Wuthering Waves already looks good to anyone with eyes — flashy character models, massive sci-fi fantasy zones, clean combat effects, the whole package. But according to Japanese developer Masahiko Nakamura, the really mad part is not just that Kuro Games made a pretty anime RPG. It is how much custom technology they seem to have forced into Unreal Engine 4.
AUTOMATON Japan spoke with Nakamura, the head of Indie-us Games and a technical artist with deep Unreal Engine experience, to break down why Wuthering Waves stands out from a developer’s point of view. Important note: Nakamura was not involved in making Wuthering Waves, so his comments are based on professional observation rather than insider info.
Still, his read is spicy. He described Wuthering Waves as one of the leading anime-style games built in Unreal Engine, especially because it has to work across mobile and PC while still using high-end visual techniques.
That matters a lot for Malaysia and SEA players. Around here, not everyone is playing on a monster desktop with an RTX card. Plenty of players swap between phone, laptop, PC cafe, and now console. So when a live-service open-world RPG tries to deliver premium lighting, detailed environments, and smooth character presentation across different hardware, that is not just “wah nice graphics” — that is serious engineering.
The key detail: Wuthering Waves is reportedly running on Unreal Engine 4.26, not Unreal Engine 5. Yet Nakamura says the game appears to use technology associated with UE5, including Lumen-like lighting features, inside a heavily customised UE4 setup.
In normal gamer terms: Kuro Games is not simply using Unreal Engine out of the box. They seem to have rebuilt and extended huge parts of it so the game can look modern without actually moving fully to UE5.
Why not just upgrade? Because game engines are not like updating your phone app, bro. Nakamura explained that jumping from UE4.26 to current UE5 versions would be extremely risky. Developers usually need to upgrade step by step — 4.26 to 4.27, then 5.0, 5.1, 5.2, and so on. Skip too far, and custom systems can break everywhere.
For a normal project, that is already painful. For a live-service RPG that keeps adding characters, story, maps, events, and platform updates, it becomes even more dangerous. Nakamura estimated that for a game on Wuthering Waves’ scale, a full staged migration could potentially take more than a year. And because the engine has likely been heavily modified, Kuro Games would have to fix many problems themselves with limited outside support.
The most interesting technical bit is the lighting and character rendering. Nakamura believes Wuthering Waves uses a custom ray tracing system based on Lumen’s hardware ray tracing ideas, even though standard UE4 does not include that feature. On top of that, the game seems to apply its own toon or cel-shading work so anime-style characters still look soft and natural under more advanced lighting.
That balance is hard. Realistic lighting can easily make anime characters look weird, too harsh, or plastic. Wuthering Waves manages to keep its characters stylish while placing them inside detailed, more realistic environments. That is why the game often feels more expensive-looking than many other mobile-friendly anime RPGs.
There is also the platform headache. Wuthering Waves is available beyond just PC, including mobile and PS5, which means Kuro Games has to keep performance and compatibility under control across very different machines. Once you customise Unreal Engine this heavily, you cannot always rely on Epic Games to solve your problems. Nakamura said that level of responsibility starts to resemble building with your own proprietary engine.
For players, the takeaway is simple: Wuthering Waves is not impressive only because the art team cooked. The tech team is also doing serious work behind the scenes, squeezing UE5-style ideas into a UE4 foundation while keeping the game alive as an ongoing service.
So the next time your phone heats up during a boss fight, at least know this: there is some genuinely wild engine magic happening under the hood.
Source: Automaton Media