Hey everyone,

I’ve been playing Wuthering Waves since day one, and as someone who doesn’t typically touch gacha games, I thought I’d share my perspective on the game. To be upfront, I’m not a fan of the gacha model and I dropped Genshin after just a few days, but Wuthering Waves had so much more going for it that I decided to give it a shot. Here’s a breakdown of my experience as a day one gacha-hater:

What I Love:

1. Character Design
The character designs are phenomenal. Every character feels distinct, and their abilities are beautifully animated and expressive. You can tell a character’s personality just by watching their ultimate animation. It’s a level of attention to detail that I deeply appreciate.

2. Combat System
The combat is where Wuthering Waves shines brightest. It’s anime-meets-Souls-like, with satisfying dodges, parries, and smooth animations. The Concerto System, which lets you swap between characters to pull off combos and synergies, is an absolute joy. Every character I’ve played has been fun, yes, even Lingyang!

3. Illusive Realm Event
The Illusive Realm deserves its own shoutout. It’s by far the most fun I’ve had in the game—more enjoyable than some actual roguelike games I’ve played. I wish it were permanent because I kept going back just for the pure fun of it, not for the rewards.

4. World Design
The world is stunning; a perfect mix of anime aesthetics and highly detailed areas. It feels alive and lovingly crafted, and I’m excited to see how it expands.

5. The Music
Despite many complaints that the music isn't "that memorable", I like it, though I don't understand why they removed the guitar part from the Crownless Theme, please give it back, it was so good. :(

6. Mini-Games
Even though I don’t usually enjoy mobile-game puzzles, the mini-games here are genuinely fun. They’re a nice break from the main gameplay and rarely feel like filler.

7. Gacha Model (Surprisingly)
While I’ll never be a fan of the gacha format, WuWa felt accessible. It’s not as in-your-face or predatory as some games, and the other elements of the game are strong enough to draw you in regardless. Not to mention that I got most characters without spending, and mostly just spend for weapons and Yinlin Sequences.

List of small complaints and QoL-features I'd love to see:

• Option to disable slow-motion during dodges: This would be especially helpful given that co-op events slow-motion is disabled anyway, and it would keep the flow of combat consistent when switching from single player to co-op.
• More dodge animations: Adding variety would make fights feel even cooler, especially since dodging is such a core mechanic. Right now every character has two animations for dodging; one for when you're idle and one for when you're moving. Since you barely just stay still during a fight I'd love if they just made these two animations play randomly instead and maybe even add one for variety.
• Improved visual clarity for boss attacks: Some bosses’ moves get lost in the flashiness of the animations. Even something as simple as a Sekiro-Style perilous warning for high damage attacks could help avoid frustration.
• Smoother movement: I love that you can do the slow menacing walk like in Sekiro, as it makes fights so much cooler, but the running kinda feels sluggish to me. A slight speed boost or smoother transition between the dash and the run would be nice, since right now you do this fast dash only to end up slightly faster than the jog, which I also think could be made a little faster.

What I Actively Dislike:

Before I come to the next list of negatives I want to clarify some things before I get spammed with the same messages over and over again. I'm about to critique some aspects that are pretty common in other Gacha Games as well, but I don't think that shutting down every critique that challenges the game to do more with itself besides being another Gacha-slop like Genshin etc. is a good idea. To me the definition of a Gacha is a game where you pull for characters and weapons for said characters using limited currency that you get by paying money or logging in daily and doing quests that are limited. And while I certainly would prefer just having a normal open-world game where I can get every Character legit and level them without time-gate or spending money, I understand that this is their business model and they probably won't change that, which I am also not asking for.

1. Boss Design & Artificial Difficulty
I can’t stand time-gated boss fights or bullet-sponge enemies. It feels like artificial difficulty, especially when dodging and countering don’t feel rewarding enough. Right now a perfect dodge slows down the time, but not the timer, which is really stupid. The best way to clear in time is to just spam your rotation, ignore damage and heal it before doing it again. Dodge-counters should deal significantly more stagger damage to create better openings, rewarding thoughtful and defensive game-play over button-mashing and hoping the boss doesn't interrupt your important attacks.

2. Lack of Long-Term Content
Once you’ve done the story and events, it feels like there’s not much left to do. Limited events like Holograms are fun but too infrequent to keep me engaged long-term. Most quests boil down to repetitive enemy mobs with little variety in design or mechanics. No new move-sets, no new enemies or designs for enemies, just a different arrangement of them, that's it. The only combat event I enjoyed so far is the Illusive Realm like mentioned earlier, it was the only one where I had motivation to play it beyond just getting my Astrides.

3. Story Weaknesses
The story started strong but has fallen off for me. The first Act was so amazing and I loved the story and the tone set. Not only did the story made me interested in the world and the characters, it actually had a good fucking climax each time. First the fight against Scar, which was amazing, then the whole Story with Jiyan where you fought Dreamless at the end and unlocked your Havoc MC was SO GOOD. I actually forgot I was playing a Gacha Game at this point. But sadly the character stories that came after that were a bit of let down.

Yinlin had a nice story and I loved the whole puppet thing, as it made for a really good setting, and made me genuinely excited about what's to come, and the thing is, if I didn't already made the population of the Mech Abomination go extinct in order to farm the 4-Cost and the mats to level my Yinlin, it probably would've made for a decent climax as this thing looks scary as fuck. But it would've been even better if they just made us fight the Puppet Master that was the big bad of the story too, I was really sad given how much I loved the Scar fight. just give him 4-5 moves, make him summon some TD's to support him and done, a good climax to the story instead of what we got.

After that I started skipping more often as I felt like most stories would just lead to a boss fight with another loot-box I already dropped hundreds of times at this point. And after the introduction of "Abby" I pretty much just started spam clicking the top left corner of my screen every story that came after her. It may not be as bad as Paimon, but why even add a Paimon clone in the first place knowing damn well how much the Genshin Community "loves" Paimon. I just wish the story felt like it had actual stakes again and gave me a bit of the post-apocalyptic feeling back.

4. Echo/Artifact System
The Echo system is probably my biggest disappointment in WuWa. When I first saw the gameplay, I was genuinely excited about its potential as a creature-collecting mechanic, especially since I’d just came from the Palworld hype train. I thought that if I can’t pull the characters I want, at least I can at least catch myself a cool set of Echoes. It felt like WuWa was set to carve out its own identity with this feature, offering something unique compared to other gacha games.

Unfortunately, the Echo system turned out to be much closer to the artifact grind in Genshin Impact and other gacha slop, and that realization was a massive letdown. Despite this, I held onto hope as updates like the Data Bank system made farming slightly less painful. But they stopped improving anything with the new levels and the system feels like a wasted opportunity.

You can't tell me that Echoes like the Dreamless, Fallacy of no Return, Jué, the Ape, or even weaker Echoes like the Havoc Dreadmane, Cyan-Feathered Heron, the big fucking Ice Sword or even the summonable Echoes aren't incredibly cool concepts and sometimes just as fun to use as the skill of the equipped Resonator. Their designs and abilities are flashy, fun, and visually stunning. Why not take it further? Imagine if we could cycle them mid-combat, using the Ape for the big enemies and single-target situations, using the Cyan Feathered Heron to counter special attacks like the Crownless combo, or using a Whiff Whaff for clearing mobs with the Aero-Set for example. Balancing could be as simple as shared cooldowns, but it would breathe life into Echoes as more than just stat sticks.

The most fun I've had was when I started the game, didn't have my full Data Bank and kept trying out the new abilities of the Echoes. Most of the time I used the Havoc Dreadmane for my Rover despite it being sub-optimal, just because I felt like it fit and was fun to use. Even now I try to make weaker Echoes work just because I like using them. But the joy of experimenting is just kinda gone given how cost expensive it is to even level up an Echo in the first place.

Another opportunity that they kinda ruined in my opinion is upgrading the abilities of the Echoes themselves, like the current Nightmare Echo system, which was underwhelming as it replaced the original rather than building on it. Adding a mechanic for Echoes to evolve or unlock new abilities could turn them into a true progression system instead of a tedious grind. (Just like they did in Illusive Realm, though I do understand that doing this for every single Echo would take a huge amount of time, but they could even just add simple buffs that probably aren't that hard to implement (especially since they already used some of them) like making the pull area of the Whiff Whaff bigger, giving it more pull strength, or giving the Glacio Prism bonus damage against frozen targets, increasing the summon duration similar to how they level up in the current co-op system) and if they don't already have a blue-print for that just let them deal more damage per level or give your Resonator extra sets like +10 ATK or decreasing the cooldown of the skill. ANYTHING, it's not that hard to come up with stuff.

What hurts the most is that this could have been the game’s standout feature, setting it apart from Genshin and drawing in players who love creature-collecting games or meaningful progression systems. Instead, the current implementation feels like a step backward—a system with so much potential reduced to an artifact grind. For players like me who came in hoping for something fresh, this feels like a missed opportunity to make the game actually unique. And to add insult to injury the Artifact grind is atrocious as well.

What frustrates me most is how every suggestion to improve the Echo system gets dismissed with, "it's a gacha, not a creature collector," or other dry arguments from people who wouldn’t even be affected by the change. It wouldn’t make WuWa a different game—you can still pull for your Waifus—while players like me could actually enjoy the game beyond the monthly Hologram fight. Ignoring the fact that Pokémon to this day is still the most poplar franchise with an easy concept of just add a few more monsters and maybe buff and evolve some of the older ones to keep the players happy and that WuWa has the literal blueprint to do is kinda oblivious to me.

Final Thoughts:
Wuthering Waves is still a great game, and I’m glad I gave it a chance. But I currently feel like the game is kinda letting me down, which is sad since I already spend money as I trusted them to keep expanding on their ideas and listen to players like us as well. I still hope for the best for this game and Kuro, as it's evident that they do care about their players, just sadly not much about the non-gacha players, which does make sense, but even so they could still make money by drawing in new players. Thanks if you took your time to read all that!