With Mecha Break, it seems like history is bound to repeat itself.The mecha action shooter finally had its full launchlast night, after a couple of beta tests over the past year.
Much like during the beta tests, Mecha Break has seen incredible success, peaking at over 132,000 players in its first few hours, putting it at 8th place on SteamDB’s 24-hourplayer count chartand top positions on the trending and popular releasescharts.
However, the successful launch has been marred by a wave ofnegative reviewson Steam, with only 65% positive reviews giving it a ‘Mixed’ rating.
Most of the complaints are focused on the free-to-play game’s excessive use of microtransactions.
Paywalling Customization
Mecha Break’sSteam pageputs a strong emphasis on customization, both for the Striker mechs and the player’s pilot.
However, players are finding that there’s heavy paywalling within the customization system, locking many of the options behind expensive microtransactions, including options that were free during the beta tests, which is the main focus of most of the negative reviews.
Some reviews mention certain packs costing as much as $50 for a non-customizable pilot and mech skin, or customization options present in the beta being relegated to the premium store or resold through the user marketplace.
Developer Amazing Seasun Games has copy-pasted a response to some of the negative reviews, asking players to submit feedback through their own form, so hopefully that means they really arelistening to what their community has to say.
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That being said, Mecha Break is still earning praise for its solid gameplay, which is unsurprisingly causing heated arguments in the comments of more popular reviews. Some are pointing out the game’s free-to-play practices as less predatory than other major free titles, while others are just saying that cosmetics shouldn’t be such a sticking point when the gameplay is so good.
Mecha Break saw similar conflict in its reviews inits previous beta tests, includingcomplaints about microtransactions.
I played the beta test back in February, and while I have not had the chance to try the full release yet, I remember there was a grind to unlock new Strikers as well as a loot box system for mechanical boosts, which can stray dangerously close to pay-to-win territory, so players will need to keep an eye on how Mecha Break develops in that area.
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