Guild Wars® Reforged
Last updated: 2025-12-04
- Timeless, highly recommended RPG experience.
- Deep skill and build variety.
- Unique instanced online RPG gameplay.
- Dated graphics and user interface.
- Unforgiving difficulty and grind.
- Severe account login issues.
Emotions
Players felt satisfied by the game's overall high quality, enduring appeal, and unique gameplay elements such as the versatile skill system and deep build variety. Positive interactions with customer support, abundant content, engaging story, and the ability to play effectively solo or with an active community also contributed significantly to this emotion.
Joy stemmed from the game being a personal favorite, offering a captivating adventure, and providing long-term entertainment whether playing with friends or solo. Rediscovering the game's magic, enjoying its unique mechanics, supportive community, and engaging content like class builds and missions also contributed to this positive feeling.
Nostalgia was a strong emotion for veteran players who cherished childhood memories and long histories with the game, often playing since its early days. Revisiting the game after many years evoked fond memories of its unique atmosphere and the best PvP experiences, reinforcing its status as a legendary title.
Excitement was generated by the game's amazing story, world, brilliant PvP, and unique, deep skill system, which allowed for extensive build experimentation. Players were also thrilled by the prospect of replaying campaigns, exploring lore connections, and the game's overall enduring quality and value.
Frustration frequently arose from technical issues, including account bans without clear reasons, inability to log in, and slow download speeds. Players also experienced frustration with poor zone design, slow travel, high difficulty spikes for newcomers, outdated UI, and unhelpful AI companions.
Verdict
Mostly positive
Summary
Positive 86% · Negative 14%. Score: 14 / 100
Positives:
- Players consistently praise the game as a classic and one of the best MMORPGs, highlighting its vast content, depth, unique mechanics, and overall fun. It offers hundreds of hours of entertainment and holds up remarkably well, often surpassing modern titles.
- The game's unique skill system, combined with dual-classing, allows for exceptional build crafting and character customization. Players enjoy experimenting with thousands of skill combinations, providing strategic depth and endless replayability.
- A highly lauded feature is the ability to form parties with customizable NPC 'heroes' and henchmen. This system enables players to experience nearly all PvE content solo or with a small group of friends, offering unique strategic possibilities.
- The combat system is described as unique and tactical, providing a satisfying experience that holds up well. It's noted for its accessibility, even for players less skilled with modern controls, while still offering depth.
- Despite its age, the game maintains a dedicated, loyal, and active community that is praised for being kind and helpful to both new and veteran players. Developers also continue to support the servers, ensuring its longevity.
Negatives:
- A prominent theme is the game's age manifesting in outdated graphics, a clunky user interface, and slower combat compared to modern MMOs. This contributes to the game feeling rough and unwelcoming for new players, despite some finding charm in its vintage appeal.
- The game presents a significant challenge, especially for newcomers, with a high initial difficulty, powerful early enemies, and frequent difficulty spikes. Players report a huge time investment is required, with boring leveling and a brutal death penalty, often necessitating external guides to progress effectively.
- A critical issue is widespread problems with account management, including arbitrary bans upon login or account creation, and inability to log in via Steam. There are significant difficulties linking Steam-purchased Guild Wars 1 accounts with Arena.net accounts, impacting access and cross-game rewards with Guild Wars 2, with support often proving unhelpful.
- Many players report a significantly low player count, making it difficult to find real players for group content and PvP. The PvP system, in particular, is noted as largely inactive, with many modes only playable with bots, which deters new players and impacts the social experience of an MMO.
- The game suffers from extremely slow travel due to the lack of speed buffs, mounts, or effective fast travel options. This is compounded by overly large, often labyrinthine zones that feel empty and purposeless, making movement a significant time sink and contributing to a monotonous experience, especially with low player counts.
Gameplay:
- The game is best described as an online RPG with instanced zones for parties of 4-8 players, rather than a traditional open-world MMO. Players gather in social hubs but undertake missions and exploration in private instances, supporting both cooperative missions, competitive PvP, and robust solo play with AI companions.
- Guild Wars features three distinct story campaigns, with a relatively low maximum level of 20 that players typically reach early in their progression. The game emphasizes continued story engagement, skill acquisition, and exploring other campaigns rather than continuous level grinding, with specific campaigns like Prophecies requiring certain early game strategies.
- The game features a click-to-move control scheme and notably lacks jump or swim mechanics, which some players find unusual. The world design is generally linear, guiding players along specific paths rather than offering broad open-world exploration, contributing to a 'walking simulator' feel for some.
- Combat employs a tab-targeting system with 8 skill slots, characterized by a slower pace compared to modern action RPGs. This encourages strategic thinking and careful skill selection. AI enemies are noted for being effective and tactical, often utilizing the same skills available to players.
- The game provides considerable system depth and challenges, including hidden abilities, fostering long-term engagement. Many players pursue significant achievements, indicating rich end-game content and replayability that extends far beyond completing the main campaigns.
Performance:
- The game generally plays flawlessly on Steam Deck with only minor button remapping needed, enhancing its portability. While a few non-game-breaking technical bugs exist, common framerate issues can often be resolved by capping the framerate in the game's settings.
- The game can run on entry-level PCs and very poor configurations, indicating good accessibility for a wider player base. However, there are also reports of poor general performance across multiple operating systems, suggesting an inconsistent experience for some users.
- Players experienced slow download speeds for the game content. This suggests a potential issue with how the game's files are hosted or mirrored on Steam's servers, impacting initial installation time rather than in-game performance.
Recommendations:
- Many players enthusiastically recommend the game, calling it a 'must-play masterpiece' and a 'gem' for RPG and MMO fans. It's considered a solid, fun, and worthwhile purchase, even years after release, though some noted it might not appeal to everyone due to time investment or older mechanics.
- The game is highly recommended for players who enjoy Guild Wars 2, especially for its rich story, acting as a valuable prequel. Some even consider it a better overall experience than GW2 in certain aspects.
- Prospective players are advised to watch videos before buying to understand the gameplay, which some describe as an outdated MMO experience. The game may be less appealing without a sense of nostalgia for older titles.
- Players recommend the game for those who enjoy deep mechanical character customization, extensive build systems, and a 'single-player MMO' feel. The ability to form teams with NPC mercenaries for solo progression is highlighted as a key draw.
- Players strongly advise purchasing the game through the original Guild Wars shop rather than Steam. This is particularly important for those intending to link to Guild Wars 2 for rewards, due to potential account linking and access issues.
Miscellaneous:
- Many long-term veteran players are returning to Guild Wars 1, often drawn by anniversary events, the 'Reforged' announcement, or simply a deep sense of nostalgia. They recall cherished childhood and early gaming memories, expressing renewed appreciation for the game's unique qualities after years or even decades away. A significant number are engaging with content they never completed, despite having thousands of hours of prior playtime.
- Players frequently compare Guild Wars 1 to its successor, Guild Wars 2, noting that GW1 retains a distinct and preferred appeal for them. Some players, initially engaging with GW1 to gain perks in GW2, found themselves drawn back to the original game's unique experience and continued playing.
- Feedback indicates issues specific to the Steam client experience, including inaccurate playtime tracking for veterans who played predominantly outside Steam and a lack of official Steam Deck compatibility. There's a strong desire for bug fixes and quality-of-life improvements, similar to those implemented for GW2's Steam release, to enhance the current game experience.
- Despite some individual preferences for less social engagement, many reviewers highlight positive experiences with in-game communities. This includes joining supportive guilds with strong alliances and enjoying casual chat in popular social hubs like Kamadan.
- Feedback suggests that the in-game store's offerings for gear are considered 'mediocre' and only 'slightly more powerful.' This implies that the current monetization strategy for items might not be compelling or adequately balanced for players.
