Wuthering Waves 2.0 bringing a mini-expansion worth of content to the game landed recently, and… it’s frankly, incredible. I was already having a pretty good time with Wuthering Waves since revisiting recently when I blasted through all the content released to that point.
Despite having a good time with the game, I sought out almost nothing on what the 2.0 release would entail. I didn’t know where we were going, who the characters would be, or what the next beats in the story might look like beyond the speculations I was left with after the Black Shores storyline.
And I certainly didn’t know we’d be getting freaking flight.
And not nasty boring pre-Dragonflight WoW flight, no. This flight has some teeth to it! Arcadey-but-still-flight-like teeth. You can zoom around pretty fast while heading down — sometimes alarmingly fast, but none of the characters seem to mind and will just tuck and roll if you crater into the ground — but to really make it up- up- and away into the skies you can hold ‘shift’ for… err… a magical afterburner?
It’s stamina limited, but your flight stamina increases as your exploration does, and it regenerates very quickly the moment you touch down, be that in an attempt to make a new crater or otherwise.
Flight isn’t the only neat addition however, the story is much improved too.
Once I actually gave Wuthering Waves a proper shot, I ended up enjoying what was on offer a fair bit — the story included.
The 1.0 content has a bit of a slow start to it, to be sure. Almost reminiscent of early-game MMO quests in some respects. But by the end, it was going places — and each significant story content drop post-launch continued to build upon it.
The developers grew more confident in their craft and refined their delivery.
But through it all, it was hard to deny the simple truth: Wuthering Waves is a gacha game — and as such, it has a job to do: sell you their new characters.
Whenever you are given a chance to demo a character first-hand as part of the story beats, it is in service of this fact. And it was, at times, difficult not to feel the ‘advertising’ really coming to the fore.
While that ‘job’ hasn’t at all changed and is still to be found here in 2.0; it is a little less… Hm.
I’m not sure of the right word. It’s less ‘in your face’ about it, I guess. And they’ve done a much better job of integrating their desire to sell you characters with a story that includes character development and story telling to a better degree.
They were on this path already, I think, with the post 1.0 content, but it has really been nailed here.
Then as a rather intriguing cherry on top, there are some lore and story drops that give you a lot to chew on regarding the potential implications, which I’m sure (or at least, hope) will be further delved into in the 2.x content updates still the come.
I’m up to Union Level 55 on my account now, and with 5 more levels, I’ll be able to get my characters to the maximum level of 90, which in turn should mean I can do any content in the game! :D
I finally starting playing this and was enjoying it but it kind of made me want to get back into Genshin then a friend started talking about how good Zenless Zone Zero is and now I’m sorta juggling 3 gacha games with similar mechanics and I’m just confusing the heck out of myself!!!
But I’m having fun and in the end that’s what matters, right? I do have 300 hours plus some $$ invested into Genshin. When I was playing heavily I did the ‘subscription’ thing that gives you some currency every day. WuWa has the same I think. For me it was a good way to support a game I was enjoying without being tempted to spend more than I should on it.
I’m doing the subscription thing on Wuthering Waves, this feature seems fairly common across the current generation of ‘big’ gatcha games across HoyoVerse and WuWa, but like you, I think it’s a pretty good way to put a little skin in the game, while actually keeping it at the ‘little’ end of things!
I don’t know that I’ll ever make a return to Genshin (at least, not without some significant changes at their end on play friendliness when it comes to pulling for banner characters/weapons as a F2P player).
…But I did just jump back into Honkai: Star Rail to give that a go again yesterday, and actually enjoying it so far. Despite same parent company, community view seems to be that it is generally nicer to its players than Genshin is, and having seen the influx of characters (including a choice of some pretty good 5*’s! for free!) and currency you can get, I’m inclined to agree!
Wuthering still my ‘main’ gacha for sure, but it’s nice to have one to more casually jump into for when I’m out of energy and/or story content I particularly want to do. xD
Thanks to Doro44 I met this game, glad to know I joined in 1.1, I witnessed how far they went in improvements, its scary at the same time, I am glad this company is giving feedback much importance, so the game will improve even more, and fulfilling all players expectations. I’ve been playing GI for 3 years and no improvements at all, so starting this was refreshing and feels good spending money on it since the quality is top notch, worth your money and time.
I mentioned in my reply above to Nimgimli, but I don’t see myself going back to Genshin Impact, at least not with a fairly significant change in direction in how they treat their players.
That said, I’m glad you’ve found a new home for yourself and enjoyment in Wuthering Waves! It’s funny, because right at it’s 1.0 launch, I pretty much wrote the game off. Tried it very briefly and bounced off it. I didn’t make a return until November or so, but very glad that I did!
Thanks for the overview. I’m really looking forward to getting to Rinascita but I have to finish Black Shores first. I rate the story in WW pretty highly already – especially the side stories and companion stuff – so it’s interesting to hear you think it’s still improving.
Also, I love flying so that sounds great!
Will be keen to hear what you think once you get into it a bit! Perhaps not to the same extent as you might, but I ended up dragging out the main story somewhat and doing other things in the game world in the effort to make it last a little longer. I spent several days worth of play just exploring the world and doing world event type things as opposed to finishing the story. Hah.
But yes, I do think the telling of the story itself was a lot better this time through. Still some silly illogical things for sure that you either have to roll eyes at or just decide to take at face value, but enough otherwise great telling to more than balance it out.