Solo Leveling has been getting a ton of hype once more due to the anime. With Season 2 just coming out, many fans have been reinvigorated to follow the series once more. This led me to wonder if the game was worth playing. That’s right, Solo Leveling has a game called Solo Leveling: Arise (I’m not surprised if you haven’t heard of it). It came out last year in May and was playable on Android, IOS, and PC.
After diving into Solo Leveling: Arise, I can safely say that it’s literally just Genshin and Zenless Zen Zero with a Solo Leveling skin. But is that a bad thing? I usually dismiss popular adaptations as cash grabs, but this game is surprisingly robust. After a few days of playing, this is what I thought of it.
Story Mode
The developers did a great job retelling the Solo Leveling story considering this came out before the anime. They’ve used a mix of in-game cutscenes and well-animated comic panels taken straight from the manhua, all with voice dubbing. Again, they did a pretty good job despite coming out before the anime.
Rather than watching the anime but in game form, it was more like I was rereading the manhua with animations. It looks fantastic, especially given how beautifully drawn the manhwua was. Don’t get me wrong, it feels like a high-quality game and I love the fact that it’s free to play. If you’re playing on PC, you’ll love the animations way more than mobile.
Gameplay
As a fan of Genishin Impact, Honkai Impact 3rd, and Zenless Zone Zero, I found the combat quite familiar. If you’ve played any of the games from Hoyoverse, you’ll feel right at home in Solo Leveling: Arise.
The gameplay is primarily a stage-based action combat where you clear the stage boss and optionally clear three bonus requirements for premium currency (Like the Abyss in Genshin). The standard setup involves some random mobs and then the stage boss. Again, much like the Abyss in Genshin.
The loadout and equipment is similar to Genshin Impact, where you have character skills but you also get two weapon skills from your equipped weapons in addition. Weapon skills and player skills are divided into Break and non-Break. non-Break skills are often stronger but do nothing against enemy Guard bar. On the other hand, Break skills deal slightly lower damage but can destroy the boss’ Guard bar. When the Guard bar is broken, the boss is stunned for a few moments and takes bonus damage from all sources.
The gameplay feels familiar, and the dodging feels intuitive. Using the iframes of a dodge for an attack triggers a bullet-time effect reminiscent of ZZZ called Extreme Evasion, which activates any associated QTEs you have equipped. Yes, you can change Quick Time Events and equip different ones for different abilities.
One complaint I have with this game, and mostly other Gacha games, is the timer. The timer’s main purpose is to determine the bonuses you get based on clear time. However, it has a secondary purpose as a statcheck. No matter how good you are at the game, under leveled characters and equipment will lead to slower clear times or even fails. Solo Leveling: Arise is no different from the other Gachas in this sense.
Game Modes
Depending on which game mode you select, the number of characters you play as varies. Solo Leveling: Arise has modes featuring Jinwoo and have you play as him with your teammates providing assist effects, while the other modes let you pilot each team member and swap between them like Genshin and ZZZ.
Netmarble’s choice to create separate game modes is interesting but understandable. For the sake of adaptation accuracy, they’ve made one game mode that lets you progress as the OP protagonist. On the other hand, they didn’t want to detract from the gacha experience, so they made other mandatory systems excluding Jinwoo. A choice which feels a bit off considering this is a Solo Leveling game. I guess Jinwoo isn’t leveling solo in this case.
Progression
I want to say the progression for Solo Leveling: Arise is unique, but it’s still a Gacha game at the end of the day. You have your protagonist (Sung Jinwoo) and your teammates (Hunters) and you have to level all of them up.
For Jinwoo, you can distribute attribute points as you see fit. This aligns with the game’s manhuwa, where the he gains “5 stat points” per level up in the story. In the game, you gain 5 attribute points per account level. As you level up in the game, so does Jinwoo.
Your Hunters follow standard gacha game progression. While leveling up is free, there are stages and progressing to the next stage needs a duplicate of the character. Just like Genshin, SR characters have unique movesets and skill with some SRs clearly being better than others.
After leveling up some more, a new function called “Army of Shadows” unlocks. Defeating certain story bosses unlocks new members for an exclusive party slot for Shadows, providing a team-wide aura and a new skill button for in-combat use. End-game is your standard Genshin Impact experience. You have artifacts and equipping the same set gets you a bonus.
Gacha Game Through and Through
If you’ve played Fate: Grand Order, you’ll be familiar with the pull rates. Abysmal rates at 1.2% for an SSR. On top of that, characters AND weapons are all under one banner. Unlike Genshin or ZZZ that have separate pulls for both.
Much like Genshin, there’s at least a pity system. Soft pity at 64 pulls and a hard pity at 80 pulls so not as bad as FGO. At least for the standard banner, you can select a personal rate-up list to reduce the chances of getting duplicate characters but it’s still a major flaw that the rates are so bad and it’s a mixed banner.
You can grind for the in-game currency and the missions aren’t so bad but you will need a ton of RNG if you plan on being free to play.
Conclusion
Overall, it’s a solid game. It’s nothing special and it could have honestly been a lot better in terms of execution. If you’re a Solo Leveling fan, it won’t hurt to try it out. If this was a paid for single player game, i would have recommended it in a heartbeat!
Thinking about other games to try? Check these out.
