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When Black Myth: Wukong launched in August 2024, it looked like not much would prevent it from snagging the coveted Game of the Year award at The Game Awards that year. Its breathtaking visuals, impeccable technical presentation, satisfying combat system, and action-packed boss fights made it a quick sell, causing it to skyrocket to an Overwhelmingly Positive rating on Steam almost immediately after it was released, where roughly 96% of user reviews were positive. However, for all the praise it seemed to garner, it ultimately lost to Team Asobi’s Astro Bot in one of the more controversial TGA twists in recent memory. Now, Black Myth: Zhong Kui, its successor, has a chance to make up for where Wukong fell short and potentially redeem the franchise by taking home GOTY once and for all.
While some might have seen Black Myth: Wukong as more deserving of the GOTY award, it lost the race because of some very fundamental shortcomings that are easy to ignore when all you’re looking at are its visuals and cinematic scale. At the end of the day, Wukong lost to Astro Bot because its polish was only surface-level, all while the foundation beneath that shine was cracked and unable to push back the criticism it was eventually met with. If Black Myth: Zhong Kui can retain everything that made Wukong great, and then improve the parts that arguably matter the most, it has a shot at winning—though with no release date yet, when it will get that shot is still up in the air.
How Black Myth: Zhong Kui Can Improve Wukong’s Biggest Shortcomings
- CLEAR SOULSLIKE IDENTITY — Embrace the Soulslike design philosophy openly so player expectations match the game’s difficulty and structure.
- IMPROVED LEVEL DESIGN — Reduce immersion-breaking invisible walls and create environments that feel more natural and rewarding to explore.
- GREATER ENEMY VARIETY — Introduce more diverse enemies and combat scenarios between boss fights to make the journey as engaging as the battles.
Black Myth: Zhong Kui Needs to Be Honest With Itself About What It Is
One of Black Myth: Wukong‘s biggest shortcomings was only as significant as it was because the game gave it too much of an opportunity to miss the mark: its boss fights. Firstly, there are over 100 unique bosses and mini-bosses in Black Myth: Wukong, and even in a game that can take upwards of 60 hours to fully complete, that’s a lot. There’s nothing inherently wrong with having that many boss fights, but it will undoubtedly turn a lot of players off, especially if those boss fights are difficult—and they often are. It also gives the game more room to fail if what it puts front and center isn’t quite up to par. Essentially, Wukong placed far too much weight on its boss encounters. When those fights worked, they were spectacular, but when they didn’t, the game had very little else to fall back on.
Who’s That Character?
Identify the silhouettes before time runs out.
Identify the silhouettes before time runs out.
Easy (7.5s)Medium (5.0s)Hard (2.5s)Permadeath (2.5s)
Many of Black Myth: Wukong‘s boss fights don’t offer the kind of challenge one would even encounter in a Soulslike game. Rather, the majority of them are exceedingly chaotic, with enemies who have an outrageous number of skills and tactics that make it very difficult to learn through trial and error. On top of that, most of Black Myth: Wukong‘s bosses move around arenas so rapidly that players have little time to regain their composure between strikes. Even Wukong’s more powerful attacks that require time to execute are nearly impossible in many boss fights because of how quickly most of the foes can move. It also doesn’t help that players may find the path leading to a boss encounter somewhat easy, only for the boss fight itself to a wedge an incredibly massive, joy-robbing difficulty spike right into their heart.
Black Myth: Wukong’s Downfall Might Have Been Its Denial of the Soulslike Label
What makes this such a major point of criticism for Black Myth: Wukong is that developer GameScience repeatedly refuted the Soulslike label, no doubt due to the subgenre’s tendency to alienate players on account of its difficulty standards and the team’s desire to draw in as many players as possible. However, Black Myth: Wukong is a Soulslike in almost every way except for perhaps one. Players respawn at the last shrine they visited, all enemies respawn in the area, boss encounters often require repeated attempts due to their difficulty, and any recovery items players might have used before dying are not returned to them. But at least players don’t lose all of their progression currency on death. That means it’s not technically a Soulslike…right?
The reality is, Black Myth: Wukong might actually have been better received if the developer went ahead and embraced the Soulslike genre, and that may be what Black Myth: Zhong Kui needs to do if it follows its predecessor’s design philosophy. For Wukong to observe so many Soulslike principles and yet refuse the label might mean more people played it in the long run, but it also meant those who went into the game thinking it would be easier than a Soulslike were more likely to criticize it. In other words, Zhong Kui needs to pick a lane and be honest with itself about which lane it’s in. The term is “Soulslike,” after all, which means if it is “like” a Souls game, it is technically a Soulslike.
Black Myth: Zhong Kui Should Go All In on Level Design and Avoid Invisible Walls
Something else that really worked against Black Myth: Wukong is its level design, particularly in how the game handled exploration. Despite featuring stunning environments and impressive scale, the world often felt more restrictive than it appeared. Invisible walls frequently blocked paths that looked perfectly traversable, which inevitably broke immersion and discouraged attempts to explore beyond the beaten path. Barriers would seemingly appear at random, where players would reasonably expect to move forward, making the world feel more like a series of corridors rather than a space meant to be explored freely.
So, for one thing, Black Myth: Zhong Kui needs to chill on the invisible walls. There are far more creative ways to design barriers in a world than throwing up an imaginary one, and that’s especially true as modern technology continues to provide methods for doing so. It’s more than possible now to create beautiful worlds that simultaneously present players with natural boundaries if Zhong Kui still wants to funnel players down a certain path. More intuitive environments, fewer immersion-breaking barriers, and a stronger sense of spatial freedom could go a long way toward ensuring that its world feels as expansive to explore as it does to look at.
Black Myth: Zhong Kui Needs More Enemy Variety Between Boss Fights
Finally, Black Myth: Zhong Kui would do well to have more enemy variety between boss fights. The way Black Myth: Wukong was set up really did make it feel like a boss rush game more than anything else, simply because moving from one boss to the next didn’t offer much worth remembering. Wukong‘s standard enemies were relatively simple and could often be defeated with repetitive attacks, making them feel like little more than an interruption before the next big encounter. If Zhong Kui wants to build on the strengths of the series, it could focus on making regular enemy encounters more mechanically distinct and strategically demanding, with a broader range of enemy behaviors, attack patterns, and even environmental interactions.
If Black Myth: Zhong Kui can learn from these shortcomings while preserving everything that made Wukong such a spectacle in the first place, it could finally deliver the kind of experience awards juries tend to reward. The series has already proven itself in many ways, but what Zhong Kui needs to do now is smooth out the rough patches. A clearer identity around its difficulty and genre, stronger level design, and enough enemy variety to make the journey between bosses just as memorable as the fights themselves could make it the complete package and turn any hype into actual potential for a Game of the Year award.
