Since GE5, FoE ratings have dropped to 1 of 5 stars. That says a lot.
To check on your comment, I reviewed it exactly as you stated, in the Apple Apps store.
You are correct, on first blush review of the comment stream. If you
sort the list of reviews based on most recent, it seems a LOT of people bequeathed a 1 star review based on GE 5, yes - and also other factors they see changing in the game.
That being said,FoE still has a 4.6 out of 5 rating, with about 151K ratings. Some are ancient (2 years old, or more) but they're counted.
Inno has responded to almost all of these reviews with a seemingly robotic scripting retort (maybe even an AI bot doing so...).
Clearly reminding everyone and the posters railing on the new depth of the PAY 2 PLAY aspects of the game, that they're standing on their FREE 2 PLAY design thesis that was built on day 1.
This has verisimilitude, but the reality is - you won't make enough diamonds (especially NOW with changes recently made to the game...) to get reasonable game traction, so will have to eventually fork over some real money.
We can argue this point, but I'd rather propose it as anodyne.
If you want to be a weekend warrior and play FoE as such, or in a bored moment when a quick game of Candy Crush or Wordle fills a few minutes of idle fancy, yes - you don't have to ever spend anything.