Glad I tried Dragalia Lost before it shut down, but it’s not very good.

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.

Not my screenshot. Somehow I didn’t feel very screen-shotty when I played this.

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!

Epic Seven – Regretfully dropped + newbie tips (spoilers)

[Warning: this is an old post from early 2022. I picked up Epic Seven again later and am still playing it as of May 2024. Also the meta and systems in E7 change very quickly and any post about it older than 6 months is probably obsolete. Therefore take the advice in this post with a pinch of salt i.e. definitely don’t reroll for Sigret because she is now given out for free, etc. etc.]

As I said, I’m dropping almost all the gacha games I’m playing because they take up too much time. Epic Seven is the one I’m feeling the most pain over, because even though I’m not too good at it, I can feel myself getting better every day. Also I’m really liking the characters, the art and the flashy animations. But I’ve reached the point where I’ve taken my characters as far as they can go and now I need to grind for good gear. That will take months if not years, so I’m “taking a break” (i.e. dropping it without admitting it) for now.

Status when quitting:
AR Rank 65.
Abyss 80. I don’t like Abyss but I love the rewards
Labyrinth – Area 5 of Nixied’s Sanctum. I despise the Labyrinth.
Automaton Tower level 2 cleared. I LOVE Automaton Tower, I wish there was a new one every week.
88% in Hall of Trials
Wyvern 13, Golem 10, Azimanak 10, Banshee 11, Caides 10

Why I really like Epic Seven

I’ve been having a blast since I started playing it after Christmas. I’m only dropping it because I don’t want to grind.

Lively characters. The cast is large, but not so large that I can’t easily follow the story. Though very often it’s a case of “I pulled this character and I don’t know who she is but she’s really strong.” All heroes can be raised to max level. Yes, even 2-star fodder. And some of the 3-stars are good enough to give the higher tiers a run for their money. If you really like a character, you can keep them with you for a long time.

PVP is optional, so you can go at your own pace. The rewards aren’t that great so you’re not missing out. And that means there’s no pressure to get the very strongest and bestest characters and gear unless you’re into PVP. You’ll still need/want to get stronger as you play, but you can do that in your own time.

Colorful anime art. Their slogan is something like “Play the anime!” and I can definitely see the inspiration. I thought I would quickly tire of the repetitive attack animations, but I still enjoy watching them whenever I play manually. Of course I only played for three months, so it doesn’t really count.

Generous gacha and frequent giveaways. So generous and frequent, in fact, that it has delayed my quitting by several weeks because I kept thinking, ooh, I’ve gotta get that 5-star hero at the end of the Valentine giveaway. Oh, now I’m two days away from 5 galaxy bookmarks. Ooh, a 7-day 10-summon event! Ooh, 50% hunt boost! I’m not convinced I’ll be able to resist whatever Smilegate has planned for the anniversary in July either. But that’s still a while away, so at least I can uninstall Epic Seven for a while.

Of course, the reason they can be so generous with the pulls and tickets is because getting good characters is only 20% of strength in Epic Seven. Another 20% is catalysts and runes for skill enhancement and awakening. The other 60% is gear, gear, gear, gear, gear!

Conclusive stories. The main story is the same old unoriginal secular humanist treatise that JRPGs use in lieu of plots: “mankind needs no gods!” and “the power of humanity will save the day!” Epic Seven even contains three variations on the humanist theme: “God is dead” (Orbis, Rekos), “God is caring but incompetent” (Diche, Rekos) and “God is evil” (Archdemon, Fastus). If you’ve played a few JRPGs, you’ve seen it all before, but luckily no one plays JRPGs for original writing.

What I really like about Epic Seven‘s story as opposed to most mobile games is that each arc has a clear beginning and a clear end. There’s a clear good side and bad side. When I started and read about the Archdemon, I thought for sure the story would drone on for years and we would still be trying to beat this Archdemon and his henchmen who would keep escaping and complicating things, etc. Like how I played Granblue Fantasy for 5+ years and never reached Estalucia. Without spoiling too much, Epic Seven is not like that. Each arc does have a few loose ends that are wrapped up in side stories and events, but the main arcs end nicely and conclusively in a very manageable amount of time.

Easily-understandable gameplay. It doesn’t take too much time to figure out what equipment goes where, which drop does what and what it takes to get stronger. Apart from Effectiveness, it’s pretty clear what each stat does, so it’s not hard to sort good equipment from bad.

I especially appreciated the skill and artifact descriptions: “X jumps into the air and fires at the enemy, reducing their attack by Y% for Z turns.” Simple! Of course, “easy-to-understand” doesn’t mean “easy-to-do,” so the game contains plenty of RNG traps, grinding and time-wasters to keep you playing. Knowing what a stat does means nothing if you can’t get any equipment with that stat, right? Hmmmmm, speed boots?

Why I’m dropping it

I already said it: these gacha games are too time-consuming. Especially when it’s as fun and as attractive as Epic Seven. I just keep playing and playing and playing, and honestly I’m having a great time. I thought I could just keep it in the background because it’s auto-friendly, but somehow my eyes and hands keep returning to it. So due to my own lack of self-control, Epic Seven has to go.

Newbie tips

Does a rage-quitting newbie player of less than three months have anything to tell others about Epic Seven? Naturally. Eight weeks is more than enough time to make mistakes and kick yourself for it. I didn’t mess up too much in the long term, but there were things I could have done to make life easier for myself.

Reroll for Sigret. Or at least for a better 5-star character. I’ve never bothered with rerolling in gacha games, and I’ve always done fine that way. Plus I like to jump into games without checking who is meta because it’s more fun that way. Big mistake with Epic Seven, because I took a crappy 5-star character called Baal & Sevan. Useless waste of a free roll.

Sigret is the best wyvern hunter, and she’s also very good against bosses because of her bleed mechanic. Random level 60 Sigrets have saved me more times than I can count. Wyvern hunts are very important because they drop Speed, Crit and Hit boosting equipment, which 99% of the characters in Epic Seven run. I had heard of rerolling for Sigret, but I thought, meh, she can’t be that important. And if she is, I’ll get her some day (nope). And if I don’t, it’s a gacha game so I can just pay or save for her. Nope, you can’t just buy or pity a character unless their banner is on rate up. TL;DR don’t be like me. Check the meta and reroll for the best characters.

That said, it’s not the end of the world if you don’t have Sigret. I’m auto-ing Wyvern 13 reliably with Angelica, Furious, Muwi and Kise. Could probably do even better using Alexa instead of Kise as well. It just took me a while (and pulling the Song of Stars artifact) to get to this point. It would have been better and faster with Sigret because debuffs are so important. Plus as I said she’s useful in other content as well. The tips I’m giving assume that you want to make things easier and faster for yourself so you can enjoy whatever content drew you to Epic Seven.

Speaking of which, you need to pick your focus early on: PVE or PVP? PVE is the main story, hunts, expeditions, labyrinth. The bulk of the game, really. But PVP (Guild Wars, the real-time arena and the general arena) is extremely important to many players, and the characters, gear and builds you need for successful PVP can be very different from PVE builds. Knowing which one you want to focus on will help you determine which banners to pull on and what weapons are good or junk.

For example I pulled a 5-star character called Ilynav early on, and I was like “Woohoo, 5-star!” Lots of wasted penguins and so-so performance later, I discovered that her main gimmick doesn’t work outside a PVP setting, so she’s pretty much useless for PVE. Luckily I didn’t use many molagoras on her. I also spent a lot of time getting an Injury set from a side story because it was higher level than what I had at the time. Only to find out that “only works on heroes” means it only works in Arenas, and not against bosses. Grr.

Many Moonlight (ML) heroes are great in PVP but only so-so in PVE, many sets like Immunity and Unity don’t see much use outside PVP. Speed is important in both but middling speed will take you much further in PVE, etc etc. That means the kinds of hunts you’ll be farming and equipment you’ll be enhancing will vary greatly. Long story short, it helps to know what you’re playing Epic Seven for.

Tip no. 3: You can achieve stage goals easily by using powerful supporters. In fact, this tip should be get and use as many powerful supports as you can. You know those goals that ask you to “Use 2 Dark Heroes and 1 Soul Weaver” and that kind of thing? Just field one random weakling with the right element/class and tag them out or let them get killed so a powerful supporter can come in. You still get the achievement in the end.

More importantly, powerful supporters will flat out carry you through some of the most annoying stages in the game. Like chapter 10-10 of Episode 2, which I cleared with the help of a support Vivian after about 20 failed attemps. Before that, I also went pretty far with a support Straze, Sigret and Seaside Bellona. You don’t need Vivian in particular, as long as the character is powerful. What did help was taking two soul weavers: Angelic Montmorancy and Angelica. Along with Vivian, they provided a lot of cleansing, healing and immunity to help keep the team alive long enough for Kise to rip through his barrier and take him down.

The point is, I consulted a lot of guides, threads, videos about that fight and they all said the same thing: get a powerful support to carry you. So I’m telling you the same thing. Good friends will take you places.

Don’t waste catalysts. Every new player is told not to waste molagoras, and it’s good advice. But don’t waste catalysts either. Early on, you you get several “choose your catalyst” boxes for rare and epic catalysts. Don’t use them just yet! Yes you can grind for catalysts, but it’s a massive time-sink and really annoying. If you need 10 epic catalysts to 6-star Violet, for example, it will cost 4000 AP in the World epilogue to grind them up from scratch, which will take 500 battles and several hours even on auto-play. Better save the free stuff for really good characters. How do you know which ones are good? Google around and see, and also consult guides on the kind of content you want to do.

Don’t waste dupes either. Unless you’re going to use that character immediately, hold off on imprinting them with any duplicates you pull. As I mentioned earlier, Epic Seven is pretty free with the skystones and the free pull events. You will get many copies of 3- and 4-starts naturally just by pulling in the various summons. You can raise them to the next level that way and save yourself lots of fodder and dogs. And it doesn’t hurt to wait on 5-stars you don’t need to 6-star right away as well. Every little bit of fodder helps.

Wait for Free Unequip events to play around with your equipment. Epic Seven has a frustrating mechanic where unequipping weapons and armor costs money. It’s cheap at first with low rarity weapons, but when you get up to Heroic and Epic weapons, you’re talking 50,000 gold just to take off a helmet. And you need money for many other things like leveling characters, enhancing weapons (giant money sink) and above all crafting new stuff. I got up to 10,000,000 gold early on and thought I had it made. Went crazy with the unequipping and before I knew it I was flat broke and all my growth came to a standstill. Luckily (?) there’s a Free Unequip event at least once a month, so wait till then to make major changes. Unless you get something super-good or you’re gearing up a new character, you can wait a while for minor tweaks.

Look at that eye-watering price.

Start preparing for Wyvern Hunts early. The last and most important advice. The nickname “Wyvern Simulator” given to Epic Seven is not a joke. Past a certain point, the game is just one DPS (damage per second) check after the other. And the best DPS comes from equipment dropped by Wyvern Hunt 13. Getting Sigret is one way to prepare. Reaching Episode 2 early to unlock Furious is another way.

Preparing to farm wyverns also means you should build Ice/Water heroes first. Specialty-change Montmorancy to Angelic Montmorancy ASAP or get Angelica ASAP, build 3-star characters like Muwi and Alexa as soon as you pull them, and so on. I have zero regrets about using my Potion of Ascension on Angelica because she tanks Wyvern 11 and 13 like a boss. Muwi helps immensely, though, so if I had pulled him earlier I would have given it to him instead.

For reference I will post my wyvern team and their stats/equipment when I started auto-ing wyvern 13.

MVP Angelica. Her HP and defense make me wonder if Wyvern 13 even hits that hard… until it targets someone else and I’m like YIKES. I use her as a tank in other content as well since even Earth enemies have a hard time phasing her.

Daddy Furious, father of defense breaks. He has access to three different debuffs: def break, burn and target (with Song of Stars) but he can and will frequently fail to proc all three just to mess with you. I need to tweak his speed so he doesn’t arrive at the wyvern with def break on cooldown… wait, no I don’t need to do that because I’m dropping the game. You need to do that, though.

Muwi was very obviously created to help people farm wyvern, but I’m not complaining. He has attack down to soften the wyvern’s blow, backup defense break in case Furious misses and a bleed that doesn’t proc that often but does help shave off health occasionally. His speed is also pretty good even with so-so equipment. I raised him to 6-stars after taking this screenshot, and I use him quite a lot in mono-Ice PVE teams.

My little wyvern shredder. She has Exclusive Equipment that increases her combat readiness (speed, sorta) whenever she uses a basic attack. Because she lacks a debuff, she’s not ideal for wyvern farming, but no one told her that, so she makes mincement out of them. I also use her in just about everything because I don’t have that many well-built characters. Also she’s kind of cool.

Final word (for now)

I feel a little relieved to be Epic Seven-free, TBH. I said I might return for the anniversary, but now I’m thinking I should get clear and stay clear. Now at last I can have time to play and finish shorter, more complete games.

Other dropped gachas – Blue Archive and King’s Raid

While dropping most of the gacha games I’m playing, I took the chance to try two titles I had been curious about.

Blue Archive – It was released recently so I took a quick look. The modern UI was pretty and I loved the the sky blue palette. So cool and refreshing and relaxing. Apart from that, I didn’t like it much. The story didn’t pique my interest and the cast was too full of little girls. I have fond memories of playing Ring Dream, but these days I want more out of my games than just “Look at the cute girls.” The battle system was the usual “auto side-scrolling and press some buttons for skills” stuff. Nothing to keep playing over if the story and the characters aren’t working. Nice-looking game, though. And speaking of blue games and girls, I’ve been meaning to try Blue Reflection.King’s Raid – Also the same “auto side scrolling and press some buttons” combat, but flashier. It bills itself as an “Idle RPG,” which means you can dispatch your team to farm a stage, turn off your phone and come back later to collect the rewards. I so wish Epic Seven and Genshin Impact had that system…

Despite King’s Raid having a more rustic UI and worse graphics than Blue Archive, I enjoyed it more because it reminded me of PSP RPGs. Which ones? I don’t know, but it felt so comfortably generic that I couldn’t help getting nostalgic. Random orphan and his childhood friend who is a healer go on an adventure to find a family member and of course they meet a lively girl and a third wheel and they work together to fight this sealed evil and of course the random orphan is the chosen one, etc etc. Which RPG is like that? I don’t know, but it feels so familiar.

Actually I had to skip large parts of the story (you can skip!!!) because my phone hated the game and kept crashing randomly, but especially when loading story scenes. My phone hates every game, actually. Unlike most mobile games, King’s Raid‘s developers (Vespa) are pro-emulator, and they even have the APK available for download on the official site. But once I deleted the game from my phone after one too many crashes, I came to my senses a little and decided to get out before I got too involved, like I did with Romancing Saga Re;Universe.

That said, I hear there’s a King’s Raid 2 coming out later this year with better graphics and over improvements, so I may pick it up again at that point. Since it’s a continuation and all and we can carry over our data. On the other hand I also hear the developer is going downhill so IDK. “Later this year” is a long time.

Note about King’s Raid: there is no character gacha. You don’t pull for characters. You either get them for free through the story/rewards/events/the Inn, or you buy them with in-game currency called rubies. Any character can be yours for 6,000 rubies, no matter how powerful or broken they are. Imagine being able to just buy the most broken character in your game in the first week. When I dropped King’s Raid after 1 week, I had over 20,000 rubies so I could afford three characters. But! I didn’t even have to buy any because:

1) The free characters in the game are apparently useful all the way to endgame.
2) The game gave me my pick of any two free five-stars as well as any two unique weapons AND a free unique treasure.
3) This was enough to easily sweep all the story content and much of the side content until chapter 5 when I stopped playing.

AFAIK the developers initially balanced the no-character-gacha thing with gacha for weapons, accessories and other boosters instead. But right now all the best stuff can be attained from raids and grinding, so I’m not sure how they make their money. Costumes? The costumes are nice. But they can be had for rubies, so who would spend money for them? No wonder Vespa is revamping the game, and no wonder few other games followed the no-character-gacha model. It’s financial suicide. You can imagine the same situation in your favorite gacha game. Imagine if it was Genshin Impact and you could pull Ganyu, Zhongli and Kazuha after a week of play with plenty of primogems left over. AND they gave you the Amos Bow and the Mistsplitter for free. From a gamer’s perspective I love it, but I really wonder how they made their money.

Now that King’s Raid is approaching its end, it’s incredibly generous with just about every in-game resource. In addition to the 20,000 rubies, I received over 150 million gold and more than enough essences to transcend my characters several times over. This is like getting Ganyu AND Amos Bow AND five free constellations, because why not?

The downside is… there is no downside! More accurately, I didn’t play long enough to discover the downsides. It’s a crazy generous game that keeps throwing great characters and great gear and tons of money and loads of stamina at you. It’s almost guaranteed that if I’d played a little longer I would have run into a trap caused by this seeming generosity. For example, the powerful characters and the ease of auto-ing stages means I have no idea what most skills do or how to use them effectively. Once I get to a stage I can’t auto, I’m gonna be in big trouble. Maybe, or maybe not.

Same with gear, since I’ve just been using random drops without much enhancement or optimizing. And since the title is “King’s Raid” and there are plenty of raids in the game, I suppose I’ll be expected to join a guild and do raids so I can get the best of the best gear. *groan* Will cross that bridge if/when I come to it. We will find out later this year if/when King’s Raid 2 comes out and if I still miss it enough to give the updated version a try. Right now I’m leaning towards “Leave well enough alone.”

That’s enough for today. Next post will probably be about Epic Seven, since I’m this close to mustering the strength to drop it. Wish me luck!

Genshin Impact – Skipping update 2.5 to wait for The Chasm

Some people play Genshin Impact for the waifus. Others play it for the great soundtrack. I play it to explore new terrain and open lots of treasure chests. I enjoy the combat too, though the enemies are becoming rather gimmicky these days. The lore doesn’t interest me much… or rather it would interest me but it takes too long to come out and is accompanied by too much unskippable dialogue. Some of the events are fun but I wouldn’t log in specifically to do any of them.

Long story short, I like Genshin Impact when it has stuff for me to explore and I don’t like it so much when it doesn’t. But when I like it, I really like it. Since the 2.5 update doesn’t have the stuff I crave, instead of hanging around and whining, I can just put it aside for a while and jump back in when The Chasm is released. According to the latest livestream, it should be coming in the next update, which should be around late March. I think that’s a bit soon for such a major update so I wouldn’t be surprised if it got delayed. But I’ll be happy if it doesnt, because then I’ll have both Enkanomiya and The Chasm to explore, which should keep me going for a long time.

Other things I have to do when I return to Genshin Impact:

1. Build Zhongli and learn to use him. I got him all right, but I was too lazy to farm Geo Hypostasis and Domain of Guyun to build him. That will be a task of first importance, because I’m hoping a good shielder will make content faster and easier to solo. I’m not a fan of co-op in GI because the quality of joins you get is too random. Plus it makes the enemies even tankier and a lot of time is wasted on selecting characters, waiting for others, etc. I already solo 99% of stuff, but if Zhongli can speed up the process, all the better.

2. Save primogems for Kazuha. I don’t need him, but I played him in an event and loved his play style, so he would be nice to have.

3. Save primogems for the weapon banner. I have more than enough characters, so it’s time to optimize them and finalize my teams (I feel like I’ve been saying that for months, but this time I mean it). In particular I want a good spear for Xiao so he can show his full potential. I think he’s still running the Blackcliff Spear or something gnarly like that. And if fishing hasn’t improved by the next time Engulfing Lightning rolls around, I’ll try to pull one for Raiden Shogun. Yes, I’d rather spend thousands of primogems pulling a weapon than fish in Genshin Impact; it’s that bad.

4. Farm artifacts for real. Everyone has a basic set which has carried me pretty far, but they could all be doing much better. Especially when it comes to crit rate and crit damage. I haven’t been motivated to do anything about it so far because artifact farming is very boring and unrewarding and I’m getting along just fine, but I can imagine the enemies getting more HP and more annoying gimmicks down the line.

And that’s it. As you can see, there isn’t much for me to do in Genshin Impact when there’s no new area available. Sooner or later Mihoyo is going to have to change the meta to give players an incentive to pull new characters apart from the waifu and husbando factor. It’s great that there are no useless characters, but it’s too easy to get a good team together and stop pulling entirely. I’m curious to see if/how they will resolve the matter besides the usual power creep gacha games resort to.

Anyway, that’s a problem for them to worry about down the line. For now I’m just saving bandwidth and space by skipping the current update. See you all in 2.6, God willing!

Guardian Tales dropped – Too much skill required (great game, though)

And by “too much skill required” I mean there were too many stealth missions and eventually I’d had enough. I played up to World 9-1 in Guardian Tales, made it through other stealth-based stages like the whole desert saga, but finally I gave up the ghost. It’s like, even if I make it through this one, there’ll just be more of them, won’t there? Along with a host of other game tasks requiring skill and sharp reflexes, all of which I don’t have, otherwise I’d be at the Winter Olympics and not sitting here blogging about games.

I’ll say this for Guardian Tales, though: there’s never a dull moment in the stages. It’s not all running around smashing enemies, fun as that may be. There are also plenty of dungeon puzzles like pushing blocks, completing circuits, lighting torches, stepping on a switch and dashing through a gap before time runs out, and more. Now I hate dungeon puzzles and I hate stealth, but for the most part I was able to figure out the ones needed to pass a stage by myself. As for the optional/bonus ones, well, someone somewhere must have done them, and that’s enough.

Apart from the puzzles, there are also places where you need to race others, blow stuff up, swing across with your hookshot, jump with trampolines, slide across ice, etc etc etc. I haven’t even covered the side stories and optional quests, one of which features a shoot ’em up type game. Incidentally, my personal favorite weird gimmick is/was the Awakening dungeon where you could farm awakening stones by smashing illegally-parked cars. It’s nothing innovative, but it sure is funny.

All that skill-based gameplay makes the stages varied and interesting. That’s undeniable. But it also means you can’t grind/buy/pull your way to victory in non-battle scenes. It doesn’t matter if you have a level 9999 waifu if your fingers are too clumsy to sneak past the guards at the beginning of the stage. And therein lies the crux of my problem with Guardian Tales.

Honestly it’s a fantastic game for anyone who is sick of the one-way monotonous gameplay many casual games offer. Too many of them just have you moving from screen to screen killing enemies and watching cutscenes along the way, but GT keeps you on your toes. It still has casual elements, though. Most stages are short and quick to clear, and you can unlock auto-battles and sweeps for the grindier content. You can also ignore the story and focus on PVE/PVP like the Towers, the Orbital Lift, the Colosseum, the real-time Arena, etc.

But if you care about the story at all (and you need to, to unlock those PVE/PVP options), you’re going to have to “git gud” at running, dodging and sneaking, and I don’t have it in me to do any of that. If you do, though, you’re in for a real treat. I recommended it to a Zelda fan I know, and he’s loving every minute of it.

Things I liked about Guardian Tales

⚔️Action RPG combat! With all the ducking and jiving that comes with it.

⚔️The challenge level is just right. Most stages come with a recommended level, and as long as you stick to that and keep up with enhancing your equipment and awakening your characters, you should be fine. I hear there’s a massive difficulty spike at World 11, but I won’t get there so I have nothing to worry about.

⚔️The soundtrack is pretty good, especially the one that plays in the lobby.

⚔️The little princess is so cute!

⚔️I’m usually not a fan of the retro pixel SNES RPG look, but it worked great here.

⚔️Lots to do, plus lots of unlocked side stories to play through if you get bored. At the same time it’s not overwhelming or confusing. With some games it takes weeks and tons of guides to get all the mechanics down, but it’s pretty straightforward here. There are only a few things you need to grind to get stronger as well.

⚔️The pop culture references are amusing to spot. Monty Python, Ski Free, Pokemon, Ace Attorney, Disney, Dragon Quest… and those are just the ones I remember.

⚔️The game is pretty generous with gems. And it’s not just the usual “love-bombing” gacha games do to newbies to keep them playing. Even after playing for weeks, there are still plenty of ways to earn gems like the Colosseum, events and frequent giveaways. You could probably do at least one 10-pull a week.

⚔️The localization is mostly good, but you do spot occasional careless errors that suggest that the translation was done in a rush.

Things I wasn’t so hot on

🔨It doesn’t run well on emulators unless you’re very persistent & lucky. I don’t like gaming on my smartphone, so it was inevitable that I would remove it eventually.

🔨The story isn’t all sunshine and rainbows. A lot of bad things happen to your cutesy characters and their friends, so you won’t be feeling very good when all is said and done. TBH I rather like sunshine and rainbows, but if you’re looking for a grittier experience, this might be for you.

🔨I said it already, but I hate stealth missions and dungeon puzzles. Always have. And while we’re at it, I resent the fact that it’s a free-to-play mobile game and yet I can’t simply pay my way past the most annoying aspects of the game. I’d actually pay a small amount of cash to skip certain puzzles, no joke.

TL;DR Guardian Tales is a very charming game with a lot going for it. You can see that by the small number of things I disliked versus what I liked. It’s just that both the stealth thing and the phone-only things are complete dealbreakers for me, so this is where I get off. Anyone who is even slightly curious, I highly recommend you try it. Best of luck to continuing players and may the little princess give you lots of free gems!