While I agree the mtx in the game are ridiculous and shouldn’t be in there, there isn’t really a massive cost to play it in the normal way, the items are not needed and are earned in game. I do feel ripped off about the deluxe edition though as nearly all the items included in it are single use which was not explained in the product description! There should be more noise about that.

• Fast travel usage for real money. You can buy one and one only port crystal for real money (yes one is too many). This is a fast travel marker where you can set one custom location to fast travel to, that can never be relocated. It isn’t a token to actually use fast travel, those must be earned in game (or just use the oxe cart routes which is another fast travel system). You can also earn port crystals to set fast travel markers in game as well. It does not cost real money to fast travel and you cannot spend to do so even if you wanted to.

• Buying an extra save slot for $2: There is no such dlc, this is completely made up. The game doesn’t let you start a new game/multiple saves even if you did want to pay for it (which is a really bad design decision, mad you can’t start a new game without messing around in the files).Buying extra lives instead of reverting to save.

• You can buy a maximum of 5 of these for real money (yes even one is too many). Total waste of money, you can earn them in game and they are rare (part of the game design), but it isn’t like people claim that the game is designed in a way to make you keep buying lives and spending all your real money.

• Paying real money to change your character: You can only buy this once and it’s single use (yes one is too many). You cannot pay again and get another even if you wanted to.

• Buying in-game currency. You can buy quite a lot of this (I think about $30 worth and not again) and ruin the game progression if you want to. Basically paying to cheat.

I’m not trying to defend their presence, they are a rip off, unnecessary and shouldn’t be in the game. It’s reasonable for people to complain about it. I’m Just trying to lay out what they actually are, rather than some of the clickbait rage on YouTube and blogs, which is exaggerated. The weird one save system and no way to restart is bizarre, but it’s not done to sell anything, it’s just a really weird decision.

Here is the proof you cannot pay more than once to change your character:

You can pay to do it once, but after that to do it again you will have to earn it in game like every other player. I can’t pay for it even if I wanted to as I already bought it once (included in the deluxe edition as a single use item, which is an issue in itself). It’s basically a way to piece meal buy the pre order bonuses and the deluxe edition items (for most of the items) at a higher price. You won’t see this mentioned in all the coverage about it though and would get savaged for trying to point it out on other platforms for supporting mtx in a full price game (which I’m not).