StaggerLee

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A hack-n-slash Adventure that falls into the trap of pay-to-win - Should you play Undecember?

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It may be October, but these days, I can’t stop thinking about December. Or rather Undecember. (I know it’s corny, but I couldn’t resist.) This game has reached the top fifty most played games on Steam just two days after its release, not to mention hitting over a hundred thousand downloads on Google Play. But is it any good?

THE STORY

In Undecember, you take on the role of a Rune Hunter, a hero destined to stop the thirteenth god of this world – one predetermined to be evil – from being born. Your ultimate goal is to become the best Rune Hunter possible and find the powers and gifts shared with Rune Hunters by the twelve other gods to give humanity a fighting chance against unlucky number thirteen.

PLATFORMS

For this playthrough, I used my iPhone 13, which ran Undecember smoothly, despite the long download time and almost 7GB worth of data taken up on my phone. The game is also available on Android and PC.

TIME PLAYED

I played for about four hours. In this time, I made it through the opening tutorial, unlocked my skill tree, and earned 100% completion rate in several of the game’s early areas, including the Yellow Wastelands, Empty Hills, and Sunrise Hill.

WHAT’S AWESOME

• The visuals. Hands down, the first thing I noticed about this game is the impressive graphics, including the cinematics, environments, and characters. The game put me into epic set pieces right from the start, such as fighting off attackers on the back of a huge Sand Walker, a sort of massive dinosaur creature carrying a ship on its back across the desert. Undecember looks incredible, and when you add in the strong voice acting, it just feels like a high-quality product.

• The combat. From the first moment of the game, Undedecember is fast, fluid, and filled with hack-n-slash badassery. The skill animations are pretty cool, and there's really no cooldown on fight skills, so you can just blast your way through opponents so long as you have the mana. Even better, the game employs a classless system, which means you can reset your skill tree and change your playstyle as you see fit.

• The mobile controls. The developers really made sure that Undecember feels right on mobile. The game features two entirely different interfaces between PC and mobile, so the controls feel like they were meant for my IOS device, but if you opt for the PC version, that should still feel natural as well.

WHAT SUCKS

• Microtransactions. I didn’t buy anything yet in my time with the game. With that said, there is a currency shop where you can exchange real cash for virtual diamonds, which can be used to purchase almost anything in the game. In other words, Undecember is pretty much the definition of pay-to-win. What's worse is how the game implements many little tricks that are meant to bug players until they’re tempted to make a purchase just to stop being annoyed. For example, I was annoyed to discover that the only way to expand your bag space was to pay real money. In a game where loot piles up at a nonstop rate, that frustration alone may be enough to turn some people away.

SHOULD YOU PLAY IT?

If you’re a big fan of hack-n-slash, you should absolutely download and try out the early hours of Undecember. The impressive opening gives you a sense of the high production values that went into the game. From there, you can decide whether it’s worth sticking with the game or not. If you're a patient person that doesn't mind grinding for items, you can probably stay on the free path of Undecember, but it's only a matter of time until you’ll notice how annoying that path is.

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Comments

【覇】Kuma

how expand a bag is pay to WIN?? daam u are retarded AF

10/17/2022

Ken

He isn't restarted you are just to high on copium.

10/18/2022

View 1 reply

Ken

So in short it's just another p2w garbage for whales or guys that are too high on copium.

10/18/2022

Panda

this isn't an accurate representation of the game at all and is a good example why reading and believing reviews without playing games firsthand--and worse, being the type of person who writes such reviews after limited playtime--is so detrimental. he played long enough basically to get to act 4-5. if you ever played PoE, you know completely acts is basically just a long tutorial for end game.

10/19/2022

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Guardian Koala

i don't really care if it's f2p, P2w, or any acronym as long as the story is good and i can progress without spending, i'm good, thinking about trivial things like that only lessens the fun point of just playing the game. i would just like to play just like the first time i played my first game, not thinking if it's good or not as long as I'm just enjoying it and i'm enjoying this game that's all.😊😊

10/19/2022

Panda

you can definitely progress/clear all content without spending. I wanted to clear acts and experience end game before making my opinion. having done so, I'm still having fun without having spent.

10/19/2022

View 1 reply

Ginisis

So it is pay to play? There is no other way around the things? That's a shame though

10/16/2022

Panda

it isn't pay to play. it isn't pay to win. people who spend money pay for convenience. yes, this means the can progress faster than f2p players but this is pve content we're talking about. what's more, dungeons and raids are co op and consistent mostly of PUGs so you're playing with them towards a common goal.

10/19/2022

View 2 replies

Panda

have to take the review with a grain of salt. dude only played for 4 hours. this is basically the amount of time it takes to clear the first 5 acts. also, his understanding of P2W and microtransactions is completely off. as someone who has near the top on the ranking boards during launch, I can tell you the top ranked players were all f2p and cleared act 10 with a f2p friendly build (toxic flame) which only utilized 3-4 skill runes and a handful of link runes--all normal tier. Also, saying "almost anything" can be bought in microtransactions only shows how grossly uninformed this post is. You have to farm end game content (trials and chaos dungeons) and use alchemy to obtain most higher tier rune/link skills (none of which can be listed on auction house or otherwise bought), essences for enhancing, relics, charms, etc. also, the leaderboards in this game do not award anything special and can be earned as f2p (amount of exp earned, how quickly you clear acts (which anyone can make an alt character and re-clear the acts to improve their time). read this and go play the game for 1-2 hours. you will see how fun the game is and how bad this review is.

10/19/2022

DaneQueed

you can actually get through all of the content available, but if you want to pvp thats where the pay to win comes in

10/18/2022

Keng Bae

Uhhhh, Ive been playing it so far and I'd say it's NOT pay2win, more like pay 2 get ahead? And since when does more bag space mean pay2win? Who is this guy? lmao.

10/18/2022

Ken759 7789

get good in real life so you have extra money if you want to be competitive. every mmo or gacha is pay to win scrub

10/18/2022

Son of Rome

Game totally sucks! I highly doubt it got any better! Devs with another trash ass gsme!

10/20/2023

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