Gamer reviews for Taichi Panda

In the World of Pandas, Taichi Panda is King

Created by Snail Games and released this week in the US, Taichi Panda will transport you to a world full of bloodthirsty demons, giant pigs and some just all-around bad guys. Your job, of course, is to be the hero and vanquish every last one of them. But far from being a game solely designed for dungeon-crawling destruction, Taichi Panda offers players an entire online community and a host of side quests to keep the action going.

The game is free to play for Android and Apple users and will not beg you to buy anything. Really. I promise. No one jumps at the chance to play a "free" game anymore, mostly because they are (almost) without exception actually free. When you set aside time to play a game, you want to play it until you are starving, exhausted and practically blind, right? Of course you do! Developers of free-to-plays know that your time is precious and charge you for it. Taichi Panda is, so far, the only exception I've found. Can you exchange your rent payment for in-game currency? Absolutely! Will it advance your game play faster than old fashioned experience grinding and pillaging? Not significantly! None of the in-game currencies (and there are several of them) cannot be earned by regular game play and they are earned in quantities significant enough to make even avid free-players happy.

The game is rated 12+ on the App Store and for a game about a panda, does display quite a bit of gratuitous violence and even the occasional scattering of entrails throughout the battle sequences. So, parents be warned.

The game begins by the player signing up for a Snail account to save progress and choosing a server. The game has been wildly popular in its previous continental releases with the US being the newest, so the US server is currently the least busy. Be warned, the game does require a WiFi or cellular connection to access all of the features. Each player is allowed to select one character at a time, but can play any of the three available. An account can store info for all three characters, but weapons and items earned in game are non-transferable this includes any event prizes or PvP rewards.

The three characters offer different learnable skills and available weapons, but the chosen character does not effect the (easily skip-able) story mode significantly and other than user-preference the three are similar in ability right off the bat.

The game begins with a five level comprehensive tutorial and then drops the character off to begin raiding, upgrading, and leveling to their heart's content. One of the best and most addicting features of the game is the constant supply of loot available. Just about every action in game earns the player a reward. There are daily tasks updated every 24 hours to be completed for prizes, completing the plot episodes earns the player prizes on top of loot won during gameplay, logging in and staying online earns prizes, leveling up earns prizes - the list could go on, but it won't for time reasons.

The graphics in the game are flawless. They are beautifully animated in 3-D and create a rich and engaging atmosphere for this anything, but average mobile game. The quality mirrors that of a typical console game and is a sharp contrast to the "less is more" quality of many apps available.

This game is what every MMO fan has been wishing for on their mobile device. It is quick enough to play while waiting for the bus (most levels must be completed in five minutes or less) and addicting enough to continue playing in place of a traditional console game. With online multi-player and a constant flow of events, this game has the potential to be a constant favorite on many devices for a long time.