Aug 152018
A year ago, I reviewed a game for MonsterVine called Egglia: Legend of the Redcap.
A few things made it catch my attention more than the typical mobile game. It was a turn-based RPG, it had a strong team behind it (including Yoko Shimomura composing the music), and it was a premium game (one payment instead of being free-to-play with microtransactions).
I enjoyed some aspects of it, but I never stuck with it since despite being a premium game, it used a lot of free-to-play mobile game mechanics, mainly timers and a required Internet connection. The required Internet connection is the one that really kept me from playing it as much as I wanted.
Still, when I saw it was being discontinued, I felt disappointed that I’d never be able to play it again… until I read the full announcement and saw that it’s being replaced by an offline version.
Egglia: Legend of the Redcap has been officially shut down, but Egglia: Legend of the Redcap Offline has launched. Players will have until September 28 to transfer their content to the new app. (Unfortunately, it sounds like there are no plans to translate the later story expansions that were released in Japan.)
The offline version removes the online features. I haven’t tried it yet, but I assume the timers will stay. Nevertheless, with the ability to play offline, I might just see it through to the end this time.
Games like this make me wonder why mobile developers feel such a need to include these tedious gameplay mechanics. Most mobile RPGs I’ve seen have variations on the same systems in place. My favorite mobile games have been the ones that felt like regular games that just happened to be on mobile devices, games that didn’t follow the same model. If we saw more mobile games like that, I wouldn’t be as worried about things like the Wild Arms mobile game.
I bought this game last year after seeing all the great reviews, despite the tedious mechanism and online connection hassle.
Sadly to say I have lost all of my progress, the game, and the money spent. I’m at least glad I didn’t spend anything on in-App purchases. They offered a very short migration to the “offline” version that started on August 16 and ended on September 28.
But they did not send any e-mail notification. I just discovered it yesterday and very sad that everything is lost and they would not do anything to compensate my loss. No way I would spend another 10-25 and start the game from scratch. That is a very terrible business practice. The reason of the Internet connection is for anti-cheating, anti-piracy and try to get more in-App purchases….
Very sad and would never support this company or its publisher again. Best to stay with big name publishers like Square Enix or Bandai Namco. They never do things like this and most of their single player games do not have IAPs and no constant Internet connection is required.
(This comment reminded me that despite downloading the offline version and transferring my data, I never actually went back to playing it. Oops.)
Yeah, I think the announcement was only made online and in an in-game notification, which is frustrating. I don’t know why they decided on such a limited window.
I didn’t think Egglia had in-app purchases. Wasn’t that part of the point – a premium app with a one-time purchase instead of microtransactions?
To be fair, Square Enix and Bandai Namco do tend to have DLC, although it usually tends to either be sizable and story-related, or completely optional things that you can ignore. I’m glad they don’t require constant Internet connections, though.