After scraping my way to level 17, the game is still borderline unplayable. The only people who can stand this game are very small children, and the reviews clearly back that. The only reviews that give this game a decent rating are by kids who appear to be under school age.
1. You spend a ridiculous amount of time watching ads. You have to either use a large amount of tokens per every step of actions you want to skip, and there is an endless amount of steps to one part of ONE quest, or you have to sit through ads to do the skipping. More ads than gameplay, this is no lie. Its designed to force players to spend money on in app purchases to avoid having to sit through ads to acquire tickets or gems to skip very VERY long processes
2. I have never in my life played a game that performs so poorly. It freezes CONSTANTLY. CONSTANTLY. Its absolutely ridiculous. Aside from the background disappearing and your villagers and items appearing on a black screen, the sound effects or music cutting out, or the endless malfunctioning of the use of gems or the tickets for ad watching, the game consistently gives you nothing in return for using gems or for sitting through one of the ridiculous amount of ads.
3. Back to the amount of steps required for quests and tasks. Yet another thing thats flat out ridiculous. To light a fire - you have to mine flint, gather one of the types of wood, then light it, and this is after youve BUILT the fire pit. To get pears you have to gather wood, gather vines, build a ladder, mine for tin, gather more wood, craft a knife, THEN PICK THE PEARS. Someone must have been playing a sick joke when they thought this up. Its inane. Not to mention after taking all these steps to collect things to craft items, they all break after very little use. About a day.
4. The majority of things take a very VERY long time to finish or unlock. And I dont mean 5-10 minutes, I mean 1-5 DAYS.
DAYS. Who in their right mind would ever put that in a game? Thats the worst aspect of the game by far, the ridiculous time windows. You can also only unlock three things at once, so if youre unlocking a new fire pit, an item for "fun" (and the villagers constantly want new leisure items) and new food to gather or plant, and the villagers get it in their heads that they now want something else that requires unlocking, you now have to either sit through about 20 ads to skip through and finish one or two of the things youre "unlocking", or use what is generally a ridiculous amount of gems to skip. Or just be stuck for days on end with an unplayable game and very unhappy villagers upon your return.
That kills the game.
5. All of the villagers are white. There is zero diversity to the point of it being telling of the person who designed the characters. I mean even the mock "Cleopatra" hero is Caucasian. I mean be realistic. Especially in 2017. I realize this game is made in the U.K., but seriously. There is also zero customization for villagers, besides their name. No hair color, skin tone, face, nothing. There are only a handful of basic outfits for males and females to wear, so they all end up wearing the same crap. I suppose there is probably more, if youre willing to fork over real money. Horrible. Why exactly did they try to add "realism" by forcing you to complete a million steps to acquire each item for quests and tasks, yet dont care enough about realism to give even different skin tones much less different clearly defined races?
The villagers are also all goofy looking except for the babies who are reasonably cute.
6. If you allow your villager to marry one from another village, and they have a lower star rating, you lose your villager. Or if vice versa, you involuntarily "steal" the other players character. Major disappointment and a huge flaw.
7. The text is minuscule, unless youre playing on an iPad. From a phone you cant actually see the numerical font, only the regular text during the comic style "cutscenes"
8. There is virtually no customer support. Good luck actually getting a reply if you need help. But that isnt surprising given the rest. Perhaps if youre a young player who has parents who are paying $60 a month for you to play, then you might get a reply.
Basically, the game is just being deleted from my phone. Its not even enjoyable. Its frustrating. Also frustrating to see the gaming industry turn into what it has.