For Mobile Friday this week is i tried out Wuthering Waves, from developers Kuro Games.
This game only came out this week, but after playing it maybe it came out a bit too soon. i played it on my #iPhone 14 Pro and i had rough time. the most frustrating part for me was the framerate. when it worked, the combat was fast and flowed well. it was great working with my partner and doing combo attacks. but there were far fewer of those fights. often the combat, and most other aspects of the game, were plagued by slowdown and stuttering.
Other annoying issues included the sound. at times, the sound would get ahead of the video. so the sound would then stop, the video would play until it caught up with the sound, and then they'd continue. i also found the controls to be weird in that when i put my finger back on the screen there was a second or two where the character wouldn't move in the direction i wanted before then stopping and going where i wanted them to. it also got in the way of the soundtrack. it's hard to relax and enjoy the soundtrack when it pauses so frequently or, once or twice, seemingly doesn't play at all.
There were minor issues with pop-in with textures and when we got to an area with grass it was noticeable where the boundary was between the grass being drawn and not. those kinda issues i don't mind and understand. what i couldn't understand were some of the game design choices. Wuthering Waves says a lot in this first hour. there's near constant talking. most of it is well timed and well controlled so we get to hear all of it. and then there are sections where the talking is tied to places on the map. so i found myself starting one conversation and then abruptly ending it with another conversation as i moved across the map.
The subtitles couldn't help as they too had issues. in the beginning there's small section where the subtitles get in the way of the Home Bar. those subtitles are also much bigger than the typical ones, but there were also some smaller than that. some subtitles scroll, whilst others need you to manually scroll them. and once or twice some of the subtitles looked incomplete.
Between looking at the beautiful world Kuro Games have made and the fun to play combat, it often felt like there was too much being said too quickly. i couldn't take it all in, i was being overloaded with information. it felt like this came at the cost of a tutorial as what the game had seemed basic and barebones. for example, i picked up a sword and yet the game never showed me how to equip it. the weapon screen mentioned upgrades, but again there was no tutorial telling me what to do. i can understand if these are done later, but if you're going to have gameplay mechanics that use them from the start then they need to be tutorialized from the start. i also feel that combat needs to be paused when new items are introduced. when a new button appeared in the middle of combat, with so much happening at once, it was difficult to hear what they wanted me to do and too easy to hit the new button before it was explained. if there was a pause when the button was introduced, they could tell me what it does and then un pause and let me do it.
with the game in such a state on iPhone 14 pro, i can't recommend it for anyone with the same phone or later. the iPhone 15 pro might have enough power to force a stable framerate and fix other issues. the new #ipadpro might be able to do the same. but for now, for everyone else, i don't recommend starting the game. Oh, and if you do start the game do it on wifi as the game will not warn you that it'll download over 6GB of data. in this video you'll see that it forced me to restart the game. and when i did it didn't work correctly. i HDMI out the video so i can capture it, and you'll see black from the capture as what i saw on my screen wasn't being outputted. and then i got stuck as the sign up appeared on TV and not my screen. so i had to restart it a second time for everything to work.
Version 1.0.0 Played.
