I am very sorry but I had to stop reading the post because I had just uninstalled Raid Shadow Legends after 1 month of a lot of insistence, but finally gave up due to its ATROCIOUS monetization and ridiculous energy system.
And let me tell you about it!
The "silver" the regular money you earn is spent even to unequip gear from your heroes, if you don't want to LOSE them, making customizing for different bosses and scenarios and PvP almost impossible, if you are not swimming in silver.
It's 2019, and this game has energy. This should sum up pretty much how freemium this game is. You have so much stuff to do yet so little energy. You might be getting a lot of it in the beginning like I was, but once you start to receive quests that make you drop certain specific gear, with minimal % rates, you understand how they manage to suck your energy away. You are usually either levelling in the campaign (best place for XP) that sucks to get good gear drops, or you are dropping gear in "dungeons" or you are dropping some "potions" to "ascend" (increase base stats) heroes in other dungeons, or you are killing the Minotaur in its dungeon to drop some scrolls that also customize a passive tree for your hero. And the XP in dungeons is usually terrible compared to the campaign on purpose, to force you on using even more energy because guess what? THEY SELL ENERGY AND SILVER. Remember when I said that silver was spent to change gear? It is also used to upgrade gear, and unlock heroes and ascend heroes and you get the point.
Oh, yea and ALMOST EVERY SINGLE AREA is just 3 zones with waves of enemies to defeat, sometimes with a boss at the end. It gets stale so quick the only reason I got to play it for long was that I actually almost never play turn-based RPG games so this one felt "fresh" for me. Now I had just got into weeks of hiatus, tried again, remember it wouldn't improve its store, and gave up. If I'm going to play a game that is screwing me or limiting me just to try and take my money, I might actually do it with Dark Souls which I already paid for and I KNOW it's trying to fuck with me!
The PvP is not even a real PVP. You fight against a pre-set team that another player built, and fight that team controlled by an AI, and the balancing of the PvP is HORRIBLE because it's basically non-existent. Heroes do have a power meter, but it is not rounded down or anything in earlier ranks, meaning that you may find full teams of lv 50 heroes (max being 60) fully ascended in the SECOND RANK, bronze 2. Oh, and remember how in order to be a little forgiving they let you not lose rank up to a certain point so you don't get too demotivated? Not in here, you can go back to bronze 1 if you mess up. Also, while people attack your team controlled by an AI which might not even use the right skills in the most optimal sequence, you lose rank. So you might grind with some effort, go to bed, then boom, down 1 or 2 ranks because people picked your team to fight against.
The "fight against bosses with your clan" is the most deceptive message I've seen in some years! What actually happens is that the boss has a shared HP and every clan member fights it individually and get a reward for doing a certain amount of damage to it. For a game named "Raid", not having any raid with multiple players seems pretty ironic.
And now for the best part: The store. They try to sell loot boxes with heroes inside for egregious prices, usually, the one that comes with the best box, that doesn't even guarantee the best rarity hero is the price of a released triple-A title, AT LAUNCH! That is the most ridiculous price I have seen in years! "Hmm, I wonder what I'm gonna do, get Cyberpunk, OOOOR A LOOT BOX?" And of course, they don't expect you to buy it without a discount, that is what anchoring is for! Now that you found this price absurd they will eventually pull up a "limited time" offer with a certain % of discount for you to believe that price is actually worth it because you know, obviously, a digital loot box with not even guarantee a legendary hero is worth the price, discounted. Obviously. (not)
If you are against the predatory practices that EA and Ubisoft have been implementing, do yourself a favour and don't play this game. The core game is pretty ok, but the monetization is simply evil.
I'm sorry for posting this, DeMod, but as a person who is worried about the integrity of how other gamers might become prey of egregious schemes, I cannot recommend this game at all.
