Wuthering Waves Is Good... But It Needs To Be Better. | Wuthering Waves CBT2 First Impressions

weathering waves is a game that I have been eagerly anticipating ever since I heard of it back in 2022 this came during a time when open world action RPGs were running hot following the meteoric success of ginji's made in Voyage a sizable portion of the gacha fandom was quick to write off most of them as knockoff attempts to one up each other but for one reason or another weathering ways was different at least for me maybe it had to do with the fact that it was being developed by Kudo a fairly reputable company or because of the strong first impression of the demos and trailers me but I had high hopes for this game I still do having received access to the the second Clos beta I had the privilege to look through all the changes implemented since the first beta and I wanted to make an honest review of what I think about the game so far of course this is still a beta test there's found to be a number of bugs and Janks to be ironed out and currently we still don't have a release of the official version yet that being said the game feels very close to completion just based on what is made available to us so far in the second beta I'll be giving a cursory overview of the game's mechanics and systems things I stood out to me as well as offer feedback on what I believe can be improved on after all that's so betas are for right weing waves or woa which I'll be referring to it as is a more combat intensive action RPG with a greater focus on understanding its various battle systems and mechanics as someone who definitely leans more on the side of combat than exploration for these types of games this resonates with me a lot one of my main gripes of achin is how much potential there is to expand on the game's combat but whether due to the absence of endgame content or lack of further expansion on its mechanics it always Felts superficial I think that's ultimately the same thoughts people have towards woa with more complex and sophisticated combat right away something I took notice of is better movement options we have at our disposal the game has a basic Walkin Sprint but when pressing the Sprint Key by default it actually makes you dash backwards implying it's less of a Sprint and more of a Dodge moreover you can actually Dash midair which is something I love because in my opinion every open world RPG with the focus on combat should have some suance of a double jump continuing with the movement options running in this game does not expend stamina merely the initial Dash the only time it actually does is when you run up walls yes you can run up walls in this scheme I know it sounds kind of silly but compared to painstakingly climbing I'll take the alternative any day speaking of which the jump off animation is a lot more fluid and satisfying you actually jump off the wall and perform a somersault in the air so despite wo placing more emphasis on combat I can definitely see the more fluid mobility in this game lending itself to better exploration as well especially given we can Sprint forever it gets even more fun when you have access to your grappling hook letting you repel to various areas and even use it as an extra jump there's a lot of freedom and movement in the geme it actually almost reminds me of near autom I'm not sure if the animations are finalized yet but I do find the camera movement for when you jump to be a little rough maybe it's the way the key frames transition between animations but smoothing that out would be easier on the eyes although I'll touch on camera movement a bit more later on to the actual fighting itself since my audience on vars 2 mainly consists of genchan players I'll be making references between the two games although I'm trying my best not to since I personally don't subscribe to the whole ging killer discourse with these types of games but Wu was combat should be very intuitive for ging players every unit has a normal attack and a heavy attack with the ladder consuming stamina in exchange for dealing more damage or having an additional effect what's interesting about this game though is how unique the attacks are normal and charge attacks are pretty uniform across the board with the only difference coming down to the weapon you use in wua even with a limited number of units I have so far characters have their own way of attacking for example yyang is a conventional sword fighter with a heavy attack dashing forward on the other hand we have V who uses what is called a rectifier this game's version of a catalyst I assume her attack animations are more distinct when normal attacking she commands a spirit that strikes in a manner of ways during which she can slowly move around while this is happening as for the heavy attack actually has a spear spin around like a top letting you remotely control where it moves in a set radius BYU is the only rectifier user I have at the moment so I'm not sure if all rectifier users have this type of attack or if it's just her but if that's the case I'm really excited to see everyone else's heavy attack by the way woa has guns one of the First characters you get in your party is tiisha and she fights using guns I love bow arrows don't get me wrong but I find guns to be far more satisfying to use from what I know at the moment there are five weapon types rectifier pistol gauntlets so we're going to have roller type units very excited for that your conventional swords and Broad blades which are great swords basically continuing on with the combat mechanics we have resonance skills your e very similar to genin's Elemental skill and serves as their secondary method of combat now every character has what is called a forte circuit you'll find a lot of the game's terms and parament is founded on the basis of Sound and Music Forte circuits essentially serve as a charge meter wherein you accumulate the resource to then Empower your attacks and skills adding another layer of depth to Wu's combat each unit has a number of ways to charge up their Forte circuit making it so this a lot more to the game's combat than just attacking mindlessly the main finishing move is called resonance Liberation wo is equivalent of an elemental burst or ultimate it behaves identically otherwise designed to come with a special effect or property based on the character yangyang steals damage B is a heal and Echo summon chisha is a burst of damage stuff like that anyone who's played genin impact can easily digest wo's combat they just have to become familiar with the Forte circuit mechanic one last aspect of the game's combat is the intro skill a small feature but one that I'm extremely appreciative of while attacking in battle you'll notice your teamate Ates icons glow indicating their intro skills available to use when swapping to them not only do they briefly show on screen alongside your active character but they un show quick strike as a enter and your current unit rotates out the existing unit also performs an outro skill incentivizing you to swap between characters as much as possible to get as many intro outro skills as you can most intro skills are attacks while outro skills can range from attacks to supportive elements such as regenerating energy or debuffing enemies tandem attacks are a common sight in tag battle systems and it's incredibly satisfying in this game it feels a lot more grounded to especially being able to see two of your units on the field briefly at the same time instead of switching to another without any special flourish or entrance something else I really enjoy about Wu's combat is how Dynamic it feels the way the camera moves as you fight how it tenses up and relaxes the ability to lock onto a specific enemy and have it so your character can strafe left or right back and forth it really highlights and accentuates the intensity of a fight probably more so as you get more and more into it let's move on to the other major gameplay system that you're probably excited about the weapons and equipment Wu's weapons are pretty standard fair you have a main stat substat and a weapon passive associated with them the real meat and potatoes of this game is the echosystem echos can be equated to G in and star artifacts and Relics with each Echo having an assortment of stats ranging from defense to HP to attack and other things and there are set effects based on the type of echo it is indicated by an icon next to each one on the bottom left more noteworthy though is that whichever Echo that's in the primary slot can have their Echo ability used letting you transform into them for a special ability whether it's regenerating Health dealing damage Etc so these are essentially summons that you can capture to then use in combat almost like a Pokémon except you can also capture boss enemies and use them in combat as well Echo abilities are yet another layer of depth added to W was content and present a lot of possible ideas in compass scenarios for example you can have an attacker but give them an echo that recovers HP increasing the survivability or you can have a support character and give them an echo with the crowd control ability that corals enemies together so while artifacts and Relics are almost entirely stat sticks that don't really change the unit's play style Echo come with their own active ability ities that can drastically change how you like to play your units and will likely be a major influence in certain fights one battle you might gear up your entire party with offensive echos to one shot everything another battle you might have to supplement your team's durability by giving a bunch of tank and healing Echoes there's a ton of room for a personal expression depending on the type of player you are and from a hardcore slm meta standpoint I can see this getting very optimized it's a really cool system considering the way you obtain Echo is to fight enemies and bosses giving players a reason to grind I know grinding can be a divisive thing particularly for those don't have the time or motivation to dedicate hours every week but it does afford the option for players who want to go down that route so as you can see from character mechanics like Forte circuits to intro natural attacks to item mechanics like Echo actives there's so much more to think about when it comes to WS combat and while I'm all for that there's something that has me mildly concerned about it this game is crossplatform intended to be playable on both PC and mobile on PC The increased complexity of the game isn't that much of an issue in light of having effectively 7 to 10 buttons you can press at any given point in time but on your phones you can only only press two or maybe three things at a time if you're one of those crazy mobile Gamers trying to seamlessly maneuver about the fight while attacking using your skills Echoes switching between characters can be quite the owner's task for just your thumbs so I wonder how difficult this game will be to play on handled devices I've always played genin on my computer but on the rare occasions I had to play on my phone I would always just try to use someone easy to attack with like a bow user or net since trying to use a melee attacker while moving the camera moving the character and stuff was just too unwieldy I can see this being more difficult in woa where there's even more things have to account for kacha games have a predominantly handheld audience making the game non mobile friendly could work against it next thing I want to briefly go over is the overall exploration for starters the visuals I find Wu's environment to be easier on the ice it might be a result of the landscape being less saturated compared to genin's more vibrant aesthetic not that there's anything wrong with the vibrant colorful landscape more that it's easier to notice anything of import like if you're trying to find items or materials and it makes enemies NPCs and whatnot stand out more beside from that there's a more how should I say subdued undertone to the aesthetic of the game the graphics are still picturesque and have that anime breath of the wild aesthetic to them but there definitely appears to be a more monotone color scheme to this game which I'd imagine is intentional in light of the more serious realistic darker Vibe given off by woa as opposed to hoo's more bubbly lighthearted games I haven't spent a great deal of time exploring but I did notice there's a lot less focus on it likely to put more emphasis on Combat on one hand I'm inclined to believe that this is close beta and they plan to add more explor Dev elements to the game or they're trying to make the game more combat Centric and less on overall search and travel depending on what type of player you are this is either a positive or negative thing but kind of like what I said about the gacha audience being mostly mobile Gamers they're also mostly casual players who prefer overall exploration though I've expressed countless times that I wish genin had more combat I'm fully aware of the reason they prioritize exploration mini games and puzzles given that wo's gameplay is predicated on intense engaging battles and combat exploration naturally won't be the main focus nor does it have to be even so it is first and foremost an over World title and an in integral part of the genre's gameplay is checking out all there is to see and explore you can easily accomplish both considering the greater freedom of movement we have you should make exploration a lot more fun and when paired with the ability to pick up everything by holding the pickup key instead of mashing F I honestly feel like wo's exploration will be more enjoyable than ginin assuming they do add more content in this department I will acknowledge that the ecosystem is a good way to encourage you to visit New areas to find new enemies to capture and use as your own it's not just exploring for the sake of collecting items that you have too many of anyway one suggestion I have is St overw World occurrences have so a couple times a day a cluster of rare enemies or maybe NPCs you can fight spawn in various parts of the overw world that can satisfy the exploration and combat fans at the same time last but not least the gacha system at a surface glance I find woa to be less burdensome on your wallet for starters prices for PS are the same as hoyo titles but the five star character and weapon rates are 8% 2% higher than gain and. 1% higher than STL while that doesn't seem like a whole lot you can expect a couple more five stars per year give rettin especially in ton with the hard pity for this game being 80 PS instead of 90 not sure if this is soft pity since I can't well in the beta the reimbursement benefit only applies to the Chinese server I believe but I imagine there will be one as that's kind of The Benchmark for these kinds of metrics another thing to keep in mind is that the weapon Banner for woa has 100% guaranteed pity and for the standard weapon Banner you can specifically choose which one you want that alone greatly increases the accessibility of five star weapons for players on a limited budget character banners have a 50/50 and a guarantee if you fail just like engine and star now rates only tell one side of the story you can have extremely generous gacha rates but give absolutely no free currency and vice versa you can give players thousands of free pulse but have abysal rates there's also the question of whether or not five star characters and weapons are necessary to complete the game's content and how many you'll need wo's difficulty will likely be higher on account of it being more combat Centric which may imply you're expected to have more five stars I hope that's not the case as I want the game to not be a whale trap fortunately however I did notice that overall chests give a fair amount of currency so at least until we exhaust all the the game's content pulse in this game appear to be more available again we'll have to wait until live release to see how generous Kuro is with free pulse that being said punishing Gray Raven their other Flagship title has the history of giving five star selectors and I assume they'll do the same here for celebratory occasions apart from that I think we should avoid making final judgments on the gacha system until we have the empirical data from live release all in all I feel cautiously optimistic about weaing waves it is a very strong premise and a good foundation for being an extremely successful game but there's still a fair bit of work that needs to be done and I'm not just talking about bug fixes and polishing clunky animations I think the current challenge with this game is that people will naturally be making comparisons between it and gin this means that while I wish it weren't the case expectations will be noticeably higher for this game compounded even further by how long we've been waiting for it to come out it can't just be as good as genin it will have to be better for the game to truly establish itself as a strong rival once more I'm not a fan of the whole Narrative of this game being a genin killer teams are more than capable of coexisting and serving as healthy competition for each other but with with how similar the two games are success or failure will depend on distinguishment woa needs to do a lot of things but more importantly it needs to do them well and in a way that caters towards a broad audience of casual and hardcore combat and exploration story and gameplay alike most critical of all it has to be memorable there are countless schemes with a good premise but they're forgettable because they don't Foster loyalty and attachment to the characters Mythos or anything so far based on what I've observed in the second beta there's definitely potential but there's also definitely room for improvement beyond the aspects I talked about in this video anyways that will conclude my first impressions what do you guys think about weathering wavs do you feel like it's a game you're willing to try out or is it not that appealing to you let me know in the comments down below I plan to make more content on the game during the close Beta And of course when it officially comes out so for the time being if you enjoyed the video I'd appreciate it if you could leave a like And subscribe don't forget to follow me on Twitter at bars SPM join my Discord server and stay tuned for future weathering ways content as usual but until next time thanks so much for watching and I look forward to seeing you again soon take care [Music]

Channel: Vars II

Views: 84,319

Keywords: genshin, genshin impact, vars genshin impact, genshin discussion, genshin impact analysis, hoyoverse, vars wuthering waves, wuthering waves, wuthering waves closed beta 2, wuthering waves review, wuthering waves closed beta 2 gameplay, is wuthering waves good, wuthering waves cbt 2, wuthering waves gameplay, wuwa, wuthering waves release date, wuthering waves trailer, wuthering waves vs genshin impact, wuthering waves vs genshin, wuthering waves first impressions

Id: E2sRG3_55fc

Length: 14min 28sec (868 seconds)

Published: Tue Feb 20 2024