Wuthering Waves just crashed into the cliff that is the gaming public, and reactions are, well, a little mixed. In case you're unfamiliar, the game's a Genshin Impact-styled gacha from developer Kuro Games, set in a post-apocalyptic world where you follow the journey of amnesiac pretty boy/girl Rover.
It's been generating quite a bit of buzz: At the time of writing, Wuthering Waves currently has a whopping 91,000 viewers on Twitch—but from a player perspective? Things aren't going so great.
Taking a jaunt over to the game's subreddit, there's a deluge of players complaining about a vast range of technical difficulties. First up, the game's performance isn't stellar. On the technical issues megathread, many would-be Rovers are reporting stuttering even on considerably powerful hardware for the game's PC version.
Bugs have also been popping up like whack-a-moles, such as unimplemented NPCs with placeholder dialogue, tails made out of stretched polygons, and this accidental PSA for sunscreen (thanks, VG247). Remember to lather up before you go outside this summer, folks, or you too might turn into a walking Zalgo.
Please tell me I'm not the only one experiencing this ???? from r/WutheringWaves
In a separate thread, players are also pointing out two major issues with the English dub, with one being far more solvable than the other. The game's subtitles often run out of space, simply vanishing into the ether mid-exposition dump—otherwise, players are reporting that the game's voice lines are both flatly delivered or just poorly recorded: "I'm constantly hearing popping (missing pop filter?) and breaths," writes one player, "most glaringly from Yangyang. They sound like they're trying and failing to do ASMR."
As other players have noted, however, this seems to be more of an issue of direction. Several of the game's voice actors have had notable roles in other titles and have done just fine. Yangyang's English voice actor, Rebecca Yeo, has starred in Cyberpunk 2077 for example—whereas other characters have had roles in the dub for the Xenoblade series, which I hear is quite good.
Shoddy direction tracks with other complaints about the story itself, which is apparently so front-loaded with exposition it's grounds for a migraine: "We've got The Lament, Waveworn Phenomenon, Tacet Fields, Tacet Discords and TD Outbreaks, Retroact Rain, Tacetite, Resonators, Reverberations, Echos, Pangu Terminals, Sentinels, some vaccine candy and an outbreak from decades ago," laments one player after just three hours of playtime.
In a list of known issues sent to players, Kuro Games highlights problems such as character assets not loading, freeze-ups, lips not syncing up to voicelines, and problems launching the game at all, which the studio says will be "fixed in future updates". Some baffled players are even reporting mysterious messages from Kuro Games congratulating them for participating in a "closed beta 2", which is news to everybody involved.
Closed Beta 2??? from r/WutheringWaves
That's not to say it's all bad, though. A lot of the hype for Wuthering Waves was based around the DMC-style combat which—from what I've seen—is both intact and still a positive draw. Still, when you're being compared to Genshin Impact—a game so hotcake-popular it's capable of starting TikTok trends—a bad first impression is potentially fatal.
