Don’t bother answering. Success has already decided that you do, that’s why they’ve made Ring ☆ Dream, a game full of scantily-clad “pro-wrestling” ladies for your viewing pleasure:

Ring ☆ Dream was the surprise hit of the whole Hangame x Success campaign for me (a long defunct campaign where you could earn virtual rewards for trying certain Japanese browser games). I really wasn’t expecting to enjoy a game about collecting pictures of scantily-clad anime girls, but now I find myself playing it every day. The reasons are simple and many:

1. Bright happy colors! Especially after the darkness of Pazuruka and the dullness of Eiyuu Chronicle, it’s a breath of fresh air.

2. Very, very simple gameplay. Walk around town, collect powerful cards, fuse them together and sic them on a variety of AI and human enemies. There aren’t many distractions, there aren’t any intricate leveling techniques and the tutorial takes all of 5 minutes to complete before you’re set free to roam.

3. Wrestling matches versus the AI don’t take any skills or smarts. It’s a pure numbers game, all about how good your deck is. Okay, there’s some luck involved in the boss battle roulette, but that’s about it. It makes things easy because the game usually gives you a choice of enemies to fight with their HP displayed up front. That way you can look at your own numbers, look at theirs and decide what to do. Like in the screenshot below…

…my combined deck power of 786,046 means I can do a minimum of 786,046 HP damage to an enemy. In other words I can beat those lovely 150,000 HP lasses with both hands tied behind my back. But since they’re so weak they’re hardly worth my time, so I chose not to fight them.

4. Player-versus-player battles are also mainly about luck and good decks. You can’t strategize, after all, because you aren’t given any information about your opponent in advance. The only general guideline is that players above your level have usually been playing longer than you have/spending more money than you have –> they probably have better decks –> it’s a good idea to pay 5 stamina points to roll a different enemy. The only time strategy comes into play is when you fight PC characters masquerading as PVP, since they respawn frequently and always use the same deck. Even then it’s just a matter of having a better deck, the end.

tl;dr Ring ☆ Dream is a very simple game of numbers and levels, which is just the way I like it.

5. Junk cards don’t look quite so junky. I mean it’s clear from the start that anything under Super Rare is just fodder for strengthening your main deck, but they’re still nicely designed AND the mook card characters regularly show up in skits or moonlight as sub-bosses so they actually have personalities. TBH I’ve been skipping 90% of the story because they talk too much, but it’s nice to know all the cards have a story behind them.

6. The first 20 levels really draw you in because there’s no stamina cost at all. You can play and play and play and play as long as you want… until you hit level 20 and then suddenly stamina points take 3 minutes each to refill. If you don’t know it’s coming it’s like Whoa, what happened?! The nice thing about Ring ☆ Dream, though, is that you get to decide how to allocate your bonus points every time you level up. Put enough points into stamina (my ideal is 160) and you can ignore the game for up to 8 hours at a time without feeling like you’re missing out on EXP, perfect for busy gamers like me.

7. The game is very generous with the paid gacha (Japanese term for valuable in-game items, can’t think of a good English equivalent), giving out free gacha tickets almost every day. I haven’t spent a cent so far, but I’ve still managed to get some really good cards from gacha spins and login bonuses. You don’t the same sense as you do from other games (*cough* Rakuen Seikatsu Hitsujimura *cough*) that you might as well not bother unless you’re a paying customer.

8. You also get a lot of money and “friendship points” through events so you can actually level any super powerful cards you get. It’s not grindy like Pazuruka where it can take hours to earn enough money and cards to nudge up one card a tiny little notch. Here you can level them up a lot and they actually feel like they’re getting stronger with every level because the numbers are on plain display.

In short Ring ☆ Dream looks nice, is easy and satisfying to play and doesn’t make too many demands on my time so I don’t feel under any pressure to play/not play depending on how I feel. The fanservice isn’t as bad as I’d expected going in either. I’d say like 50% of the outfits are just normal bikinis, 40% are a little risque and the last 10 are… well, just look at this:

Part of me thinks the game would be just as good with less emphasis on cleavage, another part of me realizes it’s a game about professional wrestling and these aren’t too different from the outfits female pro wrestlers sorta-wear so…yeah. Kinda comes with the territory. I wouldn’t complain about all the water in a sailing game, would I? At least I think I wouldn’t. Actually I’m just nitpicking to find something to complain about so I’ll seem all objective and stuff. Mission accomplished!

And with that my attempt at all 4 Hangame x Success collaboration games is complete. 3 of them sucked, 1 of them was good and that’s fine because I don’t have the time to play more than one or two browser games at a time. In more regular gaming news, I think I’m almost done with Littlewitch Parfait, so I’ll probably do a quick roundup on that next time. I also got the 3DS back over the weekend and almost started Rune Factory 4 but decided to get some sleep instead. The story of my gaming life these days…