Disappointment

I came to this game hoping for a nice, relaxing card game to pass some time. On its surface, its a bit rough around the edges with hand drawn caricatures and repetitive reminders. I played on through the tutorial, coming to enjoy the whimsical characters as they began to take on a familiar tone. And then... Stale. The game comes to grinding halt as it locks you behind a paywall a mile high. All charm of adorable wolves and harmless chinchillas are lost. Let me attempt to illustrate.

There are over 3000 combinations of cards, and in order to "discover" them, you have to research them. However, research ranges from 1 hour to 6 hours to 24 hours... And that is just for low level cards; I havent even seen high level cards (well get to levels in a second). A vast majority of the cards are 6 hour research and beyond. Lets say, for simplicity sake, each research is 6 hours, and you were super efficient with checking the cards, with just one "research portal" it would take you over 2 years straight to get close to all the possibilities. The make "research portals" you may obtain are 5, which 2 being locked the previously mentioned paywall. So most normal humans could obtain all possible combinations in a little under a year, all things aside. Great.

The "leveling" of cards is another issue. Cards do not level on their own. You have to manually upgrade a card which costs "dust". For some really crappy cards, the dust cost from level one to level two is three dust. You obtain dust from recycling old cards, at 1 dust a card. So to be clear, in order to upgrade that crappy card to a slightly less crappy card, you need to recycle three cards to upgrade one one level. There are ten levels for cards. Level two to level three costs 12 dust... 12!!!

Okay, so how do you get cards? You get them from battling opponents in adventure or arena. Adventure offers some variance with enemies in their different locations, albeit all the same mechanics overall. Once you beat an opponent, you are awarded with coins or with a RARE chance for a card. After about two matches you get enough coins to buy one card pack... Which contains one card... Just one; these cards are mainly crappy cards and once in a blue moon, you receive an uncommon... Good luck with a rare card; Ive opened about 40 packs and have yet to see one.

Many of the research possibilities are locked behind level requirements, meaning you cant even obtain a new possibility until you upgrade two cards to a new level. I should note, more rare cards, like uncommon and above, cost more dust to level up and longer to research.

As for the battle mechanics, you take cards, pair them together and get a temporary "upgrade" in battle. You can do this 7 times, with each subsequent "combination" offering a large boost to your chosen power (healing, card enhancement or player damage) per turn. However, once you miss one combination, you reset all your upgrades, so maximizing your combinations is KEY. Remember however that combinations are discovered through research...

This already exhausting... Ugh. So how can you speed up the game? Gems! Gems allow you to instantly research things, upgrade cards and give you access to card packs with multiple cards, where at least one card is an uncommon or a rare! Great! You are provided one gem every few levels. If you want more gems, insert real cash, and a lot of it. This game quickly becomes unmanageable unless you upgrade cards to get better research to get better combinations and get better cards for you deck. Pvp requires a better deck, so anyone who has the cash to shell out, also has the means to win. Everyone else, well you get a participation award of 3 coins!

This game has potential, with the cute characters and the goofy satirical dialogue. But what it creates in artistic expression, it immediately and permanently overshadows with a system that REQUIRES money and a lot at that. Honestly, there are much better card games out that and unless the developers intend on fixing the in "costs" of things, I am not wasting another minute with the game. Hope this helps some people. Such a shame, the wolf is SOOO cute!!!

Forgotenhope666 about Little Alchemist