Eternal Return

19% of the longer reviews talk about the size of the player base or queue times, and the complaint appears at a similar rate in every year from 2020 to 2026. Reviewers describe Korea and the rest of Asia as busy, and North America and Europe as quiet outside peak hours. They report 10 to 30 minute waits for normals, ranked queues that only pop in the evening, and matches where a missed accept or a dodge sends everyone back to the queue. "Having to play evening into night to have a match on a EU server (especially a ranked one) doesn't help the situation," one reviewer writes. Some western players switch to the Asia server ("click on the globe icon in the top right of the menu -> change server to Asia," one NA reviewer advises) and trade the queue for high ping. Several ask the studio to advertise the game in the West.

16% of the longer reviews talk about the learning curve, skill gaps or being stomped by veterans and smurfs. Players have to learn characters, items, routes, crafting timings and map control at once, and many say the first matches are confusing. "Most games are easy to learn/hard to master. This game is hard to learn/hard to master," one player sums up. Reviewers tie this to the small player base: new accounts matched against high-ranked players and smurfs in normal games, and dying minutes into a match. One wrote that they "spent more time reading up guides and watching videos than in game towards the beginning because I didn't want to keep getting stomped". Players who stick with it often say it clicks and becomes very rewarding, and the advice they give is to watch a beginner guide, learn one character in bot games, and play with someone experienced.

Balance, buffs or nerfs come up in 19% of the longer reviews. The basic complaint, in one reviewer's words, is that "some characters are just strictly better across the board than others". Reviewers also say new releases arrive overtuned and that favorite characters get nerfed hard or are left weak for long stretches. Fights are said to be decided by burst damage and crowd control. Some players answer that the game is better balanced than League, and that a character who looks broken falls apart in less skilled hands.

17% of the longer reviews mention matchmaking or bots, and two complaints keep coming back. Normals have no meaningful skill matching, reviewers say, so newcomers, veterans and three-stacks share a lobby. Empty lobbies are filled with bots, so a game can be "with and against bots but there will also be a 3 stacks of vets that run down the full lobby making normals pointless," as one EU player describes it. Some players describe winning easily against bots and learning nothing, then hitting a wall in their first real lobby. Reviewers say ranked is played against real people, which makes it fairer but slow to find outside peak hours.

12% of the longer reviews bring up the tutorial, the UI or the controls. Players say the tutorial does not teach what matters, especially how fast you need to complete a build, and several call it outdated or "still terrible". The menus are described as busy, mobile or gacha-style and hard to navigate, and the item and crafting screens confuse first-timers. A smaller group dislikes the point-and-click movement itself: "The point -and- click definitely is not for everyone," one writes. Players who come from League of Legends often say the controls feel natural.

Reports in the 8% of longer reviews that mention bugs, crashes, lag, disconnects or frame rate include crashes after character select, getting stuck on "verifying account" or loading screens, server errors mid-match, and poor frame rates on laptops. Some players were penalized for leaving after a crash. A few reviewers say stability improved with the full release.

A small group objects to penalties: queue lockouts for missing the accept prompt, and suspensions for leaving normal games early when teammates won't revive or are trolling. One player describes a 20 minute queue penalty for a missed accept on top of a long queue.

2% of the longer reviews mention cheating, hacks or teaming. Most come from the early access years, when solo players reported rival teams cooperating, and later reviews still mention scripts, map hacks and smurf accounts. "Rife with bug-abusers, scripts & hacks, this is a cheaters' paradise," one 2024 review says, though few reviewers go that far.

A handful of reviewers object to the phone or identity verification that they say ranked play requires, and to the Xigncode3 anti-cheat they say installs with the game. "You do not need nor deserve people's phone numbers to play ranked," one writes.