THE REVIEWS Episode 64: LINE’s Let’s Get Rich

Getting rich in absolutely nothing…

Ah, nothing beats a mobile game based on luck.

You’ve heard of luck-based games before, haven’t you? You probably do. It’s everywhere. Poker, mahjong, UNO!, gacha, russian roulette…the list goes on.

I’ve talked about luck-based games in the past. The mobile port of Injustice 2, Jurassic World The Game, Mahjong Soul. Those examples I’ve mentioned…oh god, they’re horrible. Not as horrible as the one I’m writing about this time. You think you’ve seen the worst of it all? The gacha and matchmaking aspects? Then you have seen nothing much yet. Those are just the icing on the cake.

The big steaming pile of shit I’m referring to is LINE’s Let’s Get Rich. It’s a game made by LINE Corporation and netmarble. LINE is a internet and telecommunications company based in Tokyo, while netmarble is a South Korean mobile game developer. On August 12 2014, they came together and made this god-awful asinine smelly heap of a dung. netmarble is the main developer, while LINE is there to just give licensing rights to their characters in the game.

The game is fairly simple, to be honest. Have you ever played Monopoly? Do you know how to play the game? If your answers to these questions are yes, then you’re on the right track to play LGR. It’s basically like Monopoly, but there’s an extra rule in this. A catch, I might say.

In this game, players roll the dice and buy properties, and the others must pay tolls to the owners of the lands that they land on. They then can ACQUIRE the land if it’s not a landmark. A landmark is four houses built, for your information. In a game, there can be up to four people playing. It can be a 1v1, a four player showdown, or 2v2, also known as a team match.

There are various characters and various maps with certain mechanics to each of them. For example, God’s Hand Map allows you to step on a special block to lift any tile on the line, while Magic Land Map allows you to move someone by controlling the dice, and the Adventure Map allows you to fight a monster. Weird shit.

You can win the game by three ways. The first way to win is by bankrupting the opponents. Make them pay you until they have no money. The second way is through three types of completion. Triple color completion, in which you own lands in the three different colors. Line completion, in which you own all the lands in the same line. Tourism completion, in which you own all the tourism lands, but this is unachievable in newer maps. The last way to win, and the most pathetic and luck-based out of all of them, is timeout. Each match is 25–30 minutes, and once it’s over, and no one gets any completion or bankrupt, the game will calculate your score based on the properties and money you own currently.

Character cards in this game have certain abilities. Of course, the higher the rarity, the better. However, you don’t only use character cards. There are pendants too. Yes, pendants that can boost you by giving you an extra ability, like toll increase, go to World Travel, or the infamous Dice Control. Character cards have the same type of abilities like pendants too, but the former has higher percentages.

Your character can equip four pendants to have the maximum power. In later updates, pendants have an additional skill on top of the ability, named “Sub-skill”. So, by using 4 S+ pendants and a S+ character card, you get 10 abilities in one game. Insane, right? That’s something out of the box compared to mobile games that were released at that time. That’s part of the reason why it gained so much popularity even up til today.

Right now, you’re gonna ask me, “Noah, this sounds like a fun game. It’s Monopoly but with a fresh twist. You get to make other people’s lands yours and unleash hell on them. The characters look decent, they have pretty interesting abilities, and the pendants boost you to higher stats. The maps all have fascinating mechanics that change the gameplay to a more exciting one. The game seems so fantastic. Why are you writing a bad review of it?”

Oh, how naive you are. That’s what the game developers want you to think. That just because a game has some fancy stuff, it means their game deserves the top-quality praise and attention it gets. To that, I say fuck you to these greedy developers.

First of all, let’s talk about the characters and the pendants. From the game’s release to now, the developers have been releasing A LOT of overpowered characters and pendants. These characters can go multiple places in one dice roll, detain people in a bubble to make them pay toll twice, or even applying a paw effect that STEALS FUCKING MONEY FOR PASSING THE OPPONENT EACH TIME. When new or free-to-play players go against them in a match, it’s a guaranteed loss no matter what. Great way to introduce people to your game, right? Make them lose on their first public match? Sounds really great for settling those newbies into the game.

I want you to guess how often they release these characters and pendants. Injustice 2? they release it every update. Brawl Stars? Every season, which is in two months. What about one of the shittiest gacha games in history, CSR Racing 2? Around two weeks or so. You thought that’s the lowest games could go, right?

How often do you think netmarble does it? They do it…RIGHT AFTER ONE ANOTHER! Yeah, you saw my words right. After releasing a new overpowered character, the next event is another god damn overpowered character or pendant. What a joy, ain’t it? I haven’t even gotten to the next point yet, and I’m already furious.

How long do you think an event lasts? I’ll just let you in on the answer. *holds up four fingers* Oh, you think it’s four weeks? That might be understandable if that is true…but it’s not. It’s four…days. FOUR FUCKING DAYS IN BETWEEN EVENTS! You know what that means? Each new overpowered character or pendant is released in FOUR GODDAMN DAYS! Imagine spending all your hard-earned currency on one character, upgrading it to the max, and thinking you can win the game because you got the best character currently, only to have a better version of your card or pendant FOUR FUCKING DAYS LATER WHEN YOU SPENT ALL OF YOUR DIAMONDS ALREADY! Even as someone who has played a long time, I can tell you this is all very impossible to be the strongest or the best unless you spend money on this ridiculous horse shit.

This game is treats you way worse than CSR Racing 2. At least in CSR 2, your 30 dollar car can last at least for 2 weeks. In LGR, your character and pendant can only last for LESS THAN A WEEK! Whereas CSR 2 beats you up, LGR not only does that, but it’s like they also throw you off a building and proceeds to stomp on you until you are incapacitated, and then doing the Griddy on you and tea-bagging you afterwards.

netmarble also gave out rewards to those who get the event character or pendant during the specific time period. 200 diamonds, as a reward. No, your eyes aren’t deceiving you. They give you 200 diamonds at the end of the event. Wow, that’s so wonderful! Suteki! Subarashi! 200 diamonds is given back to me after I spent TEN OF THOUSANDS OF DIAMONDS TO JUST GET THE FUCKING CHARACTER/PENDANT, YOU FUCKING MANIACS!

That’s right. At least ten thousand diamonds to get an event character or pendant. The gacha in this game is ungodly. So horrible it can compare with the likes of other disgusting gacha games such as Jurassic World The Game and Mahjong Soul. netmarble never give you the things you need, like the event materials. Instead, they LOVE to give you gold, and it’s not even high amounts of it. You need to save up to get the cards or pendants you want, which is almost impossible because of the powerful stuff in the game and netmarble refuses to give you any diamonds. Stingy company.

If you truly desire to get something you really want or need in this game, you have to spend money. Let me tell you, it’s not a small amount. 880 diamonds costs about 75 bucks, and as I said before, you need at least ten thousand diamonds to get an event character or pendant. That equates to NINE HUNDRED DOLLARS! ONE HUNDRED AWAY FROM A THOUSAND DOLLARS! Remember when I said Mahjong Soul’s developers are crazy and are hunger’s next contestants? netmarble makes MS developers look like well-to-do people. netmarble is like that one beggar sitting in the train station asking for money, and have no home to live in. It’s like they’re about to die from stage 4 cancer, and the last thing they could do is to suck people’s money out of their wallet through pity.

Even the event packs never help. They seem to give you a lot for a low price, but the rates in those things are just horrendous too. I’ll give an example. For a character event, you usually need to get their material cards, and it consists of four different types. They’ll give you the one same type for at least 20 times. It’s not like you could do much with it either. You could combine two of the same type at max level to get a S+ character, which will most probably give you nothing 99.9% of the time. If you can’t, then that becomes level fodder. Wow, imagine spending all those money and diamonds to not get the event character in time, and then A NEW OVERPOWERED ONE APPEARS RIGHT AFTER. Motivational. Awe-inspiring. Jaw-dropping. I have never seen such a greedy game corporate before, but here I am.

Its gacha aspects are downright abhorrent, monstrous, and detestable. It’s so appalling to see how so many people are still supporting this game with the amount of abominable in-app purchases and events they have. You could better spend money elsewhere, like start a business, go on a holiday trip, or even treat yourself well with it, instead of wasting it on a shitty game like this.

Oh boy, you thought I was done with this review? I only went through its gacha aspects. I haven’t even gotten to the gameplay yet, and I’m raging from even talking about ONE part of the game. That’s how bad this game is. I know it’s boring to see me type ‘this game is bad’ so many times, but I can, and I will, prove to you why this is one of the most atrocious games out there.

I remembered when I first played it in 2014, it was a fairly balanced game. As long as you have decent characters and pendants, have the knowledge on how to pair them up well, and learnt how to control the dice, you can still win the game. Last time, B-class characters can even win an A-class or A+-class. Why? Because with the right pendants and knowing when to utilize it, you could master the game. When netmarble added S-class and S+-class, it was still fine. Just a grade up. Expected. Like every other game too. My favorite games like the mobile port of Injustice Gods Among Us and Azur Lane have various rarities too that were added overtime and are way better, like Metal Rare and Ultra Rare respectively. They look more cooler and are much more powerful.

It’s all fair and games until netmarble decided to amp up the S+-characters. From having very good abilities, to excellent, to god-like. The kind that newbies and F2Ps can’t beat AT ALL. netmarble realized if they released stronger and stronger characters and pendants overtime, people would want them so that they could win the game, and thus fork out money to buy the materials from them. It is never a fair match anymore. You can’t rely solely on dice control like you used to, and returning players who had the best set-up last time can’t even hold a candle to those who spend money to get the newest characters and pendants. It’s all about luck now, and I hate it when a game and a win is based on pure luck, not even skills. It’s not a fun game anymore. It’s a guessing game resulting in life or death, like those trying to hit jackpot in casinos.

Well, here comes the twist of the decade. Turns out that besides having overpowered characters and pendants, you need to have luck. Wow, Noah, didn’t you say this is a luck-based game already? Correct. Did I also say that overpowered characters and pendants can win? Yes, I did. But I did not say it’s a guaranteed win when you go against others who have WAY MUCH MORE than you. First, let me you show you what I mean.

This is what I have. Decent pendants, and a top tier character. As you can see on the second picture, it is the top 7th card to have the highest win rate, which means it’s pretty god darn powerful. Right? Take a look at this.

Wow, looking the best, isn’t it? 8 games, and I only won 2 of them. *chef’s kiss* Really satisfying to see this, right? Yeah, right. As satisfying as watching myself get back my exam results and see that I fail. Even though I have one of the best characters in the game, and pretty good pendants, I can still get this win rate, which is horrid. You wonder why I keep losing? Well, it totally might not be because I get matches like this.

The opponents I’m up against…is the character with the highest win rate, AKA the most powerful character in the game, and a person who cashed in the game to get that costume. Believe me, it does not come cheap. What about my team? It’s a character…with the 50th highest win rate. Great team-up, am I right?

The matchmaking here is horribly sickening and nightmarish that it could go toe to toe with Brawl Stars’s matchmaking. Somehow, this game always team me up with the worst of players, and pit us against people with high status and credit cards in their wallets. If that’s not enough, my teammate would do something foolish like straight up just stepping onto my opponent’s land and not stepping on the land I recommended to them to have a higher chance of winning.

You know the percentages on the abilities? See that 65% right there? Yeah, lemme tell you, that 65% is a fucking lie. It’s just there for show, to make the character look all good and fancy. In reality, this shit doesn’t even activate HALF THE GODDAMN TIME EVEN THOUGH IT’S MORE THAN 50% POSSIBILITY while somehow, my opponent with 45% rate to activate the ability PROCS IT THREE TIMES IN A ROW.

Luck. I can’t stress this enough. This game has become purely luck-based. The dice control does whatever it wants to do, and wherever it wants you to go. Whether you have an ability that helps the dice control or not, the game does not give one fuck about it. You have to hope for the best that you do not step into the opponent’s 1 billion toll land or the opponents step into your measly 64 million toll land. I have a better chance praying to the gods for peace and prosperity than to pray for this game to make me win. I have more luck trying to figure out the 6x6 ghost master rubik’s cube than my character or pendant activating their abilities. I’d rather do push-ups with a person sitting on my back while I clap each time I go up than to play this unforsaken, loathsome, dreadful game.

netmarble really outdid themselves on this one. They made majority of the whole community hate this game. Job well done, netmarble. The App Store and Google Play states that the game is 4 out of 5 stars based on its reviews, but don’t be fooled by the surface. In fact, netmarble hid many negative comments talking about how unfair this game is, and only showed the good ones. Pfft. Typical move of a shitty company. All those giving it 5 star reviews are either those who are good at the game as they have the most overpowered characters and pendants because they spent their whole life savings on it, or they are the members of the team who worked on this piece of shit.

Let’s Get Rich? If they meant it for themselves, then that is a majestic and marvellous title they came up with. This game will only make you broke, feel hopeless, and lose all your sanity until you start paying money to the rapacious, avaricious, money-grabbing developers.

This game on the same level as Mahjong Soul, Harry Potter Hogwarts Mystery, and Brawl Stars. It’s THAT bad it makes CSR Racing 2 look like an angel. Fuck this game, and I hope it actually closes service one day and then delist itself from the stores.

You know what? I should go and play Monopoly. At least that doesn’t suck my money away, and it’s more fair and transparent, fucking greedy assholes.