The guys non-answer to your question was probably enough to realize the game is P2W, just to make it explicit, this is from the game website:
LOOT
Battle monsters in dungeons and other players to get loot.
CRAFT
Collect items and components when you play to craft into more powerful items. Sell or melt them on our NFT marketplace.
EARN
Play and earn through gameplay. Better players earn better rewards. Partly community-owned and influenced by the players.
The gear you get, either by playing or paying for, will give an advantage when competing against other players. The rewards for beating other players are the real world cash fees each side puts up in order to fight each other (minus the % cut the game devs take out of the fees).
Yup,,, so no surprise, this is 100% the same as all P2E games which,,, as you point out is P2W.
Play to earn but pay to win,,, someone should be writing an article about this right now if not already done before. There is no game here, just a mindless ponzi of "mining" as pointed out above.
What a shame it is for blockchain gaming, I have to say!
It is a shame indeed, however, I notice that the market needed this oversaturation so that most of these click-to-earn-to-pump-then-dump games, because now these are dying out and the new era of blockchain gaming is coming with solid projects with actual development teams and technical roadmaps.
The in-game utility of NFTs will become more and more common with more than just hype around them.
I am part of an upcoming blockchain game so I might be biased, however this rapid change has been observed since October/November 2021.