Solo Leveling:ARISE Review
I re-read the Solo Leveling manga again. God knows how many times that is at this point. And every time I get to the end I get that itch where I want more Sung Jinwoo content that does not exist yet. You know the feeling.
I was actually eyeing Solo Leveling: ARISE OVERDRIVE first. The PC standalone with no gacha mechanics sounded genuinely appealing, especially after my history with the mobile version. But I saw I had missed a 30% sale and I was not paying full price on principle. That sale will come back. When it does I will take another look.
In the meantime I went back to the original ARISE hoping the game had improved since I last wrote about it. The original review is still up if you want the full picture from 2024. The short version of that one: loved the source material, loved the combat, hated the constant stuttering and loading on every single menu interaction, and walked away not fully recommending it.
So. Has it improved?
What Actually Got Better
The first thing I noticed coming back, and I cannot overstate how much this matters, the constant stuttering and loading freeze after every menu click is gone. If you read the original review you know this was one of my biggest dealbreakers. Every interaction, every menu tap, every time you did anything, the game would hitch. It was infuriating in the way that small repeated annoyances always are. Opening the game now and having that just not happen anymore felt like a different product.
The rifts have also been redesigned completely, both standard rifts and mining rifts. I am still forming my full opinion on the new version because I have not been back long enough to feel the ceiling of it yet, but the early impression is that it does not seem bad at all. The redesign at least feels intentional rather than the old system which often felt like content padded to fill time.
Entry currencies have also been unified into a single Dungeon Entry Key across Gates, Unstable Dungeon, Battlefield of Chaos, and Hunter Archive modes, which is a small but genuinely appreciated QoL move. It does not fix the full currency problem (more on that in a second) but it is a step in the right direction and shows someone at Netmarble is at least thinking about this.
The main story has also been refined to remove repetition in stages throughout chapters 3 to 20, and new chapters 32 to 34 are now available. For someone who actually cares about the lore, that matters.
The Game Is Way More Generous Than It Used To Be
This one genuinely surprised me and I want to give it proper credit because it changes the free to play experience meaningfully. ARISE is now genuinely generous with premium currency and draw tickets just from playing the game and progressing through story mode. You accumulate crystals and actual draw tickets at a rate that feels rewarding rather than designed to frustrate you into spending. For a gacha game that is not a given and it is worth calling out.
The bigger thing though is Monarch Milestones. As you advance through the game, the milestone system hands you SSR characters and SSR weapons as rewards. Not every single one, but a significant majority of them. That is free top-tier units just for playing. The concept is genuinely smart and I love it, because it means you have the base version of a character in your party, you can actually play with them, feel how they handle, see if they fit your style, and then make an informed decision about whether you want to invest further in pulling duplicates or chasing their constellations.
Compare that to the old Character Trial system, which still exists and lets you test a character in a controlled dummy scenario. Trials are fine but they are not the same as actually running content with a character for a few days and seeing how they slot into your team in practice. Monarch Milestones gives you that real experience before you commit anything. It is the kind of feature that respects the player’s time and wallet in a way gacha games rarely do, and it makes the whole roster feel much more accessible than it did when I first played.
The Generosity Is Actually Real
This is the part that genuinely surprised me coming back and I want to give it proper credit. The game is far more generous with pulls than I remembered. Just playing through story mode and doing daily content gives you a steady stream of crystals and actual draw tickets without touching the shop. It does not feel like a trickle designed to tease you, it feels like a real income of pulls for a free to play player.
But the thing I love most right now is Monarch Milestones. As you progress through the game, Netmarble hands you SSR characters and SSR weapons just for advancing. Not every single one of them, but a vast majority. That is a massive shift from the typical gacha model where SSR units sit behind a pull wall you are expected to fund.
What makes it even smarter is that you still have Character Trials in the game, which let you experience a character before committing your pulls to them. So the loop becomes: get the base SSR through Monarch Milestones, actually use it in your party, see if it clicks with your playstyle, and then decide whether it is worth going all in to fully invest in that unit. You are making an informed decision rather than gambling blind and hoping the character you just pulled is one you actually enjoy playing.
I genuinely love this concept. It respects the player’s time and their resources. More gacha games should do this.
The currency and item problem is still there and it is still a wall for returners and new players alike. There are so many different currencies, materials, tickets, stones, keys, and assorted items that when you come back after time away you genuinely do not know what 99% of the things you are receiving even are. Some descriptions are vague enough to not help. Some items look important and are useless. Some look useless and are actually critical. It takes a real sit-down session to work through it all, and even then you are probably going to Google half of it.
The unified Dungeon Entry Key helps on one small slice of that problem. The rest of the inventory is still a mess that feels like it accumulated over years of patches without anyone stopping to audit whether any of it still made sense together.
For Now, I Am Loving It
That said, I am back and genuinely enjoying myself. The combat is still the reason to be here and it still holds up. The Solo Leveling world is still the pull that keeps me coming back every time I close the manga feeling like I need more. The stuttering being gone removed the single most friction-heavy part of my previous experience and the game underneath that friction is actually good.
OVERDRIVE is still on my radar for when that sale comes back. No gacha and a proper offline mode being rolled out sounds like the version of this game I might prefer long term. But for now, the mobile ARISE is keeping me busy and that is more than I expected when I reinstalled it.
