Solo Leveling: ARISE OVERDRIVE

Solo Leveling: ARISE OVERDRIVE is an action-packed character-driven RPG that tells the story of Sung Jinwoo as he evolves into a legendary hunter. There are many improvements across the board, including major gameplay tweaks and additions, a more immersive story mode structure, and the removal of gacha mechanics. Fans who have been waiting for a single-player Solo Leveling game finally got it with Solo Leveling: ARISE OVERDRIVE, despite some of the quality-related flaws that came with the original ARISE.

A spectacular action RPG faithful to the Solo Leveling universe, with rewarding combat, successful fan service, and immersive progression, but whose repetitive secondary content limits its replayability over time.

Solo Leveling: ARISE OVERDRIVE is clearly intended to be a love letter to the source material that's drawn many fans across the globe for its dramatic, protagonist-driven story, fascinating lore, thrilling fight sequences, and surprisingly emotional moments. However, the creative execution of that homage in this game leaves a lot of confusion and disappointment on the story front, which should serve as its foundation rather than a botched afterthought. As a result, it almost forcibly alienates Solo Leveling newcomers, who are left without a premise to base their experience on. The combat and endgame grind does make up for it well enough, as cutting through fearsome foes as Sung Jinwoo feels satisfying and seldom gets old. Time will tell if the development team fills the holes it needs to for this game to become a true retelling of Solo Leveling, or if it remains more about fan service.

Solo Leveling: ARISE OVERDRIVE feels like an adaptation that fixates on power-fantasy action while discarding nearly everything that made the original compelling. Its has great audiovisuals, sure, but the gameplay quickly becomes an unrewarding and repetitive checklist.

Solo Leveling: ARISE OVERDRIVE is an ambitious project that only partially succeeds in capturing the strength of its source material. Some sequences work well, and the artistic direction shows genuine care for the webtoon’s iconic moments, but the repetitive structure, technical instability, and a framework still tied to mobile design significantly limit the overall impact. Considering the asking price, the content feels both limited and uneven, leaving the sense of a title that hints at a clear direction but struggles to fully sustain it.

Solo Leveling is a fun story, as much as a power fantasy distilled down to its simplest elements can be, but turning something inspired by video games back into a video game inherently washes away some of that novelty. As a video game, Solo Leveling’s biggest hook is just a normal fact of life, the ability of leveling up and assigning points to stats as common as taking a lunch break. The Monster Hunter-like grouping and grinding is an attempt to make more of the story’s world in this gameplay context, but it can’t escape the homogeneity of mobile game trends it ends up leaning on to power the whole endeavor. As such, Solo Leveling: Arise Overdrive looks impressive, but its muscles are largely just for show.

Netmarble Neo's action RPG is a shoddy adaptation of the beloved manhwa and a terrible, repetitive experience otherwise.