For the first Mobile Friday of 2025, i tried Hardcore Leveling Warrior, from Superplanet on my iPhone 14 Pro.
I am mostly sure that Hardcore Leveling Warrior came out this year, 2025, so will include it in my Game of the Year Round up. it's app store page looked really interesting. the art looked cool, reminding me of the style of Kill la Kill, and for the most part i think it carries over well into the game. what was perhaps the most surprising thing was the soundtrack. the start menu blasts you with a cool song and the bgm throughout was nice. i do think that i'd have to tweak it so the music volume is less than the speaking.
I've played enough of these games to know that RPG could mean anything. but here in Hardcore Leveling Warrior, there's an actual story and within the first hour we watch a cutscene of our fall from power, we meet up with people from our past, and we make new friends. the idle nature of the game acts as the grinding of levels between story beats and feature unlocking.
After my time was up, there were many elements of the game i hadn't unlocked and a lot of story too. i get the feeling we're talking double digits of hours needed to play through it all. and of course, as a mobile game, the developers can always add more story or side quests in the future.
Hardcore Leveling Warrior isn't the simplest idle game i've played, it lives up to it's name. there are a large number of things to level up, one way or another. our character himself has a few ways to be levelled up, then there's the items we have equipped, our skills, our companions, boosts, and more. the numbers in this game are going to keep on getting bigger in a way that feels right for the game and our character.
The spelling mistake wasn't an issue for me, but what does keep Hardcore Leveling Warrior from being a great game is it's tutorial and quest mechanic. both start out as good and useful, but their limitations become quite apparent. early on, i failed to beat the first boss and my character was stuck looping the previous stage. the quest wanted me to beat the first boss, but when i pressed it nothing happened. the tutorial didn't tell me how to get out of the loop if i failed to beat the boss. But there were other times when pressing the quest took me to where i needed to complete an action. The home screen also feels unnecessarily cluttered. especially when the tutorial never talked about it and there were no quests to interact with it.
Hardcore Leveling Warrior isn't bad but it's not fantastic either. but what it does have is an interesting story and some cool art and music. i wont be deleting it from my phone as yet as i'd like to see a little more of it's story. so i would say it's worth downloading and trying, but after an hour i think you'd have a good idea if it's something you want to continue or not.
Version 1.1.2 Played.
