We were at The Game Awards! Well, not the event itself, but we did get invited to participate next to the theater in a behind-closed-doors event that let me play the 3.0 build of Wuthering Waves. I will admit I am not nearly as pigeon-holed into Wuthering Waves as I used to be during the 1.3 launch, but that has nothing to do with the game and everything to do with my schedule and reviewing games. So, I spent a month getting myself familiarized with where Wuthering Waves is at now, and also losing a 50/50 on the Chisa banner. Welp, guess I will be convening for somebody else in the game.
Anyway, the event allowed me to play roughly two hours of Wuthering Waves. They said that I could spend the full two hours doing the story of 3.0 and learning about the Lahai-Roi nation, or mix it up with some other features they were excited to show off. So, I chose an hour of story and an hour of the features that the Kuro Games team was excited to show off, things they were particularly proud of.
The event was the morning after The Game Awards. The team at Kuro Games were excited to show off Wuthering Waves, and I think winning the Player’s Voice Award added an extra spring in their step.
The Story of Wuthering Waves 3.0
I started in front of StarTorch Academy with a nervous Lynae. Lynae was the newest revealed playable character in the 3.0 gameplay showcase. Apparently, a voidworm had eaten part of Rover’s resonance, and that may have led to Rover getting hit by a speeding Lynae on her Expedition Motorbike. She was worried that Rover might tell on her, so she wanted to join Rover to help get her enrolled in the academy. You are then led to Chisa, who is ecstatic to see you safe and sound, as she hasn’t seen you since you were both separated while travelling to Lahai-Roi. You tell her about the voidworm and needing help with getting your resonance stabilised after the voidworm attack. You are then directed to a nurse and a doctor. Doctor Luuk Herrsen.
After checking your vitals and hearing your story, he doesn’t even try to hide that he has seen you before. After learning you don’t remember him, he doesn’t skip a beat in talking about this being the first meeting and then trying to hide his intentions. Just like in other nations, this does not appear to be Rover’s first rodeo here, but they don’t know that due to Rover still suffering from Amnesia at the beginning of the game.
After Doctor Herrsen says you’re good to go, Rover is brought to the enrollment office. After you are enrolled, you are given the Expedition Motorbike. After a tutorial on customising the bike and seeing the ways to enhance your bike, you are then given the handlebars to drive it. This is also when you get to see why Lynae is the way she is. She is essentially female Sonic the Hedgehog. She wants to go fast, and she wants to be free to go fast. That is one of her mantras when you are idling with her as the playable resonator. She will scream out “Gotta go fast” at random intervals, and I loved it every time! Attending StarTorch Academy and living in Lahai-Roi is the best way to achieve her dream to be truly free in a time of void storms. Once you make it to another department of the academy, she leaves you, and you go to meet Professor Mornrye. The point of you meeting the professor is to burn a Cassette. Your Cassette.
You meet Mornrye, and she immediately gets a bit flustered and confused about you. She also recognises you. Once she learns you have no memory of her, she also pretends not to know you. She isn’t nearly as convincing as Doctor Herrsen’s attempt. This is also when you get to see what goes into burning a Cassette. The machine burns your resonance into a Cassette. Your memories, your feelings, and your thoughts are all in this little device. This also marks a nice montage of some of Rover’s finest moments.
It ends with a moment that looks like Rover leaving StarTorch Academy, which puts Rover back in reality, confused, as they don’t remember that. As the assistants are cataloguing the Cassette tape, they encounter the age-old “This file already exists, keep old file or overwrite for new file?” window. Mornrye looks into the data to see that the old resonance data with the previous Cassette is blank. Her response is just to overwrite it, as they don’t need blank resonance data. The assistants proclaim that it is a bit lazy to delete a file but not get rid of it from the system.
As the file gets overwritten and Rover tries to figure out why they got a brand new memory in their head, they don’t remember; the hour mark got hit. I got switched to a different in-game account that was at the end of 3.0’s story.
Combat With New Resonators
I got to play two boss fights with the three pre-picked resonators. My team was Chisa (the current Convene banner that is out), Lynae and Mornrye. I was mostly focusing on the playstyle of my resonators, so I can’t even remember what the boss’s movements were like, but it was pretty easy once I figured out both the new resonators’ playstyles. Lynae is a speed demon and is focused on being close to the enemies. After she uses her special move, she gets on her skates, and you can jump and slam down on the enemies. The third slam lets you hold a special attack for a giant slam that does a ton of damage.
She is very much a high-risk risk high-reward playstyle. Mornrye is a battlefield control character. She uses range to fight from a distance and can group enemies into small spaces. Once they are in a small space, she has a pretty good attack that focuses damage on that small area. Her damage wasn’t as much as Lynae but it was consistently safer and required less reaction to the enemy’s movements. Pretty simple, and as the team pointed out, these boss fights weren’t meant to be difficult.
This next section, however, was. They sent me into an area that was like a projection of echoes. As soon as I entered, I got bombarded by a bunch of level 100 enemies, and each one could do a ton of damage. I had to rely on my own muscle memory of combat to counter, dodge and use my heavy attacks at the right time to block incoming large attacks. It gave me a flurry of emotions. One of the great stresses of needing to remember what meant what in combat, but also one of satisfaction. Seeing me dodge, counter, and use heavy attacks, special attacks and normal attacks at the right time and feeling the flow of Wuthering Waves that made me love my time with it at the beginning of my time with the game.
There is a complexity of systems underneath the battle system that you may not experience unless you do these hard events. I changed to Mornrye a lot of the time to get myself to a safe distance and let my other characters heal up by using her ultimate skill. I also had to use the equipped echoes, with most of the equipped ones being damage-dealing ones. I did change to Chisa and Lynae, though, once things were healed up and I could dish out some damage to the tougher enemies. At the end of the onslaught of enemies, a dragon spawned into the projection zone.
I was flustered. I was a bit scared, but at the same time, I was inspired. Inspired by my own accomplishments at surviving the barrage, and excited at the prospect of this new challenge. This is where I like to call combat a dance. Wuthering Waves combat definitely feels like a dance. The hard boss fights like this are where that slogan shines. You have to judge, react, and attack all throughout the fight. Are you going to get hit? If so, dodge and counter; if not, attack. Make sure to give yourself distance after the attack to not get hit by flames or any effect damage nearby the bosses, as well as to not get hit by an easy-to-dodge attack because you didn’t give yourself time and space to react.
Expedition Motorbike
This is the part of Wuthering Waves 3.0 that excites me the most. The Expedition Motorbike. After the fight with the dragon was over, I was taken to a few racing challenges. The first one was a basic circle track that helps you understand drifting. It has no boosts for the bike, so the only way to give yourself boosts without needing to move slowly is to drift in every corner. If you brake as you turn, you can drift the bike. If you drift it without losing your stability, you can instantly use boost to follow the track; otherwise, you will have to turn your bike a bit and boost, which can lose your speed.
Controlling the motorbike in third person feels a bit slow, all things considered. That is where the first-person perspective comes in. Things feel a lot faster, even if you are going the same distance in the first-person perspective. It was amazing! I would recommend anyone who uses the bike and thinks it feels sluggish to change it to first-person. That, however, can be a problem, like in this next course, where there are some tight turns and a focus on going down a mountain.
It wasn’t about drifting in this course it was about getting the boosts and making sure you slowed down just enough to take a corner and then boost back through. It wasn’t tough, but it did require more thought and timing. The last course they wanted me to try out was different. The team on site at the time told me they liked to think of the challenges in two categories: the speed category and the skill category. The first two races were speed-based, where you are focused on driving the bike at a good speed. The next one was a skill category challenge. This one had jumps and hoops you had to jump through to get to the top of a location. It also required a few resonator jumps, too, not just bike jumps.
Some Odds And Ends
After I was done with the bike challenges, we went over some little things throughout Lahai-Roi in Wuthering Waves. There are puzzles. There is bike customization, and even a bike music player. While you are driving, there is a little HUD above the screen that you can control with L2 and a face button to pause, change to the next song in a playlist or a previous song. My time with the game ended with Stargazing in a hot spring. When you complete one of the projection puzzles, it powers on the heat of a hot spring nearby. This lets you see the stars, and there are little designs in the night sky you can see. To be honest, I am super excited about what Wuthering Waves is working on with 3.0.
Overall Wuthering Waves team at Kuro Games is creating a brand new experience with Wuthering Waves, but it still builds upon its solid foundation. The Expedition Motorbike is one to look forward to, but so are the adventures throughout StarTorch Academy. I am interested in Lynae and Dr Herrsen. I am also interested in the connection that Rover apparently used to have with Professor Monrye. And how this furthers the void storms and how much more Rover can figure out about their past.
Wuthering Waves is a free-to-play game available on PlayStation 5, PC, and Mobile devices. Version 3.0 comes out on December 25th, 2025.
