Wuthering Waves

Wuthering Waves is an open-world action RPG with gacha from Kuro Games. You play Rover, who wakes up with no memories on Solaris-3, a planet still rebuilding after the Lament, the catastrophe that left behind the monsters known as Tacet Discords. Getting around that world is almost unrestricted: free climbing, wall-running, a grappling hook, a glider and, since version 3.0, an expedition motorbike with autopilot.

Combat is what sets it apart within the genre. You fight with teams of three Resonators that tag in and out through Intro and Outro skills that chain together, and defence rests on dodging and counters rather than shields. The Echo system absorbs defeated enemies and turns their attacks and stats into gear.

The game is free, with no entry fee and no mandatory subscription. Money comes in through the gacha, called Convenes: you buy Lunite, convert it into Astrite and pull with that. The base rate for a 5★ is 0.8%, it improves around pull 70, and the hard guarantee lands at 80.

The character banner runs a 50/50 against the standard pool; the weapon banner hands over the featured weapon without that coin flip. The two recurring costs are the Lunite Subscription (USD 4.99 for 30 days) and the Pioneer Podcast battle pass (around USD 9.99), which resets with every version. Since there is no PvP, paying only speeds up your roster and your endgame damage ceiling.

Kuro Games ships a new version every 41 days, each one with characters, events and a story chapter; every so often, a whole new region. Version 3.0 opened Lahai-Roi in December 2025 and added the expedition motorbike; 3.5 added Mengzhou in July 2026. Dates and details go up on the official site.

It launched on PC, iOS and Android in May 2024 and filled out its platforms from there: PS5, Mac, Steam and Xbox Series X|S, with cross-progression across all of them. On Steam it holds 88% positive reviews out of nearly 29,000, though most of the player base is on mobile and console, so that figure covers only a slice of it.

It suits anyone after an open-world action RPG with demanding combat who doesn't mind a gacha. Execution matters: dodging on the right frame, chaining swaps, building Echoes with the right stats. If you want an MMO, this isn't one: your world is private and the three-player co-op is there for exploring and farming.

Against it: the 2024 launch was rough, with crashes, optimization problems and criticism of the story and voice acting, and while patches fixed most of that, the early stretch of the plot is still its weakest part. Endgame content, the Tower of Adversity and the Illusive Realm, is solo only, and keeping several characters current costs time or money.