Ghostlore

Every so often an ARPG shows up with a build-crafting system genuinely worth the genre's attention, and Ghostlore has one. Built by a two-person team explicitly chasing a spiritual successor to Diablo II and Titan Quest, it sets its ambitions in Southeast Asian folklore rather than the genre's usual well-worn fantasy iconography, and backs that identity with a skill system reviewers across the spectrum — genre veterans and curious newcomers alike — describe as genuinely inventive. What keeps that system from translating into an unreserved recommendation is a set of specific, widely corroborated practical problems standing between the player and it.

A skill system worth the comparisons to Path of Exile

Ghostlore's active skills live on an expanding grid that unlocks more slots as a character levels, and passive "glyphs" connect to those skills in straight lines to modify how they work — one glyph might support multiple active skills at once, and multiple glyphs can stack onto a single skill for compounding effects. Reviewers repeatedly compare this directly to Path of Exile's support-gem system, while noting it strips away PoE's gear-slot requirement in favor of simply connecting nodes on a board. Combined with a triple-class system letting a character pull skills from three different class trees, the result is a build space reviewers describe as deep enough that "reorganizing your skills and passives after a level-up becomes a game in itself." The system is also deliberately permissive rather than tightly balanced — reviewers describe stacking absurd, self-created power spikes (dozens of casts per second, summons that summon their own summons) as part of the intended fun rather than an exploit to patch out, a design philosophy one reviewer frames succinctly: "the mechanics in this game are begging to be broken, and it gives you all kinds of tools to do that."

Where the ambition runs into friction

Set against that system are two specific, consistently repeated practical complaints. The first is movement and melee combat feel: a large share of reviewers describe the character as frequently unable to move and attack in the same motion, producing missed inputs and a stop-start rhythm that several reviewers call clunky regardless of how satisfying the underlying build system is to play with. The second is inventory management — reviewers describe far more distinct item types than the available storage comfortably holds, forcing repeated trips back to town to sort and deposit loot rather than spending that time experimenting with builds. Neither complaint touches what the skill system does well, but both are real, specific friction points a player has to push through to get there, and reviewers who bounced off the game most often cite one or both of these rather than any dissatisfaction with the build-crafting itself.

Controller support draws a further, more technical set of complaints: reviewers report skills unintentionally rapid-firing when a button isn't released quickly enough, summoned creatures spawning away from where they'd be useful, and inconsistent target-locking at range. Co-op, offered both locally and online, comes in for the sharpest specific criticism of all — one detailed review calls it "offensively terrible," describing specific, reproducible problems rather than a vague complaint, despite online multiplayer being one of the most consistently requested features from the game's own community.

A genuinely sustained small-team effort

Ghostlore's own development history is worth stating plainly: continuous, dense updates from its 14 April 2022 Early Access launch through its 18 May 2023 full release, followed by continued support including a major 1.1 update adding new Mythic-tier items in 2024 and further patches into

2026. Ahead of full release, the developers added an entire post-game hub — the Institute of

Paranormal Studies — offering proceduralized mission maps with randomized modifiers, directly answering complaints about a short, thin campaign by giving committed players a genuine endgame loop to chase. A February 2026 developer post confirms the game has sold over 50,000 copies and lays out, in detail, why online multiplayer specifically was never fully realized: the team judged the implementation cost too high relative to how essential "online" actually is to today's ARPG audience compared to Diablo II's era. That's an unusually transparent piece of reasoning from a two-person studio still actively communicating with its community nearly four years after this game's Early Access debut.

A divided read on depth versus complexity

Not every reviewer who bounces off Ghostlore does so over movement or inventory friction alone — a separate, more thoughtful critical thread questions whether the glyph system's apparent depth actually translates into meaningful decisions once the endgame arrives. More than one reviewer describes the system as visually and conceptually impressive on paper but functionally closer to a grid-packing puzzle than a genuine strategic choice, with unexplained stats and overtuned or undertuned options muddying which combinations actually matter. That's a fair counterpoint to the system's most enthusiastic praise, and worth holding alongside it: Ghostlore's build-crafting is undeniably distinctive, but "distinctive" and "deep in practice" aren't automatically the same claim, and reasonable, engaged players in this review's research land on both sides of that distinction.

Where it lands

Ghostlore earns the "criminally underrated" label its own fans keep reaching for on the strength of a skill and glyph system that stands genuinely apart from most of its genre, wrapped around a distinctive setting and backed by remarkably sustained small-team support. The clunky movement and attack feel, strained inventory space, and broken co-op are real, specific, and consistently reported problems that keep it from an easy top score — but none of them undo what the build system does, and for a player willing to push past that friction, this remains one of the more genuinely original ARPGs of its era.