This patch is live now on all platforms.
Developer Notes:
Fantasy Strike has always been free-to-play in a wide variety of ways: online casual play, online ranked play, offline practice mode, vs. CPU mode, and with ALL characters permanently unlocked from the start, including the two new characters we added after launch.
Friend Match was always available for free as well, provided one of the two players involved was an owner of the Fantasy Strike Core Pack.
Starting today, we’re lifting this restriction; the free-to-play version of Fantasy Strike will allow you to play not just online as part of the casual and ranked queues, but in Direct Challenges (Friend Matches), as well.
We appreciate all of the support we’ve gotten for Fantasy Strike over the years. If you’d like to keep supporting the game (and us!), please consider still picking up the Core or Collector’s Packs; they still come with several features like Offline vs. Mode, Arcade story mode, and the awesome roguelike Boss Rush single player modes.
Here’s some helpful links to pick up those DLCs on various platforms:
Steam
Switch
PlayStation
Thanks so much for being a fan. Full patch notes below.