Lost World - Monde perdu ‪-‬ 4+

Hi

TLDR: A fun pick up and play game that is unfortunately plagued with many frustrating elements that get worse as the game goes on.

-English translation is better than previous games (it is actually somewhat understandable) but is still pretty bad

-Like all previous games the game is free to play but has features locked behind a paywall (it is disingenuous that the App Store page doesn’t tell you what you are missing out on other than clearing ads). It is better than previous games at least (in some of their past games it is impossible to get certain monsters without paying since they don’t appear except during long expeditions with is locked for ftp players).

-The premium currency you will mostly accrue through watching ads or paying money. You will be mostly be using this to speed up expeditions as everything requires so much grinding that you would be spending extra years playing the game if you didn’t spend this currency. The game is long enough that even if you pay for the most expensive bundle that wouldn’t be nearly enough to beat the game. Also note that in order to maximize the currency you get you will have to watch 6-10 ads a day to progress less slowly. The building you get that produces this currency for less at max level only produces about half of what watching ads will give you (1/10 in the beginning of the game)

-The game is meant to be played over a long period of time and is very grindy. However they designed later levels and monsters to be as frustrating as possible (to the point where I flat out feel like deleting the game sometimes)

-There are a lot of monsters you can get but monsters you get (even the rare ones) are useless on arrival. I get that they are supposed to be replaced with other monsters as you progress the game (they can be upgraded but only get minor stat boosts) but even then they are too weak/underwhelming to use in game. Most of them count with too low stats (for you not when you are fighting them as an enemy) or are clearly designed to be as annoying to fight but impossible to use realistically as an ally. Also note that the game flat out cheats later on by giving monsters spells and skills that one shots characters when you fight them but is unavailable when you use them. You can’t even unlock those skills until way later (many stages later).

-The same thing can be said for consumable items which except for healing items most consumable items are only designed to be used for the enemy to defeat you. This is because all consumable items have such a small amount of times to use them that they will immediately run out before even being close the end of the expedition/boss fight. This doesn’t apply to enemies who can spam those items without care. Many items also require rare items to craft which means more grinding just to challenge a single dungeon.

-Most status effects like poison, capture, sleep, charm are so useless against enemies but are devastating when used against you. It is to the point of wondering why allow the player to use this if they are properly balanced towards the player.

-They literally add a stupid arbitrary mechanic a third in the game that has certain monsters be immune to physical attacks 80% of the time forcing you to craft certain magic weapons designed to deal with this. The monsters chosen are also completely arbitrary and random. You can’t even abuse this mechanic for your own benefit since you have no clue if enemy monsters can bypass this until you try the dungeon yourself and most monsters that have this die quickly to enemy magic.

-Half way through the game almost every stage has enemies that punish short range attackers by having damage reflection (30-50%) and elemental reflection that instantly kills your attackers forcing you to pigeonhole yourself into using ranged attacks.

-Items get more expensive to craft as the game goes on but the amount of money you get doesn’t increase proportionally to this meaning even more grinding

-The class system is flawed from the start due to the amount of grinding needed. Most skills in a class can level up to 10 each requiring a different amount of skill points. The problem is that it takes significantly more time to level up from 1-20 than it takes to level 20-40 and so on. Some skills require to be level 70 to max and you would have to spend literal years in game (or premium currency equivalent) to get there. This makes most classes realistically have a soft cap of level 20 as going above that is not worth it. The main character is even worse about this as they take double the time to level up a class than any other monster making them feel incredibly weak as you progress the game.

-Enemy monsters flat out have way higher stats than your own monsters, abilities that your monsters could never have, do more damage than your ally equivalents and come in greater numbers to the point you could say is cheating.

-In order to get new blueprints for rare equipment you need to have expeditions that are 9-12 hours long in order to 3star a level. Although the game says that it is entirely optional to do and not necessary to beat the game this is a fat lie without unreasonable amounts of grinding/time spent. This is because the equipment you can get from this has attribute resistance/nullification that is required to not get instantly killed in later levels (Most enemies later on just flat out have spells that you can’t get until much later that will one shot you unless you have elemental protection)The equipment you unlock normally are very vanilla/basic and won’t nearly be enough for the later stages. The problem that comes is that the game really likes to put inexplicably way stronger monsters or harder traps near the end of the 12 hour run just to ruin of your progress that you wouldn’t have any way of knowing until you lose. You can have teams that take no damage for 90% of the run only to get instantly killed in one battle. It’s very frustrating.

I’m only an hour into the game but so far it’s good