98 people found this review helpful
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Not Recommended
0.0 hrs last two weeks / 2.5 hrs on record
Posted: 31 Aug @ 9:34am
Updated: 31 Aug @ 11:06am

Early Access Review
DO NOT PLAY THIS PREDATORY GAME.

These in game purchases are absolutely out of control. Look I liked the game, I'd play the game, I could see myself even paying a moderate monthly fee to play this game. Of the games of this genre, this may be the best one that I've ever played (now that Dark and Darker has absolutely ♥♥♥♥ the bed).

But then I went and took a look at the shop.

$50 for a SINGLE SKIN ?! This has to be a joke I thought to myself. Certainly i'm doing the math wrong. It must be $5 for the skin. Nope. Each of this game's in game currency works out to about $0.02 USD per "Wishstone." Of course it's not a direct translation, as you get 50 wishstones for $0.90 USD. So that works out to $0.018 USD (1.8 cents) per wishstone if you want to get technical. And of course in typical predatory mobile gaming style this game has increasing bonuses the more you spend. And of course you can't just buy the thing you want for real money, you HAVE to buy wishstones, and that means you have to buy packs that give you more than you need, which means you're always buying more than want, and have extra sitting there begging to be spent. But of course you don't have enough to buy anything else, so go buy more wishstones. Repeat repeat repeat.

The predatory in game currency bundles would be bad enough. But ALMOST forgivable, if the store offered items at a relatively reasonable price. But they don't. Like I said, there is a single skin... ONE SKIN, that is being sold in the Dawnlight Bundle. It's called a bundle becomes it also comes with an emote, but be honest, anyone buying this bundle is buying it for the goner skin. This single skin costs 2,700 wishstones. 2700x $0.018 USD = $48.6 USD. FOURTY EIGHT MOTHER ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ DOLLARS AND SIXTY CENTS. FOR A SKIN. FOR A SINGLE ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ SKIN.

Again, you can't just buy 2700 wishstones. You can buy a multipack for $48.50 that gives you 2,800 with a 'bonus' 320 for a total of 3120. So what do you do with the remaining 420 wishstones if you buy the SINGLE skin? you ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ stare at it that's it, because there's nothing you can do with 420 wishstones. Nothing significant of course. You could buy some EXP boosters, but that really doesn't do much of anything. If you had 600 you could buy 28 days of 'membership'. But of course you're 180 stones short for that. Guess you better go spend another $4.50 and get 260 wishstones. Oh now you've got 80 wishstones sitting in your bank. On and on and on and on and on and on it goes.

What's Membership you might be asking yourself?

GLAD YOU ASKED.

See this game doesn't just have one 'bonus fee' to play the game, but it has two.

The first is called prime account upgrade, and as a free to play game I think this is perfectly reasonable. You pay a one time fee of $14.99 and you get a bunch of stuff, great, I won't go into it, but it does include 500 wishstones. BUT there's also a 28 day Membership, a monthly fee, it gives you a bunch of bonuses and oh look at that, it costs 600 wishstones as I mentioned earlier. Want extra storage? 28 day membership fee! Bonus help in dungeon? 28 day membership fee! Want help winning the 'market' game? 28 day membership fee! Note, all of those months in the year that have 28 days. One, 3 out of 4 years. Why didn't they make it 30 days, or even 31 days? Why would they when 28 days means you purchase this effectively $12 'monthly' fee 13 times a year instead of 12.
(EDIT - My wife pointed out it's actually MORE than 13 times a year. 365 days / 28 = 13.04. So you'd actually be paying this 'monthly fee' 14 times if you resubbed every time it ran out)

The single skin mentioned above is the worst offender, but not the only one. There's also the naughty schoolgirl' pack for you to goon over, 6,000 wishstones (roughly $120 USD). There's the 'lightly armed bundle that strips extra clothing from 3 female skins for 1800 wishstones (roughly $36 USD, or $12 per character skin), and several others.

Look the fact of the matter is this. I don't begrudge a game offering a free to play aspect and then trying to make money on microtransactions. I really don't. But the prices this game charges are absolutely insane. They are easily 10 times what is reasonable to expect. I could see paying $1 or $2 for a cool skin, and maybe that elite goner skin is a whopping $5. But $50 per skin? $120 for a bundle of three skins? This is absolute insanity. This game has gone beyond 'microtransactions' into 'macrotransactions' as they fish for whales. A trend I've seen in other games like Mechabreak and The Last Descendant as well.

There's only one thing we the consumer can do. DO NOT PLAY THIS GAME. Games like this require a base of free to play minnows who don't spend the money so that they can get the whales in to pay the big bucks. It's time for this trend to stop. Refuse to play games with predatory pricing tactics, and skins that cost the same or more as AAA titles. If there's no minnows in the pond, the whales won't swim there either.

DO NOT PLAY THIS PREDATORY GAME.
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7 Comments
Dosrev 15 Sep @ 1:59pm 
Peak player base of 3.7k, down to below 1/10th that right now only 2 weeks after I posted my review. Gosh what a crying shame. I don't know who I feel worse for any sucker chumps who wasted money on this, or the devs who worked on it, not realizing that greedy macrotransactions, seasonal resets, and predatory bribes would kill their game.

Oh, it's neither, I don't feel bad for either of those groups.

Put a nail in this one.
The Grotesque Abomination 5 Sep @ 10:37am 
skins are 100% optional and add nothing to the gameplay whatsoever. it's not predatory if it's not required. this entire review is moot. if you're that worried about skins, they're adding some available with in-game adventure tokens in next week's update.
Dosrev 5 Sep @ 10:15am 
Josef - I didn't realize that, but how am I not surprised at all?
Greed 4 Sep @ 8:10am 
Finally
Based department is leaving reviews
Josef 3 Sep @ 5:31pm 
To make the $50 hilda skin even worse is that you don't get the fancy sword and shield shown in the store picture lol
Kazuo Odachi 1 Sep @ 4:18am 
LOLLLLLLLLLLLLL
Dosrev 31 Aug @ 11:06am 
Edited to correct spelling and grammar.