W game,

Basically, there's no reason to play this over BTD5 (which this game is based on) or BTD6 unless you REALLY like the city building element, you want to try a Bloons game, or you really want a game to be free

I'd give this game a neutral if I could. It's free but the fact that, since 2016, there's only been one update to the game besides "bug fixes and improvements". (to put into perspective how long 2016 ago was, Fortnite released in 2017.) The lack of updates is what made me lean towards "no".

Positives
+ It's free
+ The city building element, if you look past the artificial timers, is fun.
+ It's Bloons
+ Has BY FAR the best soundtrack in the series.
+ Has a mobile version which can be connected to the Steam version

Neutral
~ The game DOES have lootboxes (AKA gambling) which can be earned regularly by just playing the game, which give XP towards monkey knowledge, which can make your towers stronger, however these packs can also be purchased with real world currency. The ONLY thing saving this from being an outright negative is the fact that these packs are ridiculously overpriced (€6 for a pack of 5, which is almost half the full price of BTD6) for what you get from them, which means that nobody should have any reason to gamble here.

- The game is filled with microtransactions and artificial timers for building and researching stuff, which means that you need to wait varying amounts of time (which can be days later on). This can be sped up by paying premium currency, which means that this has no gameplay benefit and is simply there to get you to pay.
- As mentioned earlier, this game is practically abandoned by NK
- Constant pop-ups at the end of games begging you to buy stuff with real world currency
- Forced 30 second ads at the end of each round on mobile (It's actually quicker to just restart the app than to wait for the ad). This isn't present on Steam but I'm still listing it as players may want to play on the go. This can be removed by spending a certain amount of money.
- The levels can get quite long as you progress in the game and even when sped up, can take a long time per tile and may end up feeling like a chore to some players.
- The main multiplayer aspect of this game (MvM) is just outright annoying and interacting with it directly disrupts down your games' progression.
- BTD6 is often heavily discounted during sales, sometimes even under €2 and isn't nearly as annoying in terms of monetization and is still being regularly updated. The Flash version of BTD5 can be played for free in the Ninja Kiwi Archive on Steam, but it may be outdated compared to the Steam version, which generally doesn't get quite as heavy discounts as BTD5.

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