I'm a big fan of the *Monkey Ball
series, but I'm seriously disappointed by the way SEGA has handled the DLC for the latest instalment. It's left me feeling frustrated and cheated.
My main gripe is that the DLC, which I paid for, wasn't included from day one. Tails, a character who was already in the previous *Monkey Ball
game, is missing from the base game. While I understand that the art style is different and they might have needed to create a new model, they could have easily reused the existing animations. It's not like Tails has unique moves or anything; he's just a character with slightly different stats.
What really grinds my gears is the absence of costumes at launch. This isn't like *Smash Bros.*, where they're adding entire movesets, dealing with licensing rights, composing new music, and designing whole stages. These costumes were likely already created for previous games. Withholding them just feels like a cynical cash grab.
Honestly, SEGA has been knocking it out of the park with their games since 2021, but their pricing strategy is getting out of hand. Every game seems to have a "Deluxe Digital Edition" that costs an extra ten quid, even though the base game shouldn't even be sixty pounds to begin with. It's always just cosmetics and extra content, but it's cool enough that you feel pressured to buy it to get the most out of the game.
The fact that they're withholding content that was probably already finished for no reason is unacceptable. By the time they add the stuff I've already paid for, I'll have moved on to something else. It's a real shame because I genuinely enjoy the game, but this practice makes it hard to support SEGA moving forward.