Warbands: Bushido

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Hours played at review time, across 41 reviews with recorded playtime.

[quote][b][url=https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microtransaction]Warning: Microtransaction infested mobile app![/url][/b] This game is infested with a toxic mobile app style cash shop. You will be prompted to and expected to give money to the developers through this cash shop to buy in-game goods so you can play the game.[/quote] "Warbands: Bushido" is one of thousands of nasty mobile apps infesting the "free" section of Steam, but it's not really free. This was made to look like an old tabletop board + dice game with a Japanese theme, but as with all mobile apps that's not really what it was all about... in order to get anywhere in this turn based tactical strategy skin stretched over a mobile app, you have to have the best units, and in order to get the best units, yep, you have to pay up big time for the mobile devs, they want your money. There's only a superficial game here. The game visuals and the game itself are incredibly shallow... think of them as the too-bright, colourful, thin plastic cabinet dress theme on a poker machine at the casino. That's basically what this is. So really, the mobile app "game" is just a veneer, a thin skin wrapped around a nasty, predatory mobile app cash shop. Putting that toxic mobile app monetisation aside... this is a mobile app. I didn't spend thousands on a gaming PC so I could pretend it's an iPhone, and I don't think you did either... this kind of mobile app has no place in your Steam library. To add insult to injury, this P2W mobile cancer was put up as a PAID product on Steam... that's right, the mobile devs wanted TEN UNITED STATES DOLLARS before you can even download this toxic mobile app cash shop. Disgusting. Ten bucks for a mobile app. As with all mobile scams, you're forced to sign a highly questionable yet legally unenforceable End User License Agreement... for such a relatively low effort, low quality mobile app, this is specifically designed to invalidate your consumer rights and destroy your right to privacy. This agreement includes questionable requirements that may attempt to revoke consumer law protections that gamers expect to have, which is also highly problematic. Developers must learn they are here to serve gamers, not control them. I had my cat walk over the keyboard while the EULA was displaying, which fixed that problem for me. This game is fairly dated at 8 years old... and even back then it looked old and busted compared to contemporary, professionally made 3D games of the same period. It looked bad then, it looks worse now. On pricing, this is "free" enough, at least you won't be expected to spend any more money after you download this, but just because something is free doesn't mean it's good, and the cost of a game is more than just financial, your time is valuable too. Bearing in mind that free games don't add +1 to your game collector count, should you bother adding this to your library and downloading it? Nope. This isn't worth downloading. There's no financial cost up-front, but you'd still be spending your time and a little hard drive space on a product that's far from the best. There's thousands of better alternatives on Steam.