So the Wii’s new downloadable game service started today and as I was poking through the initial titles Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles: My Life as a King stood out. I checked for a little bit more information online since both the information in WiiWare and the video channel was particularly vague and I was told it was a game about being a king of one of those RPG kingdoms. It involved building up my own kingdom and sending out people on quests. It sounded a lot like a PC strategy game I used to enjoy so I figured that was the game for me to try out the service.
So I buy my 2000 points for the 1500 point game since I had 400 points and you can only buy in increments of ten dollars (already annoying but that’s a given with these online services). I then choose to buy the game and after I select it I’m informed that additional purchases are required to access some features. This wasn’t listed in the product description or the information I checked online. Well I’m committed now so I download it anyway with the intention of never buying another add on.
Still out of curiousity I looked at what the additional content to purchase was. There were two that might be considered proper additions: a new set of dungeons for $3 and a race track for $8 (the price of another Wii Ware game). The rest of it are things like minor graphical changes for $1. But to get the content you’d have to spend around $25 on your $15 game.
I know it’s been popular lately to try to quietly drain gamer’s wallets with “additional content” that is in total is priced astronomically higher than the original game content. It’s a perversion of the classic idea of the expansion pack by sneaking a small “expansion pack” out one bit at a time and hoping no one adds up the total. And My Life as a King might be the worst offender I’ve ever encountered.
(Oh, after half an hour or so the game is kind of cute; I wish it was more open than it is but I don’t have any major complaints.)