The Seven Deadly Sins Origin Review: Big open-world ambition held back by a few misses

The Seven Deadly Sins: Origin is a new action RPG from Netmarble, set in the world of The Seven Deadly Sins. Many have noticed its strong similarities to Genshin Impact in terms of both how it looks and how you play. But how good is the game, really? Let’s take a closer look in this review of The Seven Deadly Sins: Origin.

Before reading the full game review, be sure to check out the Twitch drop event to earn rewards like Gold and Hero Draw Tickets. You can also find a list of redeem codes for even more goodies! Find out what launch rewards are available here.

I’ve spent almost 36 hours playing The Seven Deadly Sins: Origin before writing this review. I tested the game on both my Samsung M55, which is a good mid-range phone, and my iPhone 17.

The gameplay brings familiar looks with different combat ideas

The game has its strengths and weaknesses, but let’s start with what it does well. It doesn’t feel like a copy of Genshin Impact and offers some unique and engaging combat combos, reminiscent of Arknights Endfield. A key difference from Arknights Endfield, however, is the focus on team dynamics.

In this game, you build a team of four characters, but you only directly control one at a time. Characters perform combo attacks when you time your actions correctly. A key strategy is to build a team with characters who share the same element. Each character can also use different weapons, which changes how they play and what role they fill in your team.

Characters like Guila can be customized to play different roles – like a Tank or a Damage Dealer – based on the weapon you equip. This is true for most characters in the game, allowing you to adapt to your team’s needs, even if you’re short on strong support. However, that’s about as good as the gameplay gets.

Let’s move on to the downsides. The game isn’t very well optimized, and I’ll discuss this in more detail shortly. Right now, I’m experiencing issues where my attacks aren’t registering correctly. I can visibly see my skills activating, but sometimes the enemy doesn’t take damage or react to the effects. Overall, the game feels rushed and could have benefited from more development time before release.

Story and music reap the benefits of having an established IP

It’s hard to overstate how popular and well-regarded Seven Deadly Sins is. Fortunately, the game builds on a strong base and a compelling universe, making it a great fit for an open-world experience. The story feels both new and familiar, staying true to the anime and manga source material.

This game features a huge story with 13 chapters, taking you across the Kingdom of Liones from the anime and introducing many characters from the original series. While it might be confusing for players new to the world, it’s a must-play for fans.

You play as Prince Tristan, the son of Meliodas and Elizabeth, along with his friend Tioreh. They embark on a journey to uncover the secrets of a strange artifact called the “Book of Stars,” which unexpectedly causes a dark corruption to spread across Britannia.

This game plays with time, as its name, Origin, suggests. Players must work together to overcome a new danger. The music and soundtrack also enhance the game’s atmosphere and overall experience.

The open world and the variety of things we can do

Seven Deadly Sins: Origin delivers a genuine open-world gaming experience. Like other open-world games that use a ‘gacha’ system – such as Wuthering Waves and Genshin Impact – the world of Seven Deadly Sins offers plenty to explore. While the gacha elements might not appeal to everyone, fans of the original series will be pleased. Netmarble has successfully captured the essence of the series within a vast, open world.

The game features a vast world to discover, with challenging dungeons filled with treasure. You can collect pets, create items, and learn new cooking recipes. It’s full of content, offering both familiar and new characters and stunning visuals. However, all this comes with a downside.

Performance problems hurt the experience of this rich open world

The Unreal Engine logo often makes people worry about how well a game will run, and in this case, those concerns seem valid. The game looks as good as Genshin Impact, but Genshin Impact uses a different engine – Unity – while this game is built with the more demanding Unreal Engine 5.

Despite looking good, this game runs terribly. I crashed about fifteen times in one day and had to use a different phone just to continue playing. It’s easily one of the most poorly optimized gacha games I’ve encountered.

If you have an older or less powerful phone, you’ll likely have trouble running this game – it might not even start. The performance is really bad; it’s worse than when Wuthering Waves first came out, and even that game ran better. I could at least play Wuthering Waves on my phone, but this game just crashes constantly.

Given how good the game looks, the performance is surprisingly bad. It’s really not good enough, and many players on both phones and computers are experiencing the same issues.

The UI and the design elements feel too familiar again

The game’s graphics are very similar to Genshin Impact – so much so that people often mistake one for the other. This has led to online criticism, with many calling it a clone. The developers clearly took inspiration from Genshin Impact, even copying elements like the clock hand used when changing the in-game time.

The game sometimes feels slow and unresponsive. Loading items and opening menus can take a while, and switching between sections isn’t always smooth. This seems to be due to the game not being well-optimized – a smooth user interface needs a smoothly running game to begin with, and unfortunately, this game doesn’t quite deliver. Hopefully, the developers will release updates soon to address these problems.

The monetisation is better than expected

Many open-world gacha games require six copies of a character to fully upgrade them. This game also needs ten, which might seem excessive. Some players feel this pushes monetization to a greedy level. However, you’ll automatically receive four copies just by playing and leveling up, so it’s not as bad as it appears.

The game uses a ’50/50′ chance system for getting rare characters, with a guaranteed rare character after 80 pulls. You’re guaranteed the limited-time character after 120 pulls. It’s similar to the gacha system in Arknights Endfield, but much easier to grasp. A big plus is that there’s no separate gacha for weapons! Instead, there’s a banner for weapon skins, which are completely optional and don’t affect gameplay stats. Thanks, Netmarble, for making a good decision on this!

The game features a battle pass with both free and premium options. The premium pass, costing $4.99 like many similar games, includes weapons, in-game rewards, and resources to help your characters improve. It costs 300 StarFragments to do one random draw, or 3000 for ten. The pricing structure is comparable to Genshin Impact, so you can expect similar costs.

Final Verdict

The Seven Deadly Sins: Origin gets off to a great start, with fun battles, a large world to explore, and lots to offer fans of the series. It’s a solid game with the potential to be one of the best anime RPGs available on mobile.

Currently, the game’s potential is limited by significant performance issues, frequent crashes, and general instability. As it stands, it’s hard to recommend to most players unless you’re a devoted fan who can tolerate these problems.

The Seven Deadly Sins: Origin has potential, and with a few improvements and bug fixes, it could become a great game. It’s best to keep an eye on its development before deciding to play.

The Seven Deadly Sins: Origin Review by GamingonPhone

Gameplay Mechanics – 8

Storyline and Content – 8

Game Optimisation – 4

Controls and UI – 7

Graphics and Music – 7

Free-to-play elements – 8

7

Average

As a big fan of The Seven Deadly Sins, I was really excited for Origin, and it definitely delivers on some fronts! The open world is great to explore, teaming up with your favorite characters in combat is a blast, and they packed in tons of stuff fans like me will love. But honestly? It’s frustrating because the game is plagued with technical problems – crashes, bugs, and it just doesn’t run smoothly. It has the potential to be amazing, but those issues really hold it back right now.

2026-04-19 21:43