I feel like the developers tried to make a midpoint between an idle game and Facebook daily game and fundamentally misunderstood the appeal of both genres.
It's kind of really obnoxious that the game goes into scientific notation as soon as you hit the ten thousands. Like, writing out 3.417e+04 is *MORE* characters than just actually writing out 34170, and harder to immediately look at and grasp (at least, for me).
I think all of these games would be about a hundred times more playable to me if I didn't have to spend so much time WAITING. I can handle the time management, I can handle the tedium, I can handle the reflexes necessary, but... None of it matters when I have to stop playing your game for a solid 15 seconds so Dicktuck McYokel, wafflenazi extraordinaire can wordlessly inspect my work, give me a thumbs up and then drop his change into the tip jar like he's a sloth moving underwater on a high-speed camera. Like, seriously, I have eight pancakes burning on the griddle but this jerkass needs me to hold his hand while he takes a single bite of his food? Screw you, dude! Other people exist and they're also hungry! TAKE YOUR FOOD AND GET OUT.
Everything that can be said critically about the game has already been said, so... Can I just point out that I really like how this game handles ammo? It's always bugged me in a game when you reload a 30-round mag and your 21 remaining bullets just go into a free-floating pool of however much ammo. I know repacking your magazines isn't ever going to be a feature in most games since it's boring, but I like that here, if I reload a 25-round mag, my 9-round mag just goes back in my inventory as a chunk. And it's not just a blindly implemented design feature, since shotgun shells simply reload as much as possible. Small thing, but as someone who goes shooting IRL occasionally I really appreciated it and it occasionally adds a little depth when I'm planning out my strategy, since reloading won't always give me a full mag.
Cereals: I immediately placed an attacker next to the first crystal and sold my first plant. As soon as I had money, I placed down another attacker, sold my previous plant and repeated until I was in range of the last crystal. I used Meteor to nuke any crystals that hit the wells. Hope that helps!
I came from the future to warn you! This game is terrible, you're not winning anything, and the Yo Dawg quest is NOT worth three hours of your time spent playing this terrible game! Also it gave my dog cancer.
Oh man, "no whining"? Clearly Kongregate doesn't know us very well. It would take nothing short of divine intervention to get us to stop pissing and moaning.
Oh and yes, this badge is really freaking unfair and obnoxious. Grrr argh.
There are several cameo weapons.
To get them as easily as possible, go to the stage with the platforms over acid in Act III. Jump on the platforms on either side of the stage in the middle where you fight a wizard, a gnome and some bugs. There are three or four platforms in total, and there will be a cameo weapon on one.
If you want to see all of the cameo weapons, simply pause the game at that point and restart. When you enter the stage, there will be a new cameo weapon on one of the platforms. The platform the weapon is on changes every time.
The cameo weapons are:
The Kingdom Key from Kingdom Hearts
Kratos Blade from God of War
The Master Sword from Legend of Zelda
Sting (Frodos dagger) from Lord of the Rings
The Sword of the Ancients from Paladin
The Buster Sword from Final Fantasy VII
Frostmourne from Warcraft
and the lightsaber from Star Wars.
Have fun, happy hunting.
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