RE: When Games Waste Your Time Through Pointless Gatekeeping

I love it when games (not just mobile games) do their marketing based on the dozens and dozens of hours of gameplay they'll give you; then the majority of those hours are things like forcing the player character to work painfully slowly through certain segments (As thought to enforce the impact of the story beats at that time) - when allowing the player to "See" or rather be "shown" the impact through their own eyes.

When games take away agency to extend their play time, it isn't quality gaming time, or good game design.

My favourite games have none of that crap; they're all about how I am interacting with the world and what I am experiencing at a given moment.

This is why I never play mobile games. They're all badly designed with no intent outside of making money. They're not art.