But back to my original line of thought: Wuthering Waves.
I made several small posts here and there while playing, and I wanted to try to collect most of it into one. Hopefully getting that out of my head will help let me sleep.
So of course the easiest point of comparison for Wuthering Waves is Genshin Impact, as it seems to be the game it most closely wants to compete with. Honestly I think both games will manage just fine, even if I personally don't want to go back to either. I think there's enough audience for both of them to survive comfortably.
Comparing it to Genshin I'd say Wuthering Waves has many advantages. The traversal that also made me think of Forspoken is fun, fast, and smooth. And they've designed the terrain to help you make the most of it. Plus running up walls feels great. It's definitely one of the better traversal systems I've encountered in games.
It makes hunting for secrets fairly fun too, even if the rewards are sometimes not much. Though I enjoyed secret hunting in Genshin too, and I wouldn't say the rewards were really any better.
And the combat system is perfectly fine. Action combat with a good dodge, and buttons you can press to make things happen. Sometimes flashy, shiny things. I wouldn't call it spectacular, but I've played a lot worse.
I also quite appreciate the ability to set my own difficulty level, which Mihoyo's games refuse to do.
But then there's the writing... okay, I'll say something positive first. The world quests, I think they were marked green in the quest journal, were actually not bad. You get to learn more about, and interact with the world in a way that produces a meaningful result. I ran into a few other alright side quests as well, and the main storyline isn't completely without merit.
But I still overall felt underwhelmed. When we reached the climax of the battle against the... big thingy. What they did call it? The carnifex or something? Big thing that I wanted to eat. The resolution to that chapter felt like such a letdown. And the ending cutscene afterwards was so disappointing it made me lose interest in playing further. I was demotivated.
This wasn't helped by the character story quests I played which were just a pain to get through. A genuine slog because I was completely unable to get invested. It just couldn't make me care. My strongest feeling was apathy. I only finished them out of simple obligation because I had decided to start them.
And there were a lot of little moments here and there where the writing felt a bit... meh. Then there was the uncomfortable pro-military stuff, and such things. And all of that added up to a feeling of... well... bleh, I suppose.
I'm not going to blame the actors, though. I played on the JP dub, and I think they all did a decent job. They just weren't always given the best material to work with.
At least Wuthering Waves is free, unlike Forspoken where I had to waste both money, and time on it.