Text/Repair

Last Wednesday (June 12), Grape Jun was invited by Game Science to participate in the latest offline closed-door trial of "Black Myth: Wukong".

Anyway, it's never easy to evaluate Black Myth: Wukong, because it's so special that it makes people feel that the product is precious and fragile. From the perspective of the media, of course, saying good things is the least risky, but it is easy to create dangerous market expectations for the product; To be cautious, it will make people mistakenly think that we are singing about the decline of products and being too harsh on domestic production.

Of course I love it, and I'm looking forward to Black Myth: Wukong, but too many similar cases in the past have told us that this kind of emotional expression is easy to overdo it.

In fact, the style of the game science team has always been steady, not floating at all. Every time, the team will tell Grape Jun that I hope that the report will seek truth from facts, try to be objective and fair, and not have too many domestic protective filters, and even once saw what I wrote, I would feel that it was too much.

So let's be simple and say whatever we have.

The trial duration of this game is two and a half hours, and you can experience the complete process of the Black Wind Mountain level. According to the layout of the plot before and after, the unlocking of character skills, and the difficulty of the battles and levels, I guess this should be the first level in the official version of the game.

After all, Black Wind Mountain is the first serious "difficulty" encountered by Tang monks and apprentices in "Journey to the West", and it is also the first complete level mentioned by Game Science in the Touch Interview that was first started to be produced. The first trailer for the game, which mainly shows the content of this level.

However, what we have seen before is only the process fragment of the level and individual boss battles, and this offline closed-door trial is the first time that the game shows a complete, beginning and ending level process, including map exploration, upgrade and development, level mechanics and other content.

Due to the restrictions of the confidentiality agreement - the official team took into account the characteristics of the stand-alone game, in order to protect the mystery and freshness of the player's first experience, and because the research and development was not fully completed, this time Grape Jun will not reveal the specific plot content, as well as all the characters, gameplay, items and functions that have not been officially exposed before.

I try my best to share my feelings with you within the scope of the non-disclosure agreement. Overall, I have confidence in "Black Myth: Wukong", but don't understand this confidence as being invincible, but it is the only one in China, and it also has a competitive power in the overseas stand-alone market.

01

Let's start with the happy ones

The system framework and combat mechanics demonstrated in this closed-door experience are basically the same as those shown during the offline trial in August last year. It can be seen that in the past year, the product has mainly been paved work, and the system will not have major adjustments and changes.

And the volume of the content that everyone is most concerned about also shows the tip of the iceberg in this experience - just in terms of the number of bosses that appear in the first level, it is exaggerated. To a certain extent, it verifies what Grape Jun has learned before: the overall number of bosses in the game will far exceed most similar products on the market.

At this time, some people may want to ask, is it all a change of skin? In fact, the game has a similar skin-changing BOSS.,But there's only 1.,And it's more similar in appearance.,The attack moves、The rhythm is not quite the same.,It is not excluded that it is a choice made to serve the plot setting.。

Except for this special case, the other boss battles are very unique, and no one will feel that they are simply made to make up the number of perfunctory things.

In fact, I think the boss fights are probably the most important core experience of Black Myth: Wukong, and the part that the team has written about the most.

The first is the proportion of content. In the two-and-a-half-hour level process, I am either fighting the boss, or on the way to the boss, the whole level seems to be connected by one boss after another, and if the two-and-a-half-hour experience time is stuck for a while, it is too late to finish all the boss battles. The anchor point of my memory of the map does not come from any landmark, but from the location of the boss.

The second is the effort of design. Whether it is the sword wolf sect leader, Lingxuzi, or the black bear spirit in the back, and more bosses that have not yet been exposed. Each battle feels different, some of them are full of flavor and tricks, and some of them seem to be dull, but they actually love to use yin tricks. In addition, the game has a good combat feel, and with various spell changes, the player's boss battle experience will be quite rich.

The third is the importance of the plot. Most of the game's current plot content comes from boss battles. Every time before, during, and after the battle, the boss will provide a lot of information to the player, and the boss illustrated book included after successful defeat is also one of the keys to completing the story. So if you want to know the whole story, it is essential to fight all the boss battles.

Not to mention, one of the most attractive things about "Black Myth: Wukong" since it was exposed is the reinterpretation of the Journey to the West theme. Those who stand in the way of learning scriptures, the famous demons, monsters, gods and Buddhas, in what form will be presented in the game, is the thing everyone is most looking forward to.

Three dozen white bone spirits, true and false Xiao Lei Yin, after making trouble in the Heavenly Palace, he fought with the Four Heavenly Kings, and set foot on the Flame Mountain to face off against the Bull Demon King...... These boss battles can be exciting just thinking about it.

On the other side of the boss design, the player has a richer offensive means. Although I can't expand on it in detail, I can say that the RPG development part of "Black Myth: Wukong" may be more important and fun than everyone thinks.

Players can build their own or boss-specific style of play through the combination of equipment and skills. Players who have difficulty in operation can also rely on sufficient cultivation and correct strategy to win.

According to Grape Jun, one of the development concepts of "Black Myth: Wukong" is called "A Hero", which is an abbreviation for a series of keywords, such as Addictive Gameplay, and its internal Chinese counterpart is an excellent growth experience, rather than pure numerical growth.

02

Let's talk about worries

Black Myth: Wukong's boss battles are really good, but the core fun of the game seems to be a little too focused on boss fights.

I'm not sure if it's because Black Wind Mountain is the first level of the game, and the flow design between the bosses is not too much fun. First of all, the level itself lacks exploration value, although there are some forks in the road, but most of them are either dead ends, or they will still converge on the main road in the end, and the level as a whole is still a linear line of thought.

Secondly, these side paths are still based on miscellaneous soldiers, prop materials, and elite monsters as the main content, but their combat parts lack changes and challenges, and there is no special terrain, traps, and mechanisms as a cooperation, resulting in an experience of sweeping monsters on the ground. Coupled with the average reward, I don't really want to pay attention to these miscellaneous soldiers in the future.

The content in the final level except for the battle, compared to the tense and exciting, large quantity and high-quality boss battles, is a bit lackluster. For example, the game doesn't have an assassination feature at the moment, so there may not be a stealth level.

When it was first exposed before, the "golden cicada" that amazed players was actually not a core ability or permanent gameplay. It's more of a specific, hands-on, one-off storytelling. And the range of action is quite limited, and it cannot be considered a "stealth play".

But again, I'd like to stress that these are just the problems that the first level shows, not necessarily the full picture of the game. Like the quest gameplay that appeared in the trial last August, in fact, there is no one this time; In a previous game demo video, there was also a scene where a crow was transformed into a flying level; Finally, there is also a hidden mechanic in the Black Wind Mountain level, but not much more.

So I don't rule out the possibility that as the plot progresses, the game level design will reach a higher level. For example, in a super-large boss battle like the Four Heavenly Kings, there is a high probability that there will be a special map mechanism to play; For example, when it comes to the Flaming Mountain, will you need a banana fan and a specific decryption technique to move forward?

Including the combat logic that was displayed in Havoc in Tiangong when the game was first exposed, and was not used for the core gameplay at all, also shows that the R&D team may really be hiding ruthless work in the key levels in the back.

In 2020, the part of the Havoc Heavenly Palace that was first exposed

However, only the overall level shown by the first level of Black Wind Mountain, maybe you can still lower your expectations appropriately - compared with those top ARPGs, there is indeed a certain distance, especially in the level design and process layout.

Of course, the premise of my evaluation of "Black Myth: Wukong" is also that I have regarded it as a work that can be taken to the international stage and can be directly evaluated without adding a domestic filter and stacking a bunch of armor.

03

Finally, let's talk about relaxation

Every time I write Black Myth: Wukong, I get a little nervous.

After all, this project is so hard-won in the domestic market that people can't help but want to protect it.

But after writing it down a few times, I realized that we could have faced it with a much easier mindset and judged Black Myth: Wukong - I believe it can't hurt the game science team, or even the game itself.

So let's just talk about a few small feelings, the character's moves in battle are good, but in the non-combat state, the character's turning, emergency stop, and jumping feel are not very comfortable; The game's scene art is extremely realistic and of high quality, but the paths of the levels are not clear enough, and the edges of the map are not easy to grasp. The combination of these two makes the experience of breaking through the level a little discounted.

Although these details are small, it is not easy to do a good job, and many overseas masterpieces may not be perfect, let alone a fledgling stand-alone team?

Now there are only 2 months left before the official release of the game. Although the team still has time to make final optimizations and fill in the gaps, we from the outside, whether we are applauding or declining, we can't change anything fundamental.

In other words, we don't have to worry about what others think of and how they evaluate Black Myth: Wukong. We just have to wait quietly for the day of 820 to come, and everything will naturally have a result.

And the previous signs also made me more optimistic about the final result: it topped the global Steam best-selling list, 20,000 sets of physical deluxe editions and 10,000 sets of collector's editions were sold out in an instant, and the pre-order players on the small black box have reached 480,000......

I think the only goal of "Black Myth: Wukong" is probably word-of-mouth. As long as this is done well, the sales of the game will not be too bad.

I would also like to believe that we will finally have a happy end.

This article is from Xinzhi self-media and does not represent the views and positions of Business Xinzhi.If there is any suspicion of infringement, please contact the administrator of the Business News Platform.Contact: system@shangyexinzhi.com