Recent reviews by Greg

yup

I deleted my last review as the developer dismissed it as a revenge/burn out review despite it having backed up criticisms but also positive things to say about the game, he flagged it as abusive and dismissed anything I said based on the negative rating I gave it. So I decided to write another one. For clarity, I no longer play this game and have no desire to do so anymore. I have been banned in the past, but no longer. This is not a revenge review, or a burn out review BECAUSE I'D PLAY IT STILL IF IT DIDNT HAVE SO MUCH WRONG WITH IT- this is a review based on the current game as of October 4th 2019 and my experience in 14 games as a sample. I will touch on other things other than my experience in those game however. I will also preface that this game can be fun and I've enjoyed many hours on it, that was a long time ago however. The game has a very steep learning curve but it's fun to learn and get the hang of. It's one of those games where when it's fun, it awesome and when it's bad it's just an utter shambles and frustrating. I initially recommended this game back in the day, it was a lot of fun to play but everything just went downhill in my view, and I'll try to cover that below. The game in it's current state is a shadow of the game before, if you want a TLDR, go to the bottom. If you want to know why, here we go, lets begin.

XP from said 14 games:
1 game of real quality out of 14. By that I mean no throwing, leavers, toxicity and I personally enjoyed it.
6 terrible games (throwing, leavers, toxicity) but these games had poor players who didn't know basics of the game or pretended not to, terrible decisions based on mob mentality guesswork and suspicion rather than deduction.
3 games I died early and had no impression on the game.
4 games which had varying amounts of things on a smaller scale ( an average game) perhaps 1 leaver, slight toxicity but an average/ slightly unpleasant experience.
On one of those games I was toxic and had enough. If you'd been in that game, you'd see why.

So out of 14 games you could say about half were passable to play at most, probably less so. 1 quality game out of 14 is quite dreadful for a gaming experience, and that is from my point of view, someone who has a lot of hours in this game and knows it inside and out. Games are supposed to be fun, if the law of averages playing this game are going to reward you with a decent game less than 50% of the time, why should you play it? Bad games happen, no denying that but the average experience should be much higher than that.

One of the things that's bugged me about this game for a while now is the RNG for classes. They thought it was smart to give more experienced players certain roles more often based on playtime in the game, this was one of the things that caused me to stop playing the game and also get banned (leaving day 1, throwing after getting certain classes constantly in a row) So again I took note of these classes played in the 14 games:

2 games NK
1 game INQ
1 game alch
4 games phys (LOL)
2 games princess
2 games prince
1 game CW
1 game drunk

8 classes out of the 14 games. Not the worst I've seen believe me, but again not great. (there was someone in my game who got king 3 games in a row) I get that's it's RNG, but it's just frustrating to play the same roles over and over. Moving on.

Lack of additions and game changes/balancing makes the game boring and repetitive. Last major update was in June which changed the boring mystic meta and king allies. This took way too long as a lot of people hated playing like that every game. The current games have the noble meta which again is stale, boring and repetitive. The last class changes before then were February, and before that December. So around 2 major patches for classes per year on average is what we're getting. This needs to be way more regular. I get that balancing isn't easy, but to keep things fresh for players it needs to happen more regularly. New classes should be added at least twice a year. Again, not easy but this is why the game is as stale as bread to anyone who plays it on a regular basis. I'm not saying the game doesn't get worked on by the way, Xblade loves to show everyone all the hard work he is doing. Fine, hire someone else then. Since everyone who was on the team before when there were actual updates to the game regularly got kicked to the kerb. He's too busy working on the backend of the game because it's a mess, there's so many bugs in this game that haven't been fixed for years and some of them are gamebreaking, it's pretty bad. Although as some people are fast to point out it is an indie game and has a small dev team.

Next - moderation. The double edged sword. Can't be too strict, can't be too lax. It's not a F2P game and the game is dying so the moderation is not overally strict. It is inconsistent for sure, with certain people being favoured over others aka discord favourites/streamers (I have seen this personally). I have been banned myself, I have no complaints, I deserved to be banned. I feel moderation for the most part is fair. The rules are written in stone, break them and well you know what happens. People complain about moderation as too strict, but I think in a game like this it's very hard to do - a social deduction game where to play you have to interact. I have seen some terrible decisions from staff, and I've seen a lot of appropriate ones. One thing this game is, is moderated. They have a server in discord with each action against any unruly player. Not sure if I agree with that practice or not but alas.

The community which plays this game is terrible. A lot of good players/people/streamers have moved on or been pushed away by others in this community. It's the most toxic game I've played and that says a lot. I myself as pointed out have been toxic. In a game like this, it's just going to happen. Most of it stems from frustration with the players making stupid decisions. After a while even the nicest people crack in this game. If you're one of the few who hasn't cracked in this game before, then truly I salute you. The moderation comes hand in hand with this of course, and they do ban/warn for toxicity.

The game has a small player base and it's only getting smaller. The game is dying, it's rotten and it will keep decaying if things don't change. There seems to be a lot more newer players rather than experienced ones, who have got fed up with the game or been banned/pushed away - or for whatever reason. Staff/players like to point out on here and forums and reddit or whatever that the game isn't dying and that it's always populated and theres a million people in our discord ready to play! No. Peak times, the game is populated, true enough. Queue times aren't terrible unless you're staggered between lobbies. If you're not playing at peak time, then you'll see what I mean. By peak time I mean US evening. As for the discord, it does have however much members, but 98% probably don't play the game anymore, at least of a regular basis.

You can read all the complaints about staff on these reviews, I can't say much on that apart from Xblade the head 'developer' of the game. He is passive aggressive, egotistical, unwilling to listen to the community, and dismissive of any criticism, constructive or otherwise. He would reply to negative reviews on here and make himself look a jackass, but he has smartly deleted them now as he probably realises how stupid he has made himself and game look. If there's one reason alone to not buy this game it's him. Period. I've been shown a lot of screenshots, reddit comments and the reviews on here of him and it's just laughable. He blames this game dying on revenge reviews, he made a blog post on it, it's funny because it can't be the state of the game or his fault, right? Kappa.

RIP ToL, it was fun. Thanks for reading this rambling mess.

TLDR - DONT BUY THIS GAME, ITS ROTTEN TO ITS CORE AND DYING, SAVE YOUR MONEY

I poke my head out of the gutter for one freakin' second and Take Two shovels **** in my face.

Me trying to aerial is like Helen Keller trying to swat a fly with a straw.

10/10 would miss again.