My thoughts on Wuthering Waves

Let's go point by point, things I believe are good AND bad. I'm not going to use "It's gacha game" as an excuse for anything.

Story:

+ the concept of Lament is interesting and It's a good hook for the story.

+ the social ranks adds more authenticity into the cities since we can see more about what is happening behind the curtain of first impression.

- Rover's memory lost - very lazy way to start plot. We don't even know why she wants to regain her memories. Feeling of purpose? Need to help the world? Meet someone? Achive something? We just know she wants to regain her memories just because. The concept of "you're connected to this world" is not explored at all, leaving us with nothing to root for her as main character.

- Scar as antaghonist. Don't get me wrong, he's a great character, lots of personallity, interesting way to guide the story BUT he appeared in 1.0 and last seen or mentioned in 1.1. The game seem to completely forgot about him leading to inconsistensy in plot. Intead of exploring Fractsidus we just get more and more organizations so the one that was introuced to us in 1.0 as big and dangerous is now completely meaningless.

- Every "big story quest" is completely separated from the rest, the only thing that connects them is Rover and Lament. Feels like unfinished, different stories that just happen is the same world. The order you do those quests does not matter at all. The only thing that connects Black Shores and Rinascita is that one letter/invite we got from Shorekeeper. No foreshadowing for next location, no lesson that we learnt that will be useful in the next destination. Plot just forgets about them as soon as we go further.

- The main plot just doesn't exist in this world. It's seems like they tried to do Genshin's acts that are separated stories but forgot that they're connected by plot and push us forward in main story. The only hook at this point is Lament, the only reason for us to keep going is to regain memories. In Genshin the more you experience, the more goals you have. It started as "find our sibling" and later we're involved in crazy things with many goals. Every destination adds something to our purpose. When in WuWa It's still just "regain memories" everything else is temporary an lost as soon as we leave to another location.

- A lot of dropped things that are "Big" not explored by plot at all. No foreshadowing for them to be brought back later.

- No foreshadowing in general. Because there is no main story as a whole and everything that happens is separated, the foreshadowing last for at best, 1, maybe 2 quests. Everything is resolved as soon as we get some info drop about it, leaves us with no space for theories, anticipation and feeling of something bigger in the corner.

Character's design (the personality part):

+ there is some diversity

+ Most of the characters play part in main story for their region

+ Interesting male characters

- Character's have little to no personality (mostly accur to women). Seems like main trait for all of them is "being attractive" and simp for Rover. The role they play in main plot is important but does not have any emotional impact. Some could be replaced by a mascot and It would require very little rewritting. That also make them predictable and does not allow player getting attached to them for longer that one patch. Because of that there is nothing more to say. Judging character's personality when there's no diversity is meaningless.

Character's desing (visual aspects judged by main principles for character design, not just how It looks):

+ They look stunning visually

+ the amount of details and work putted in rendering is impressive

- Not depth. The designs seems to fit them at first but the deeper you go in the plot the more you see how shallow they are. No detailes connected to their past, no symbolism, no foreshadowing.

- Because for all character's the main color is white or black with one color as an accent, there is no space to use colors to match the personality of the character. Even that one color sometimes does not fit in terms of color language in character design.

- Very weird physics when It comes to breasts. Even when character is standing still they're jiggly like some jelly. The gravity is generally bit off in this game.

- Using one main trait as entire inspiration for character. Carlotta is from mafia? Lets make her like stereotypical, anime mafia girl. Cantarella - jelly fish. Jinshi - dragon. Brant - pirate and circus (this is one of the most interesting designs since he got two main traits), Shorekeeper - butterflies. This does not tell character's story or their past/connections. This gives us only one main thing about them.

- Contrast. The characters either blend with everything having the same value or there's too much contrast: basically very heavy dark element and everything else is just bright. It's very visible when you look at them with no saturation - the most basic way to check If your character's design is good. There should be different values for everything, especially for elements you want to stand out that complements a whole image.

- Terrible sexualization of female characters. I don't have anything against characters to be sexy with exposed skin, flirty sttitude but you can do both: sexy and classy, still very elegant and charming. It just look like Kuro took path od least resistance to get players attention by focusing on fanservice. Just like some low quality, low efford gachas.

I understand It's Gacha and this genry is based on goonerbait BUT It's not an excuse for bad design in game that is prased for their designs. If someone is creating character for goonerbaiting pupose only, without a single care about plot, personality etc. then It's no longer "Game first, gacha second" it's pure "Gacha mostly, game just by the way"

Voice acting:

+ playing with accents is fun (that point is also in [-] section)

+ male character's voiced very well, fit their personallity 100%

- All female adult character's sound exaclty the same: sleepy, unbothered, "attractive" (almost in seductive way) Even in emotional moments, when they bring sad things to them, are angry, clenching hand in fist, there is no emotions in their voice. I'm not blaming VAs I'm blaming voice director. Their voices also sometimes completely don't match the character's visual presentation which lead to breaking immersion. Not diversity in the way they're portrayed by their voice makes me feel that they're all have the same personality: calm, calculated, flirty.

- Bacause of the amount of "calm and sleepy" voices It's hard to go through entire quest in one go (I got tired after 15 min and had to go for some combat to woke up a bit)

- Accents are... weird. Kuro said that they won't be forcing British VAs to do american accent but they still do force them to do any other accent. That leads to many mispronunciations that could be forgiven in normal circumstances, yet hard to ignore since characters sounds like they should be able to pronounce them correctly. The accents are also problematic since sometimes they disappear or accure to everything but the words that should be native to the character. Not to mention that some accents were suppose to sound like x accent but since VAs are not natives - the accent is who knows what.

Storytelling:

This point would need a whole different post since It's very deep topic with a lot of things to discuss. I'll keep It simple: I can's say anything good about WuWa's storytellling. It's just bad, in some parts more or less. The best proof for my statement is the pure joy of WuWa's players for ability to skip entire main quest. In games with good or at least mid storytelling players would not be happy for that option rather than joy they would express their concerns about ruining immersion, leading to misunderstanding the plot and lowering the emotional impact of It. Even It's good points have big [-] to them.

Enviroment design:

+ looks stunning

+ some places are breathtaking

+ very detailed

+ NPC's animations in cities

- Inconsistent. Sometimes when you see a location from distance you just see some colors and ruins but when you got closed (like, really close) you can see that sky is completely different on this part of the map, yet you saw nothing like that from far away. Flying object, giant hole that appears only If you enter the location. It gives feeling like in old games when different locations were in fact just different layer of the map. (Like you're not in open world but going from one domain to another)

- Very... empty. A lot of open spaces with nothing to do, some villages without a single NPC or hidden story. Like the only things you can actually explore are those few locations. Thank goodness they added flying mode in Rinascita, running through so much unexplorable terrain would be just painful.

- Looks like they focused efford only on important locations just filling the gaps between them with emptyness.

- The amount of those empty spaces is huge. Travelling from one point to another without fast movement can take forever since the teleports are so far away.

- Incontistancy when It comes to sizes. You see a building quite big from the outside. You go inside and suddenly It's twice as big when It comes to the height and length. I tried to check If It's just my perception but no. Running around the building can take even 10 seconds less than when you run from entry to exit inside (take in account that running around is not straight line, so It should take even more time than run inside the building)

Exploration:

+ QoL mechanics for fast travel

+ Beautiful views

+ Special enemies/mini bosses

- Another thing that just don't exist as a whole...

- No hidden story, notes, infoes within eviroment

- "Secret locations" are marked on map, why they can't allow us to discover them by ourselves? What "secret" It is If simply marked on map?

- No intriguing layers on map, like cave systems, forgotten ruins hidden deep under the surface, everytime I've entered some "Secret Location" It was just small cave with exit right in front my eyes with few enemies inside. Giving you hope of something bigger only to discover that there is nothing.

- No random quest chains related to main plot

- Giant locations with nothing to offer beside beautiful view.

No wonder players are grateful for fast travel as the exploration is just boring, shallow, meaningless, based on farming materials, without any connection to main plot, packed with giant empty spaces with just few chests at best.

Combat:

+ very interesting idea of outro and intro that provides buffs

+ well done dodge/parry system

+ skill based

+ different enemies attack patterns

+ generally well done

- reflex based, you can't make up for It's lack

- slow mo that interrupts rythm

- dodge/parry very basic, no factors that would affect It. In Dark Souls there's multiple ways you can improve your dodge speed, parry by sacrificing another thing like heavy but very protective armor.

- different attack styles in characters that does not affect your play style since It's still based on dodging and the way you attack does not affect It.

- elements without much purpose, added completely unnecessary

- generally not flexible combat, you either have reflects or not, you can't really use healer as main DPS for example. Even with unleashing full potencial of characters - the DMG is not that big which makes fight tiring and long, attack, dodge, switch.

music:

+ very beautiful

+ different music for different locations

+ Inspiration from real world

- Sometimes music does not fit the on screen action. When you fight an enemy you should have someting to encourage you to try harder not to just running around and listen. For some bosses music is way to soft to make you feel the gravity of the fight or too melancholic to stay focused.

- Music that don't tell any story. It's just there, beautiful but leaving no hints. Music have incredible impact on storytelling, makes you feel what happened in certain location without telling you anything directly or to get the general atmosphere.

- Wasted potencial for synchronizing music with enemy's movements, giving you hints like when to parry, when to dodge, when to attack, is It your opponet's weak moment or increased resistance for your attacks.

cutscenes:

+ beautiful

+ quite a lot of them

- Too chaotic

- focus mostly on character expression with camera flying around all the time - this make it hard to focus or understand what is actually going on.

- Too much slow mo, It should be used to put an impact on most important moments not to just exaggerate cool character's movements.

- Lack of meaning when It comes to the story, cutscenes are another powerful storytelling tool. Creating emotional impact, deliver informations in very visual way. For WuWa the cutscenes are mostly used to show cool fights, to explore only current in game moment not to give you more infos or understanding of the situation.

symbolism:

+ nice references to Italy in Rinascita.

- actual meaning of some symbols is very twisted. For example masks in Venecia are used as symbol of lack of social norms or ranks, where evryone are equal - in Rinascita you have very important and visible social structure. To show loosing identity, being completely anonymous, society as collective instead of individuals. Rinascita is focused on individuals, everyone have their identity and role established. The carnival masks also symbolise chaos, lack of rules without any balance. Rinascita already have strict rules and they try to achive balance, nothing is chaoting. Everyting is very calculated - including characters.

- symbols are very shallow, not used for foreshadowing as It should be.

I am not answering any comments under this post. The explanation is in another post on my profile. Thanks to everyone open to good and valid discussion.