Summary
Game of Thrones: Kingsroadlaunched in early access this week, becoming available to play exclusively viaSteam.Reviewsare mostly positive so far, with fans praising the story and open world. However, there are more than a few negative reviews, and they’re pretty much all complaining about the same thing: microtransactions.
Ultimately, many feel thatGame of Thrones: Kingsroad is a mobile game that just so happened to hit PC first due to its monetisation. Many feel that it’s too excessive, especially since the game is not free to play right now, with some going as far as labelling it pay to win.
To play Kingsroad in early access, you have to pick up one of three bundles. These range in price from £21.99 for the Standard Pack, to £77.99 for the Ultimate Pack. And yet, players are still facing charges once they start the game and are finding it frustrating.
The game will be free-to-play once it is out of early access.
“The cash shop destroyed the game for me. and I’ll never be able to finish the game because of that paywall,” reads a review from Steam user LeFrenchie. “Sure, you can farm it all in the game but this is futile.”
“As soon as I died and was asked to pay to be revived I quietly exited the game and refunded,” says julbug.
“After purchasing the game I still have to pay to fast travel?” agrees Onyma. “No thank you.”
Another aspect of all of this that players are finding frustrating is that the pre-order items that you are granted are tied to a single character, not your account. So you won’t be able to reuse them if you make a new character later on, as there is currently no way to share items between characters on the same account.
Many of the negative reviews complain that Kingsroad feels like a mobile game. Indeed, the game will be available on mobile when it fully launches later this year, and there’s no word on any console ports right now. There’s no date for its full release either, so we’ll just have to wait and see how the game progresses in early access.
