Black Myth: Wukong review – an excellent, approachable Soulslike with fresh ideas

Black Myth: Wukong is a playable kung fu movie. Inspired by the Chinese novel Journey to the West, you play as a mute reincarnation of the Monkey King as he searches across the land for various MacGuffins, using your staff and magical powers to battle creatures from Chinese mythology – crouching tigers, hidden dragons, and plenty more.  It plays like a fast-paced Soulslike – checkpoints you manually activate, NPCs with vague quests, respawning enemies, and tough bosses – but it’s more forgiving. When you die, you respawn at the last checkpoint you activated, but you keep all your experience points, allowing you to grow your strength even through failure. It can even be paused… imagine that. Of course, there aren’t any multiplayer invasions here so pausing makes more sense.  I found it refreshing to advance even when I wasn’t making direct progress, and every stat increase, move unlock, and crafted weapon feels like a significant buff – you never change “class” or playstyle, you just get stronger in one direc