Dropped both after roughly two days, though. It’s going to take a lot for a game to make it into my permanent gacha rotation now. I don’t even think it’s possible because I’m either really busy or really tired these days. Peak earning years, I told you. Games aren’t going to pay for my retirement home, you know? Ahem, anyway, on with the update.

CounterSide – Studio Bside did a major overhaul of the game’s user interface and player experience. They called it the Origin update or something like that, IIRC. I was a bit curious, so checked in for the rewards and to see what had changed. I liked what they did with dupes because previously I just hung on to them with no clear idea of how to use them effectively. Now it’s clear how to re-arm characters, now to get re-arm data, how to strengthen them with dupes, etc. and I was able to clear out much of my bloated character inventory.

Everything else about the update, I didn’t care for. The UI changes make everything bland and hard to find, though possibly that gets better once you’re used to it. Moreover, the boring core gameplay and depressing, sleep-inducing weapon grind hasn’t changed. And I discovered that once I lost interest in the story, it was impossible for me to regain it no matter how many side stories and new episodes they released. The magic is just gone.

Furthermore, the update makes it so that fighting battles doesn’t give characters experience any more. Previously I enjoyed throwing characters I was trying to level into a single team and using them to clear all my dailies. A simple, pointless pleasure, but why would they take it away and force me to use appraisals instead? What’s wrong with wanting to level your characters in battle?

They also made some changes to dives and dispatches, but I didn’t stick around long enough to find out. Despite the offer of two (or was it three) Awakened characters if I played around for several days, the fact that my core problems hadn’t changed and they had taken away the little I enjoyed just killed CounterSide for me. I wasn’t done-done with it before, but I am now.

Alchemy Stars – Only played for two days and dropped it. This is largely my own fault because I didn’t do a lot of research on it before starting it. I’ve recently discovered that the more I read about a game, book, anime etc. before starting it, the less likely I am to actually do so. I looked at a couple of screenshots, it seemed decent enough, I jumped in.

And yeah, I played it and it was “decent enough.” Just that, though. No more, no less. And it takes more than “decent enough” to make me stick around. The color-puzzle combat in particular left me cold. It’s like all those match-colours-to-fight puzzle games but on a flashier scale. If you like the base concept, cool, otherwise it has nothing to offer you. I’m trying to think of what they could have done better, but the system works very well, controls are very smooth and there is a lot of room for strategizing and experimenting with party combinations and positioning, so it’s not a them thing, it’s a me thing.

Once the combat didn’t work out, the rest of the game didn’t stand a chance. But I might have stuck around a little longer if at least the story didn’t turn out to be the same old “aliens are attacking and we don’t stand a chance!” as in CounterSide. Every spot on the map is dotted with Eclipsites, every bit of story is interrupted by a battle against Eclipsites. Having a conversation? Eclipsites. Eating a meal? Eclipsites. Just entered a very cool-looking underground city that you wish you could explore thoroughly? Eclip-bloody-sites.

If I hadn’t played CounterSide, I would be wondering, perplexed, perhaps even hopeful. Having played it, though, I know that the same Eclipsites menacing the world in chapter 2 will still be threatening us in chapter 10, 20, 30. Every new place we visit will be invaded by Eclipsites, every event will involve fighting Eclipsites… am I wrong? I could be, but I don’t feel like finding out.

Also I’m just too lazy to get into Alchemy Stars now. Strengthening a character seems like so much work: ugrading, ascending, breakthroughs, equipment for dozens and dozens of characters to finally form decent parties. Not to mention all the different kinds of stages you will have to grind to get enough material to do all that. I’ve done it in other games so I know precisely how involving and time-consuming raising characters in gacha games is designed to be. It’s better to cut my losses after two days than waste more time and then drop it.

I want to go on and declare that I won’t even start any more gacha games from now on, but I said that last year, and we know how that turned out. It’s more likely that I will try some new stuff here and there for the rest of the year but keep coming back to my regulars in the end. So that’s the skinny on CounterSide and Alchemy Stars. I’ll probably talk about Shining Nikki a bit next time.

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