Seven Deadly Sins: Origin is a game developed and published by Netmarble, a gaming company that was in charge of the rise of Lineage 2: Revolution and coincidentally, its downfall (mainly due to their own greed). Now the question poses itself — will they do the same with this adaption of the popular anime?
For now, Seven Deadly Sins is out on PC, PS5, and on mobile phones. Seems like a great start. I’ve played it all night since the launch and the whole morning the day after. I’ve accidentally seen that reviews on Steam are mixed and I just had to see what people are saying. And while I agree with a few, most of them I thought were just little cry babies. I’ll try to go over it all in the next few sections and hopefully come to a conclusion.
Story
The main protagonist of the SDS: Origin is the son of Meliodas and Elizabeth, Tristan. He is accompanied by Tioreh, a daughter of King and Diane. They were exploring Britannia when they discovered a strange artifact called Book of Stars which records and connects countless timelines, holding limitless potential. And it’s up to Tristan to unravel the mysteries of it.
It’s physically impossible to finish the whole game in such a short span but so far the story is piquing my interest so far. I’m invested in finding out where this might lead. Before you rush to a conclusion — no, I don’t think it’s the most amazing game story out there or remotely close but for what it is, I don’t mind it.
I’ve seen people complaining about the story and they’ve spent less than 30 minutes playing Seven Deadly Sins: Origin, which simply blows my mind and just proves that you can’t listen to most of those people or value their opinion.
Gameplay
I’ve played this game for less than a day and you should take this review and every other with a grain of salt. I truly believe that most of them were too harsh or paid actors. Lets make this review as true as possible. I’ll tell you about my experience and you can correct me in the comments.
Let’s start with the elephant in the room. It’s a gacha game just like most anime-turned-games (as well as comp titles to this one). The rates aren’t bad but acquiring summon tickets is such a long process that it “forces” you to spend money in order to get decent characters. Especially if you want them to be maxed, it usually requires more than a couple hundred bucks per character. It’s what worked in the past for other companies, so Netmarble is no different. I’m not saying it’s an ethical practice but it is a profitable one.
For the actual gameplay, there’s a lot to be dissected but for now I’ll keep it brief. At least till I get more hours in. The combat was criticized to lack certain oomph and you guessed it right, by the people who didn’t even get past the tutorial. The fighting against enemies is based on using basic attack, 2 skills, and ultimate. You can create a team that consists of 4 members and you can interchange them during combat while you wait for skills to finish cooldown. It’s nothing innovative or special but it’s pretty standard for this type of game.
Besides doing main missions and side quests, there are also special dungeons and boss instances where you can obtain all sorts of materials/gear to grow stronger. I haven’t dabbled much with it for now but everything in its due time.
The last thing that I would love to talk about for now is the pet system which I absolutely adore. It’s a system where you can catch certain monsters and use them as a pet, mount, or a flyer. You need to wear them out and use a potion of charm in order to capture them. Hopefully they keep working on this system and add even more monsters to catch. The only thing that bothers me is that the potions are very hard to come by and catching the monster is tricky so you won’t always succeed. Sometimes you waste all of your potions and you don’t get them. And this is the type of content where the size of your wallet won’t matter. They don’t sell it in a shop.
That’s all from me for now. You can expect more takes about the game once I play it longer and get a little further ahead. I’ll keep you posted.
Graphics
Another set of complaints I’ve seen is that it runs poorly, bugs out, and sounds are out of loop/not optimized. Which I haven’t witnessed once and that says a lot considering I’m running it on a potato. I didn’t even have to mess with options at all, just pressed play. With that said, the overall art style, while it looks pleasing on the eye, lacks details. Especially if you compare it to Genshin Impact or Wuthering Waves.
The last thing that kinda bothered me was a lack of English voice-over. I wanted to have a chill time while playing it and not having English voice-over made it 10% percent less enjoyable. Mainly because my eyes were strained and I didn’t wanna make it worse by reading CC.
Final thoughts
I don’t see the reason for this much hate, especially when it’s coming from people who played it less than an hour. It almost feels like the game is getting review bombed. It’s a free game that could be compared to Genshin, Wuthering Waves, Solo Leveling, etc. and while they are all different, people put them in the same category. As someone who played all of them, I wouldn’t put Seven Deadly Sins below them.
This is not me kissing someone’s ass, especially not Netmarble’s. If I end up hating a game, you’ll be first to know. As for now, I enjoy it.
Pavle is the founder of PlayForge and its lead writer and reviewer, covering PC, PS5, and mobile games, a with a focus on RPGs, MMOs, FPS games, and more. He’s been gaming since the PS2 days and now writes in-depth reviews and guides to help players find their next obsession and get gaming insights from real players, not just critics. His reviews are honest and transparent, but he always tries to stay positive, because in his opinion, almost any game can be fun if you look at it the right way.
In his free time, he likes to (obviously) play more games, spend time with his family, theorycraft about various media with his wife, and watch anime. So yes, he’s a complete nerd, even if he’ll never admit it.
