Solo Leveling: ARISE OVERDRIVE is exactly what you’d expect from yet another anime-adapted action game: an explosive first hour followed by a long, grinding descent into “oh… that’s all there is?”
The combat is flashy, loud, and full of particle effects, the kind that make you feel absurdly overpowered until you realize you’ve been spamming the same skills on the same enemies in the same cut-and-paste dungeons. But don’t worry — it still looks cool every time, even as your brain slowly shuts off.
The game proudly announces it has no gacha, which is treated less like a normal business decision and more like an act of divine mercy. You buy the game once and actually earn things by playing it. Incredible. Truly groundbreaking stuff in 2025.
It’s “faithful” to the source material, meaning it recreates some iconic moments and expects the nostalgia fumes to carry the rest. Characters look great, the animations are crisp, and everything feels like the anime — right up until the story starts tripping over itself, cutting corners, and serving dialogue with all the emotional depth of a loading screen tooltip.
Co-op exists, theoretically. You and three friends can tackle content together, assuming you can convince three people to endure the same repetitive missions. After one session, you’ll likely agree that solo was fine after all.
Once the early excitement wears off, the grind kicks in hard. Missions blur into each other, the world feels strangely empty, and progression becomes less “leveling up” and more “doing chores with special effects.” Skill trees and customization sound deep until you notice most builds feel identical, just with slightly different sparkles.
Performance issues sprinkle themselves throughout like confetti. UI hiccups, frame drops, bugs, the occasional glitch that makes you wonder if the dungeon you’re in is supposed to have a floor or not — all part of the charm, apparently.
In short, the game is amazing for the first stretch and then settles into a comfortable mediocrity powered by your love for the IP. If you’re a Solo Leveling fan, you’ll probably enjoy the fireworks and tolerate the flaws. If you’re not, the repetition will hit you faster than a dungeon boss enraged phase.
It’s fun, it’s shallow, it’s stylish, it’s grindy — basically, the perfect adaptation of a power-fantasy anime for people who want to feel strong without thinking too hard. If you buy it, you’ll have a good time… until you don’t.
6/10
Great first impression, gorgeous effects, and fun combat — followed by a whole lot of repetition, shallow progression, and technical bumps. Enjoyable enough, but nowhere near as deep or polished as it pretends to be.
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