Highlights

  • Wuthering Waves aims to distinguish itself from Genshin Impact through unique traversal options and combat techniques.
  • The game offers faster exploration with features like grappling and parkour.
  • Wuthering Waves introduces dynamic combat mechanics like active parrying and Concerto Effects for temporary buffs.

With Wuthering Waves bursting onto the open-world gacha gaming scene over two weeks ago after spending some time in beta, it has drawn inevitable parallels to HoYoverse's Genshin Impact. The basis of the comparison lies in Genshin's image as an industry leader in the genre since its debut in 2020. Given the influx of HoYoverse titles like Honkai: Star Rail and the upcoming Zenless Zone Zero, it's more important than ever for each debutant to distinguish itself in order to make an impact on the gacha genre. Given the overarching gacha status of Wuthering Waves has the same premise as Genshin Impact, there are bound to be some areas of intersection between both games, but Kuro Games played some trump cards that distinguish its experience from HoYoverse.

Wuthering Waves and Genshin Impact's storylines explore wildly different textures and character relationships, but the main differences between the two titles come in terms of features and gameplay mechanics. Besides cosmetic differences in things like in-game currency (Wuthering Waves uses Astrite in place of Genshin's Primogems, for instance), there are more impactful distinguishing dynamics Kuro Games deploys in Wuthering Waves to establish it as an entity independent of Genshin. These distinctions are most pronounced in the newer title's traversal options and combat techniques, and the slightly different approaches to these fundamentals could provide all the material Wuthering Waves needs to thrive in the space.

echoes in wuthering waves.
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Wuthering Waves: Echo Tier List

Out of all 52 Echoes in Wuthering Waves, these beasts are genuinely worth the time and effort as they can elevate any build to META status.

Wuthering Waves' Exploration and Combat Diverge From Genshin Impact's Basis

Wuthering Waves' Exploration Mechanics Give a Different Flavor

In terms of exploration, for starters, both games differ in their content blueprint. Genshin Impact is known for adding new regions occasionally through its six-week update schedule, and HoYoverse has gradually built out its map through this formula. Although it's still too early to say how Kuro Games plans to keep its meta fresh, Wuthering Waves' map is about the same size as Genshin at launch -- but the exploration mechanics, such as grappling and parkour, cut the travel times considerably. Players only need to jump twice to turn on glider usage, and the ability to run on walls gives Wuthering Waves an Assassin's Creed-esque feel, as opposed to the pure climbing focus of Genshin Impact.

Aside from the different movement mechanics that Wuthering Waves deploys, its combat also diverges from HoYoverse's take on battles. Genshin Impact has a party-oriented system that can be described as turn-based, where players focus on getting character rotations right instead of directly influencing fights. While the approach has worked wonders for the title, Wuthering Waves aims to draw gamers into active participation through its simple yet dynamic parry. Enemy attacks can be interrupted with a perfectly timed counter, a window of opportunity represented by a golden yellow ring appearing around an opponent.

Wuthering Waves Shares Similarities to Genshin Impact, Albeit With a Few Twists

Parries like this are only available to certain Genshin characters like Beidou and Yunjin. The restricted appearance basically eliminates parrying from teams that don't mesh well with Yunjin or Beidou's Burst abilities, whereas Kuro Games applies it across the board to make its combat more intuitive and challenging. Similarly, stunning enemies is more of a niche technique in Genshin Impact, while Wuthering Waves allows stuns to take on a more widespread role in its battles.

Another difference between Wuthering Waves and Genshin Impact lies in the former's application of Concerto Effects, which provides temporary buffs based on the Element of the characters being swapped. Genshin Impact has a similar feature in Elemental Resonances, although these apply to the entire party permanently in contrast to Wuthering Waves' temporary boost. The exploratory and combat differences form the nucleus of the main distinguishing features that separate Wuthering Waves from Genshin Impact, but it remains to be seen if the Kuro Games product can bridge the massive popularity gap that HoYoverse's current games enjoy over competitors in the industry.