Ingress Prime Reviews

by Realdasho

Ingress is a game run by a company called Niantic, who profits from the free labor of those who play this game. Niantic claims they want to curtail cheating in their games but instead they punish large groups of people (with banning and accusations of cheating, detected by an algorithm they implicitly trust) who have been legitimate players and whose collected data made possible all of the success Niantic has had in their other games.

What do all of these “cheaters” have in common? They installed iOS 14, which was detected as “unauthorized modified client software” by Ingress’s cheat detection algorithm.

And through all of this, in addition to cheating going unpunished by actual offenders, Niantic engages in the barest minimum of communication with the “cheating” players who are confused as to what they could possibly have done to warrant their punishment.

If you were interested in this game, I recommend looking for a game not made by Niantic. Unless you are okay with being labeled a cheater while the actual cheaters are still running wild and using automated means to cheat, stay far away. I would give 0 stars if I could.

by Zeke_A

You cannot use any of the PC based functions of the game without a Facebook or Google account. Thus, you can’t see a larger version of the Intel map, can’t redeem passcodes, can’t use the mission authoring tool. The game only provides a subset of its functionality to Apple users. Sign In With Apple should work across all Apple devices and provide full functionality of the game. Otherwise, why offer it on iOS at all?

Additionally, the map in the iOS application is seriously degraded. It has an extremely limited zoom out capability, so in rural areas where it is mikes between portals, you can’t get any contex, nor do any planning. This essentially makes game play meaningless.

Great idea, but very poorly implemented.

by :) :) :) <><

I used to just love this game, but the community here in the Bay Area is a ghost of what it used to be and for me the unbearably pretty and sparkly prime UI still disrespects the role play/time investment a serious agent has to make to really immerse oneself in the agent role of this game. Basically I just can’t pretend I’m an ‘agent’ anymore using a ‘scanner’ that looks so much like a stupid game. The old scanner was designed like a tool not a toy. The genius of the original Ingress UI and shtick was in the ‘make believe’. I just can’t make believe anymore no matter how hard I try The UI reminds me I’m just playing a boring and sadly declining game and nobody cares anymore if I accomplish the mission anymore. Hope someday this global friendly capture the flag get off your sofa concept gets a reboot cause for a time in my life it was a really great way to get a little exercise, meet great people and explore the world.

by Astraeus4

Niantic cannot stop spoofing, cheat tech stays ahead of anything they try, so they bury their heads in the sand and pretend it’s not a problem. They abet the spoofing by incentivizing it. They do this in ingress by leaving traces of the cheaters on the game board, even after they get banned, if they get banned at all. They abet the spoofers by making it easy for them to troll, by allowing them access to boosts at low levels, by allowing them gear codes to obtain gear they don’t earn or deserve. They abet Spoofers by not implementing a reporting mechanism that can quickly freeze a harassing account so that it can be investigated for more action if necessary. Niantic has lost thousands of customers because they continue to ignore the problem and ignore the advice and begging of their paying customers. Stop paying or quit, until they take meaningful action. Sadly, many have and are quitting.

by Dixonrammstein

This game doesn’t seem to have a lot of players. Really it seems like just a couple of people who spoof the game with a couple of accounts. The premise of the game is really unworkable. It sounds fun to go out and explore but no one actually does, and it is frustrating if you do and then have your portals taken back while you are still there but no one else is. If Niantic can’t stop spoofing then they should level the play field by creating their own spoofing platform. This game doesn’t actually promote building community and outdoor exploration. As far as I’ve been seeing it promotes bad behavior which Niantic seems to contribute to. This game has actually been a very toxic experience and I wouldn’t recommend it to anyone. If anything this is an example of a game that should actually be banned based on the type of behavior it promotes. I say that being someone that doesn’t support banning anything lightly.

by Hnavas

It is the worst game I have ever known, where everything is handled by influences; if you don't know the developers or you're not friends with the people behind this company, you're a zero to the left, they don't listen to you, they don't answer you and they put bots to answer your support tickets; to such a level that being a geo-localized game you can be accused of harassment or whatever comes to mind without legal evidence or anything, without they worrying of the laws of your country and even so you show them that any accusation made against you can be legally refuted via the justice system in your country. Cases where it has been shown that internal staff gave access to players of a faction making the game benefit with confidential information to an entire group or the case of the photographer who worked for the same company and who was "wrongly" banned without evidence during a live event or all the Vanguards that have left stating that they do not support the current vision of the game are just some of the many things that show that the internal management of the game is deplorable and leaves much to be desired. Certainly a waste of time.

by Geezfools

Continued low effort by Brian and the Niantic team. I’m assuming after company layoffs, there isn’t much of a team left anyways. Sad seeing the other Niantic games get attention during Halloween and we only got a store paid item for $30. No event, couldn’t even change the color of the XM. I used to look forward to the random events in Ingress, some even had cool medals you could earn with enough effort. Doesn’t seem like they do them anymore, just anomalies and the same tired out first Saturday events. I genuinely think the Ingress team wants this game to succeed, but they seem to make almost no effort at actually trying. The forums are a ghost town, the lack of events says a lot and just doesn’t seem to be a lot of people playing these days. Bummer…

by ThazWhaSheSed

I have played this game pretty much everyday since the first year it was released. A week ago I went to open IngressPrime to play and I received an error message. “ Unable to sign in. Please check that this Pokémon GO account exists and you have correctly selected New or Returning Player.” Having never seen this error before I went to the internet to find its meaning. From what I read I had feared that my account had been deleted or hacked. I reached out to Niantic Customer Service and they said I was logging in incorrectly and to try through another login. I further explained and they said they were unable to assist me. After a weeks long back and forth Niantic will not answer any of my questions and prefer not to help a loyal customer and just send emails as follows: “ Just to reiterate, we cannot help with your request to recover your Pokémon GO account. You are welcome to play from a new account.” I am giving it one last shot but I can’t just start over. My advice to those still playing the game, unlink you Trainer Club login and hope you never have to get help from the support staff.

by Thr33head

I used to play this years ago with my dad and loved it. We even drove to an event in Florida many years back and then one day I was randomly banned and was confused as to what I did. When I tried to appeal it they declined it and I asked what I did wrong and they said they couldn’t disclose the reason. Some friends of my dad said that if you pick up items that someone had gotten illegally then your account could be banned and I’m assuming I picked up either keys or something else and didn’t know they were illegally obtained (since there’s no way to know). Because of how long ago it was I recently tried signing in and was met with “access denied”. Maybe I’ll make a new account and try to restart but if I remember, having multiple accounts was against the rules so who knows if I can do that…

by Jkizer82

Monthly CORE subscription auto-renew feature has been broken for over a year and there's no sign that it'll be fixed any time soon. Every month, my payment automatically goes thru via the Apple Store, the previous month expires, and then nothing happens in game until I contact support, wait 2-3 days for them to respond, and then it gets manually added. This means every month there's roughly a week lost of play because the inventory maxes out and I can't complete any activities. Again, this has been happening every month for over a year, so I have something like 14 support tickets? They don't seem to care about the issue at all.

by Kaz_10_08

There’s no other game quite like Ingress, and for good reason. It’s surprisingly deep but also lacking in gameplay elements at the same time. This is a PVP game where you battle other agents in real life locations via the portals in game. Issue here is that the game became extremely dull when you are located in areas with few players. You cannot play the game anymore because almost all the gameplay is aimed at local in person PVP interactions. There really needs to be more marketing and dynamic content because there’s a huge opportunity here to have a fun engaging game. Live world events organized by players are the best part of the game but that’s pretty rare and you have to travel which isn’t really possible with Covid pandemic. My favorite part of the game because of lack of players for PVP is the missions for exploration of different neighborhoods. Unfortunately lately even that feature is broken and new missions are not getting approved. Overall I think this game really needs some rework as the gameplay concepts haven’t really changed in years while the player base has suffered almost a complete collapse in my area without new updates in content.

by Tecolot3

Pros are obvious if you decide to play the game. Team play, getting out of the house is a must to play and be successful. I enjoy the real life fantasy underworld integration. I’ve been playing for 6 years plus. Competition can get a lil spicy. There’s many levels and layers to the game that, depending on your involvement, can keep you involved even when you can’t get out constantly.
The cons…. In a word, CHEATING! There’s plenty of rules and regulations to help keep gameplay even for everyone. Where there’s a will there’s a way. And in this game there’s plenty of will for some reason. Some players have no problem using their tech savvy skills to take advantage of the players who don’t. Niantic, because this is a free game, does the bare minimum in its efforts to catch even the most brazen cheaters. If you can accept knowing that, then I highly recommend this game.

by Erin1821

I have to agree with many that the old interface was better- less bright, less cluttered, very much like a “scanner” as described in the tutorials. I stopped playing for a bit because I couldn’t progress on some of the medals/badges, of which you need so many to move on. Living in Hawaii there’s only so many unique portals and so many missions without having to travel really far… I figure that’s very similar to the problems rural players have. Having been back to playing it’s still a fun game concept, with slightly less money grabbing by Niantic than Pokémon Go or the new Peridot. “Recycling” items for xm makes a lot of sense that I wish Pokémon Go would do for its items. Can still be enjoyable if you travel or aren’t living on an island in the middle of the Pacific :)

by MartinUSMC

I’ve played this game for a long time now. And I think that the new purchasing feature in the game is cool. But you can only get level 8 gear such as bursters and resonators. You should be able to get any level depending on what level you are at. So the higher you are the more different level item can be bought instead of only one level of items

by ReaperCross XIII

Either play it once in a while or really get into the community.
IngressPrime it’s self works well. They do have a couple bugs every now and then, but they are also always looking to improve it and make the player’s experience even better than before.

You can explore new towns and maybe even find things around your old town that you never knew was there. Choose a team and capture the world.

by Opie Sweets

Super fun game if you travel! You don’t have to be good at it you just have to get off the couch and explore. The only change I would make, that I’ve notice so far, is if you have a cluster of portals in your circle it would be nice to be able to hack them all at one. Hold down the hack button to “hack all” for example. Same goes for the xmp busters. It would be nice to use 10 or so at once especially if they’re low level xmp busters.

by Rod-Dog55

I consider this game the greatest ever made for mobile play! I started playing the first day IPhone got the game July’2014 and have not missed a day yet! Going on 7 years this game never stops being fun and challenging, I have met most all of my fellow players and enemies in Phoenix AZ. There is no other game like it, I’m 65 yo now and enjoy a bike ride everyday to attack enemy portals! There are many players in each city looking forward to you joining their team, very social. Highly recommend Ingress Prime!

by Sjkomenko

For those looking for a great game to play, look towards Ingress Prime. Don’t let the review rating or 1 star reviews fool you. A lot of those reviewers haven’t played in a couple years and complain that they can’t play due to non-compatibility to their phone (maybe a phone upgrade from the iPhone 4 would help) or they cry about glitches and bugs that have been fixed long ago. Anyways IngressPrime is all about PvP. There’s two teams fighting for control of “Mind Units” to put on the scoreboard. Before the pandemic there were a lot of events created by both Niantic and the player base. I’ve been playing this game since Ingress Redacted and was a beta tester for Ingress Prime. It has come a long way from the beginning and Prime out does Redacted in every way! Improvements in game play are always being looked at. Again ignore the naysayers and the review rating. If you haven’t played Ingress Prime, then give it a try and give your own review of it.

by The Opinion Of The Generation

This game is amazing at mixing ar and real life in an online war. I just want to point out just two things to make the game better. 1. Clearer tutorial The first thing is that I don’t think the tutorial might have been clear enough, because even after the tutorial, I didn’t know how to use the weapons or what the power cubes were. I don’t know, though, maybe you did. Maybe it just has something to do with me being part of the resistance. But still, even so, you should be a bit clearer. 2. Easier time leveling up The second thing is that this might go only for me, but it’s really difficult trying to level up. Now, when I say “easier time leveling up”, I don’t mean it being a cakewalk, because those games usually get boring after a few weeks. I mean that instead of taking you, for example, a week to level up, it just takes four days. All in all, this is a great game, and I hope you improve a lot :)

EDIT:
Also I think another benefit might be to add IngressPrime on watches, so you can check on portals and km will count even if you don’t have your phone or iPad with you😉

by Nindle PNW

I’ve played this game for four years. It’s very competitive and my team (Blue Resistance) is friendly and supportive to all new players. The game can be played almost anywhere and with different styles. Players can do player-made exploration missions, collect badges, capture and defend areas large and small for their faction in order to out score the other team. Large battles are organized every so often called Anomalies taking place in multiple major cities across the globe. The game continues to improve with updates. I’ve discovered so much and met many fine people due to this game.

by Rylyshar

Absolutely addicted to Ingress. Because of this game: I exercise by walking and playing, and I enjoy it. I have met interesting fellow players. I have learned about hidden/unnoticed art and objects of community interest.

Update — still playing, 8 years on. Still exploring, participating in events, and playing almost every day.

The rest of this review was for a MUCH earlier version! I have started using Google+ to communicate with other players. BUT: Since this is a Google game, the iOS version is buggy -- especially latest version which is whole new levels of annoying/frustrating! Get used to re-launching IngressPrime and cussing at it regularly. And you will need an external battery - this is an excessive battery drainer, even when not allowed to access location info when off.

by Haptotrope

Update;
Still playing. still enjoy the game as a way to explore the world. Seeing lots of multi accounting tho, and it's a bummer.
Previous;
I used to love this game And play 7-8 hours a day. I still love the idea of it. I still adore the people who run it, i just really really hate change. And I miss the simple genius of the prior interface. It didn’t care if it was pretty it cared about getting you to the place, allowed for low data situations, and do the thing efficiently. Yes prime can link faster but takes three times as long to deploy resos. This negates a lot of the energy around building portals when routine commutes can’t lay resos fast enough to be of value in non urban settings. Still hoping for the best and a game that values simplicity over gamey over shiny shennanigans. Tho I’m playing less than I did before, I’m not going to blame ingress for changes in my attitude or life. ❤️

by JamieP59

Prime is still not as stable as the original scanner. I regularly see several bugs.

1- the scanner will show item inventory as being 900 items more than actual inventory. I have to completely close IngressPrime and restart to fix this.
2- nearby portal icons are so wide that they cover to the middle of the screen and into the middle of the viewed play area.
3- nearby portal icons show portals 30, 40, or as much as 100 km away, but do not display portals within 1-2 km. I am to the point of wanting a switch o just turn off the nearby portal feature.
4- longer distance portals either take several minutes to show up in linkable portals list or do not show at all unless all closer portal keys are placed in a capsule or portal key locker.
5- the new player icon rotating in the top left corner of the scanner screen serves no purpose, is distracting, and should be switchable to hide or display
6- deploying resonators is still significantly slower than with the old scanner
7- app start up takes for-ev-er

by Little Kitana

It’s been 5 years on IngressPrime and played about 8 million AP a year for this fabulous game. I was always a gamer since my middle school years. However, it was a lifestyle change as an adult. Meet lots of eccentric people on both teams thought out California and Canada. Favorite part is exploring different cities and noticing more artwork. Giving myself self care, exercise, taking care of children, friends and family and a chance to breath to enjoy life.

by AboveTheSkys

For ban large part of the world, 9 years of playing. 2000days of strait soujorner. If this helps to stop Mr. P. Go on. I just want to know how?

Btw you made a great job, for unite people all across the world, don’t ruin it. You made people separate from politics, links fly across the borders, fields, that ignores conflicts, and wars, i hope you will stand for those! And may be someday theres no man’s who could decide to counterpart some nation by his own will. I hope you will return, someday.