Ginger

First of all, I think the ovenbreak gameplay is simpler. It’s simple enough to understand quickly while still having fun with it. The character powers are simple, too (to my knowledge? I don’t have all the characters so I could be wrong). At the end of the day, they boil down to collecting points, breaking obstacles, and going faster.

Kingdom added element typing years ago, and I still don’t get it. Yeah, it’s just Pokemon rules, but not everyone follows the Pokemon typing alignment! I’ve also never seen it used except for that boss rush event. And they just keep adding them. Pokemon at least holds your hand at the start of the game and explains to you what type advantages are (again, to my knowledge, I haven’t played every Pokemon game). What the fuck is a chaos type? Is it just an easier way to sort the cookies? Who’s gonna remember all of this??

Even then, crk is so much more complicated. Kt started out so simple, with lightning strikes and charging into the enemy. Now we’ve got about fifteen different status effects and paragraphs about what a cookie’s ability does. There’s over 160 cookies, I’m not about to read or memorize all of those abilities just to figure out which obscure character to use for one boss.

And that’s another thing! You have to unlock all these different characters just to do anything! Wanna get anywhere in the arena? You need the rarest characters at max level. You wanna be at this stage? You need a legendary character that just came out. I know gacha games are predatory, but I’ve literally never seen any other game paywall their shit to such a degree. Even Genshin Impact, which is the most predatory gacha game I know, doesn’t do that shit. Puzzles that require certain elements can either be gotten through a free character or the traveler, which requires a lot of time but no RNG. I shouldn’t need to be lucky or a whale to beat a stage of the MAIN STORY!

Another related thing, too many fucking characters. I get it, it’s a gacha game, but I don’t think a character should exist if you don’t plan on using it. Back to comparing it to ovenbreak, I’ve seen most, if not all, characters used at some point, whether it be a cameo in a cutscene or the actual story. What’s the fucking point of the citrus cookies? Taking up storage?

That’s a good Segway into how often this game crashes. I’ve been playing ovenbreak for at least a year or two now, and it’s barely ever crashed on me. Kingdom has had a constant crashing problem for years, for as long as I remember playing it. It got so bad that several people (me included) couldn’t even play the game for most of the last update. It would crash immediately. My phone heats up so fast playing crk that I think I could cook my breakfast on it. When I first tried genshin impact, I got it on my phone first to see if I’d like it. Can somebody explain to me how a 3d open world game with good graphics is somehow able to run smoother on a phone than cookie run kingdom? Genuinely.

Somehow the ovenbreak gameplay feels more engaging. Maybe the auto mode is what’s ruining it, maybe the repetitiveness, but if it were that then ovenbreak shouldn’t be more engaging because it’s arguably more repetitive. In kingdom you don’t really have to think much, you just da pawn buttons. Ovenbreak makes you use at least some of your brain power because you have to pay attention. Maybe if the core story was more like the mycookie adventure mini game we can sometimes play, it’d be different. It couldn’t have taken them several years to figure out how a joystick works. It also took several years to figure out how to make their game not crash every five minutes, so maybe I’m just stupid.

The story. Do I even have to mention the story? I’m gonna. Any time I look over at the ovenbreak fandom, I never see any complaints. Are we just the ungrateful younger siblings compared to them? Maybe, or maybe they’ve just never had an ending to an arc in their game about hope and friendship that accidentally promotes suicide.

I think the only bad thing I’ve heard about Ovenbreak was their yougurca update, which.. I have no defense for, holy shit.