Recent reviews by Iara

This isn't really a game. It's more of an experience. Do I recommend this experience? Of course I do. Try to get in with as little info as you know about it. Just try it.

I really wish Nexon got their act together. Maplestory's artstyle is unique. The plot and its characters are unique when compared to any other MMORPG in the market. The music is and will always be a masterpiece, blowing any other composition in most games out of the water. But underneath this beautiful wrapping of hope, you only find a trashy time-sink. MapleStory holds what little relevance it still has in Western countries via nostalgia and FOMO mechanics alone. Maplestory Korea is pretty huge, almost a cultural phenomena, but only until recently have the original Korean devs decided to actually try to fix several of the bugs, inconsistencies and unbalanced mechanics of this game. Only took them well over 15 years to finally get down to that...

On the other side of the pond we have 'Global' Western Maplestory. We amount not even 5% of Maplestory's global earning. As such, this server is relegated to scraps and 'whatever it gets'. It is even rumoured between the community that Global Maplestory doesn't has devs, only translators and localization team. What does that mean for you, should you choose to play this game? Well, not only you are behind 6 long months of updates compared to the Korean server, but you also have several mechanics that simply don't work. Global Maplestory was an unique experience that got experiences from every other Maplestory server, but sometimes balance isn't accounted for this. The current global team simply copies and pastes different features from Korean Maplestory, without adapting anything to the public of Global. Nexon America is just awful at dealing with costumers.

But OK, let's imagine you don't care about any of that, and you just want a fun game? Well, Maplestory is akin to a college education and demands as much time invested into it as possible, except that it doesn't 'reward' with anything like actual education would. Maplestory timegates content and slows down progression to a crawl, by forcing you to take into Daily Features such as 'Daily Quests'.

I hope the time played in this account (and the many screenshots you can find in my Steam account) are enough to show that I have indeed played my fair share of Maplestory. I am nowhere near endgame, because simply progressing to that point is more of a chore than actual fun gameplay.

I don't recommend you to ever play Maplestory.

[Rushed review. Might work on it more some day, maybe]
This is a very flawed game, with a greedy company that doesn't care about it.
The only saving point of this game is that it has the Digimon IP. If it wasn't for that, no one would play this lacklustre RPG. There are so many flaws, and the gameplay is monotone. The selection of "top" Digimon is limited, with most of the roster becoming Encyclopedia fodder. The grinding is absurd and its clearly pay to win when you see how much and how often the cash shop is stocked. Some Digimon are locked in lootboxes systems, making them virtually unattainable.
Knowledge of the game's kinks only gets you so far, because the amount of grinding several features require to reach an acceptable and 'competitive' level (Seals and Digivice farming) clearly benefit cheaters.
The community is filled with toxic players that rather than working together, prefer to be ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ about everything. Sexism is rampant as the game is mostly played by men, too. Cheaters run unpunished.
Oh, also the difference between the Steam and regular versions of this game are only the cash shop: You can freely trade cash shop items to other players from the regular version, but all cash shop items are character bound if you buy them from Steam (they cost less, too).

Don't play this game even if you love Digimon. I love Digimon, but this game is simply not worth it... Unless you cheat and break the rules, I guess?

It is a simply charming game, with hours upon hours of fun. Every waking moment you discover something new. Why don't you try it yourself? It is indeed the greatest labor of love. Unpopular opinion but I think Relogic shouldn't move on from developing Terraria, but that's just me.

Buy this game, buy it to your friends, buy it to your dog, I don't care. Just buy it.