Yikes, I can see why this one got cancelled. There's a decent amount to unpack here.

1. Microtransactions, holy hell. You can't even get additional "fightlings" without a 5 dollar paywall, as there doesn't seem to be a way to get them through the game itself. The grind is awful, but don't worry, for 11 DOLLARS PER ARMOR/WEAPON you can skip the grind!
2. Game design. The game doesn't seem to be very clear about what is what right now, I often just couldn't find my teammates to group up with during a match.
3. Game Balance. Stun mechanics are insanely strong and lock you from doing absolutely everything, which results in extremely unfun gameplay. Stamina Potions are both a requirement to keep up attacks and are simply too good as you can literally stunlock people with the talons. Also the Rogue is trash.

NINJA KIWI FOR THE LOVE OF GOD, PLEASE HIRE MORE MARKETING AND QA PEOPLE. Even if this game was advertised, people would realize pretty quickly that it isn't worth their time. You need more development time for things like this.

I have been holding off on this review for a good while, because I loved what I played of this game and didn't want to contribute to the pile of negative reviews, but with the broken state that this game launched in, I also couldn't genuinely recommend it in good faith. Now that the game is officially shutting down in under 3 days from when this is written, the time has come. Consider this less a review and more a postmortem of a game that had lots of potential but needed more time in the oven, as well as more attention from its developers.

I'm not much of a PvP fan, and MOBA style games are especially not my cup of tea. Those types of games are usually very competitively focused, but this offered a more casual, laid-back, low-stakes experience in the genre. This was also supposed to be the first MMOBA, or Massive Multiplayer Online Battle Arena (that I am aware of), since it supported 100-man lobbies, but it never really got there unfortunately. Regardless, when I played this game for the first time, I saw the potential right when I clicked "FIGHT" and was immediately dropped into a match.

But with all the bugs it had, including game-breaking ones that led to crashes, as well as no clear tutorial for new players, it wasn't going to work if it wasn't updated fast. The balancing was mostly fine, there were only 2 things that were definitively overpowered: the Crown modifier and the Mage's ice weapon. Alas, the game was released in this state right as the dev team went on holiday, which meant there was nobody there to give it the love and care it truly deserved. And once they came back, they just left it to die, rather than fix the issues that prevented it from reaching its true potential. This 100% should have been an Early Access launch rather than a full release. That way, players would have had more grace in their judgment.

Overall, I'm glad I got to experience this game, but heartbroken that I'll never get to experience its true potential. If only this game had just been updated and marketed properly, it could've been something big. But I guess we'll never see that now, unfortunately. I was excited for something new from Ninja Kiwi that wasn't Bloons or Zombie Assault, and I was as willing to leave my comfort zone as they were here, but now my faith in their ability to deliver going forward has fallen. That being said, I'd like to commend them for taking the risk with something new, even if it didn't get the attention it should have.