Wuthering Waves on a phone: what an open world costs you

Open-world games ask something of a phone that session-based games do not: they never stop. There is no lobby, no between-rounds pause, no natural moment where the hardware gets to cool down. You move continuously through a world that is being drawn continuously, and on a device with no fan that adds up.

Heat is the limiting factor, not the graphics setting

Phones protect themselves by slowing down when they get hot. In practice that means a long session gets worse the longer it runs, regardless of how powerful the device is — the phone that starts fastest is often the one that has the furthest to fall.

• Take the case off for a long session. Most cases are insulation.
• Charging while playing generates heat in the same object you are trying to keep cool, so it makes throttling worse rather than better.
• Direct sunlight will end a session faster than any setting will.

Our guide to games draining your battery goes into why this category is so much more expensive than it looks.

Storage and data

The App Store listing puts the download at roughly 2.3 GB — large, though smaller than several games in the same category — and it requires iOS 14 or later. As with any live game of this size, updates arrive regularly and need headroom beyond the installed size to apply.

It is a gacha game

Characters and weapons come from randomised draws bought with in-game currency, with published probabilities. If you are new to that model, read gacha odds explained first — the published rate describes the long run and says nothing about what your ten pulls will do.

Who it suits

People who want somewhere to explore rather than a match to play, and who can take the game in sessions of half an hour or so rather than marathons. If you mainly play in short bursts on a commute, a session-based game will give you more for the same battery.