THIS GAME ROCKS. I adore this game and need to segment my thoughts to properly gush about it. I have completed two playthroughs on ps5, and 2 playthroughs on PC. (Love this game so much I wanted a steam completion, 2 playthroughs minimum)

-Story: Unfamiliar as I am with Chinese mythology and Journey to the West, this game’s story is awesome! I don’t understand all of it, I don’t catch all the references, and I am definitely losing something in translation, even so this game has engaging characters and interesting plots. Being an action game, these characters and their relationships mainly create conflicts that the player can resolve, but it never feels forced and seems like a natural state of the world. The pacing is good, and the payoffs are great, especially near the end of the game. On my first playthrough, I did not get the true ending and I still felt satisfied with the ending, even though it was (unknown to me) incomplete. When I found out about and then got the true ending on my second playthrough, there was still a large amount of surprise and satisfaction, more than I expected. Disclaimer, I played with Chinese audio and English subtitles, the story I got may be different from what you get.

-Graphics and vibes: Immaculate. This game is so pretty it’ll brick your PC so make sure you have good specs lol. The fur, the particles, the amount of detail and care put into each and every model is breathtaking. You could spend half an hour looking at a piece of armor and still not see everything. The environments have many unique decorations with lots of detail and interesting stories on them. Some are highly detailed scans of actual monuments and sculptures in China. No wonder the file size is 130gb.

-Music: Very good! A lot of it may require the context of the game to shine, but it's always framing the situation perfectly, and a joy to listen to.

-Combat: Very fun! Your job is to be an annoying fly in the enemy’s personal space, constantly ticking away at their health and zipping around evading their swats at the last moment, gradually building up focus, then hitting them with a large burst of damage. The challenge is good! Many fights took me multiple hours on the first playthrough, however I was accidentally ignoring a levelup system that I wrongly assumed was consumable crafting, and I was specifically avoiding things I thought were cheesy. Spells and transformations can make things pretty easy and cheesy if you want. On my first play, I used rock solid, immobilize, and, only when I really needed them, transformations. On my first playthrough I ignored one of the primary ways to upgrade your stats accidentally because I thought it was crafting, yet I still thought the game was pretty fair.
The different builds you can run are quite varied, each weapon and each armor piece has a different passive ability. Unfortunately weapons cannot be upgraded like your armor pieces, so by the end you’re probably going to use a higher tier weapon because it does more damage, rather than a lower tier weapon with the super cool effect you want to use.
Unfortunately combat does not evolve very much over the course of the game, you will be relying on a sense of wonder or desire to see the story to carry you through the late game. Your abilities become more powerful, and enemy patterns become more intense, but the game will not change dramatically. Thankfully you have a plethora of tools to experiment with and you can change your build at any time.

-Exploration: This is the main issue with the game, lots of invisible walls that really confuse the player on first go. They have updated it with a map now, which will help you know what is an intended route and what isn’t, so that’s cool.

-Overall: I fully recommend this game to anyone who likes action games, character action games, or souls games, even at full price I bought it twice. It is the game I most enjoyed in 2024.

THIS GAME ROCKS. I adore this game and need to segment my thoughts to properly gush about it. I have completed two playthroughs on ps5, and 2 playthroughs on PC. (Love this game so much I wanted a steam completion, 2 playthroughs minimum) -Story: Unfamiliar as I am with Chinese mythology and Journey to the West, this game’s story is awesome! I don’t understand all of it, I don’t catch all the references, and I am definitely losing something in translation, even so this game has engaging characters and interesting plots. Being an action game, these characters and their relationships mainly create conflicts that the player can resolve, but it never feels forced and seems like a natural state of the world. The pacing is good, and the payoffs are great, especially near the end of the game. On my first playthrough, I did not get the true ending and I still felt satisfied with the ending, even though it was (unknown to me) incomplete. When I found out about and then got the true ending on my second playthrough, there was still a large amount of surprise and satisfaction, more than I expected. Disclaimer, I played with Chinese audio and English subtitles, the story I got may be different from what you get. -Graphics and vibes: Immaculate. This game is so pretty it’ll brick your PC so make sure you have good specs lol. The fur, the particles, the amount of detail and care put into each and every model is breathtaking. You could spend half an hour looking at a piece of armor and still not see everything. The environments have many unique decorations with lots of detail and interesting stories on them. Some are highly detailed scans of actual monuments and sculptures in China. No wonder the file size is 130gb. -Music: Very good! A lot of it may require the context of the game to shine, but it's always framing the situation perfectly, and a joy to listen to. -Combat: Very fun! Your job is to be an annoying fly in the enemy’s personal space, constantly ticking away at their health and zipping around evading their swats at the last moment, gradually building up focus, then hitting them with a large burst of damage. The challenge is good! Many fights took me multiple hours on the first playthrough, however I was accidentally ignoring a levelup system that I wrongly assumed was consumable crafting, and I was specifically avoiding things I thought were cheesy. Spells and transformations can make things pretty easy and cheesy if you want. On my first play, I used rock solid, immobilize, and, only when I really needed them, transformations. On my first playthrough I ignored one of the primary ways to upgrade your stats accidentally because I thought it was crafting, yet I still thought the game was pretty fair. The different builds you can run are quite varied, each weapon and each armor piece has a different passive ability. Unfortunately weapons cannot be upgraded like your armor pieces, so by the end you’re probably going to use a higher tier weapon because it does more damage, rather than a lower tier weapon with the super cool effect you want to use. Unfortunately combat does not evolve very much over the course of the game, you will be relying on a sense of wonder or desire to see the story to carry you through the late game. Your abilities become more powerful, and enemy patterns become more intense, but the game will not change dramatically. Thankfully you have a plethora of tools to experiment with and you can change your build at any time. -Exploration: This is the main issue with the game, lots of invisible walls that really confuse the player on first go. They have updated it with a map now, which will help you know what is an intended route and what isn’t, so that’s cool. -Overall: I fully recommend this game to anyone who likes action games, character action games, or souls games, even at full price I bought it twice. It is the game I most enjoyed in 2024.