Palia

Greed Always had this as I "I'll come back to this when life calms down" game. But nah. Way too much greed. Shame, so many truly seem to love this game and the devs just kick them around. Paid storage is and always will be a "We are testing to see how much we can get away with" type of microtransaction that always leads to more in the worst of ways. It's been evident - and the video "Paylia" describes this beautifully, that this is no surprise and has been slowly creeping in for some time. Devs create the storage problem - sell the solution. Gross.

Paid storage (P2W)

They lied about not monetizing core aspects of the game. This used to be a cozy free to play game but now they put storage and plushies behind paywalls, also if you have a horse or more guess what riding them is also behind a paywall too. I now regret spending money on this game for cosmetics to give support to the creators who seem to have gone greedy for money. For now I recommend Starsand island for an actual free cozy game that doesn’t hide core gameplay behind paywalls.

I loved this game for the first 200 hours. It felt like they put time, effort and love into their world and their characters. Now, it is a barely functional, buggy disaster where the micro transactions and Cash Shop talk and everything else walks. Huge pass from me until something changes. Also, ranching is garbage.

Lied about microtransactions.

Used to love the game when it just came out (with 1000+ hours through their original launcher), but up until a few years (Daybreak take over) the game got ruined. First of all I don't mind spending some money on a game I love (strictly cosmetics), but the prices in this one are ridiculous. 30 euros for an outfit, or to have a chicken run next to me. Now also 125 euros for an additional 100k storage while free to play players only get 18k, with previously defending themselves that adding more storage capacity was tricky. Now 100k storage is suddenly doable?! But only if we are willing to pay 125!!!!! euros for it. The same with the courier pet, players who spend their hard earned real money on it have an advantage over those who don't or can't. Palia has become a pay to win model and it's ridiculous. Palia used to be cozy and it felt amazing to do anything we wanted. Now everything is locked behind the lunar paths/battle pass, and the store. In order to build the home with the housing and decor you want you need to first grind 500 hours to unlock it all. Then grind some more to actually build it, and grind more and more cause that is what the game has turned into. Even worse, if you don't have the time to play as much, or if something is locked behind the premium pass you can pay 20 to 30 euros to unlock it! Because they are thinking about us players who only have a few minutes to play. That's just plain narcistic reasoning. When I log on, I want to play the game as intented, cozy farming, building and decorating and gathering. Not this absurt grind to finally being able to get that recipe for the mindwill. Not to meniton the lack of storylines, quests and exploration. There is no attention to bug fixes, improving gameplay or the longevity of it. New main storylines take maybe 1 or 2 days to complete, and we wait a whole year just for that. The quests are always the same, too easy, so much dialog too little action and with every updates comes a ton of bugs. Meanwhile they claim to still be a "Beta". Newsflash, Palia is not in beta anymore. They stopped being a Beta game a long time ago. For new players this game may be a lot of fun, for vets- at least for me, it's a nightmare. I have officialy quit. Luckily there are plenty of other games that actually do deliver.

Paid storage

I Want to Love This Game, But I Can't Recommend It Right Now. The update cycle increasingly feels like: New update → new bugs → “We're investigating” → next update → new bugs → repeat. At some point, this stops being reassuring and starts becoming a pattern. Bugs happen. This is a huge live-service game, and I don't expect everything to work perfectly. But after around two years of beta, I expect the testing and development process to be improving. Some bugs are especially frustrating when they affect things players already paid for. S6 previously said they wanted to focus monetization on cosmetics, yet we're now getting paid storage. If you're going to charge players for features, those features need to work reliably. There are also issues with players not receiving titles and other rewards they're supposed to get. These aren't things that should repeatedly slip through testing. And whenever people bring up these problems, there's always the same response: “It's a free-to-play game, the devs need to eat!”, “It's still in beta!” How long can we keep using those arguments? Being in beta should mean the game is actively improving and the development process is getting more reliable. It shouldn't be a permanent excuse for recurring problems. Deadlock is a good example. It also chose the beta/early-development approach, yet still showed a huge amount of progress within its first year. The problem isn't that Palia is in beta. The problem is that the same patterns keep repeating. I don't expect Palia to be perfect. I just want better post-update testing and more consistency, especially when real money is involved. I really want Palia to succeed. There is a genuinely great game here, and a community that clearly cares about it. But that goodwill isn't unlimited. I'm leaving this as a negative review because I want to see the game improve, not because I want to see it fail. Right now, though, I simply can't recommend it.