After reading the reviews, I decided to leave mine since people seem to be weird about this game lol.
This game is absolutely worth playing, even if for a single playthrough.
Absolutely beautiful and gorgeous experience. The environment design is top notch and even at low settings it sometimes takes your breath away. Lots of side stories to explore too. The fact that this experience is free is astounding.
Okay now for the MMO parts where people have the most issues. FOMO, High prices, grinding. They all have some truth to them, but its important to remember that it is all about cosmetics. There is no P2W, no paywalled content, you can experience the whole game and complete it without paying a cent, which makes it a pretty good monetization model.
High prices - yeah they are on the higher end, US based company, what can you do.
Grinding - half true. I mean it takes me to get 50% of daily currency limit in like 30 minutes. 75% of daily limit in 1hr of playtime, and like 4hrs to get 100% of the daily limit(non optimized). The thing is, I think this game is about coming in every day and slowly accumulating lots of stuff, not about grinding out all you need in one huge sitting. It is fine to get 50-75% of daily limit and move on, you don't have to squeeze out everything. I joined this season 15 days before the end(it lasts 75 days normally) and I will still be able to get a cape and a hat for playing 1 hr a day(completing dailies), sounds quite reasonable to me, I will get all f2p stuff I want from it.
FOMO - Perhaps the truest one I guess. I played too little to know. But from what I understand old seasonal items come back in shop for like 3 days, and cost more than you can get by collecting all the daily currency you can get during that time. If you don't get it, it might be months till it reappears in the random returning seasonal shop. But then again, personally, I don't care about cosmetics that much. I mean it's cool to style on people around you, but that doesn't change the core game, and if I don't enjoy it I don't care for how I look. And if I do enjoy it, I care little for cosmetics. So overall I don't think I care too much. Same for permanent buffs, old players have an advantage at having more permanent buffs(new players can get them, but they come with the old seasons rotating shop, so 2 a month at most, and then you might get duplicates since its random, while its like 50ish total iirc), but then it matters so little that I don't think I want to stress about it, you aren't competing with anyone in this game, you just chill and take it easy.
Overall the game is worth playing through once for everyone, a really great free experience.
For people who want to engage strongly with the MMO components and have a cool wardrobe, multiple outfits, and style on people, this game might be frustrating at times. If you relax and realize its not worth caring about cosmetics that largely don't change much about the game you are playing its still a great social MMO experience, still worth it imo.
EDIT: just read about the latest travelling spirit(the returning old season items shop). And it is a lot a lot to get it all. You have to actively not be a collectionist and then you will enjoy the game, don't hyperoptimize it and don't turn it into a chore of grinding out everything you can, make some friends and do silly stuff with them. Then it will be enjoyable.
