The Cyberpunk: Edgerunners collab in Wuthering Waves has been over for a while now, but despite it having been pretty much my sole reason for picking up the game in the first place I’m still playing every day. Which is to say, it’s fricking awesome as a whole! To some extent that really doesn’t surprise me of course, as I’ve heard a lot of good things about it since its release two years ago. What does surprise me, however, is that some of the features I’d expected to like the least are the ones I actually enjoy the most right now. The most prominent being… You are not stepping on me, mate! Yeah, it’s the combat! I know, I know – I’m just as bewildered as you are. But, folks, it feels so good! It’s flashy, fast paced, visceral and really satisfying. Also, and to me that’s the most important aspect, it somehow makes following relatively strict and complex rotations still feel like I’m basically just button mashing. I don’t know how they managed to get that balancing act right, but they did it. By the way, don’t even think for a second that I figured out said rotations by myself. Hell no. If YouTube videos made by people who are much better at stuff like this weren’t a thing I’d be completely screwed. Now, of course the information on how it all works is right there in the game…but as far as I’m concerned they might as well have saved themselves the trouble to translate from Chinese to English, because I don’t understand a word either way. I mean, just look at this wall of text… This is just part of one skill… Yeah…do we really need things to be this complex? But, again, playing my main team consisting of Lucy, Rebecca and Shorekeeper has become second nature by now, so much so that I even know when (and how!) to follow the optimal rotation, and when it would actually be overkill to do so, in which case I really just button mash with Lucy and watch everything die regardless. This is basically what a graveyard looks like on Solaris-3. Another feature I surprisingly like quite a lot is the Echo system. Echoes are WuWa’s version of Artifacts, and like in most gachas that have them they constitute the main late-game grind, because multiple layers of RNG stand in the way of getting your hands on the perfect stat boosts for your characters. There’s one huge difference here however – Echoes are left behind by defeated enemies, no matter when and where you’ve killed them, meaning that you can farm them almost endlessly without the need to spend Stamina. This really alleviates a big chunk of the RNG pains. If you need a certain boss’ Echo, for instance, you can just go and kill that same boss over and over until you’ve got some copies with the desired main stat on them. As long as you don’t claim the other rewards at the end you can repeat this ad infinitum without ever spending any Stamina. Meanwhile, enemies in the open world only respawn once a day and don’t always leave an Echo behind either, but the open world is huge, so…yeah. There are also consumable items that can change an Echo’s main stat, and even one that lets you keep the good sub stats while rerolling the others. The former isn’t even all that rare; the latter unfortunately is though. Bottom line is, getting perfect gear is still very RNG-dependent and will take a long time, but it’s relatively easy – and also fun – to get to a point where it’s at the very least good. The story chapters I’ve seen so far range from just above servicable to all-around terrific, seemingly getting better and better the farther you progress. Granted, I was a bit underwhelmed at first… So the main character has amnesia again? He also looks and sounds rather bland (I think this is the first MC whose voice actor I dislike). And he has a floating, talking sidekick, too? Channeling Genshin Impact much? It gets better pretty quickly however, and the later chapters of Act I already deliver some really strong emotional beats, as well as spectacular set pieces. The MC aside I also like most of the characters a lot, personality- as well as design-wise. They’ve done a banger job with all the playable characters in particular, and while every gacha game tries to do that for obvious reasons, I think Kuro Games have really knocked it out of the park with most of theirs. The open world really is huge, and wherever you go it’s either very beautiful, or at least interesting. This is a post-apocalyptic world after all, so many areas not being quite as lush as Genshin’s is understandable. Make no mistake though, the graphical fidelity is much higher overall, as the game runs on Unreal Engine (a mix of 4 and 5, if I understand correctly). Puzzles are mostly very easy to solve, and collectibles aren’t hard to reach either. Which isn’t to say that there’s not much to do – far from it. I’m just saying you shouldn’t expect much in terms of challenge. So, yeah, I’m having loads of fun. Now that Bhagpuss has his account back we may well get to read some more about the game over at his place, too. Next time around I’ll probably talk about a completely different breed of game though…for now let’s just say that the trend of awesome but older games getting high-quality remakes continues, and I’m so here for it! Yo ho, yo ho, a pirate’s life for me…