Wuthering Waves

The Wuthering Waves logo.

Wuthering Waves is a 2024 game by Kuro Games, previously known for Punishing: Gray Raven. Initially for iOS, Android, and Microsoft Windows, it was released for PlayStation 5 in 2025 with an upcoming Mac OS version. It combines elements of action RPG, Gacha Game, Hack and Slash, Mon, and Wide Open Sandbox.

You are a male or female Amnesiac Hero known only as the Rover, sent to the planet Solaris 3 by an unknown woman. Solaris 3 is a world recovering from a apocalyptic event called the Lament, which unleashed monsters called Tacet Discords and hostile phenomena that wiped out most of humanity. Mankind has been rebuilding ever since, fending off both Tacet Discords and human predators with the aid of Resonators, individuals who have the ability to manipulate frequencies to create pseudomagical effects. Going on a journey with newfound companions to discover the truth behind your Mysterious Past, it quickly turns out that this may not be your first time in these parts...

Tropes used in Wuthering Waves include:
  • Arbitrary Headcount Limit: Normal gameplay limits you to three characters in a team, of which only one is on the field with the other two needing to be tagged in. Some quests can temporarily add a fourth or reduce the number of members in the party.
  • Anti-Frustration Features:
    • Sprinting only requires an initial use of stamina but doesn't continuously drain it when outside combat.
    • Using the Grapple without any fixed points causes a cooldown, but using it on grapple points doesn't, so you can chain together grapples where the environment allows.
    • There is a pity system where doing 80 pulls on a Convene (the game's term for gacha banners) without having gotten the featured 5-star character or weapon will result in you having a 50% chance to get the target, with the other 50% being one of any other available 5-star. If you still lose pity, the next 80 pulls will guarantee a success.
    • Doing pulls will grant a currency that can be fed back into more gacha currency.
    • Some (though unfortunately not all) of the highest-difficulty content do not lock Astrites behind them, sparing less-skilled players a bit of agony.
    • EXP booster items allow you to quickly level newly-acquired characters, Echoes, and weapons, instead of needing to babysit deadweight.
    • Waveplates are only needed for certain content and consumed after completion rather than on start, allowing you to retry indefinitely if you fail.
    • Mooks killed by friendly NPCs still give you EXP and drops.
    • Most Warp Whistles are located safely away from enemy spawns.
  • Bonus Boss: Tactical Holograms are more difficult and powerful versions of bosses that are also thankfully optional for storyline progress. To make things worse, they have six difficulty levels, and gain even more abilities starting from the fourth.
  • Break Meter: "Vibration Strength". Elite Mooks and bosses have a second bar underneath their healthbars. Depleting it causes the enemy to briefly enter a downed state and also take more damage, though it will replenish after a while. Successful parries will deplete Vibration Strength faster than normal attacks.
  • Chekhov's Gunman: Cristoforo, because the dapper, enigmatic gentleman who keeps popping up totally wasn't going to be important later on.
  • Cozy Catastrophe: While the threat of Tacet Discord invasion finishing what the Lament started is a perpetual Sword of Damocles that eventually drops, most people still live peaceful lives without having to constantly look over their shoulders for the next meal or monster.
  • Counter Attack: Attacking after a successful dodge (as in one that triggers a Bullet Time) results in more powerful attacks.
  • Difficult but Awesome:
    • Danjin is widely considered to be more powerful than her apparent four-star rating, but her Cast from Hit Points gameplay makes her a difficult call for less skilled players.
    • Taking full advantage of Calcharo's potential power requires coming to terms with his clunky moves.
  • Do Not Call Me "Paul": Chixia is embarrassed by her birth name, Ma Xiaofang.
  • Draconic Divinity: Jue, the Sentinel of Jinzhou, is an eastern dragon and Time Master.
  • Dynamic Difficulty: Increasing SOL3 Phase by increasing Union Level results in higher-levelled, stronger enemies, but also better rewards. It's possible to manually lower the level by one, albeit with a 12-hour cooldown to raise it again or vice versa.
  • Fake Longevity: Raising the Level Cap on characters, called "Ascension" ingame, requires you to farm bosses for drops. You have to do Ascension multiple times per character, and a boss will not drop the required quantity of Ascension items in one go, meaning you have to do it even more multiple times.
  • Gameplay and Story Segregation:
    • Like most other gacha, you can pull for characters before meeting them in the story.
    • Cutscenes will always act like the Rover is present and being interacted with even if he or she is not in the party.
  • Gas Mask Mooks: Most of the Exiles wear these. It's not clear why, though.
  • Grappling Hook Pistol: You unlock a Grapple fairly early on that can be used to reach designated points or launch yourself into the air.
  • Gravity Screw: Rain falling upwards is a sign that the Retroact Rain has reached its third and most potent stage.
  • King Mook: There are certain places where you can encounter enemies with a red aura. They don't have any new moves, but they hit much harder, and some can go up to level 120 where the player characters are capped at 90. There's a trophy for each that are defeated.
  • Mon: Killed Tacet Discords have a chance of leaving behind Echoes, golden silhouettes of themselves. Absorbing these allows you to use them in combat both as direct Summon Magic and as passive buffs.
  • No Range Like Point-Blank Range: Two Trophies require you to kill enemies at close range with the gunslinger Chixia's Heavy Attack.
  • Notice This: Items that can be interacted with sparkle.
  • One-Winged Angel: Scar transforms into a goat-like giant after he's defeated as a human.
  • Power Tattoo: Most Resonators have waveform-shaped Tacet Marks somewhere on their bodies. Normally black, they glow gold in use.
  • Remember the New Guy?: Lingyang and Yuanwu appearing for the Big Badass Battle Sequence in Act 1 Chapter 6 will confuse players who only did the main questline as they weren't introduced before that, with Lingyang only in a sidequest and Yuanwu not at all.
  • Shout-Out:
  • Talk to the Fist: When you encounter Scar in Qichi Village, the game expects you to play along with his requests. Or you can choose the option to just skip straight to the fight.
  • Unfortunate Names: "Lupa" is Bahasa for "forget".
  • Video Game Caring Potential: NPC redshirts can get into fights with mooks, and you can help them out even though there's no reward for doing so or penalty for leaving them to die.
  • Warp Whistle: Resonance Beacons and Resonance Nexus can be teleported to from anywhere. Several other map features can also be teleported to.
  • What Could Have Been: Initial closed beta content was quite different, with an even darker tone where several nominally nonvillainous characters were openly hostile to the Rover. Player backlash led to changes.
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