Solo Leveling Arise Game Reviews are out, and we want you to take a look at them and not be swayed by the respective writers’ positive demeanour. Our attempt herein is to make a different case altogether: that the said reviews are likely a bantering fanbase of the manhwa and anime series’ almost nerd-like fanbase. The point being, the positive reviews are an overestimation. The game that was released today on the 8th of March is full of bugs, an annoying game system that wouldn’t let you touch anywhere other than where it wants you to, and a Pay to Win that is undeserving of true Gacha fans. And these are only a few out of many things that make the game a no-go for us.
At the onset, I do wish to clarify that I did play the game quite warringly. Despite my speedrun, the only fun I had was wiggling through my tablet screen, rage-tapping the four action buttons on the right, and sliding and dashing using the movement arrow on the left. And that surmises my fun experience with Solo Leveling Arise.
Read the following articles, by Sportskeeda, and by Dexerto. Both the platforms seem to write these textbook-happy articles on how you get immersed into a world of Solo Leveling through this game – a statement I’ve been finding more and more difficult to grapple with.
Who is giving a positive Solo Leveling Arise review? Not us
This leaves me with this bittersweet taste in writing this Solo Leveling Arise review, because I have strolled through early-access YouTube videos, some famous news agency articles, and some subreddit discussions. The only good reviews seem to come from –
- Potentially Sponsored parties,
- Solo Leveling mega-fans who were dying to see their favourite universe come to life.
And the problem is there exactly, Solo Leveling Arise tries to be both an action RPG retelling of the manhwa and a good gacha at the same time. This works well to some extent when you’re doing Genshin Impact with all its new story. This point of mine is critical of Sportskeeda’s first pointer as well: that such a tactic of incorporating Sung Jin-Woo was a good move: I argue that it is not. If you want to make a story-based RPG, make that. If you want a gacha game, have some random new customizable character like Dragon Ball Xenoverse. Don’t do both.
But here, the system makes you go through the initial story of Solo Leveling, and the only thing you can do is dash, swipe your sword, win, gain points and level up, but not have access to the menu AT ALL, be made to do actions the system wants you to do without it being a tutorial, and this and that until you leave your screen.
Why having a short or optional tutorial distinguished from the main gameplay is essential
Here is how a game should progress: you open the game, go through a tutorial, come back out and then proceed through the main story with all your acquired basic skills. Solo Leveling Arise deprives you of that by not giving you the option to leave the tutorial. Heck, there is no tutorial, and whatever is there to teach you is proceeding through the main story itself. And the way the story is knit together is all in shambles.
If I were a new person getting into the beautiful world of Solo Leveling, this game would have spoiled everything for me. And would have done so in an untasteful manner on that.
The user has to tap only the buttons and options which the game wants you to tap. At least for the initial few hours. It does that by darkening the rest of the screen, putting this golden buzzing rectangular box in the option where it wants you to click. And the only reason I proceeded through all of those, is only for the sake of – you guessed it, to see the moment where I get to the point where the game lets me do whatever I want.
Y esto es… “Solo Leveling: ARISE”
Es tedioso que se cargue a cada rato :/ pic.twitter.com/MPdpHOZs5N— AntooYT ✨ Grand Cross 😎 (@AntooGX) May 8, 2024
There seems to be such an amazing amount of content. A menu bar that lets you see your character’s skill set, change its moves, change its job class, do some gacha pulls, check the store, etc. And none of these options were available to me initially. I conjecture that they are unlocked at some point, but it seems the user is tempted more to leave the game than stay. And that made me wonder really, what good is it if it doesn’t even allow its playerbase to interact with all these apparent options it lay before them within the first 30 minutes of the gameplay?
Such a method of hard pressing everything for your player base seems justified, and understandable even, when one is dealing with the intricate web of complexity that is Baldur Gate 3. But for a mobile-developed game that is already supposed to be simple, hand-walking players to completion seems like a no-no move for any company wishing to make a sensible game, and not a franchise rip-off of something already mainstream (which Solo Leveling definitely is).
Why our Solo Leveling Arise Game Review is critically negative
Read what gameleap had to say about the same:
Gameleap –
Is Solo Leveling: ARISE Good? The short answer is, yes. Solo Leveling: ARISE is a good game.It does a great job of bringing the characters of Solo Leveling to life while also offering a good combat system with a ton of build depth and different playstyles to keep people entertained.The story is presented in an interesting way and does justice to the original work.Characters, or Hunters, are well made with good models and smooth animations that live up to their counterparts in the webtoon.The gacha system is decent, and can definitely be more generous, but isn’t that the case for every gacha game?All in all, we think that Solo Leveling: ARISE is a good adaptation of the Solo Leveling IP and will definitely have you playing for some time when it officially launches.
I wish to forward few counter-arguments –
The failure of a Gacha system
The short and long answer is: NO, Solo Leveling Arise is as bad as a gacha game gets. The game lets you have both unit and weapon gacha in the same banner. Then you have to pull for units, to then hunt for artefacts.
Part of things being Gacha is the absolute dread of what your pull brings you, yet Solo Leveling Arise seems to be fixated on targeting toddlers as their audience base. They want to feed the player everything, and I mean literally everything (with the exception of artefacts, which is actually a worse thing).
They want to make it so easy for you, that you don’t even have the most essential feeling of playing a game: the challenge it is supposed to bring. At the same time, they wish to compete with gacha hard-cores and make a few things difficult for you. Such a combination has not done them any good.
The failure of an artefact system
Talking about artefacts would get us into a whole new fandom altogether, people freak out a lot about Genshin Impact artefact farming. And it seems Solo Leveling Arise has a model to follow. But it ends up taking everything bad from Genshin Impact and ruining everything good about it.
The system is severely lacking.
- Players are restricted to a mere three attempts per day, forced to choose between farming for two specific body part pieces.
- Adding salt to this injury, there are four rarity levels of artefacts: common, blue, purple, and gold. And if you think that’s rough, there are also four different gear sets to obtain.
- All this, and we haven’t even touched upon the additional layer of RNG concerning main stats and substats.
The concern for Leveling up
Now we can get to some smaller details, but these will only be the cherry on top for my nightmarish of a Solo Leveling Arise review. For example, there seems never to be enough gold to fulfil my character leveling desires, for a game that is all about levelling up.
Although the recent events and patches should be able to help with that, at least, if not anything else, until that is handled, the level progression is close to disaster. Solo Leveling Arise does not necessarily escape the greed of Gacha games. The gates offer limited opportunities with minimal returns, hardly qualifying as a fruitful farming endeavour.
The gold system is a debacle
Gold has become a precious commodity, indispensable for every facet of progression. Thus, players are confronted with a very difficult choice: allocate resources toward enhancing their character, bolstering their hunters, refining skills, or investing in equipment, all drawing from the same reservoir.
Moreover, assembling a cohesive core team proves challenging, as certain missions necessitate specific hunters. While side missions offer a temporary solution by providing suitable hunters at matched levels (albeit without equipment), the dynamic shifts for those already in the roster. Suddenly, neglected hunters demand attention, thrust into the spotlight at the level they were left at, prompting an urgent need for levelling up to meet the demands of the game.
The gold issue is about how scarce the resource exactly is in Solo Leveling Arise, and just how much of it is actually required to do anything worthwhile. From basic actions like unequipping gear to other more prominent transactions. And the only way to accumulate seems to be to pay up or to wait passively every day.
The game’s early access status has been its saving grace, but today after its a global launch, problems do not seem to be solved. Alternatively, a substantial boost in gold and experience rates within the gates or gate mining activities could alleviate the shortage and enhance the overall gameplay experience.
That is mostly all I had to rant about why Arise is such a far-off from what it originally seemed to be: a phenomenal Solo Leveling world immersion. It is far from that, and if anything, it is a pollution of the original Solo Leveling franchise.
