Dragalia Lost is one of those games I’d always meant to play but never got round to it. It’s 90% because the game doesn’t run on emulators, and I’ve said ad nauseam that I don’t like gaming on my smartphone. Still, when I heard the game was ending service soon, I knew I had to give it a try or regret it forever.Or at least for a little while before I forget all about it.

I would have regretted it because Dragalia Lost is from Cygames, makers of my ex-favorite Granblue Fantasy. It has a reputation for bright colours and generous gacha giveaways (it’s not that great but I wouldn’t have known without playing it). Plus it has action RPG combat… sort of. If I had let the game die without trying it after hearing all that, it might have become a great game in my fevered imagination, and I would have gone through life thinking of “What might have been.” It’s good to try hyped things sometimes, if only to destroy the myth in your mind.

Long story short, I downloaded Dragalia Lost and played it for a couple of days. I think it was about 5 days because I still had free draws left from the 7 days of 10 pulls they give beginners. It was also the 3.5th anniversary celebration and Gala Dragalia (increased 5-star drop rate banner) so there were a lot of freebies to be gained. But none of them could entice me to play longer than a few days because the game itself is dull and grindy and nowhere near as pretty or exciting as I was expecting. There’s no point getting flashy new characters and dragons if there’s nowhere fun to use them.

Story

The hero Euden is looking for his kidnapped twin sister (what IS it with videogames and missing sisters?) while also roaming the world catching ’em all forming pacts with dragons who are the key to saving the world. Generic stuff with generic goody two-shoes hero who tries to save everybody, even if they were at his throat just five seconds ago. I hate those guys. I started skipping the dialogue after a few chapters and don’t feel I missed anything. Played up to chapter 10 and lost interest.

Dialogue skipping is something I want in other games, but it’s a two-edged sword. Your plot will have to be really intriguing or the writing will have to be very compelling to keep people reading it, and very few games can manage that. Of all the gacha games I tried recently, IIRC only Epic Seven has a skip option that I didn’t use, and even there I skipped a lot of the side stories. And actually it’s not because the story/writing is all that great but because the letters are huge and the dialogues are usually short and to the point.

I feel very slightly sorry for the writers because it’s a tough job coming up with so many ideas and witty one-liners only for gamers to ignore them all. But on the other hand, I can’t honestly get excited about saving yet another little sister en route to saving yet another world. Get some fresh material.

Combat

The much-vaunted action RPG combat turned out to be a whole lot of nothing. You tap frantically on the screen to attack and swipe to dodge or dash. It’s action all right, but it isn’t what I had in mind. Tiny characters racing around on my tiny phone screen where I can hardly see what I’m doing because my fat thumb is in the way. Unlike Guardian Tales, this isn’t something that could be improved by using a controller or an emulator, not that Dragalia Lost would allow it anyway. After a few battles I just started auto-battling, and that’s when I knew the writing was on the wall.

The game has a limited number of skip tickets, but if the core gameplay isn’t enticing, skip tickets aren’t going do to much. You use skip tickets to skip the grind for getting new weapons, then you get the new weapons, then you skip those battles as well? Unless the rest of the game is fantastic, it’s a quick step from there to not playing the game at all.

Speaking of weapons, that was the final nail in the coffin for me and Dragalia Lost. I opened the weapon/crafting screen and saw all the weapons I would have to grind for and decided to get out while the getting was good.

I’ve been through too much with Granblue Fantasy and its various types of weapons and weapon grids and damage calculations. And I’m going through the artifact grind in Genshin Impact and the endless gear grind in Epic Seven. There’s no room in my heart for another lengthy grind. Especially since this game will shut down long before I ever get strong enough to get the better stuff.

I made it to around 12,000 might in most elements without difficulty, but after that I felt like I hit a wall. Co-op is pretty dead outside of events, so there’s no question of getting carried by randoms, unlike in Granblue Fantasy. If I have to struggle to get already-outdated weapons so I can watch characters play themselves in an already-dead game, I’d rather quit and eat bonbons on my couch.

Gacha

Supposedly generous rates. I didn’t play long enough to find out. Dragalia Lost doesn’t front-load all the goodies like, say, Romancing Saga Re;Universe does. I got some draw tickets and a 7-day 10-draw that should have impressed me, but I’ve played so many mobile games in quick succession that it will take something reallyy over-the-top to wow me.

More importantly, as I already said, you have to care about what you’re getting before “generous” gacha rates mean anything to you. If you get several five-star characters but you don’t care about their story relevance and the combat is boring so you don’t know their skills and the game is shutting down in a few months anyway…

TL;DR

I thought if nothing else the action RPG aspect of Dragalia Lost would give me a few months of fun. Unfortunately that turned out to be the biggest disappointment. And once the gameplay failed, everything else felt pointless. But as I said in the title, I’m glad I tried it so I know for sure I’m not missing anything when the game goes down. It lacked popularity for a reason, let’s just leave it at that.

What else I’m playing

I went back to Epic Seven, which is why I haven’t touched any of the stuff on my To Play list from the beginning of the year. I’m fixing to drop E7 again until changes like the triple banner and the gear pity system take effect (supposedly at the end of April). In the meantime, patch 2.6 of Genshin Impact is out, and the Chasm along with it. Unfortunately my wifi has been unstable these past couple of days, so I haven’t been able to download it yet. Starting to think a Genshin-free life isn’t so bad… Well, I’ll figure something out. See you guys around!