MapleStory

This game is actual dog sh!t. I think most negative reviews are because of Nexon's greed. The current event has 3 different battle passes, all of which add p2w mechanics to their "non-p2w" heroic servers. The community was outraged, hence the overwhelmingly negative reviews. In response, Nexon added a fourth battle pass. Now would this be enough to consider this game bad? Yes, but I think this game is bad for other reasons as well. The biggest negative would be how progression works, I'll list off many points: - RNG upgrade system - Forced to create countless alts to upgrade your legion level (why force players to play characters they don't want?) - Insane visual clutter during bosses + "unfair" mechanics due to bad timing (no bad luck protection in their boss fight design), making the best way to clear bosses just to outgear them and burst them down quickly. - Event-based gameplay I think out of all the above, the worst is the event-based gameplay. If you're a new/returning player, there's basically no point in playing outside of a burning event. These events will fast track your character to 260+, making playing the game outside of events feel pointless. Not only that, but even the upgrade system is event-specific. Most endgame players will wait for specific events in order to gamble their in-game currency to upgrade their gear. Imagine waiting 3 months for an event then being unlucky, causing you to not have any meaningful increase in power. I returned to the game to play through the "challenger world 3" event in order to quickly upgrade my legion level; by doing so, I was able to complete about 20 different endgame bosses (up to and including ctene). This gave me insight on what endgame is like. Honestly, the gameplay is just bad. It would be one thing if the entire game was just mindless grinding mobs, but forcing you to complete 20 minute boss fights if you want to "push" progression is insane. Before some Nexon apologist comes on and says "oh you're just bad at the game that's why you don't like it", I'll make it clear I very much enjoy difficult games (see my history/play time on soulslikes, or hmu directly and I'll send you the logs of my mythic raiding in wow). The fights in this game are just badly designed, both in length and execution. If maplestory is the only game you play (i.e. you're a lifer here), you might disagree and believe it's the best part this game, in which case I sincerely hope your account gets hacked so you can finally quit this piece of sh!t. The people who unironically defend Nexon are honestly mentally ill and have stockholm syndrome. Overall not fun. Don't come back.