Black Myth: Wukong has only 1 difficulty setting that’s the same for all players. Leading up to the game’s release, much has been speculated on the game’s difficulty. While early gameplays made it look like a Soulslike, that’s not what it is.

Black Myth: Wukong is NOT a Soulslike

It’s a Hack and Slash Action game. The closest thing to compare it to would be God of War Ragnarok or the 2018 God of War.

What differentiates it from Soulslikes:

• You never lose anything when you die, you are not being punished for dying.
• It’s much easier overall.
• There’s no character classes and no buildcrafting. There are no attribute points to allocate. Instead, you get skill points. Skill points can be used to upgrade some attributes to a limited extent, only up to 6 times for a small stat boost. There’s not as much customization. However, you can trade items called “Mind Cores” to Xu Dog in Chapter 2 to improve attributes but this is limited to a specific amount.
• Only 1 weapon (Staff), no other weapons.
• Only 3 melee moves: quick attack, heavy attack, dodge (plus some basic spells). There is no parrying mechanic and no shields. There’s only one autocombo on quick attacks. Although other staff-stances are unlockable, the moveset is very limited.
• The game is geared towards being a cinematic story-driven experience with frequent cutscenes. The chapters are mostly linear.

The game’s area structure is comparable to Nioh. While the combat is more comparable to God of War.

How difficult is it?

The difficulty of bosses is comparable to God of War Ragnarok on normal difficulty. The non-boss mobs are comparable to easy difficulty, they die in a few hits and deal no meaningful damage. Using spells they pose no threat whatsoever.

Bosses early on can still be challenging as you don’t have any skills unlocked and are learning the dodge timing. As you unlock more spells it gets increasingly easier. Later on you can defeat most side bosses in 20 seconds by spamming a few spells in a row. You also gain a lot more healing charges as you upgrade the Gourd which helps to stay alive longer.

The harder bosses are at the end of each Chapter. Those can take a few tries to learn their pattern and dodge timing. If you try to rush the game they can be quite challenging, comparable to playing God of War on hard difficulty. If you explore all side areas thoroughly to get better equipment and level up, then it feels closer to normal difficulty. Especially early exploration pays off, for example you can unlock a very useful Transformation spell that lets you deal damage while negating any incoming damage. By chaining together a few spells and spirit attacks you can usually take down 50% of a boss’s health before they can even attack you.

Overall it’s a 4/10 – 5/10 difficulty for experienced Souls players, if doing side content to level up.