RuneScape: Dragonwilds

Combat is named in 22% of negative reviews (461 of 2,069), the largest share of any theme counted. The complaints are concrete: attacks and spells cannot be cancelled into a dodge or block, extra button presses queue up and get the player killed, enemies glide into range during their attack animations, ranged enemies hit from far away, stamina runs dry quickly, and fights against groups feel built for one-on-one. Several reviewers say the most reliable tactic is standing on a ledge and shooting down. "The combat is such a large focus throughout this game and it is easily the worst part." Some players feel 1.0 changes to dodging and special attacks made it worse, while a smaller group says combat improved and calls it fun, challenging and Souls-like. Archery bugs (aiming stops working) and the thin mage kit add to it.

Bugs and glitches come up in 14% of negative reviews, and many reviewers tie them to the 1.0 label: "Feels like an early-access." The most damaging reports are progression blockers. Players describe being permanently stuck on main quests, naming the Library puzzle, "Beast in the Sand" and the Black Knight fortress ("Bad game that permanently locks you out of the main quest 40 hours in due to a Library puzzle glitching out"). Others mention corrupted or overwritten saves, keys that stop responding after cutscenes or fast travel, falling through base floors, audio that cuts out in boss fights, crashes on launch after updates, and end-game raid enemies that stop respawning. Even positive reviews often add that it should not have left early access yet, and some 1.0 reviewers say they would revisit after a few months of patches.

Performance complaints often come from players who refunded or quit early. They report low frame rates and stutter on capable hardware ("Frame stuttering every 8 seconds no matter the settings."), heavy reliance on upscaling and frame generation, crashes with frame generation or on some AMD cards, and high CPU and GPU temperatures. Separately, a recurring group cannot get past the image itself: bloom, contrast and saturation that make daylight glaring and shadows near-black, which one player described as "it's like getting flashbanged while having cataracts." Some say no setting fixes it. Other players run it smoothly, including on Steam Deck and handheld PCs.

A long list of interface friction comes up across reviews: a small inventory with both slot and weight limits, no scrolling through the hotbar, a spell wheel instead of hotkeys, keys that are hard-coded and cannot be rebound (players with other layouts are hit hardest), controller buttons that cannot be remapped, and a 1.0 radial menu that replaced the old controller layout. Smaller annoyances include craft notifications that linger on screen and only one player at a time being able to open a chest.

Players who reached the final regions, usually after 50 hours or more, are the ones raising this. They describe reskinned enemies and dungeons, armour sets that share the same bonuses, loot that rarely excites, and a final area that feels assembled from earlier parts. "the game was good up until the desert, and still passable in the desert." The Scorned Wilderness and its raid draw criticism for long runbacks, platforming, and having to farm slow-spawning skeletons and zombies for top-tier gear. A minority enjoyed the final stretch.

Players repeatedly say they had to open the wiki or a video to find quest items and crafting recipes. "The game's quest design is truly awful, They are just so vague and impossible to do without opening the wiki or watching a guide". Quest areas on the map also cover fast-travel points so they cannot be clicked. Some players like the lack of hand-holding.

Dropping your inventory on death and running back to your grave frustrates players, especially solo or when the body lands somewhere dangerous or unreachable. Some report graves disappearing entirely.

A focused group could not finish even simple roofs because pieces read as unstable, sometimes after adding many support beams. It can be disabled only in custom worlds.

Some players could not join friends because of crossplay or invite-code failures, were disconnected from their own hosted worlds, or saw rubber-banding that made jumps fail. Hosting dedicated servers is described as confusing, and some dislike paying for one. On public worlds, strangers can loot chests and destroy bases while the host is away: "Players can join your public game steal your stuff or destroy your entire base while you are away".

A small number of reviewers, often early access buyers, object to a paid Deluxe upgrade with cosmetics they feel should be in the base game. Others object to linking an Epic account for multiplayer, a data-collection prompt and code-of-conduct screen at launch, and having no full offline mode.

Changing any world setting, even to make the game harder, disables achievements, and some players only found out afterwards.

Players want more hairstyles, hair and skin colours, and more options for feminine characters, and some are annoyed that a separate character is needed for each game mode.