izigame.me

As this game is a Live Service game, I will be continuing to update the review as it continues to change.
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Season 1 - Solid Kart racer, good mechanics. Time gating elements with no way to speed it up. Season tour mode is neat, but the slow drip of single player content hurts. Multiplayer rewards aren't great, but it's something. Offline and private lobby multiplayer doesn't have level up mechanics, but all racers are unlocked (goof for parties!)
Season 2 - Introduced a new track, several new racers and easy to unlock them all during the season. No easy way to unlock last season's racers yet. Multiplayer rewards were changed to be better for all!
Season 3 - Multiplayer rewards were reverted. Makes every one sad. Still no easy way to unlock Season 1 racers, let alone Season 2's. Some maps on release were crashing games, but this (mostly) has been addressed again. Microtransactions have been introduced at a high rate. Pay-2-Win starts to show itself for early lead, but levels out for F2P players after a few weeks. Biggest issue is Pay-2-Win for stars and crew.
Season 4 - First season the game goes Free-to-Play. New Aladdin racers are pretty fun, updated music tracks for some of the older levels and a whole upgrade system overhaul to help smaller collections not become obsolete so quickly and a full rework of the "Collection Level" reward system. That said, there are several bad things with this update. HEAVY monetization including pop-ups for content already purchased in the shop. Current season crew pack deal went up over 100% in pricing even compared to the other collection crew packs. The first mid-season racer event has made it so the vast majority of players will not unlock the new racer (Gaston). This was not the case the last three seasons where at least participation provided the unlock. Legacy boxes have been introduced with it being the only way to obtain the highest level upgrade materials and at an abysmal rate too. Finally, for those not in the US, the premium currency is not changed for your local region. So if you're in say, Brazil, expect to pay about 5x more than other regions.
Current thoughts: Until GameLoft decides they are going to make the game more new player or free-to-play friendly, I HEAVILY recommend staying away from this game until then. If you do play, understand that the game is heavily time gated and is going to treat you unfairly unless you open your wallet. This game can be played F2P, but you won't have much daily game time in it as most of the content is geared towards online multiplayer. F2P players will feel the level differences pretty heavily around Online Ranking (MPR) of level 18. Regulated Rewards (even playing field) only provides rewards for about 3 hours of total playtime for an entire week.
What I would like to see moving forward is for them to understand how to keep their player base rather than try to milk it as much as possible. We've all seen this with a F2P game we liked only to see it die and there are very easy ways to entice purchases without the gross disrespect for the player's time.
Bump Regulated rewards back to 10 shards - There is NO reason not to do this. The game currently has 37 racers on the roster and is growing every season. Even after a full year, doing this wouldn't even give a new player a 2 Star racer. You would still be encouraging purchases and weekly play without making players feel like they HAVE to spend just to play the game.
Focus on cosmetics - The in game karts and outfits are way too overpriced for how little effort they are. The ones in game are just reskins. Having "Premium Karts" be something like Venelope's kart fromt he movie would be something people would pay for. Nobody wants to spend $20.00 USD on a reskin. Do better if you want this to be an actual way to monetize the game. This goes the same for the Racer skins. People want to look like the characters from the movies too, so why not give them actual skins from their past and leave the driver themed skins for the free-to-play crowd?
Upgrade Mats - Remove these from Premium Currency boxes and move them to an upgrade material box that can be purchased with the free season coins. While I wouldn't advise players to generally spend here, it gives an option if they want and removes the feeling of having to spend to play the game. As a reminder, you still can buy season coins with the premium currency.
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I'll be back in Season 5 to see if they make any good changes, but I will not be spending any more actual money any time soon.