I am addicted to PAD. To the point of playing it the moment I wake up to heading to bed. I find myself wandering between classes thinking about my pets, who needs skill ups and if I have the correct fodder for an evo.
PAD explores a weird grey area between simple puzzler and mobile RPG. The gameplay is quite simple. You get a starter pet (similar to Pokemon in the sense that you choose a fire/water/grass starter) and then collect other pets as you advance through the dungeons. You fight your way through dungeon levels by matching orbs — the player drags orbs around the screen making as many combos as possible.
Like the Candy Crush Saga, PAD is free to play — the monetary aspect comes in with ‘magic stones’ the in-game currency that allows you to buy more spaces in your pet collection, add more than 50 friends and roll in the rare egg machine that can deliver incredibly powerful pets. The game doesn’t really force the idea of purchasing stones at you — you know it is there if you need it, but there are no pop ups demanding purchase. I’ve never purchased any stones, and thus far have been able to make it to rank 166 with many powerful pets — but from what I’ve seen online, this is not the norm — GungHo is making tons of cash off of in app purchases.
An entire database has been created for the game, along with dozens of different forums. Friend finders have been established that connect players across the world and allow one another to use their lead monsters in each dungeon.
Unfortunately, the chat/mail element of the game is a bit clunky — improvement here — upping the community and creating more social game-play would make PAD a fully immersive experience.
I can’t quite put my finger on why I like and play this game so much. Maybe it is because many of my friends play and we discuss strategy and level ups while relaxing at the end of the day, or because it provides both a simple game to play while waiting in the dining hall line and also a long term time all-consuming strategy game for my mind to mull over all day long.
Anyway, they just released a new update so I’m going to go ulti-evo my siren now and try and wreck Zues Descended.