Recent reviews by Withak

cozy

goated arcade-horror game, definitely worth the $2

The most funny game to play with friends 10/10

Very fun little top down shooter with a good amount of replay-ability. A must buy if you like challenging, arcade-y shooters.

I see a lot of reviews that are bashing this game for the wrong reasons so:
The major exaggerations or incorrect things I see on reviews of this game are that it takes an absurd and unjust amount of time to unlock a new character, that you don't get battlepass xp from just playing games, and overall people seeming to forget that a free to play game doesn't need to be extremely easy and quick to unlock the primary source of income without paying for it. I'm sure that a large portion of the people complaining about the f2p experience would have happily bought the game for $40(The price to unlock all the characters) and been able to play all the characters without complaint. I do think people have got used to games being funded by skins and that makes a more mechanical focused game like this be criticized for not giving away the 5 locked champs out of 17 total. I have seen a ton of reviews claiming it takes weeks or even a month to unlock a new champ but that is a flat out lie and I have no idea where those people are getting these estimates.


This game is absolutely not perfect, the main problems include the game not being well optimized in general and people reporting crashing mid game and because there is no rejoin feature players get leaver penalties (players can reconnect to games that are still in progress) *players only get immediate leaver penalties if you dc or crash while the players are loading into the game bc this causes the game to end* when its completely the games fault. Now if your one of the players who doesn't have crashing issues the game is a lot of fun. Personally, I find it more fun than overwatch ever was, even when the game was new. Now because this game is free to play and for whatever reason most of the cosmetics in this game are pretty boring, the main way they make money is with the 5 locked characters. This in itself is not a bad practice as long as the locked characters aren't any better than the 12 free ones, but sadly some of them are at least somewhat better than their free counterparts and one of them (Zaku II melee) is absolutely broken. I won't go into detail about the overloaded abilities they gave that character but simply comparing Zaku and their abilities to any other character in the game will reveal how much better that character is than most of the other characters.

Now this is obviously a major issue as the current state the game is somewhat pay to win, but there are ways to unlock the characters for free. While the credits are locked behind a time gate, people are vastly exaggerating the amount of time required to get a character. At the time of writing I have 17.8 hrs and I have 1700 credits so I only need 280 more to buy a character, but because of the system I will either have to get to basically the end of the free battlepass, or wait 3 days before I can earn credits with challenges. While I don't think threre's an actual problem with this structure(Because as I said previously this is this games primary source of income), I do think its jarring for most people as this is not normally how things are structured in most games and is more blatantly restricting your ability to unlock characters than most games would. That being said unlocking one character is most likely achievable in 10 hours over the course of 4 days or possibly quicker if you grind xp from matches, but I don't think the this method is viable for anyone who's not spending a ridiculous amount of time on the game (~10-12+ hrs a day). I get people being frustrated with not being able to play all the champs but it does most certainly not take a month or even weeks of playing to unlock a character and people seem to forget its a free to play game that has plenty of viable characters without buying them.

Now all of this does not solve at all the issue of Zaki II melee being broken, and sadly because its behind a paywall it makes it feel that much worse. In the current state the game feels disappointing when the both teams skill is relatively equal but one team has Zaki II and because of that the devs need to patch that character immediately.

In summary, there are most definitely issues with this game, as all games have, but realistically they are not major design flaws that condemn the game to being forever unbalanced or unplayable, and I for one have been thoroughly enjoying my time playing the free characters and passively farming currency and hope that the devs will push a balancing update soon. If you truly enjoy the game but the currency system is the only thing stopping you from playing, I would question why you wouldn't be willing to spend money on it as the game needs to be supported and it can't fully cater towards people who don't support the game.

Triple A devs and publishers these days are extremely greedy and generally make subpar, half baked games riddled with micro transactions on top of a massive entry cost, but this is an example of a game thats done mostly good and only has a handful of legitimate problems which is why its frustrating to see people so heavily reject and complain about a game like this while there are other games that are so, so much worse.

For reference I do not play rotmg on steam so the hours don't reflect my actual playtime. I probably have a 500+ hrs over the years its been out.

This game has been and still is extremely good and almost infinitely replayable gameplay-wise. That being said no matter what company owned this game the monetization has always been absolute garbage. It feels as though the developers have no idea what the game economy and weight is, and the battle pass is the cherry on top: It has some free rewards to start (most of which are pretty bad) and if you play a decent amount over a week or 2 or so you'll probably be about a third of the way through the tier system (~35/79) which seems good enough that you might buy it thinking it will only take another 2-4 weeks of modest play to complete. Sadly, this is not the case. Instead of having a xp system in which the xp between tiers is the same or slightly increased, the xp difference goes from 50 from the very start to over 100k xp (At 100k total gained xp you would be at tier 48/79 ~60% and doubling that would only get you another 12 tiers). I can only assume that the only reason DECA would do this is to trick people into thinking they could complete the battlepass so that players would buy it only to realize that to actually get to the last reward or anywhere near it you would need to farm for 6+ hours a day, everyday for 60 days starting from the battlepass release. The reason DECA would want to do this is to pressure you into buying the battle pass tier unlockers which automatically unlock 1($5USD) or 4(20$USD) tiers. The best rewards from the battlepass (Char Slot + Vault Chest) are over 200k total xp at tier 60 and 69/79 and would be potentially achievable if you played for multiple hours each day everyday for 60 days. Thankfully the last tier rewards are not worth getting but it seems very odd to purposefully make the battlepass end tiers practically unobtainable and make the rewards ♥♥♥♥ to compromise instead of just doing what other games do and make something that's hard but realistically doable and have the end tier loot be better. Because the battlepass costs $10USD it would be the same price as buying a character slot and vault chest which is what anyone who doesn't want to spend a ludicrous amount of time grinding the battlepass should do. Although this is just one aspect of the monetization in the game, the multiple questionable and bad decisions DECA has made in just the battlepass alone speaks for their incompetence and inability to listen to their playerbase or make informed decisions. If you are a player that is thinking about spending money on this game I would advise you to only buy character slots or vault chests and stay away from the battlepass and the other parts of the monetization or to not spend any money and collect the daily rewards. The reason that these bad decisions feel even worse is because the actual game is amazing and has so much potential, which is why I highly recommend you play it

TLDR;
The monetization in the game is bad but not because its pay to win or anything close but because most of it is borderline a scam. This being said the game is still extremely fun and completely playable if you don't pay a cent, but be careful if you do want to spend money.

Why are people ok with supporting devs like this who promise so much and deliver none of it. This game is nowhere near revolutionary or unique and story is ok at best. The reason games like this are getting worse and worse while promising more is because people let them get away with it.

This game is an arena shooter where you try to defend the tiles you stand on while dodging enemies and shooting down towers. While there isnt any alternate abilities or maps this game has a solid gameplay loop and fun mechanics which is much more than other games can boast these days. Would recommend if you like fast past, on your toes type arena shooters, although seems in need of more content which is on the developers to deliver.

This game presents itself as a open-ended choose your own route to victory game, but in reality is just a railroaded experience made arbitrarily hard to force you down a narrow path or viable options. The concept and idea are really cool but the execution failed to deliver.

This game is pretty unpolished and buggy, and twofold in multiplayer. If you enjoy the atmosphere and graphics then you might enjoy it (although the lighting frequently breaks and looks atrocious), otherwise the mechanics are buggy and repetitive and the game teaches you very little. All this being said you definitely can have fun in it, but this game is clearly a collection of pixel art first and a game second.