Recent reviews by Pichi

If you have any remote interest in animated wallpapers, this is absolutely worth the couple of bucks.

There's several settings you can use to make your experience better visually or on your performance, so even a low end rig should be able to utilize this without much issue. And that's not even mentioning all the content the community provides for this tool, so there's a high chance you'll find something you like. If not, you have the opportunity to make your own.

Mobile game with a PC version. The only two things I will note about the PC version is for situations with joystick controls you can use WASD (though diagonal movement is limited) and that there is a hard limit for each type of content you can do per day. However, this hard limit is only really noticeable for hardcore grinding. Now, on to the game itself...


I first played this game 5 years ago (my steam account is NOT my main account) and although I took a break for about 2 and a half years (returning recently), this game does show its age in some aspects, but I find myself wanting to come back.



Yea. This a gacha game. If that's enough to turn you away, forget you saw anything. If not, let me tell you: this game is still one of the more generous gacha games out there. With the increased amount of SSR/SP characters, they have only made it easier to get them from pulling during events. Keyword: events. Pulling outside of events is strongly unadvised unless you want to get the unlucky streak achievements, which are rewarding in their own right. Never pull using Jades; buy the 11 Mystery Amulet + 10,000 coins pack with 1,000 jades instead. It is quite important to note that you can obtain whichever character you want by gathering their shards from your guild and Demon Parade, a feature used to obtain shikigami shards.

Note that while you can try to pay-to-win your way through the game, you'll quickly find yourself to be like everyone else who needs to grind constantly to actually be able to use their shiny characters. Simply put, if you want to whale to be able to catch up and get going fast, you'll be disappointed.



I think this game is best enjoyed for the individual characters and their stories rather than trying to grasp the story as a whole. I think most of the characters (particularly the rarer ones) are well done.



It's a turn based RPG and like any reasonable gacha game, has auto to deal with routine tasks. You have one of four Onmyoji to pick from (each unlocked as you progress the story) with their own set of skills and specialties. Then, remaining team slots are filled with shikigami, the characters you get from the gacha and shards. Shikigami use orbs for their special skills, which determines whether or not they can use that skill.

When not bossing, doing harder content, doing PvP, or doing events, you will typically use a farming team into a soul stage to farm souls. Souls are each characters equipment that they use to get stronger. The grind for souls is incredibly lengthy due to substat RNG. You want a good (enough) arrangement of substats AND you have to worry about whether or not the substat you want gets leveled up every 3 soul levels AND you need souls (or imps, preferably) to level them up. Then, for maxing out a shikigami's level you will need....lots of fodder such as the various daruma and Ns that you aren't using for meme purposes. Then, for the SSR/SPs, you'll want to use skill daruma because they are natrually harder to obtain, and the majority of them need those skill ups to even function properly, lest they be worse than SRs or even Rs. This isn't to say that SR/R aren't worth using; in fact there are plenty of them such as the free Zashiki you get that see irreplaceable use in PvE farms and I consider that to be one of the game's biggest selling points.


Quality of life features have been added to make the grind less tedious, but you can tell that in some aspects, it's dated. Some games have a better substat system.



The game will actively reward players who keep logging in, to a point where they get access to things like a free daily draw, exclusive skins, and the legendary samurai daruma to insta-max a character. On one hand, it's nice they reward loyalty, but what about the newer players? Newer accounts do get a better start than I used to and the mentor system can be good for more resources (if you can find a good mentor). If you're a returning player, then, depending on how long you've been away, you get various catch-up benefits, including SSRs/SPs via returnee summons and even an SSR selector if you max out the returnee pass. So they do try to keep all players in mind, though 1,500 login days (that's a little over 4 years) for the samurai daruma and some skins could feud a lot of envy to the point where that itself could be a turn-off ("I'll never catch up!").



This game holds a special place in my heart and I would love people who aren't instantly turned off by gachas to try this. However, if you aren't interested in the story & characters, the fact that progression in this game requires patience, or that your biggest difference as a whale is often a cosmetic difference rather than immediate power, then look elsewhere.

The game is simply great. At the very least, I most certainly enjoyed the 100+ hours of gameplay I sunk my teeth into.


If I were to write a synopsis for the game's plot...

Joker is a wanted criminal that gets caught by the cops. But wait! He's not a criminal, right? That's what he's gotta prove to his prosecutor, as he recalls his memories up to that situation. And his memories involve making friends, having wild adventures, and the fact that this isn't his first time being arrested.

As a victim of false accusation, he is chosen by fate to change its course. He will fight against the very society that kicked him down at its corrupt roots, sure, but the situation may be bigger than he thinks. Will Joker answer the call? Or will he let his ruin come to pass?



Persona 5 Royal is a turn based JRPG. This means all units on the field take turns attacking, based whoever has the higher Agility (Ag) stat. You can start fights as an ambush, meaning all your party members get a turn before the enemy. However, the opposite is also true; the enemy can ambush you and put you in a surrounded state. How you approach these non-boss fights will determine how difficult you'll make things for yourself.

Each party member can use a Persona, the representation of their inner rebellion. Personas give access to skill usage. Everyone will have their own element and role they end up specializing in, but Joker is the most versatile since he can carry multiple Personae. If he dies, the battle instantly ends in a loss. It will be important to keep him alive over the others when necessary.

There are multiple attack types in the game, and three different ways to deal bonus damage. If an enemy is weak to an attack, it's a weak hit. Physical hits can land a critical hit. In both instances, you knock the enemy down! You can also inflict status effects and then hit them with certain attacks for technical damage, which may sometimes knock them down too.

You have dungeons called Palaces that you must infiltrate and steal the Treasure of in order to progress the story. Mementos is another dungeon that you can visit after completing the first Palace, which constantly expands and has varying floor layouts. Mementos serves as a way to grind and possibly capture Persona you may have missed on previous Palaces.

You can also bond with the various characters known as Confidants in the game, which gives you extra gameplay benefits for doing so. Maxing out Confidants can lead to some additional special moments in the story, and some of them are actually key to being able to access the Royal portion of the game.

Most notably, your actions in the game are timed. You are given an in-game calendar that will be used to keep track of the game's story progress. Spending time with your Confidants, visiting Mementos, crafting items, and committing to miscellaneous activities during your free time will cause time to pass. There is a limited amount of time that you have to work with, and every Palace has a deadline. Failing to meet this deadline will cause you to fail. Thus, you should plan carefully to have satisfying results.



The game's not very hard overall. There are many ways in-game to make things easier for you, without needing changing the difficulty setting. Playing this for the first time? If you want to just enjoy the story, you can go as far as playing on Safe mode. Otherwise, for those who want to seek a challenge, I recommend a blind playthrough on Hard or Merciless (I played on Hard). Do note that certain fights may be easier for you if you play on Merciless, due to the presence of a 3x damage multiplier for Weak/Critical hits.



I'll keep this brief because this review is already kinda long. There'll be plenty of twists and turns, and each character (particularly your Confidants) are well done. A big part of enjoying the game and sticking with it is the story. If you're not into a story rich game, you'll find this game to be a drag. If you are interested in a story rich game, then it's almost certain that at minimum, you'll like at least one character.


As for aesthetics? You can definitely tell the game has a unique style, which is complemented well by the music. By the way, the OST for the game is outstanding.


You like big story? You like RPGS? You like turn based battles? This is worth your purchase. Answered no to any of these? I'd still give it a try. Only time I wouldn't recommend this to someone is if they don't like any of these things.

It is hard for me to recommend this game right now. Perhaps when SEGA does better business and the game gets developed down the line, it'll be a good game. But as it stands, consider me a PSO2 player that didn't expect much out of NGS, but still managed to be disappointed (the thousands of hours are from almost a year before NGS released). If NGS is to be treated as a separate game, then I'll review it as a separate game.



Taking place 1,000 years after the events of PSO2, you are a meteorn, an ARKS that lost their memories. You crash land into the planet Halpha and meet Aina, a resident of the planet. You then meet fellow meteorn Maron and you all go to the AKRS base in the middle of Aelio, the region you landed on. Together you defend the planet from DOLLS which have also been landing on the planet, as you (maybe) discover why the heck there's conflict on this planet and how to get your memory back.


This is an AMORPG (action multiplayer online role-playing game; the instanced nature of it prevents it from being "massive"). As such you'll actively move around in combat, keeping an eye on attacks coming your way, and dodging/blocking them accordingly. You have an open world to run around and glide in, but there's no fall damage (personal sadge) so feel free to throw some caution to the wind! There isn't any climbing, but you can scale areas by doing a wall jump. You can wall jump only once, but you can always land somewhere where there's edges to get another set of jumping in. There's still updrafters if climbing isn't in the cards. The game will expect you to know your movement to discover secrets.


You have normal attacks, weapon actions, photon arts (weapon based attacks that consume PP), and techniques (elemental photon arts, aka this game's version of magic). PAs can vary, while techs are generally: uncharged to do one thing, charge to do another thing. Enemies can be downed, which is where that enemy will be unable to attack. You have two types: physical and elemental, and they can chain into each other, so it is somewhat important to have some class diversity.

As of this review there's 6 classes. I am aware Braver is coming soon, so I'll briefly mention that.

• Hunter: Melee class that has an emphasis on survival. Timing your attacks to the enemy is key to dishing out lots of damage, timing it better is the key to also avoiding damage. If that's not as feasible, you can always counterattack with guards. You can use the standard Sword, the wide-reaching and gap closing Wired Lance, and/or the more technical Partisan (spears).
  
• Fighter: Melee class all about doing as much damage as possible. It's fast paced, and will require keen awareness to not get splattered, but the reward is there. Use the whirlwindy Double Saber, brawling Knuckles, and/or air chasing Twin Daggers.
  
• Ranger: Ranged class all about bombing and highlighting important parts on enemies. Keeping your distance is important to maximize your damage, especially since Ranger has no good reason to be up close. Its key feature is Blight Rounds, weakening a targetted part of an enemy to take more damage. You can use Assault Rifles to use blight and mob effectively, and/or Launcher to deal heavy damage against bosses.
  
• Gunner: Ranged/melee class all about doing damage, but in stylish bursts. The key feature is Chain Trigger, where you start the combo with a charged PA, build it with uncharged PAs, and finish it with a charged PA for big damage. While it can play from a distance, most of the time its theoretical DPS peaks in melee range. The main weapon for this class is Twin Machine Guns. While it can use Assault Rifles, it doesn't use them as effectively as Ranger.
  
• Force: Technique class that can play long or melee range. As a pure technique user, they are slightly more practical at inflicting ele downs than Techter. The Rod weapon action is also the longest lasting guard in the game, making the class rather forgiving to play as. Lay waste with the Rod, and/or find the heart of the cards with Talis, a weapon that focuses on a constant stream of damage.
  
• Techter: Technique/melee class that has team utility. They are better at healing allies than Force, and can buff allies for better damage. They can hybridize their contribution to phys and ele downs. Club your foes with the mighty Wand and/or use Talis like Force.
  
• Braver: Ranged/melee class but more distinct in that regard than Gunner. Advertised to be adept to the situation, use the Bullet Bow to snipe your foes from afar, and/or duel them with the elegant Katana.

To sum it up: Their attempts to combat currency selling bots and implementation of Gacha ruined everything.

This right here is one of two big problems plaguing the game right now. SEGA seems to be pushing scratch tickets more than ever than they did on PSO2, and a good portion of those are them reselling older items from PSO2. This gives players a chance to get them. But these revival scratches tend to be bloated and are being sold for the same price as new scratches (200 AC/$2 a try) which aren't nearly as packed? Absurd. When you think about it, the PSO2 clothing reselling is just so you can use it with the NGS body for specific body part settings and moving fingers, without letting the players have any form of upgrade/trade-in for that. There is no trading in NGS, and you cannot sell anything on the shop unless you buy a shop pass or premium, leaving free-to-play very limited ways of making N-meseta. Featured items are also deemed to be 500k minimum, no matter what. Also, they love making dash and glide motions behind paywalls, even ones that should be basic live the hover dash (you have a hover run already...).

People here in the west tend to get greedy, so this only encouraged people to find loopholes around this terrible system such as multi-accounting red boxes for meseta to send to their main accounts via the main account having shop access and selling an overpriced item to the alt. With that, there's also scalpers. Without any system in place to halt scalping, the economy is noticeably more inflated than it is on the Japanese server and makes the monetization of this game look even worse than it already is.


The second big problem. The slow content pace would be more forgiving if we had more to do at the start. Combat is amazing but content really is lacking, with there being little reason to push yourself to your current limits. There's no reason to 5 star cocoon/tower facilities, just don't meet the fail condition and you get your skill points. It's barebones and comparable to a beta. This also makes the monetization look worse! SEGA also doesn't seem to want to schedule things (weather patterns for Gigantix spawns, urgent quests, etc.) so your time can't be respected.


Check it out if you want, but if you really want a game to sink your time into outside of socializing, NGS is NOT your game right now. Try PSO2 in the meantime or look for a game worth your precious storage space. NGS really is just its own game that only has the PSO2 name for compatibility & branding purposes. Give it a few major content updates and pray they yeet their current director (who is infamous for almost driving PSO2 to an early grave during JP's episode 5).

TL;DR Over-the-top game. If you like rail shooters (and don't mind the theme) or are simply a pervert, then I recommend giving this a try. At a $29.99 price tag though, I'd suggest getting it on a sale. There might be enough replay value to justify the price if you're a completionist.


You play as Houdai Kudoki, an average boy who is deemed so mediocre he needs to be shot by Ekoro, an angel doing her exams to get some romance in his life. Instead, thanks to Kurona, a demon who is also trying to pass exams, Ekoro shoots you too hard and you find yourself in what's practically a fever dream where almost all the girls (including teachers!) are coming after you, but you still have to choose someone by the end of the day or you'll be FOREVER ALONE! Also, you have two childhood friends.


Let's be honest, if you're even looking at the store page you know what you're in for: panties, the idea of rubbing/tapping the girls in various areas, suggestive masochism in some cases, heck there's even a shop upgrade that increases the transparency of the girls' clothing when using the zoom shot feature (there's even a ridiculously priced DLC to unlock MORE of that via the Academy Shop). Story is sweet & serviceable enough to justify why you have characters with their own routes instead of being grouped together in one big gameplay loop. Don't forget about the "Mom Walked In" feature. ;)


It's a rail shooter. You automatically go through each stage with limited camera control (think of it as being limited to where your eyes can move) shooting every girl with pheromones to calm 'em down temporarily. There are various secrets littered throughout each stage such as quest objectives and student or teacher handbooks, so you'll have to keep a look out since some of the quest items can be on the girls! Every girl is their own character, which plays a part in quests and Unseen Destiny. You can have up to 32 save files at a time.


The story has several routes that you can pick at the end of chapter 1. You'll unlock other routes as you earn good/true endings on each route, but some will require you to get a true ending regardless. While I won't detail each route, only two of them are available on your first playthrough and the final one, Unseen Destiny, will require you to get a good/true end on almost every other route, so it's safe to say that's the endgame route you'll be spamming to fully complete the game. There's also a bonus ending you can get regardless of which route you took.


You have four stats, and they will determine what dialogue choices you'll be able to select during your route, as well as what girl will be the most compatible with you during Unseen Destiny (if any). You can lower or raise them by taking girls into Doki Doki, or by purchasing straight stat increases/decreases in the Academy Shop with in-game currency.


I will go over Unseen Destiny at least, since that is a pure gameplay loop. After selecting the route, an extra menu is showcased to list every "enemy" and what they prefer in a boy. Their affection towards you will grow the more effectively you Doki Doki them or, according to the game at least, let them confess to you, which is the equivalent to taking damage (yes, taking damage can mean progress in this route if I'm correct LOL). If at least one girl is at 5 hearts, you are given the option to skip to the end, pick the one you prefer, and fight a boss to claim her as your girlfriend. Worth noting each girl will prefer certain areas, so hunt 'em down carefully!


After having the game open for at least an hour I'll notice the occasional minor freeze. Sometimes it may crash. You'll often find yourself fighting the game's camera and your field of view to try and nab every secret if you're not already familiar with the stage (even if you are familiar, it can be a hassle). If you use keyboard & mouse, certain minigames will require you to lower your DPI quite low to do them effectively. Otherwise, I have no other issues.



All things considered, I'll sooner recommend this to fellow people with dirty minds than people looking for a good game, but the gameplay is good enough to not detract you from the fantasy of all the students (and teachers!) desperately wanting to be your girlfriend.

As a person who's never played other versions of Maplestory 2 or even the first Maplestory game, I'd like to share my thoughts.

• Open-ended map. Sure you'll start in Lilith Harbor/Tria (after tutorial), but assuming you aren't following the epic quest lines, you could be going all over the place. This leads to the next point:
  
• Incentive to explore. This game has an Exploration Goals system where you have some minor tasks to do in each map, granting exp and obtaining rewards along the way such as attribute points, messos, and pieces of an outfit set that can only be obtained from your explorations. Exploration is beneficial.
  
• Premium is pretty good. Premium membership provides weet benefits such as daily potions, unlimited Rotors Air Taxi, slightly higher movement speed, and cheaper catalyst costs. None of this should be game-breaking. Not even the unlimited rotors. It's all timed anyways.
  
• Your house can be lame or awesome but will still be important. Your home will be the source of Farming and Ranching, two life skills leading to other life skills. You can set up portals to maps you have already visited on that character, making it easier for your other characters to travel (thus implying your house is account wide and also makes not having Premium less of a bummer). There are statues you can set up for a 1 hour buff. You have a personal bank. Your house is amazing even if you design it to be boring.
  
• Along with home design, you have User Generated Content (UGC). This enables players to make music, outfits, even mounts based off of blank music sheets and outfit templates respectively. If you wish to sell your designs to other players, you'll need blue merits (real money) to list it, since it goes through the merit market. This means players will need blue merits to buy your designs. Still, you can potentially make your "special snowflake" so long as you don't break UGC rules.
  
• Classes seem relatively balanced. By this I mean there's a reason to play most if not all the classes in this game aside from the subjective "it's fun" remark.
  
• Forgiving enchantment system with two ladies to help you along the way. Peachy never fails, but she requires a higher net average worth of materials. This includes a certain type of material (Crystal Ore) that is very limited to the point where she's best utilized for early levels (+1-10). Ophelia can fail, but she requires a lower net average of materials and has ways to ease the pain of failure. You can use extra pieces of the equipment you're enchanting to keep a base chance rate of 30%. Each time you fail, you get enchantment charges you can use at any time on that piece of equipment to increase your odds by 1% per charge. This effectively allows you a 100% chance with enough charges, so she's considered the best for late levels (+11-15) with 100% obviously being used for +15. Patience is key either way.
  
• Memorable soundtrack. I don't know if it's me or if this soundtrack is just that good, but this is one of few games where I actively want to keep its music heard unlike another game I play.
  
• Played a while? Prove it with Prestige! Prestige ranking is a neat system that gives rewards each rank. Benefits are account wide and any items you get from it can be shared amongst your other characters.
  
• Not pay-to-win.

• Voice acting is a hit or miss. I like most of the voice acting in this game. Sadly some characters are not voiced well. Some voices, while good, aren't fitting. Soul Binder's lines (at least the female one) seems too quiet without messing with the volume options. Some lines characters and classes seem robotic rather than lively.
  
• Fair fight is a balacing act and a curse. This was intended to make world bosses and dungeons a challenge even with higher stats. What does this mean in this game's case? Your damage gets severely cut, and bosses don't even do that much more damage to you, making fair fight a boring fight! Surely this could've been implemented better. Maybe don't cut players' damage so much and still provide a relative risk to dying? Would be funny seeing players with 7k GS dying to Doodun.
  
• Gameplay is easy. Maybe too easy for its own good. Casual activities like fishing, music playing, minigames, make it easy for players to get into. It does get polarizing to the point of chaos raids, at least relative to the time of this review. In other words, not a smooth transition.
  
• The dedicated PvP feature, Maple Arena, is like a seperate realm. You buy seperate PvP gear to fesiably play in Maple Arena. Good side feature to check out if you're into that sort of thing. The balance? Let's just say if you play a melee class (besides Knight) you might as will expect some struggling. I won't touch more on it as I don't play it much myself.
  
• What is this community? There's helpful players, troll players, elisits players, random players...we have a mixed bag here!

• This game is very RNG gated considering Chaos Raids. This is gonna be a long and big one. So congratulations on getting that +15 weapon, but now it's time you faced the REAL RNG gates! Gem socketing, gem upgrading, making sure your bonus attributes are right, the list can go ON. So far, gem socketing is my least favorite. Each additonal socket requires an accessory that also has the same amount of sockets (i.e. if you want two sockets, you need to fuse two accessories with one socket open, which means fusing two accessories with no sockets). Oh, did I forget to mention that you're starting off with effecitvely a 50% success rate that gets lower for each addtional socket unless you have a prestige level that is impossible to obtain at the time of this review (we're talking years of gameplay here)? Have fun getting 3 sockets. Gem upgrading has low success rates from the get-go, even at tier 1 (effectively level 1). Bonus attributes can make or break your ability to help your raid group clear it, even if no one dies and knows what they're doing, gear score being near irrelevant outside of being an arbitrary entry requirement. Why is this even mentioned when RNG is a typical element in MMOs? Well, Chaos Raids being a huge step up from dungeons as well as the elitism vibe I get from the playerbase. Some players don't even want to bother helping someone with runs and prefer straight up clears, lest you pay them. Nexon addresses this by making easier and less rewarding versions of Chaos Shadow Altar (CDev) and Chaos Moonlight Fortress (CMoc), but this was not necessary. They also allow players to do more dungeons in a day (and in a week on one character only via dungeon resetting). Allowing more dungeon runs is nice, but this ultimately does NOT solve the RNG gate problem. Is this the price we must pay for a non p2w game?
  
• Rampant botting. Plenty of players bot, some using the excuse that macro settings are a thing (skills only!). Messo sellers are still on the loose--I've seen a YouTube advertisement for this! WHY?! Nexon isn't doing enough to stop it.
  
• No good way to make messos. The way I see it, you get lucky with B4 Keys for Treasure Dungeons (B4 requires four players so you sell the other three spots), lucky with dungeon drops, or already be strong enough to sell raid carries. Everything else is slow considering how much messos you'll need to pour in for progression.

Long grinding is a moot negative point in games of this genre. In MS2's case, it just needs to be less frustrating. That said, if you don't like the idea of a long grind or find it boring, this and other MMOs may not be for you. If you like the idea of personal design, chibi characters killing each other, or are a RNG masochist, give this game a shot. I wish I could give this a mixed reccomendation.

After three years of playing it when it was published by Aeria Games and another three years of playing it while published by Suba Games, I have a lot to mention about this game. Do not let my steam time fool you; I simply do not use the steam version unless there is incentive to do so.

• There are a grand total of 15 jobs (this game's term for classes) in this game; including the default of Commoner. On top of that, each job is capable of subbing two sets of active skills and two sets of passive skills barring Commoner, which is capable of three of each. With that, you have a large variety of possible combinations, albiet many of them require investment to attempt to make them to work.
  
• The game is more open ended. The map is designed in such a way that the first city is in the center of the map, and the other maps, while can be drawn in a linear path, isn't a completely defined trail. This can mean quicker travel to other places than what would be otherwise be in a linear map styled map. This also makes for easier backtracking; there is plenty of backtracking to do in this game. SOFTSTAR takes advantage of this and makes sure that Eversun City, the first city, remains to be the hub city for players to stay in.
  
• Quests aren't manditory in order to level. If you are tired of MMOs that have a large emphasis on questing, DOMO's leveling is heavily revolved around simply killing monsters.
  
• The four races are almost purely aesthetic.. The only real difference is Sprites have +1 movement speed compared to the default 37, and Shuras have -1. This difference is fairly neglible though.
  
• Lots of aesthetics in general. There's combat pets to make you look good, vanity pets for actual vanity, costumes, costume weapons, flying weapon costumes, transformation pills, scrolls, and boxes...
  
• Easy to run. Being an MMO from the mid-late 2000s, a potato computer by today's standards can run this game at a good frame rate.
  
• Solid community. Every community will have bad eggs and this game will be no different. However, I've seen players be overall more helpful lately compared to the early stages of the game where there was so much unmutable petty drama that the only way to get Public Address Systems now is through Seizer's palace.

• So much wasted potential in a lot of areas. The main story and the other big story-driven quests (life quests and Confusion Dance)? So many of them currently lead to a cliffhanger. The relationship types? The only viable one is lovers, which by far has the most incentive aside from the marriage rings that act as a full restore or a free teleport for your partner. This is more insulting with the student-teacher relationship. The Eversun Prophet, tied to this relationship, is extremely forgettable, is rather grindy to obtain some of the titles, and the rewards are hardly worth it. The monster capture system, enabling you to caputre monsters with mirrors to use them for your bidding--further expanded with the Almanac of Gods and Demons (think Pokemon and the Pokedex respsectively) is heavily underutilized and out-of-date. These and more could've been handled better had the developers been more ambitious.
  
• Many jobs fall off hard by the end-game and there is little reason to main a job outside of a select few, unless you're extremely casual. The most common ones you'll see are Hunter, Wizard, Doctor, and Blademaster as mains. Most jobs are still used as subs for these jobs of course; but they are hardly viable as a main job when concerning your main role. Damage dealer? Why stay on a job that isn't Hunter, Blademaster, or Wizard if you aren't leveling? You'll lose half of your passive bonus by subbing their respective damage boosting passives on other jobs. Support? No reason to be on a job that isn't Doctor; it has all the package you'll need to keep your team alive and supported with your subs. Tank? You'll find that the dedicated tank role becomes obsolete in most cases. Mercenary's Taunt + Mock Monsters can't even keep up with even the weaker damage dealers past the level 50s (assuming your DPS are even gearing up). Pet muse? You need far too much to try and make it work end game, as pets themselves are FAR weaker than any decent player. This is further exemplified with the use of pet saddles, which are more useful for any team-oriented content than having a pet muse in your party. Anything else I may not have mentioned is likely outclassed likely due to arbitrary debuff immunities on some monsters or gear setups.
  
• Conversely, the early game is a struggle. Given basic gear and lack of skill power, most players will struggle through the early game. Even when there's no struggle, leveling does feel boring and slow. One can catch server exp bonuses to allieviate the pain and there are plenty of badges avalible through the Anniversary Gift Box, but that doesn't change the feeling of boredom you might feel when leveling. Some people may enjoy carelessly beating up monsters, but this is an acquired taste in this day and age.
  
• Unlocking levels and rebirthing. Here's a big one. Levels 61-75 must be unlocked. A lot of level 61-70, if you don't want to use 100 prints for each individual job, requires obtaining titles from quests or completing quest lines. Considering what I mentioned earlier about how questing isn't a large emphasis to level in this game, that does imply a player can easily ignore these until they realize that they needed to do these the entire time. The journal and other quest markers do not do a good job of emphasizing their importance, leading to what could've been unnecessary backtracking or grinding that may feel like a waste as far as exp goes. As for rebirthing, to put it simply you start from level 10 again with the same exp requirements as before for each new level. This means your path to level 75 will look like this: 70 -> 10 -> 71 -> 10 -> 72 -> 10 -> 73 -> 10 -> 74 -> 10 -> 75. This makes use of Spooky Bottom and/or plvling pratically manditory if you don't want to feel like you're going to add an extra few weeks if not months to level that same job. Speaking of which...
  
• Pretty big on pay2win. As much as there have been NPCS, methods, and events that introduce previously item mall exclusive items to be avalible so you don't have to spend money on this game to feel like you're making decent progress, this does not change the fact SOFTSTAR designed this game with a pay2win model in mind. The in-game downgrade stones and upgrade tickets? I'm convinced stones and tickets exist just to make their premium versions look good considering how unviable they are to use in many cases. Then there's Spooky Bottom, a map that re-introduces some high exp monsters to kill but with 2x their base exp value. This requires an item to access, which unfortunately is untradeable if obtained from the item mall. Equipment refresh, one of the more recent features as of this review, is pretty much item mall only. This feature allows players to reroll mod stats on their equipment, allowing them to obtain perfect gear more conviently. There's wardrobe, another feature that allows players to store non-tradeable costumes, but it also rewards players with rather meaningful stat boost, which can turn costume collecting from a hobby to a chore. If none of these things speak pay2win, I don't know what does.
  
• Outdated and uncustomizable UI. I couldn't even get previous friends and acquaintences to play this game solely because of the UI.
  
• Crazy economy. This speaks for itself.

EDIT: I liked this game too much despite the flaws. Defintely a canidate for 2018's "Best Alternate History" award. Great but floundered potential partly due to the game's stagnation. Play with your judgement in mind.