Fun at first but punishing later on – RWBY: Amity Arena Review

TL;DR Fun strategy game but becomes a very slow grind unless you “pay-to-win” This game while fun at first, has poor versus match ups especially at higher levels and feels very “pay to win.” Matchmaking can very well put you against players who are 2+ levels higher than you (making their defenses superior) or with players who have far higher leveled cards (making it seem like an even match). No matter the time of day matchmaking nearly always seems to place you with someone higher. I can accept that while it is hard to always find a appropriate match the punishment for losing a virtually unwindable match is ridiculous. Losses and wins can very with a 18 - 42 trophy(rank points) change, with the average of 30 for a fair match up. Initially a loss to a higher leveled player can result in a lower trophy loss such as -18 but if you unfortunate enough to get placed with another player higher level player soon after any loss it can easily jump to -42 per loss. This is something that happens far too frequently to be just bad luck. After the first 5 or so levels going up in player level becomes extremely difficult. The primary way of doing this is to level individual units and when you do you get some amount of exp for the player level. I think this is a great way to get players to experiment and try new deck load outs but at this point many players have a feel for the kind of play style they like. With many charters hidden behind trophy requirements players are forced to choose between saving Lien ( in game currency) and purchasing more cards to level their current deck or to waste Lien leveling whoever happens to be available to level up at the time to level up overall , which brings me to my next issue the units themselves. Of the 4 different rarity cards the the more rare obviously the less frequent and the less quantity of them gained through random drops. Legendary cards are no exception they obviously rare but also obscenely overpriced. The epic (the rarity below) is reasonable in terms of drop rates and cost to buy with 4000 lien. Legendaries on the other hand if not found in a random card crate (near impossible to find in most free crates) to purchase a single legendary is 40,000 Lien 10x the amount for the rarity below. If you really want to you have the option to obtain the card via actual money is roughly $20USD. Again this is for a SINGLE card and to level said card more and more of them are required. Even with how expensive and rare these cards are there are users who very well can have 3-4 legendaries in their decks and are able to throw them out in such rapid succession that you can’t help but think there’s secret boost they are getting during a match. Overall the pressure to do micro transactions is heavily present throughout the game to the point where it feels like that is the only way you can have a chance to win. I understand as a free game there needs to be a way to get income but keeping cards behind a pay wall or making the grind for them extremely tedious is not a way to keep people around for long. Having micro transactions for something like skins and emotes (saving in game resources takes a LONG time) are fine and I’m not opposed to buying those but doesn’t make me wanna keep coming back if the game it’s self is a pay to win.
Review by M.S/Mia on RWBY: Amity Arena.