Solo Leveling: Arise Overdrive Review – Style Over Substance

From its opening moments, Solo Leveling: Arise Overdrive makes one thing clear: Netmarble Neo understands the power fantasy of Sung JinWoo’s journey. The demo faithfully recreates his Awakening sequence from the Solo Leveling manhwa and anime, complete with flashy combat and the protagonist’s signature leveling mechanics. On the surface, this PC action-RPG (slated for a fall 2025 release) nails the thrill of embodying the Shadow Monarch—until you peel back the layers and find an experience that feels alarmingly hollow.
A Promising But Shallow Foundation
The core combat is Overdrive’s strongest asset. JinWoo’s moveset blends Dynasty Warriors-style crowd-clearing with precision dodges, counters, and QTEs that capture the anime’s high-octane fights. Players can customize his loadout with weapons (some oddly uncanonical, like guns and bows), equip skills inspired by the series, and even summon Hunter allies mid-battle. Four distinct classes—Assassin, Duelist, Elementalist, and Ruler—reflect JinWoo’s evolution, each with unique skill trees.
Yet these systems lack depth. Progression revolves around grinding dungeons to level up gear, Artifacts, and the Shadow Army, but the loop quickly grows repetitive. Enemy variety is sparse, environments feel lifeless, and NPCs—including fan-favorite characters—are reduced to generic one-liners. Worse, the UI is a controller-unfriendly mess, hinting at the game’s mobile origins.
The Shadow of Monetization
Netmarble insists Overdrive is a “brand new title,” not a port of the gacha-heavy Solo Leveling: Arise (2024). But the similarities are impossible to ignore: reused assets, identical menus, and progression systems stripped of their original monetization—leaving behind a grind with no satisfying payoff. Without the gacha mechanics that defined Arise, Overdrive fails to replace them with meaningful content, relying instead on mindless repetition.
Verdict: An Unfulfilled Potential
Solo Leveling: Arise Overdrive excels in making players feel like JinWoo—for about two hours. Then the cracks show: shallow systems, recycled content, and a grind that replaces predatory monetization with pure tedium. For diehard fans, the combat’s initial thrill may justify the purchase, but most will find this a shadow of what it could’ve been.