Up until now, we’ve explained how Candy Crush Saga works, as well as outlined the potential costs of playing it. Now, it’s time to look at the high points and low points of the game, and determine whether it will be a sweet escape for you, or just leave you with a toothache. Here’s our analysis of the game’s pros and cons.
Pros
-
Free to play — Candy Crush Saga costs no money to download and install, and most of the game can be played while avoiding in-app purchases.
-
Varying elements demand differing strategies — Though the gameplay of Candy Crush Saga is rather simple, its constantly-evolving mechanics create increasingly complex challenges. Time and move limits, obstacles that block off parts of the game board, and secondary objectives to fulfill add up to a game that pushes your brain to the limit and seldom gets boring!
-
Boosters are here to help — As you play, you can unlock, earn, and buy special game pieces and functions that will help you complete the game’s levels more easily. If you’re stuck on a particularly difficult level, try using one of these “boosters”. It may just give you the edge that you need to move forward!
-
A saga of epic proportions — Candy Crush Saga currently has over 2500 levels, and is constantly adding more, so there’s almost always a new challenge waiting around the corner for you!
Cons
-
You only live five times — Each time you fail a level’s objective(s) in Candy Crush Saga, you lose a life. You can only have five lives at a time (unless you find a booster that gives you infinite lives for a certain amount of time), and once they’re gone, you can no longer play the game. You must either wait for your lives to replenish (at a rate of one every 30 minutes), or contact your friends on Facebook through the game and ask them to give you extra lives.
-
Tickets, please — After you complete the first three sets of levels, you need a set of 3 tickets to unlock each proceeding set of levels. To get them, you must send requests to your friends on Facebook through the game, buy and spend gold bars, or complete a set of three “Mystery Quests”. (“Mystery Quests” are levels from previous sets that have higher target scores, and can only be completed once every 24 hours.)
The bottom line: 8/10
Candy Crush Saga is a simple “match-three” game on the surface, but the more you play it, the more complex it gets. Secondary objectives, obstacles on the board, and other gameplay-altering elements — coupled with time and move limits — will keep you entertained and force you to flex your brain muscles. Fortunately, you’ll have plenty of help in the form of “boosters”, functions that give you special game pieces or let you break the game’s rules in order to have an advantage in clearing those tough levels. And there are a lot of levels to clear, so your candy-crushing adventure will last quite a while.
One of the most disliked parts of Candy Crush Saga is the “lives” system, in that if you fail to clear levels too often, you will run out of lives and no longer be able to play the game. This can be remedied, however, by asking friends on Facebook for more lives, buying more lives with in-game currency, or simply waiting for lives to replenish. Still, it’s a hassle that disrupts the flow of the game.
Another annoying game element that disrupts Candy Crush Saga’s flow is the “tickets” system, in that you must collect tickets in order to advance to the later stages of the game. Tickets can be bought with in-game currency, received from friends on Facebook, or earned by completing three “Mystery Quests” (though you can only complete one every 24 hours).
Overall, Candy Crush Saga is a simple yet challenging puzzle game that is as vast as it is charming. Its strengths lie in its scope, the variability of its levels, and the numerous creative aids that it allows the player to earn or buy and use in order to progress. Its main drawbacks are in the annoying-to-negotiate hurdles to progressing in the form of the “lives” system and the “tickets” system, and how in-your-face the game is about buying in-game currency or connecting with friends on Facebook to overcome these hurdles.
That’s our verdict on Candy Crush Saga. But you don’t have to take our word for it if you don’t want to… go ahead and play the game yourself! It’s free, after all! Our next tutorial will show you how to get started by downloading and installing Candy Crush Saga on your mobile device.
