This game is so dope. It’s pretty much the best thing ever.

I discovered this game at a time about a year ago when I found myself playing Tales of Symphonia (I think that’s the one, there’s a handful of Tales games and I only ever finished Phantasia on the SNES). What I really wanted to play was something like LotRO, but I just couldn’t articulate it to myself yet.

AFK Arena is like an RPG in the sense that you get characters that you can level up and improve their skills and equip some gear. There’s not really levels, it’s just fights after fights after fights, with some bosses sprinkled in.

Considering what a basic concept it is, and the fact that it’s made by Chinese people, you have to give them a lot of credit for the job they’ve done staying creative and current.

And even though it constantly asks for your money, you actually end up getting a boatload of free diamonds anyway so the grind factor is lower than at first glance. Like, after struggling on a certain level for weeks I finally won and my reward was a special $49.99 package purchase. Or take for example the merchant page that you have to visit everyday to collect rewards, especially the free Elite soulstones. You also get diamonds pretty much everytime the server goes down for any reason besides routine maintenance. And hotfixes, of which there are many. Sometimes for something as simple as cosmetic and linguistic errors. It’s easier to overlook the constant In-your-face offers to buy diamonds and other items when you also get a lot of freebies regularly.

Oddly enough I find the subscription to be the most useless thing to purchase. I feel like the little benefit you do get, like what is it a few extra gold pieces and hero essence? I feel like the same amount of money could be better applied in the game’s store more effectively.

Also be sure to do math on all diamond purchases, it doesn’t scale up in cost-effectiveness as you would expect because that’s how all games do it. Nope, not AFK, we want you to accidentally overpay…if you can even keep track of every single offer’s relative net value in relation to every other.

Talked a lot about money already, but that’s a major aspect to it. The game is nice in that you progress automatically, and your Chest will accumulate up to however many hours worth of stuff depending on your Player level. Or VIP level I mean. Oh and VIP points can be gotten free, too, they just come more slowly (obviously).

The game itself requires only about 5-10 minutes a day, depending on whether or not the Labyrinth is up. Granted initially there is the time it takes to learn and familiarize yourself. Usually about however long it takes for you to start ignoring people’s advice and learn the hard way. Oh yeah, the other people.

AFK Arena is really just a chat app, with a game as a facade. See, it appears to be the other way around, until you start chatting. It’s important to be in an active language channel you can understand to get the codes. The codes are just more free stuff. Love some codes. There’s even codes only available to new players for a limited time. So much of this game is easier when you just accept what other people say you should do early on…but let’s face it, most of us won’t listen anyway.

FIghts are 5v5, and there’s like 90 characters or something. They seem to release more regularly, almost the point of too many (Not quite, but almost). If you expect there to be basically a handful of toons that get copied and tweaked, well you’re mostly wrong. These avatars don’t F around, they got their own personalities, hopes, and dreams. And having the right combination of abilities is often more important than sheer dps.

I find the game to be fun for 10-20 minutes at a time. The dailies are super fast and easy to do (with the Labyrinth taking the longest but also being the most fun one to do, and only once every 2 days), and the progression feels like it’s always moving, even if only a little. It’s almost if the designers embrace the fact that this is a mobile app and play to it as a strength.

This right here, this chat screen. Yeah. If you aren’t all about chatting, you will be. It’s easy to get lost in the world of AFK Arena chat. Highly recommend. I like sending unsolicited pictures to people.

LOL NO WAY this just happened, 9:58PM 10/10/2020 I was finishing the above image and text, getting ready to play LotRO, and I notice on the TV there’s a commercial for AFK Arena that says “Cheat on Your RPG”. Wow. Proof of God’s intelligent design?