I have one complaint about Super Mario Run, and it's really a head-scratcher. No, it's not the DRM.
It's Toad Rallies tickets, you need these tickets to race other players competitively, the rallies are super addictive and they keep you coming back for more.
Rallies and completing the single-player mode to 100% give the game tons of replayability. But once you collect all the pink/purple/green coins, it will be Toad Rallies mode's turn to keep you coming back to the game.
However... once you run out of "tickets", you can't participate in those rallies anymore. So how do you get more tickets? Buy them through Micro-transactions? No. You play a small puzzle that depends entirely on luck.
The puzzle has 4 doors, 2 of these doors can grant you a single ticket, the other 2 are the "wrong" doors and you end up with nothing if you choose them. There's no way to tell which doors are the correct ones. So you have a 50% chance to get an extra ticket to spend on a single Toad Rally if you choose one of the right doors.
"OK, what's the problem? Just play the puzzle over and over until you collect enough tickets."
You can only play the puzzle once every 8 freaking hours. So every 8 hours there is a 50% chance that I'll get ONE ticket giving me the chance to participate in a SINGLE rally, and it's ridiculous.
Why would you limit the replayability of such an addictive part of the game by this ridiculous design choice? It doesn't make any sense. Japanese players are kicking my ass on those rallies and I bet most of them want to continue competing, but they can't do that and they have to try and win a single ticket to use on a single rally once every 8 hours. Just WTF.
The "always online" policy only affected me once so far, and unfortunately, it was right after I achieved my best score in a Toad Rally. So what happened? I lost the race despite the fact that I won, and despite the fact that my cellular connection dropped AFTER the I finished the game and AFTER the score was counted... smh
Finally, we all know Nintendo is experimenting. I think the most valuable and immediate lesson to take from this experience is to ask for the 10-dollars upfront, or have the demo & the full game in separate Apps.
Why? Because this way, those who aren't willing to pay 10 dollars, don't get the chance to complain about the price and give the game 1 or 2 stars driving the review scores down because of its price.
The App store allows people to review an App ONLY after they install it, and by making users pay before they install SMR (or any future Nintendo game), all the negative reviews complaining about the price won't be there, or they will be left under a separate free demo, and not the full game.
I am very annoyed by the fact that the game has a score of 1.5 out of 5 in the freaking Russian stores, fuck you, Russia.
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