Game Impressions I was excited to see one of my favorite games on iOS brought back with a modern update. Unfortunately, it's maybe too modern. Even with the unlimited energy unlock, the game is obsessed with bleeding the customer for Facebook posts and/or money. First, the good: there's an insane amount of content in this game (scroll up on the map), and it's looking great. In some ways it feels more challenging than ever, which in my opinion is a good thing, as a veteran of the previous two games. So I figured that with unlimited energy, a few gem-based items aside, you could get a full premium experience. How wrong I was. Because when you scroll up on the map, you also see these large gates between each "world" on the map (the first one being past Zone 13). What are they? Literal paywalls. To advance past Zone 13, you have to either beg friends on Facebook for 3 keys, or throw down 120 gems or 10000 gold (yes, that's the right number of zeroes). And I don't even know what the later gates require. It might be even worse. That's just massively disrespectful of the consumer, and disingenous because it makes the unlimited energy somewhat of a red herring. Incidentally, people playing for free: it's going to take quite some time to grind up that gold with limited energy. Oh man. Vote with your wallet, don't throw money on this. It's just unfortunate what they've done here.
This thread inspired me to download Fairway Solitaire and now I can't decide which I am addicted to more...
I found this game to be absurdly repetitive. I've upgraded nothing besides what the tutorial forces you to, and I have yet to lose. You do the same thing over and over with, as far as I can tell, zero variety outside of the image of the enemy. It's exciting to get the occasional straight or full house, but that's really it. I got sick of the redundancy and lack of challenge almost as much as the insessant popups to nag my friends. Oh and the dual currency system is BS, and they want people to pay 5 bucks to dive right into that. Hell no. Deleted.
10k gold isn't really that hard to round up. I'm not going to say these gates add anything fun to the experince, but I can't say they ruin it, either. At least they put in the gold option, unlike some other games I won't mention.
I loved the sword and poker games, I am fighting with myself over paying for unlimited energy, but I don't think I'm going to do it as it is now. I wouldn't mind paying for energy, and maybe a coin doubler, but the second IAP gem structure just bugs me. I bought the golden ham in dungelot 2, and I'm not a fan of the runes in that game, but at least you can find them on each run, so long as you get to your remains. This just seems like give us some money, now give us some more... I downloaded Mad Bullets, enjoyed that so I purchased the doubler and the ad removal, so I'm not totally against making in app purchases, but there's a difference between what seems fair and feels like fun, and what seems overly aggressive and leaves you feeling a bit cheated. Maybe a full game unlock that costs 10 bucks which either changes the gems to a coin currency or awards gems after clearing sections. But, that won't happen if people support it as it is, I'm hoping for a tweak to make it something more like what the originals were.
Really? It seems like clearing a section on the first area nets you 100-300 coins average. That seems like a long grind to $10k at which you'd probably have spent most of your money on items before realizing the gate needs money. Also there's a timer so you can't just grind to get those. You have to wait.
If you haven't gotten all of the chests in all of the zones, then going back for those can really add up. I have the unlimited energy unlock, so there's no timer for me. I don't have to wait. If you don't feel like sinking any money into the game at all, then I suppose you have to suffer with what you get for free. *shrug*
I own both Sword and Pokers and contemplating getting this version?? So is this a remake of S & P 1??? Or 2??? And the fremium model is a big turnoff. I would've spent up to $10 for the entire game, compared to spending money on gems. The Freemium model doesn't work for RPGS, hence why Namco pulle Tales of Phantasia recently.
Kinda sorta a remake. I think this one is going to have a love hate relationship with people. It's a quick download so you might as well try it. Facebook is not required, so you can see. I am still on the fence but leaning towards the delete it side. I was supposed to get a present each day for 5 days, but that seems to have gone away. Mostly it is a grindfest. Albeit a nice looking grindfest.
See, I agree that 10k gold isn't super hard, especially with unlimited energy, but it's a slap in the face when I'd expected an actual premium game after basically paying for one. You know there's no way these gates would have made sense in S&P 1 or 2, or any premium game for that matter. It'd be called bad design. It's especially discouraging because I don't know what's going to happen with the next gate. Is it going to be 20k gold? 100k gold? I wish there was some kind of assurance that things aren't going to get even more out of hand (but if I'd known about the gates in the first place, I doubt I'd have thrown down my $5).
Oh, I'm with you. I'm not very happy about the gates, either. Halting the player's progression just for the sake of getting them to pay to get back to progressing is lame. That's why I was happy with the unlimited energy option. The gates being automatically unlocked should have been included with that, imo. Especially if the price for unlimited energy really is going up to $9.99 next month. I don't think they are a game breaker, though. Not for me, at least. If the price to unlock them does keep getting steeper, then I might change my tune. Time will tell.
Lol iPad 4 and up? Who targets like that right now? And for a 2D game lol. Lazy programmers or rushed development, I dunno, but that's just sad. I spend a lot of time optimizing my code and I'm still poor lol. Obviously what I need here is a complete lack of ethics.
Yeah, I noticed that, too. After I had already downloaded it on my iPad 2, lol. Runs just fine, though. No crashes or anything.
I have been spending money earned in game to buy health. I have 36 which is the current cap for where I am in the game, it makes clearing areas much easier. I also have a dummy Facebook account which I use to register games to, this allows me to get the gems for linking Facebook to this game without posting to my real account, I now have 90 gems after playing only 2 days and clearing about 5 areas.
What's the point of playing this game if you can't buy all the weapons or at least most or even some of it? This is with the assumptions that the amount of gems gained for the WHOLE game is enough for only 2-3 gem items? Also what's the point if you can't use all the skills/magic in the game which is a huge part of what made this game good in the first place? Not only that, you can only use 1 instead of 3?
OK a couple thoughts here. Does anyone know about Konami? Do they listen to gamers and tweak anything in future updates? My problem is that the more I play this, the more fun Im having. As it is, by the time I get to the first gate, I will have enough cash to open it, since Im such a bad poker player and have to play more rounds than the normal person just to pass. Im seriously considering purchasing the unlimited energy with the hopes that the Devs might tweak the other monetization by the time I reach those levels. But if I do, I feel like such a loser sellout and not being in unity with those who know. I don't drink much Starbucks coffee and I don't smoke, but if I make the occasional IAP (I rarely buy consumables) I figure that its going to last me longer than a coffee or pack of smokes. Weird analogy, but that's how I justify it..
Only some of the weapons are gem purchases, so you actually can buy most of the weapons in the game with the gold you earn. Besides, those gem bought weapons are just "get ahead early" items, so they wouldn't even exist if this were a non-iap premium game. Basically, you just ignore those weapons if you don't want to pay to get ahead of the progression curve. The magic slots aren't TOO terribly bad, as you put any of them you have unlocked into the free slot and the second slot only costs gold. Essentially you have to budget yourself and decide whether you would rather use that extra magic spell or save for other things. My only beef is that the third slot is gems only and it contains spells unique to that slot, so without spending gems, you'll never get to use any of the spells in that set. That's rather lame. I would rather see the third slot cost gold and all of the spells in the game be available for any slot. I wouldn't mind an iap that unlocks each magic slot for free use, either.
I don't think that the identification of the gem-only unlockable weapons as "get-ahead-early" weapons, an argument that Eli also used in the podcast, is not correct as comparable weapons exist at the beginning of the original Sword and Poker games. They are not "optional" as they quickly become necessary to progress. The difference is that they are available through the in-game currency. In Adventures, they are not. If the gem only unlockables content was also available through the normal currency then it would truly be a situation of getting ahead early. As it is now, it seems more like the Dev is saying "I want to charge as much as possible for every component of the game." Free to Play can be done well. This is just not a good example.
First off, you can't compare stats of items between one game and another. The progression in this version is surely not on the same curve as the progression in the others, so that part of your argument doesn't work. When talking about the balance of progression and stats, you can only judge each game on its own. Secondly, the gem bought weapons do not "quickly become necessary to progress." Not by any means. The first gem based weapon available is the boiling war axe. In zone 6, I got a comparable weapon as a drop. Check out the differences in stats below. Sure, it deals like double the damage on straights, straight flushes, and royal flushes, but look at the rest of the stats. Other than the one single damage more it deals on pairs, it actually deals LESS damage on everything else. What's more is that the gem bought axe doesn't even have weapon effects, where the auric duelist has poison. I don't know about you, but I don't get many straight flushes and royal flushes, so the only major benefit to having the axe is when you get straights. When you really think about it, the auric duelist actually turns out to be a better weapon overall based on which hands you're more likely to make. And it was a FREE drop from zone 6. The auric duelist carried me through to the first gate just fine, too. I never needed to buy any gem purchased weapons. Once I finished zone 13, more gold purchased weapons opened up to buy, which are even better than the axe or the duelist. I tried to attach a picture of them, but the site is only letting me do one at a time. The point is that the gem bought weapon is eventually replaced with gold bought weapons, which means it really is just a "get ahead early" weapon. So no, the gem bought weapons are not necessary by any means.
