Gamblers Table

Played the game back in january when it first launched. I dropped it after about an hour or two once I realized the gameplay loop was... well, about as deep as a puddle. I had reached the last available currency at the time, and basically all of the relevant skill tree upgrades in just those hours. Oh well, plenty of incremental fish in the incremental sea. But then I saw the 2.0 announcement just this morning. More content? A reworked skill tree? Surely this was my cue to give it another shot. So I wiped my save and started fresh, hoping the loop had become a little more engaging. Spoiler: not really. I ended up 100%'ing the game in roughly 3.5 hours, and that includes about 30 minutes of accidentally leaving it running. I ended up actively engaging with the game for the 3 hours I spent on it, which is a positive compared to the incremental games that are almost fully idle with you coming back to them every 20 or so minutes to click a few buttons. The problem is that there's just... not much game here. At the full price of €7, being able to complete everything in around three hours feels absurdly short. I even unlocked the final handful of achievements simply because my last run on the [spoiler]altar table[/spoiler] happened to satisfy all the "earn X money without buying Y" requirements after I had prestiged. They practically unlocked themselves. As for the new content: the mining section was the only addition I found myself interacting with. Everything else either wasn't necessary for progression or felt like it actively slowed me down by interacting with them, as I could better spend those skill points on other things in the skill tree. I appreciate having more buttons to click. It's just a shame the game rewards you for [i]not[/i] clicking most of them. The update also advertises "200+ talents," which sounds impressive until you realize that most talents simply have three ranks. In reality, there are only around 85 unique talents, and roughly 40 of those are just straightforward currency upgrades for the different coins. [b]That leaves only about 45 talents that meaningfully change the way you play.[/b] It's technically correct, but it makes the skill tree sound much larger (and more varied) than it actually feels in practice. The 2.0 update definitely adds [i]more,[/i] but unfortunately it doesn't add the [b]depth[/b] it so desperately needed, hence my negative review. Don't get me wrong, the game is definitely enjoyable and I truly enjoyed it for the three hours it lasted, but it just is not worth those 7 euros. [b]Better wait until the game is on sale.[/b]