why is this free to play?

[['w']]

do you have to spend any money ingame to advance?

[Just Hitting My Stride]

You don't need it to advance, but you can spend money on a battle pass and purchase currency that can be used to gamble on characters.

[SmallGespenst]

It's free to play in that you can play the game without spending money, micro-transactions typically are accounted for separately when they're not tied directly to progress

[['w']]

Well with an addictive compulsive disorder, what could go possibly go wrong :D

Guess I'll pass, but it looks really funny and the story / world seems to be super weird, in a good way.

[A Wispy Willy]

Honestly as long as you don't feel like you need everything right away, it's not that bad of a game without spending money.
It's not a stretch to get everything over time, provided you do play it.

[Minh]

Gacha. No.

[In-Bread Dog]

You can get just as far into the game without paying any cash. The game is pretty generous in giving out free rolls, base identities and ego are fairly solid so you can beat the game without getting any super rare or powerful identities (although they’ll certainly help), even if you don’t roll the character you want you can craft them with some brief periodic grinding about once a week. The chances of getting 2 and 3 stars (and ego) are decent (I’ve managed to get all 2 star identities, and most ego/3 star identities with only a handful missing without spending any cash, although it’s a bit down to luck for me)

Really, I’d say the only reason you would spend cash would be for the paid battlepass, which has some very powerful ego and egoshards and other things, but the free battlepass is solid as well, with good rewards and good ego.

Also as a minor plus, the game isn’t in your face about micro transactions. It’ll only tell you about them if you click on it, so you probably won’t be tempted to spend money (so long as you have a little self restraint).

[SmallGespenst]

Originally posted by \wilb\:

Well with an addictive compulsive disorder, what could go possibly go wrong :D

Guess I'll pass, but it looks really funny and the story / world seems to be super weird, in a good way.

that's probably wise, Gatcha games are all predatory, even for one that's more generous than most.

[Bishop]

Originally posted by \wilb\:

Well with an addictive compulsive disorder, what could go possibly go wrong :D

I mean OCD doesn't translate into gambling addiction. With earlier you can set yourself targets and work toward them at your own pace just fine. With later.. you should just avoid any gacha altogether.

[Terratrox]

Originally posted by \wilb\:

do you have to spend any money ingame to advance?

If you haven't already, I recommend this game's predecessors. Lobotomy Corporation is a management game, but Library of Ruina is actually a lot more like this one, except with a more complex fighting system, longer fights, and also strong worldbuilding. Library of Ruina isn't F2P either.

There's an element of gacha in that you have to beat the fights more than once to guaranteed get everything possible from them, and until that point you get a random assortment of stuff in the pool, but it's like 5 refights at the very most and again you ARE guaranteed to get different stuff every time, so the pool runs out.

As someone with an addictive personality, I recommend playing that game for what would amount to a significantly better experience. Lobotomy Corporation is its direct prequel, but it's also buggier and a completely different genre of game. (And much harder) Library of Ruina is a deckbuilder though. You can make your characters run whatever attacks you want. Just need to be able to pay for them.

[Koun Kabocha]

if you want to, you can try beating this game without doing gachas. but uhhh, the difficulty spike would be vertical