I've played one too many games with these exact same mechanics but this one is by far the worst. Some levels are absolutely impossible to pass without trying 100 times so you get the right blocks or by using resources which one or two "events" aside you can only get by spending money. Which brings me to to the gacha system which exists for what exactly? It's not giving me anything useful. And the decorations it gives so you can make your scenario pretty like CRK aren't that appealing and that ones that do something useful are absolutely impossible to get and have limited uses like, what?

man what are we even doing here. ive played about 400 levels and this is one of the worst designed puzzle games as well as gacha games i’ve ever seen. there’s barely any replenishable resources which makes the gacha aspect basically worthless, the gacha system is expensive and also just kinda weird and clunky, the seasonal gacha gives so few pulls that you have barely any chance to get the premium items without spending (hell, i threw the game a few bucks and got basically nothing), and there’s way too many unfixed bugs and dev response time has been nowhere NEAR as fast compared to kingdom and ovenbreak. the worst of it all, though, is the level design. certain levels are nearly entirely luck based with there being so few matches possible that the game has to forcibly shuffle multiple times a level, also if you don’t beat a level it doesn’t count towards any progress in the like 5+ active events so if you get stuck you’re likely getting 0 event rewards. it truly seems like they just do not care about this game, which is a shame because the story, art, and voice acting are all top notch. unfortunately, despite that, this finished product is just inexcusable when you’re disrupting such an established genre of puzzle game. royal match, essentially the same game but with better levels and no gacha, has been on the market for years and does everything this game does but better. i cannot recommend this to anyone except the most die hard cookie run fans.

EDIT: the april update has made changes to make currency easier to get and i am not in fact immune to bribery so i bumped it up half a star. the core problems with the game remain but it’s a lot easier to be a gacha machine now

it's so bad. the mechanics of this game are a total mess. after the initial stages resources start running dry so you find yourself hitting a wall where you need to clear stages to get resources and resources to being able to clear stages. PAID decors that are supposed to help you have a small limit of uses before becoming useless. there are also countless bugs that have forced players to switch devices just to play candy crush. the worst thing between all of this is the gacha system, especially when it comes to cookies, since drawing multiple times till you fill a category doesn't guarantee anything at all and you might end up with a single souldrop (out of 20). of course this is expected from a gacha game, but not even cookie run kingdom relies exclusively on being a cash grab.
there are a few things carrying witch's castle such as art style and animation, besides this go with low expectations or don't even bother lmao