Late last month, we posted news of Konami buying the Sword & Poker IP and soft launching a totally new, re-worked free to play version of the game. If you read the story, Jared details an extensive meeting we had with the developers at WWDC about how they were still actively tweaking the payment model of the game and were highly receptive to our feedback on it. This, of course, didn’t stop commenters from as predictably as the sun rising going completely off the handle.

And, just as we mentioned back then, Konami did actually go ahead and add a $4.99 IAP unlock that strips the Candy Crush-style energy system from the game… Further proving that passing any sort of solid judgement on a game when it’s still in its soft launch phase and actively being tweaked is pretty silly. It’s also worth mentioning that the energy system if you don’t pick up this unlock really isn’t that bad, as you’ll seriously need to be having a Sword & Poker Adventures (Free) marathon (or just be really bad at the game) to need it.

The blue gem control currency still exists in game, regardless of whether or not you spring for the unlimited energy unlock… But, I played quite a bit of the soft launched version and really didn’t hit any sort of progress wall where I needed to spend more gems than the game had already given me for free.

Anyway, Sword & Poker Adventures plays just like Sword & Poker ($2.99) and Sword & Poker 2 ($3.99). It’s basically those classics updated with things like retina graphics, 3D cards, a more cohesive tutorial, and for better or worse- The ability to link your Facebook account.

For more information on the Sword & Poker games, check out our review of the original. The mechanics in the new one are mostly the same, but, we’ll review it all the same as soon as we spend more time with the official worldwide release version.