MASS FOR THE DEAD – 2020 First Impressions and Thoughts

This one was a little weird for me. I’ve watched the Overlord Anime, and I’ll admit, it was pretty enjoyable. I’m a huge fan of Anime with MMO themes after all. It’s actually one of my favorite Anime genres, and is partly responsible for the creation of the MMOByte channel.

Like every mobile RPG, you’re introduced to the game with a small narrative, explaining what the game is about, more or less. After which you’re shown a beautiful cinematic introducing some of the characters.
They give you the option to skip the tutorial if you like, which is something I appreciate. If you’ve played a video game before in your life, you know, for the most part, how every title works.
After the tutorial, you’re thrown directly into the game. And.. yeah. This is where it got a little weird for me.

Like every RPG, there’s a menu that allows you to choose between each and every Chapter you’ve unlocked. I unlocked up until Chapter 4 before I stopped recording, because honestly, and I know some of you will hate me for saying this, but I felt like I wasn’t accomplishing anything.
Every episode within a given Chapter had a story that you could download or skip, which is.. weird. It left me feeling disconnected from the game, as I’d have to sit through a download before every single episode. Some of them were small 3MB downloads, others were much larger 30MB downloads.
I don’t know if there’s an option somewhere to actually disable that and download the entire game – that was what I wanted to do and what I normally do in mobile games.
Regardless, I sat through some of the story, the rest I opted to skip because with 8 episodes per chapter, and 4 chapters so far, that’s over 32 different, separate downloads. That was just too much for me.

After sitting through each download, there were a series of 3 successive battles. And unlike other games that make you play through some of the game before unlocking auto-play at a certain level, MASS FOR THE DEAD allows you to auto-play right from the first moment you step into it.
So that’s what I let it do. Unfortunately I didn’t find any real connection or attachment to any of my characters, ’cause they were all robed men. Which is fine, but when I went to summon new heroes, I was met with a wall that didn’t let me summon even a first hero without using paid currency.
Which is an instant turn-off for me, as I don’t want to have to pay for characters to use in combat. This took me a minute to learn as I thought the in-game currency was what I required, as it shares the exact same model with the paid currency.

Overall, I feel as though I spent my time in-game letting it play completely for me.
I didn’t want to download every episode’s story before playing it because I have limited time and did this while not directly connected to my wi-fi as I was in my car at the time.
Then the battles were all pretty much the same enemy type with the same backgrounds. For 4 chapters straight. Who thought that was a good idea?
Again, I’m a fan of the Anime and knowing this is done by the original creator is awesome. Now if only it were a good game actually worth playing.

I know some of you will hate me for saying this and automatically dislike the video after hearing this, but I’ve just seen much better games – and this, being based on a franchise I enjoy, is just so disappointing.