Game Review: Disney’s Enchanted Tales (Mobile – Free to Play)

A free to play, builder game from Disney, Enchanted Tales tries to draw you in by basing its gameplay on some of the more famous stories from the company. Namely Beauty & the Beast, Tangled & Frozen. As of right now (20th October 2016) these are the only three available with the promise of more to come in the future.

Not that it really matters as after 9 days of playing constantly (without spending a penny of real money) I had only just reached level 10 & the third story becomes available at level 13. Now you might think 10 levels in 9 days is pretty good however I reached level 6 within 2 days. From that point on it crawls along clearly trying to tempt you into speeding up things by spending money on the in-app purchases.

Before I get to that though, Enchanted Tales has some addictive gameplay, one that is so rewarding at first that it’s easy to become convinced that the game is not like all the rest.

Starting with the Beauty & the Beast story you build buildings from that world & welcome characters who can than do timed quests with coins & stars as a return. Some quests are story specific leading you through the plot of the movies. Again that sounds great, however after 9 days of playing I had progressed as far as Maurice (Belle’s father) entering the dark/forbidden forest. It’s painfully slow with so many extra story parts thrown in to drag the gameplay out & the timers are often laughably long. For example; it takes 3 hours for Maurice to enter the forest, 6 hours for Gaston to ‘hatch a plan’ or 12 for Rapunzel to make clothes.

Of course you can speed these up by spending the premium currency. All free to play games have them in some form & here they come in diamond shape. The usual extravagant prices come attached with the cheapest being 25 diamonds for £1.49 and the most expensive being 1560 for £39.99.

To put those prices into context if you were to spend £1.49 on getting 25 diamonds they would disappear very quickly. To finish Rapunzel’s ‘make clothes’ quest straight away would cost…24 diamonds. So that’s £1.49 to finish one quest quickly & what do you get in return? 116 coins & 58 stars.

Again to put those numbers in context 116 coins sounds like a lot however the printer, the latest unlockable building at level 10 in the Tangled story, costs a whopping 4,900 coins. The same goes for the stars. To reach level 11 from level 10 you need to earn a shocking 7140 stars and the longer the quest the more stars you get. 12 hours is the longest quest possible right now so the max you can earn at one time is 58 stars.

Don’t tell me this game doesn’t try to force you into paying real money. Just because it’s not in your face with its offers doesn’t mean it doesn’t restrict gameplay to such an extent that you’re either forced to pay or just stop playing (I advise the latter).

To make matters worse story progression is tied into levels too. I cannot progress the Tangled side of the story as I need to build a building that requires me to be level 11! If the gameplay was deeper you could argue that they deserve a little money as the game is good to look at & runs well but you just get such a poor return for what you pay. As always pure greed drives these games & I urge everyone to steer clear. It’s not for kids as they are way more likely to get frustrated with the limiting gameplay a long time before any adult does.

It should also be noted that you can speed up some quests (normally ones with less than an hour left) by watching video ads. You can also watch video ads to earn quick coins (75 at a time) but these are limited daily. The video also overrides your phones silent mode & crashes every so often too.