Wuthering Waves launched recently to a lot of fanfare despite being a close clone of Genshin Impact with some Honkai Star Rail mixed in. So if you are already familiar with those games, you can expect basically the same scarcity mechanics to drive you to play more and buy progress from the cash shop. In this post we'll highlight what's unique to Wuthering Waves and recap the key gameplay systems that might start to frustrate you over time.
Combat
The combat system essentially becomes Soulslike for the most critical fights. That is, you need to memorize boss sequences, perfectly dodge, and occasionally hit the boss at exactly the right time. Any failure to do so essentially extends the fight and costs you precious time you really don't have in some of the timed content. Even when you are not doing timed content, failing to do this just makes fights drag on if it doesn't end up defeating your character.
This is probably the most important thing to know. If you don't like this style of combat, don't even get started unless you are willing to just be stuck at a mid-level of play and essentially be locked out of a lot of events and gameplay modes.
If you are good at soulslike combat, you can often get away with not being hit at all.
At the start of the game it doesn't feel this way and you can there are some ways to mitigate this such as by having a healer in the team. If you are willing to only stick to non-timed combat you can even try using a tank to outlast the enemy and self-heal in a very slow fight. But as you approach mid-game or start the lower-tier challenges of the various endgame modes (such as difficult timed fights in the "Tower of Adversity" or "Tactical Hologram") it is essentially soulslike combat.
Solo character play will probably also not be enough (depending on how perfectly you can fight and how well you are geared). In addition to one main damage-dealing character and mastering perfect dodge and perfectly countering when required, you will have to start planning and managing "Echo Skills" and teammate "Outro skill" synergies that give you damage buffs.
Grinding for gear (Echoes) also starts to be more important to keep up with the power creep. You can ignore this in the early game but you're basically lagging behind by mid-game. Getting resources to upgrade Echoes starts to compete with your other limited chances to acquire other upgrade materials. On top of the grind just to get an Echo, it is a huge grind to access higher-tier Echoes, and then anything you invested previously is wasted when you have to upgrade a new one. And each character can have as many as five Echoes so you are eventually expected to have a full set at endgame.
Without keeping up with character development, gear, and managing synergies, even trash fights against enemies on the overland map can get really long. Long fights on overland maps have another irritating side effect of pushing enemies into terrain such as up hills or off low cliffs. Then you have to chase them around and in tight locations a dodge can end up putting you into a climbing stage because you were too close to an object. Moreover, enemies can get pushed out of range and they reset.
Even ranged combat does not help with this: Often long-range characters keep moving backward, and sometimes the enemy is also moved backward, and eventually the distance becomes too far to actually hit them.
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