The anime-inspired action RPG space is dominated by a few major names. Games like Genshin Impact and Wuthering Waves have set the standard for the genre, raising expectations around open-world scale, cinematic combat, and long-term live-service support. Any new entry arriving in that space is almost guaranteed to be compared to those giants the moment it’s revealed.
That’s the environment Mongil: Star Dive is preparing to launch into on April 15, 2026, on PC via Epic Games and mobile. It’s also something the team behind the game seems fully aware of.
What stood out during a recent conversation with me at GDC 2026 wasn’t caution or carefully rehearsed marketing language. Instead, Ken Kim, founder and CEO of Netmarble, spoke about the game with an unusual level of confidence. Rather than avoiding comparisons with the genre’s biggest names, he openly acknowledged the competition while suggesting Mongil: Star Dive could stand alongside them. “We are very confident about the product quality,” Kim told me during the interview.
founder and CEO of Netmarble Ken Kim
Confidence isn’t unusual during press events. Developers are almost always optimistic about their projects. Still, Kim returned to that idea several times throughout the conversation. For the team, the belief that Mongil: Star Dive can stand beside the genre’s biggest titles doesn’t come from trying to replicate them feature for feature. Instead, it comes from building something with a clearer focus.
“This game is… a character collection RPG action game,” he explained. “We are not pursuing against Genshin Impact or those open-world games.” In a market where large-scale open worlds have become the default expectation, Netmarble chose a more structured direction. Mongil: Star Dive leans into narrative progression and curated gameplay scenarios rather than sprawling exploration.
Kim described the experience as primarily single-player focused, with a strong emphasis on story and character relationships. “We are mainly focusing on the single-player experience,” he explained, adding that the game is designed to be “very narrative driven.”
That focus carries into the core gameplay systems as well. Mongil: Star Dive revolves around a three-character party system that allows players to switch heroes mid-battle, triggering abilities and chaining attacks together in quick succession. “It’s all about the chain action,” Kim said.
At first glance, the system is meant to feel approachable. Players can swap between characters quickly and maintain the flow of combat without memorizing complex inputs. The deeper layer emerges once players begin experimenting with team composition and ability interactions. “Easy to enter… but to master, you have to study pretty hard,” he said.
Each character builds energy in different ways and brings unique combat roles to a party. The launch version is expected to include more than 18 playable characters, encouraging players to experiment with combinations and strategies. That design philosophy is part of why Kim says the team feels so confident about the project’s direction. Instead of chasing scale, the developers focused on refining the moment-to-moment gameplay. That thinking also led the team in an unusual direction during development. Over the past year, Netmarble spent time simplifying systems rather than expanding them.
“For one year, we spent time focusing on removing unnecessary features rather than adding ones,” Kim explained. In a genre where live-service games often accumulate mechanics, currencies, and progression layers over time, that approach stands out. Netmarble instead aimed to streamline the experience so players could jump in without feeling overwhelmed.
Kim described the project as something closer to a return to fundamentals. “This is kind of back to the basic kind of project,” he said. The goal is a game players can pick up and enjoy without feeling like they need to dedicate hours every day to keep up with progression systems.
That philosophy also extends to monetization, an area where the team claims to be taking a more restrained approach than many of its competitors. “We want to make a game that, without purchasing, you will be able to clear through all the available chapters,” Kim said.
Players who want additional characters or faster progression can still engage with the game’s gacha systems. However, Kim suggested the rates were designed to feel more forgiving. “The gacha percentage itself will be much more lenient compared to competitors,” he added.
Of course, monetization promises are difficult to evaluate until a game is fully in players’ hands. The genre has seen its share of launches where early messaging around accessibility and fairness eventually shifted once live-service updates began rolling out.
Still, Kim believes the foundation the team has built gives Mongil: Star Dive a legitimate chance to compete in a crowded space. “I think our game has the most polished, balanced combat mechanic and narrative design amongst all these giants,” he said.
It’s a bold statement in a genre where comparisons to Genshin Impact and Wuthering Waves happen almost automatically. But the confidence coming from Netmarble doesn’t necessarily sound like an attempt to dethrone those games outright. Instead, the team believes Mongil: Star Dive can carve out its own space alongside them.
Whether that confidence proves justified will ultimately depend on how players respond once the game launches. The anime action RPG market has seen plenty of ambitious newcomers over the years, and not all of them manage to find lasting audiences.
Still, hearing a development team speak so directly about its goals and its belief in the final product is hard to ignore. If nothing else, Mongil: Star Dive is entering the conversation with a clear identity and a studio fully convinced it belongs in the same arena as the genre’s biggest names. Whether players agree will become clear soon enough.
Mongil: Star Dive will launch worldwide on April 15, 2026, for PC via Epic Games and mobile.