Recent reviews by Traffic Cone

cheeki

funky uncle

(Very long review, sorry. It's split based on time played. Thoughts aren't really organized beyond that.)


Starts off really fun, then turns into a miserable grind from floors 25 to 40, growing exponentially every 5 floors or so. Post game grind (41+ floors) is beyond ridiculous.

Combat is repetitive and the majority of the enemies you'll encounter (Screamers and Haters) have the same attacks and patterns.

Dying is extremely punishing, and, because of that, it discourages in-game experimentation and learning without looking up guides on YouTube. If you die, you can continue for a limited number of times if there's an event going on, or you pay 1 Death Medal (which don't show up often in game). You can also die, but it will cost currency (either KC or Death Medals) to get everything back.

Experimenting with weapons and armor is basically impossible without praying that RNG drops the blueprint and then spending a lot of time grinding items to tier 3 or 4. Death Medals will let you skip a lot of grind (if the mats and blueprints are on rotation), but will cost a lot of money.

Everything that needs to sync with the main servers (accessing the shop, storage, moving floors, almost EVERYTHING) has a delay. It's not noticeable at first, but when you have to interact with it over and over again for hours, it gets frustrating.

The fake PvP (Tokyo Death Metro) is a neat idea, but gets repetitive as well. The enemies are custom Haters set up by players that will either die in one hit, or will kill you in one hit. The arena that this plays out in is exactly the same for every raid. This is the only way to consistently farm good amounts of SPLithium, so if you run out of the free promotional stuff, you'll have to play this to upgrade gear.

Playing without the Express Pass will make the grind even longer, and, IMO, it's not worth playing without it. The bonuses it offers (free decals, free elevator, 80% discount on revive, the extra 10 slots of inventory, and no KC or SP loss on a TDM raid) are too convenient not to use. The game will occasionally give them out as part of promos or dailies, so use them if you got them, unless you like spending 200K on getting your fighter back.

As a joke, the game gives you a Rainbow Lost Bag that gives you 500K KC and 500K SP, but you can't cash it out until you upgrade your banks, which takes literal days and a lot of SPLithium.

The sad part about all this is that the aesthetics are really nice and creative, and there's a really fun gameplay loop underneath, but it's all dragged down by the live service mechanics designed to waste your time or eat your cash. It should've just been a 40-60 dollar game with future DLC or something.

I forgot to mention a few things:

The cooldown timer when crafting/buying weapons and armor... After crafting or buying, the game forces you to wait before you can craft or buy the item again. At the higher tiers, the timer can literally be hours long. This makes setting up for a boss or floor run unbelievably annoying since you can't buy everything you need in one go. ...Unless, of course, you pay 1 DM to reduce the timer to 0, which are conveniently on sale for full price (as of writing, none of the DM packs are discounted for the Steam winter sale).

Inventory space is super limited, and items don't stack, which means 5 ultra pure irons will take up 5 slots. This is especially frustrating when dealing with the storage in the waiting room. You can expand the waiting room storage by 10 slots for every 2 DM, but even at 300 slots, I still found myself running out of space.

You can send fighters on expeditions to "raid" other players with an AI version of your fighter. The rewards for KC are decent, but the rewards for SPLithium and other items are negligible for the most part. They also made getting end game shrooms from expeditions basically impossible. Managing the rewards brought back from fighters is also a pain because of the limited inventory space, and because the rewards storage is permanently capped at 50.

Final thoughts after spending an absurd amount of time trying to climb to floor 50 (final floor was 49).

Music is awesome. Some songs are officially available on streaming platforms, but not all. If you have YouTube Music, I think you can play the entire LiD playlist. My favorite is the PIANOZOMBIE one :D

First time playing F41+ was actually really exciting. By the fifth or sixth, not so much.

Post game metal farm (reversal metal, purple metals, chemo oil) is just awful. Items aren't guaranteed to spawn and, when they do, they can have lower tier items. I was only able to get purple metals from the event quests (200 screamers) or by a lucky daily drop. They're needed for a lot of tier 4 weapons and armor, which you need, at an absolute minimum, to climb floors 41+.

Finding the Gyaku-Funsha shopkeeper (even when he's on F27) was not fun.

Bowling crusher takes forever to farm. Never got it uncapped due to purple milk metal requirements in +4 and +5.

41+ dev haters are not fun to fight. They're usually a lot stronger than player ones, and if your weapon is weak against their armor, then good luck. They can also wreck you if they get a single combo in.

I can't imagine how bad the grind is without the anniversary quests.

KAMAS RE Tier 4 is really useful, but getting the blueprint is so unintuitive. You need to gamble with 50,000 KC or 10 DM (yes, that's right, TEN) to get stickers from mushroom lady to recycle in Hernia. Most gambles will drop 1 or 2 star stickers, which don't give you a lot of recycle points.

TDM diamond rank is miserable if farming for SPLithium. People will usually have decked out defenses that can be difficult to get through. Even with a win, armor and weapons will most likely degrade, which means spending even more KC to replenish gear.

I don't care if the game is free. A bad game is a bad game, regardless of price.

Most people will invade with a naked fighter, which can be a blessing in later floors.

Decorating the waiting room costs DM. Like, come on, it's just a stupid texture swap. Why does that need the premium currency?

I feel bad for Grasshopper for having to work on this game, but a gig is a gig. Not surprised Suda split after, but that NetEase acquisition doesn't fill me with hope for the future.

Good aesthetics, music, and even a fun initial gameplay loop. Awful, mind-numbing grind and micromanaging in the mid to late game. If you're really interested, play 10-20 hours and drop it (most positive reviews are on this range). Don't play outside anniversary events.

RASPBERRY

good

I hate this game

its a gud time

3.3 million dollars