Wuthering Waves Hands-On GDC Preview: "Another Open-World ARPG With A Very Strong Hook"

29.03.2024 - 20:27 / screenrant.com / Cody Gravelle

is the latest effort from developer Kuro Games (). It's an action RPG gacha title set to release for iOS, Android, PC, and PlayStation, and borrows heavily from already popular titles within the same space — most obviously, which it will inevitably draw numerous comparisons to. That's certainly not a bad place to start, however, and what innovates is more than enough to separate it as a game worth watching as it moves closer to a global release following another round of closed beta tests.

While attending the Game Developers Conference 2024, was able to participate in a hands-on demonstration of a newer build of. Following a brief demonstration of mechanics from a member of the Kuro Games team, we were able to play through a brief combat section against a boss, an open-world puzzle, and some exploration of one of the game's settlements. Make no mistake: this game is unabashedly attempting to capitalize on the space carved out for the genre years ago. But it does it well enough that it feels like it has its own identity, too.

employs a 3-unit combat system with a design focus on swapping between them at beneficial times during battle to maximize their synergies. It's not ground-breaking, but the implementation is excellent — slowly building up a charge bar while using abilities and properly timing dodges allows players to then swap into a new unit that has an immediate effect upon entering the battlefield. We didn't get a chance to really examine what those abilities are, but they seem to range from doing damage to setting up better positioning for a new skill input.

Combat also feels snappy and responsive in, with well-made character movement a crucial element of the flow of battle. Dodges felt especially pinpoint and rewarding, and combat also features a parry system where a unit can time their attack to respond to an enemy's vulnerability indicator during their own lunge — doing so results in damage and a stagger that can set up the next chain of a combo. The hands-on was a little too short to really go in-depth on these systems so it's difficult to ascertain exactly how the interplay between dodging, parrying, and swapping units really flows, but what was on display felt intuitive and fun.

Boss design also feels like it will be a rewarding element of. We got to try a few different difficulty levels and while the first one was fairly easy, only requiring a few well-timed dodges to set up brutally efficient combos, the very next difficulty element resulted in a team wipe after an ill-timed party member swap. It's refreshing to have combat in this genre that feels sufficiently challenging without being completely over-the-top, and early impressions make it feel like Kuro Games has managed to strike