Played the game to completion. I was NOT amused with the end statement and secret.

Pay to Enjoy yourself.

The END

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I didn't like it. I played it on hard mode. (Least money spent) You're not supposed to enjoy it.

Therefore:

It did its job. And that is what my recommendation is based on.

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The only reason I recommend this is that there are some idiots who don't understand the concepts provided by the game.

So, go on, play this textbook and repeat your heart out.

Needs a sequal with battlepasses, and other new stupid microtransactions. maybe a class selection screen but the other classes cost money and are way better until midgame a "patch" comes and makes them ♥♥♥♥. Could be fun.

but for real a very tedioes game that shows pretty well how p2w suck.

Remember a few years ago, back when World of Warcraft was at its player-base peak of about 12 million players? Back then there would be new MMORPGs that came out fairly regularly, nearly a new one every month. Each of them claimed to be the "WoW Killer", that they were going to force players off of WoW servers by enticing them to play something else. None of those games ever succeeded.

*This* game does. This $4.99 near joke of a game, designed purely to make a point about anti-fun... *this* is the WoW Killer. After playing this for less than two hours, I doubt I'll ever log onto WoW again. There are too many things in the world that generate true fun, so I'm not going to dump my time, energy, and MONEY into something that doesn't deserve any of those things. This is a lesson I had already learned, but this game served to remind me.

Also, for a game that was designed to make people hate it, this was surprisingly well put together. It managed to avoid all the terrible glitches that plague many of the low budget crap games on Steam. I get the feeling that if this dev wanted to make a *fun* game, then it would be pretty great.

Final verdict: I got this in a bundle, so it was totally worth the 58 cents, if for no other reason than to remind me not to play MMORPGs. If you have a friend or family member who is addicted to an MMORPG, then this might be able to break them of it... maybe.

Pay2Win: The Tricks Exposed is a bitter, cynical, and angry game. It strips away the fluff from games and reveals the hollow skeleton beneath. As P2W reveals these tactics in a clinical way, you can't help but notice parallels with some of your favorite games, whether they're "Pay 2 Win" or not. Hopefully, this will make you contemplate how you spend your money and, more importantly, your time.

There are a lot of great, laugh-out-loud moments where the game finds new ways to extract your cash and make you feel like you're getting a good deal out of it. The combat is mindless. The rewards are meaningless. The grind is endless.

An empty world, forgettable enemies, and an addictive but ultimately imagined sense of progression are all that await you in the hours you will spend completing it. As a nihilistic statement about gaming, this game is art, a dadaistic masterpiece. I wholeheartedly recommend you experience it.

However, I do not recommend you experience it via purchasing and playing through the game, because doing so is nearly impossible. Exactly why this is would be a spoiler and too nit-picky to get into, but suffice to say this game is better experienced via a well-edited Let's Play video* rather than actually enduring it yourself. Like an Andy Kaufman performance, it's more enjoyable to hear about afterwards than to actually attend.


* I recommend this video, which shows all the game's content within the span of about an hour. Muting the audio to block out the annoying guy is optional. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C4XZwfV2lT8

This should be mandatory for grades K-12 in the public education system.

Let me start off with how everything in this game is way more deliberate and deeper than you might think. Everything is a design choice, the bland textures, the boring dialogue, the awful quests, generic cookie cutter characters, and let's not forget the atrocious combat as well.

The game has various lessons that remind me a lot of a Windows 10 first time setup screen. This almost makes me feel like the game is trying to boot up the users intelligence and set it up after the dormant sleep almost everyone has been in for a decade since the freemium game menace began. Each lesson is a peak behind the curtain of the scummy tactics used by freemium games to bait and trap the average person into a permanent cycle of emptying their wallet for that next dopamine hit.

The need to constantly press the plus button to add money instead of just adding in a dollar amount felt like a bad design choice at first. However, I realized that this was meant to reinforce just how much work you were actually putting into the game rather than actually playing the game. Much in the same way that we in the real world go and work, then sink of all our money into pay 2 win or freemium games. This design choice makes you really think about what you're sinking money into first hand.


tl;dr
Freemium gamers BTFO

The absolute ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ game I've ever played... Sadly thats exactly what the creator was going for in a quest to show just how crap generic mmo's are. I loathe the fact that due to it being true to its description I cant rail it for it's ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥, though I can say that it would've been better if more thought was put into the little details that make people willingly blow their lives and wallets on f2p games.
Ranting aside It's a generic ♥♥♥♥♥♥ simulator game ripping off an already beaten dead horse, 7/10

9/11 Best P2W Simulator "Gaem"!

Waste money to be stronger than useless PvP Npcs!
Waste money to run faster!
Waste money to get more exp!
Waste money to get more fetch quests!
Waste money to save time!
Kick the only honest NPC around!

Would spend 200 Bucks for the +10 Sword again!

I was watching a youtube video about this and felt compelled to try it myself. Sometimes you need to experience a game to really understand it. I felt the desire to get the unnecessary and useless +50% extra chance to enchant your weapon scrolls even after being told they do basically nothing. I felt a sense of boredom grinding dungeons and relief when I was told I could just get the fancy legendary sword from a lootbox. This game was a slog but not every game needs to be "fun" it showed me a lot of pay2win mechanics I knew a little bit about but really went in depth in a great way. Great game, highly educational on the evils of the video gaem industry. I wasted 2k of fake in game money on gems 10/10.

Also an autoclicker is mandatory for this game.

I got sad, I got angry, I got entertained, and I got educated.

To sum it up, I got what I paid for. Like the title says, this game explores the dirty tricks that developers use to monetize free-to-play games. I haven't even finished the game as of writing this review, yet I feel compelled to review it due to the fact that its lessons are indeed valuable in detecting psychological exploits in free-to-play games. This game definitively states that everyone can be manipulated. First step to recognise when you're being manipulated is to acknowledge that everyone, including yourself, can be manipulated. If you keep believing that you're not one of those people, this game might change your perspective.

I have a headache, my clicking hand is sore, and I want to die (AKA: go to sleep for way more hours than would be considered healthy).

Pay2win: The Tricks Exposed, is not a game. It is a learning experience for anybody who wishes to discover all of the various ways game developers get you to spend your precious coin. I have to say it did its job wonderfully. It was tedious, uneventful, and I feel as if I could have spent my time better by doing anything else. So is the current environment of AAA gaming as a whole. This makes me weep for the future of gaming, and makes me happy I adopted the Indie lifestyle before I started falling for this bull.

I would recommend this to anybody who wants some insight to just how financially predatory gaming can get.