Order Up!: Trading Legend (and microtansaction exhaustion)
By Rae
If you’ve played any mobile games with ads recently, you’ve almost certainly seen the ones for Trading Legend – a resource-collecting sim from 37Games. It’s sort of impossible not to, with how often they pop up across everything from Duolingo to PocketLove. While I don’t normally do many mobile game reviews, I’ve been asked about this one enough now – by popular demand, let’s talk about Trading Legend!
Mobile game ads can be questionable, and Trading Legend’s are no exception – they don’t show any accurate gameplay. The most common ads portray a choice-based game where you learn as you go and your choices affect your success or failure. What you actually get is pretty much a resource-collection idle game. In fact, I haven't seen a single ad that actually shows the real Trading Legend gameplay (a common complaint you'll see in the app store).
You’ll be doing a lot of tapping, building up items, and spending those items to increase your income. As your income increases, so does your level and your power. There are a lot of aspects to keep track of – traveling, starting a harem (I ended with 20 wives), raising children, increasing the wealth of your retainers, building shops, doing guild escorts… There’s a lot to do.
Regardless of its inaccurate advertisements, Trading Legend does a good job of not being boring since there are so many bits and pieces to check in on. They also put up new mini-games every few days, which have different types of gameplay. Unfortunately it has one issue that’s way too overbearing to focus on anything else – 37Games really, really seems to want players that are willing to pay out constantly.
Is Trading Legend fun even without opening your wallet? Sure! But it’s fun in the same way it might be fun to go to Disneyland without being able to go on any of the rides or enter any restaurants or pick up merchandise. Sure you’re there, and sure there are things you can do to stay occupied, but you’re missing such a huge piece of the experience that there’s only really so long you can hang out before you’re tempted to double-check your budget and see if maybe you actually can afford a little something…
The breaking point for me was the Toy Store event, for which I really, really wanted the beauty reward. The minigame for it is a match-3, which I’m pretty good at. In fact, I had no issues being on the leaderboard top 50, since I checked the game constantly to see if my stamina had refreshed, and threw all of my saved-up gold into it. If you have saved up resources it helps a lot – but there’s a catch. You’re limited to how many stamina items you can buy per day with gold. In this case, 10. Want to keep going? You’ll need to spend actual money on the event packs, ranging from $0.99 to $99.99. Considering that buying the max stamina daily didn’t even get me halfway to the reward, I expect you’d need one of the more expensive packs for sure.
I’m okay with paying for my entertainment. Work goes into games. Time goes into them. Effort. Money. I have no issue with a purchase here or there, and quite often am willing to make microtransactions in games I love.
But the microtransactions in Trading Legend really aren’t optional if you want to play the game to its full extent. Want to be in the top of the rankings? You’ll definitely need to shell out. Guilds are also rewarded based on how many players purchase “top-up packs.” Players get a little “VIP” ranking badge based on how much they’ve spent and can unlock extra privileges like certain types of autoplay. Since VIP levels come with exclusive retainers and beauties, they also directly affect your in-game income, which easily helps you move up the rankings at a pace that free-to-play players simply can’t match. Higher-income players can kick lower-level players off projects and destroy them in any guild versus guild content, affecting how much they can earn in terms of rewards.
The main pay-for currency, gold, is something you can get through regular gameplay too in small amounts, which is good considering you require it to attend feasts, do guild constructions, and buy items from traders. It does quickly run out however, especially if you use any in an event. It all just becomes really tiring, really fast. I don’t want to feel like I have to keep spending to enjoy something.
One thing I do want to mention is I loved the community – I played with some people who were genuinely helpful and chatty. We helped each other get achievements and sent letters back and forth after becoming in-laws. I was kind of sad to leave some of them behind and left a goodbye message to my guild wishing them luck.
All in all I had a good time playing Trading Legend for a few weeks, but hit the point where I knew I wouldn’t be happy constantly seeing all the things I’d never be able to earn, no matter how long I saved up gold or how much time I spent. I knew I wouldn’t be happy knowing I couldn’t do most of the things needed to help my guild out because I wasn’t spending.
If you have the cash to burn, I think Trading Legend can be a lot of fun, but for me the expectation to continually buy packs and items just to play the game really ruined a lot of the fun for me. Would I recommend it? Maybe, depending on your stance on these things. Would I play it again? Nah – I’ll save my money for other things.