No. It isn't.
I would have loved it if it was. miHoYo certainly could use the competition and Kuro has been excessively generous with Wuwa which is a direction I think many players would prefer for miHoYo to go towards. Kuro went a little too far but miHoYo's stinginess is becoming infamous and that's a problem for its longevity.
To become a real Genshin Killer Kuro needs to address some stuff. The obvious issue for Kuro is the many bugs their game has. It is still very laggy, to the extent that sometimes there's no way to really understand what's happening on screen. The worst I've experienced sadly crashed my recording app so I can't show you guys but you can see from the video how bad that lag could get compared to the lag that doesn't crash my recorder.
Actually it's due to the lag that I've been able to notice how easy the game is. In spite of barely being able to see what's going on sometimes, I usually have no trouble surviving battles. All I have to do is press the buttons of my normal rotation and it usually does the trick as you'll also probably notice from the video. That's the other issue with the game, though personally I'm happy for it since I'm a casual gamer. However for those that wanted this game to be more challenging, the ease of the combat system might be a turn off.
However that could actually lead into the next issue Wuwa suffers from. Let's say Kuro knew that they made the combat system too easy up until the endgame. What if it was done on purpose? What I've noticed is that after having started a couple weeks late in v1.0 I was still at the endgame by the update which also came early. Basically I played the game for only 3 weeks and I had already maxed out my Databank (Echoes System) and gotten to Union Rank 40 which meant Lvl.70 characters and weapons. I'd also completed the story and farmed the Weekly Bosses, completed the Illusive Realm and even defeated several of the Hologram enemies which are extra difficult versions of the World Bosses. The only things I hadn't finished yet were the Tower of Adversity and of course killing the rest of the Holograms. Anyway what I'm trying to suggest is that Kuro might have been trying to allow players to reach the hardest parts of the game quickly before slowing everything down for just the endgame. In v1.1 the Illusive Realm starts at Lvl.50 and ends at Lvl.90 compared to the Lvl.40-70 stages in v1.0.
That could be a strategy but it's very limiting. As Genshin had shown, a majority of players are going to be casual types who game when they feel like. They aren't the types to spend the effort on getting good at the game which is a problem at the endgame because that's when those combat mechanics start to matter. Proper timing of counters and dodges lead to higher damage output and dodging powerful hits. If the casuals are speedrunning to this part with barely any effort and suddenly smacking into this endgame wall where their skill in the game becomes crucial, they might abandon the game. Conversely those unfamiliar with the game who were hoping for a challenge might find the early game boring. It's a matter of poor pacing but it could be that Kuro hopes to only cater to hardcore players, relying on their competitiveness to foster their spending to support the game.
If that's the case then there's also another problem and that's that there aren't enough endgame features. Genshin has had this problem for a long time. Spiral Abyss and a few difficult events were all that kept hardcore players invested in the new characters. While Illusive Realm is very very fun and I really enjoy it myself, Tower of Adversity is just another Spiral Abyss. The Holograms are limited and their purpose was to farm for the best Echoes which is not difficult to do normally, leaving the feature unnecessary and more tedious than it's worth. So the Illusive Realm is really all there is and sadly that feature is also limited.
Bottom line, besides the obvious suggestion to properly optimize their game to address the lag, bugs and the issues for content creators trying to record it, Kuro might want to focus on more kinds of endgame content so that when their new players reach it at the expedited rate Kuro designed them to, they'll have plenty of things to hold their interest.
But what do you guys think? Are you happy with Wuwa as it is right now? Would you agree with these suggestions? What suggestions might you have?
And if you like discussing the storylines of games please click here to check out Hive Gaming Theories!