Stella Arcana- Eternal Stars 12+

I really like this game! I’ve spent days playing it since rive downloaded it and have put a lot of time and effort into it. It’s easy to level up, gain items/materials, and I haven’t had any of the issues that people have complained about that were money related, at all. I’ve kept everything that I’ve earned, I haven’t had to pay for anything, my sprites also haven’t died permanently, absolutely no issues as described by others.

But now, today, I’ve tried to launch the game numerous times only for it to tell me “Connection Error. Check your settings.”, I have no connection errors, my wife is fine, all my other games and apps load perfectly fine, including on my Xbox and Nintendo switch. So I’m not really understanding why it’s telling me that I have a connection error. It seems more an error on the games end. I’d really like to play, since I’ve reached a pretty high level in just a couple days and have spent a lot of time on it, so I hope this problem sorts itself out or the company looks into it and fixes it for myself and everyone else that is having this issue.

So, played this for two days and decided it was not worth it. I have played many similar games and this one seems like just another copy paste. It has a few fun mechanics, but here is how it goes: tap, tap, tap...finish quests... “amazing deal, spend $5 here and get ahead...tap, tap, tap...you are now level 10, spend some more money and get ahead....tap, tap...here are some freebies, but if you want even more for another $5 you get much much more...and so and so.

This game is extremely pay to win and they make it extremely tempting to spend money. For just $0.99 or $4.99 or $9.99 you can get so much stuff... on top of that for another $10 a month you can unlock all these features that otherwise are locked. Next thing you know you spent $100...it’s like a casino or something, you will aways end up spending some amount and the ones who spent the most will aways win.... And thats just what i saw. They give a lot of freebies, but still make it so you wanna spend money. Well, all in all it seems possible to play for free if you like to solo and do dailies. It will be tempting to spend at least $10 each month unless you have a lot of self control though and the more you invest in the game the more you want to buy at least one little thing. Anyways...download at your own risk...

This is probably the best of these free ios MMOs I’ve played. It’s got cute, cartoony graphics and a storyline that doesn’t take itself too seriously. The quests are varied. Unlike some of the others, you’re not just running around fighting everything and picking things up. There are stealth quests, maps that have to be rubbed to find hidden details, cannons that shoot you around, etc.

But, at the end of the day it’s still got a huge mess of different menus to obtain and claim rewards of various types of currencies. It starts off small and lures you in. Within a few hours of play you’ll log in and go hunting through the various tagged menus to find this or that claim for a daily or quest or achievement or whatever.

It’s disappointing, because I absolutely hate these types of mechanics, but the base game is legitimately decent (something I’m not sure I’d say for the other games I’ve tried in this genre). I know why they do it, but all of the claims just leave me with a bad taste in my mouth.