Guild Wars 2: Secrets of the Obscure

30 of the 126 reviews criticize the story, 5 of them from players who still recommend the expansion, while 9 like it. The critics most often call it boring, and some call it childish or aimless: "Written as if a 5 yo kid discovered ai to write the story from scratch," one wrote. Another "didn't think it was possible for an MMO to have a story campaign hit worse than WoW's Shadowlands," and a third says "Quality of the writing is definitely lower than the other stories/DLCs." Three find the Kryptis demons unconvincing; one says "the demons plot felt really like a Disney movie. And in a bad way."

"The first couple of chapters of this DLC were really great," one player wrote, then "Every next chapter was worse than the previous one." Four reviews describe a decline like this after a promising start. A recommender says the "latter half drops hard for me," and another found it "gripping for about 2/3s of the way" before it "ends abruptly."

Those who like the story mention its emotion and its lore. "Quest lines deal with real emotion and the talking makes sense," one wrote, and another felt it was "fresh each time a new area opened up." One reviewer liked that even the demons "deserve our pity," and a lore fan was glad the Wizard's Tower story was finally told.

15 reviews object to story steps that stop until the player closes enough rifts or fills an event bar on the map, 2 of them from players who recommend the expansion anyway. One mocks "the fill up the event bar to progress every step of the story" design. Another says the story "is literally just fly around and do map events thats 90% of the story missions," and a third that the "Second half of the story missions is nothing but" map events. A long launch-week review says "the rift hunting they shoehorned in to stall for playtime got old real quick" and contrasts it with End of Dragons, where "you could just do any kind of events or kill mobs. So the players had agency". It asks: "please don't forcefeed me that stuff during story progression, wasting my time".

"It's just constantly closing rifts and the rifts are just the same thing over and over," one player wrote of the rifts themselves. At launch, another said you "either get onto train for rifts or either get lost or arrive few seconds after rift is closed," and asked for map-wide markers. Four reviews say objectives are hard to find. One lists a task "with nothing marked on map," events all in one color and a need to "search GW2 wiki" to finish objectives; another found navigation "so confusing and convoluted without the skyscale mount." A recommender who enjoyed the story still says "the do rifts/events to move on is annoying."

"Feels like a living world season that's renamed and painted as a DLC," one player wrote, and two others make the same Living World comparison. In all, 11 negative reviews say the expansion is thin. An early review found "a major lack of content in terms of events and things to grind or work towards." Another player explored the whole first map by accident in under two hours, and four reviews point to reused assets, one describing the first map as "basically all the previous DLCs in small form."

Four recommenders think the price makes up for it. "It is a smaller expansion for half the price," one wrote, and another said "It's $40, I've already gotten over 40 hours out of it, it's a win in my books." Three reviews, two of them positive, suggest waiting for a sale.

Buying through Steam caused problems for 11 reviewers, 4 of whom still vote the expansion up. Seven could not get the expansion into the game: it would not download or install, the portal said "I do not have Access to the maps," or the Steam purchase did not attach to an existing ArenaNet account. "If you have an arena net account this will not work and if you buy this - steam will not give you a refund," one warns, and another says "dont buy this via steam go to arena net directly". One buyer did not receive the bonus headgear and weapon skin, one notes the deluxe and ultimate editions cost more on Steam, and one says the Hall of Monuments, which links Guild Wars 1 and 2, is "utterly broken for steam accounts."

10 reviews complain about long dialogue scenes, 9 of them negative reviews. Three say the scenes can't be skipped: "You can't skip dialogs," one wrote, another described being "forced to listen the NPC discuss a plan for 2 minutes without skip option," and a third said that had they known about the "unskippable and such a horribly awful dialogue, I would have skipped the entire expansion." Others dwell on the length. One says "you rot away in an instance just being yapped at for around 10 minutes," and another estimates that "90% of what they say you don't even need to be around for." One player renamed the expansion "Secrets of ignoring the story by alt tabbing during dialogue cutscene."

Six reviews report technical trouble. A story quest that "does not register closing rifts" left one player stuck for months while support suggested waiting or skipping the chapter. Others describe a champion whose spawn pulls players "off the ledge of the platform every 5 seconds," a "Bugged walking simulator story," lag in chapter 18 ("half the fps i usually get at other intense metas"), poor performance in the Wizard's Tower, and a disconnect that forced one player to replay "an hour of cringe and boring content from 0." One recommender wrote that they "haven't had any bugs with it."

Five negative reviews object to how weapon mastery unlocks: through the story chapters, or by buying items in WvW. Two of them come from PvP players. A warrior who plays only PvP "had no clue when I purchased this" and considered a refund, and another player bought it for the meta PvP weapons and called it "trash with trash intent". Others say the unlock path "is just nasty" and call it "The most tedious p2w weapon unlock I had ever seen." One player later learned "you can go straight to the 14 chapter and get it in like 20 minutes."

Five negative reviews, all written from August 2025 on, describe permanent Guild Wars 2 account bans that have nothing to do with the expansion's content: one on a second-hand PC, one for moving gold and items between the player's own accounts, one over character names, and two with no stated reason. They say support sent template answers or would not look into it: "Support refused to review the logs and just closed the ticket."

Four reviews expected the purchase to give them the Skyscale everywhere and found a version limited to the new maps. "It says you get the mount, you only get a non permanent version in the new bioms," one wrote, calling it false advertising, and another says it "does not unlock the Skyscale for general use" despite ArenaNet "heavily implying" otherwise. A third left a thumbs-up that reads "i do not have my sky mount and i paid for Secrets of Obscure."

Two reviews single out the story bosses. "Chapter bosses feel like a hate-letter to players with melee builds," one wrote, adding that the final fight was a letdown. Another says "The first boss fight of the story was 20 deaths, zero preparation for the mechanics."