300 Hours of Arc Raiders and nearly 8 months since release - A Review of the game.

05/04/2026

I haven't posted to this page since the game came out, which is a bit disappointing, but I'll explain why.

My intial hype for the game has died down quite a bit. It's only natural, of course, as the game has been out for quite a while and I've done most things the game has to offer. I guess the hype was what compelled me to dedicate a webpage to the game, but without the hype, my motivation just isn't there. The webpage isn't completely out of the scene though, but, it will be scaled down to just simple blogs like these ones, talking about the game.

So, lets review the game. Starting with the selling point of the game and how it holds over time.

The intial appeal of Arc Raiders for me, was its world and ability to create tension in me. It was one of the few games to really get my blood pumping and its world was intially exciting. Every raider you encountered had to be evaluated carefully because one misplaced trust, could ruin your entire run. And in, combination with the arc threat, it felt like there was an intentional balance of needing to place trust in people, and also being wary of rats and no-gooders. However, with the introduction of aggression-based-matchmaking, it feels like your "random encounters" are determined by statistics, rather than real decisions by real people, which takes away from that feeling of tension. Now, instead of feeling tense, you can simply grind your way into lobbies where everyone is nice and doesn't shoot. Or conversely, you can worm your way into PvP lobbies, in which everyone is a foe, so it doesn't even matter to evaluate them. And the problems of the system are further exacerbated by the trials system, which encourages you to load into raids completely naked, die, repeat until you get into friendly lobbies, and then kill all of the defenseless, innocents because they might accidently take some of your precious trial points. (However, I never used this strat because I gave up on the trials system after I realized how grindy it was)

Despite how negative I sound, aggression-based-matchmaking isn't awful (except for the issues with trials, those suck). The game is still fun with it and it allows players with more pvp or more pve playstyles, to find safe footing in the game. It's just a bit lackluster for me who enjoys both sides of the coin. Still, I sometimes have fun even with the system. And I've learned that you can get more random encounters by purposely balancing murder and peace. But, the system still creates annoyances where you are punished for playing differently on any given day: Like when I went arc hunting for a few raids and then wanted to switch to pvp, but got put into lobbies with friendlier people that would take personal offense if I even thought about pvp, leading me to doing pathetically easy loot runs until the lack of tension sparked murderous tendecies in me, thus causing the deaths of mulitple innocent dads with 9 to 5 jobs, all because I had no pvp lobbies.

That second selling point I talked about, was Arc Raider's worldbuilding . While not entirely unique, the world had its special moments: The goliathan, industrial architecture was marvelous to look at. The sound effects and how naturally they blended into the world was satisfying to expierence. The way arc contrasted the dying world with their perfect, futuristic designs made the arc feel threating in a unqiue way. It all just works beautifully to create a cohesive world, and I wanted the lore of it all. However, the delivery of the lore is horrendous. Lets get the obvious out of the way, the AI voice acting sucks. I don't think its ethically wrong, because the developers are using it with permission from the real voice actors that trained the AI, but I'm saying that the quality of voice acting sucks. The AI consistently messes up tonation, words feel blander, and the writing really does not help. All of the characters are really one note, without much complexity aside from the occasional quest that expands on character motives. Like the Lance quest where he asks you to inspect some androids so that he has something to relate to. This writing works in the Finals, Embark's other game, because the Finals is a bit cheesy and the gameshow annoucers are not funny on purpose. But when Celeste, the respectable leader of Speranza, cracks some stupid ass joke, it just grinds my gears, and I just have to sigh. Sigh because we didn't get any compelling writing, out of a world that is teeming with mystery and interesting ideas. Even the codex is bland, with a few paragraphs each about the game's various locations and historical events. The entrys on arc are extremely disappoint, basically just boiling down to tutorials on how to take them out. And while I get that the arc are mysterious and all, we have been fighting them for over a decade, so whats the chance that someone, a single person, sat down to study them? It would have been so cool to learn more in depth about the inner workings of the arc, and it would make sense because raiders constantly bring back arc parts for research and the raiders have the ability to seperate the larger arcs into their pieces for even better studying. These are my main gripes with the game right now, but I also have plenty of good parts! For one, the new player expierence will remain forever amazing in my eyes. Those first 100 hours leading up to your first expedition are wonderous. It really is just a joy to expierence this game's world, and then once that joy dies out, the game is still fun, albeit less so. And secondly, these updates are good. I love the new arc enemies, as they really do feel dangerous. However, they have the issue of not fitting into the games progression, like how the comet orbs and firefly tanks aren't useful outside of some limited time events and crafts. Still, they are fun to have, especially the vaporizer, I love the vaporizer and I love how its weakspot is on its bottom side, instead of in the thrusters, like all the other flying arc. And I feel as though most of the changes have been a good step in the right direction, like the change to item crafts requiring arc parts, the trigger nade nerf, and the nerf to most free kit weapons. With all that said, and all that has been unsaid (This post is unfinished as of now) I will still be playing arc raiders, because the expedition timer causes me FOMO, and because the game is still pretty fun, all things considered.

LAUNCH!!!!!!!!!

10/30/2025

THE GAME HAS RELEASED, I DON'T HAVE TIME TO BLOG ABOUT IT! EVERYONE, MEET IN SPERANZA, LETS GO, LETS GO. SEE YALL TOPSIDE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Arc Raiders releases in two days!

10/28/2025

Arc Raiders is apon us! Pre-download of the game is available now! The game releases on the 30th, at 5:30 am (in my timezone, EDT). I'm gonna try to wake up early to get my hands on it before everyone else!

The idea for this page is to serve as a logbook for my journey into arc raiders! I'll be posting reviews of the games individual mechanics and in-character roleplay journal logs. This page will be my space for interacting with the arc raiders community, and will serve as a way for me to critque aspects of the game.

I look forward to fleshing out this website, engaging in the community online, and most importantly... playing arc raiders!!! See yall topside!