Wakfu Raiders

Wakfu Raiders Review

Wakfu Raiders is gumi Inc.’s take on a WAKFU-themed mobile RPG, structured around collecting Heroes and repeatedly clearing compact stages for materials. While it borrows its characters and world identity from the PC MMORPG WAKFU (which transitioned to free-to-play in mid-2014), the moment-to-moment play is closer to the mobile hero-battler formula: side-scrolling encounters, automated actions, and progression driven by upgrades, equipment, and gacha pulls. That direction makes it approachable for casual play, even if it leaves players looking for deeper tactics with less to do during fights.

What stands out most is the presentation. Wakfu Raiders captures the charm of the broader franchise with vibrant environments and character art that feels immediately recognizable. It is a polished package, but the core loop can become repetitive, especially because the game’s systems encourage farming the same content to evolve and optimize your roster.

Exploring the Floating-Island Campaign
The main campaign is organized as instanced stages shown as a chain of floating islands. Progression is linear, with boss fights appearing at intervals. A typical stage is built around three enemy waves, and you clear all three to finish the run. Between waves, the game includes short traversal sequences where your party runs and hops across the map, which adds some variety visually even if it does not change outcomes much.

Stage runs are quick, generally falling in the 1 to 5 minute range, and they serve as the primary source of gold, experience, gear, and upgrade materials. After you clear a stage, you can unlock conveniences like Auto and 2x speed for that specific stage, which helps when you need to replay content for drops, but it also means you re-earn those quality-of-life features one map at a time. Despite being described as a social RPG, the game feels closer to a single-player grinder, with limited community interaction outside the competitive mode.

Art Direction and Presentation
Visually, Wakfu Raiders is its strongest asset. It uses a bright, stylized 2D look that blends whimsical fantasy with touches that feel both Eastern and Western in inspiration, such as serene garden motifs alongside more European-styled towns and gear designs. Characters and environments are drawn with enough depth and staging that the game often reads like a 2.5D side-view experience even though the assets are fundamentally 2D.

Backgrounds are detailed and lively, and the interface is clear and modern for its era. Animation quality is generally good, though some attack motions can look a bit stiff, as if the game could have used more in-between frames for smoother movement. Even so, the overall package is cohesive and easy on the eyes, which helps offset the grind-heavy structure.

Combat Flow and Elemental Patterns
Wakfu Raiders includes over 100 stages spread across different environments with their own enemy sets. Team-building matters, as you field up to five Heroes and place them into a formation that influences their effectiveness. Front positions favor offense, middle slots emphasize defense, and back positions provide more defensive and recovery-oriented benefits, creating a simple but meaningful setup choice before a fight.

Once combat begins, actions are mostly automatic in a turn-based exchange between your party and the enemy waves. Your key decisions are timing: you choose when to activate each Hero’s skill after their mana bar fills, and you can also trigger elemental patterns by tapping three Heroes in a particular elemental order. These patterns provide temporary stat boosts (such as DEX, DEF, or REC) and launch an AOE strike, adding a periodic moment where paying attention matters. Still, because the baseline attacks and target selection are not under your control, the system feels like a light layer of tactics on top of an auto-battler.

Hero Collection, Elements, and Progression
Collecting and improving Heroes is the heart of the game. Many characters will look familiar to players who know WAKFU, drawing from recognizable class identities and notable NPC-style designs. Heroes come with elements (Fire, Water, Earth, Air, Light, and Dark), and element matchups affect damage, making roster variety more than just cosmetic.

Progression follows the standard loop for the genre: Heroes gain experience from play, then you evolve them using specific material recipes obtained from targeted stages. Skills can be upgraded with gold, and equipment provides another layer of stat growth. Unlike some collection RPGs that let you add generic monsters to your team, Wakfu Raiders focuses on Heroes specifically. Acquisition is primarily through the Portal’s Summon options or by collecting enough Hero Soul Shards to unlock a given character. You can also earn shards, materials, gear, and Gems through normal play activities like quests, stages, and achievements.

Arena and Crypt Modes
Outside the campaign, Wakfu Raiders offers two major side modes: Arena and Crypt. Arena functions as the game’s PVP feature, matching your party against other players’ teams. The drawback is that fights are fully automated, so you mainly watch the outcome rather than actively outplay an opponent. Elemental pattern triggers are turned off in PVP, and skill usage tends to be straightforward, which limits strategy beyond team composition and raw power. A ranking ladder and rewards do provide motivation, and Arena points can be exchanged for useful items like Hero Soul Shards and equipment, but matchmaking can be rough, often placing you against significantly stronger teams.

Crypt is positioned as a set of farming dungeons, split into eight types with three difficulties each: Kama (gold), XP, and one dungeon for each element (Fire, Water, Earth, Air, Light, and Dark). The Kama dungeon is tuned for gold, the XP dungeon drops experience items, and the elemental dungeons provide elemental stones used for upgrades. These runs are less about progression and more about targeted resource collection. Each dungeon can be played up to three times per day, giving the mode a routine-like cadence that supports long-term upgrading.

Monetization and the Portal
Wakfu Raiders uses a familiar mobile monetization setup centered on the Portal, which is effectively the summoning and purchase hub. Summons are split into Honor and Heroic. Honor Summons use in-game gold and primarily award Hero Soul Shards alongside equipment and upgrade materials. Heroic Summons require Gems and can award full Heroes in addition to other rewards. The game provides one free summon per day for both types, and it also hands out Gems through achievements, quests, and login rewards, which helps free players engage with the system.

As expected, Gems can also be spent on energy refills for stages and on gold to support skill upgrades. A VIP membership adds bonuses tied to Gem purchases. Overall, the shop design is largely in line with gacha-driven hero collectors: it encourages spending for faster roster growth, but dedicated players can still progress by repeatedly farming stages for materials rather than hitting a hard paywall.

Final Verdict – Good
Wakfu Raiders is a competent, visually appealing mobile RPG that adapts the WAKFU setting into a stage-based, hero-collecting format. It offers a solid amount of content, a fun roster to chase, and a simple elemental pattern system that keeps battles from being completely passive. At the same time, the heavy automation and the repeated stage farming can wear thin, so it is best suited for casual players and WAKFU fans who primarily want the universe and art style in a quick mobile loop.

Wakfu Raiders Links

Wakfu Raiders Official Site
Wakfu Raiders Google Play
Wakfu Raiders iOS
Wakfu Raiders Wikia

Wakfu Raiders System Requirements

Minimum Requirements:

Android 3.0 and up / iOS 7.0 or later.

Wakfu Raiders Music & Soundtrack

Coming Soon…

Wakfu Raiders Additional Information

Developer: gumi Inc.
Publisher: gumi Inc.
Platforms: Android, iOS
Release Date: August 4, 2015

Shut Down: June 28, 2016

Wakfu Raiders was developed and published by gumi Inc, a Japan-based mobile game developer with a large subsidiary (gumi Asia) branched out all over Southeast Asia focused on delivering their games out globally. Gumi Inc is most known for their highly popular mobile RPG, Brave Frontier, which has over 10 million downloads on Android and iOS around the world. Wakfu Raiders is a new, free-to-play mobile game based on the PC MMORPG, WAKFU which was released in February 2012. Wakfu Raiders takes place in the WAKFU universe and attempts to bring the game onto a mobile platform, although the gameplay is greatly different. Wakfu Raiders reached over 100,000 downloads 1 week after its release with a lot of hype due to the WAKFU brand. Gumi Inc also published the popular tactical RPG, Chain Chronicle, and the puzzle shooter, Puzzle Trooper. The game was shut down on June 28, 2015, less than one year after its release.