Gacha gaming update 2023 – Tried Alchemy Stars, gave CounterSide a second chance

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.

evelyn keller, a character from the gacha game countersideCounterSide – 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.

Gacha gaming update 2023 – Dissidia: Final Fantasy – Opera Omnia

dissidia final fantasy opera omnia penelo in battleI’m a big sucker for game anniversary events. I suspect a lot of people are, which is why most online games make a fuss over anniversaries. When I heard Dissidia Final Fantasu Opera Omnia was giving away hundreds of free draws for its 5th anniversary, I couldn’t help logging in again. And like smart developers, they doled the draws out over weeks, all the way up to March 2nd. That kept me playing for a good long while, but once it was over… same old, same old. And so I uninstalled it again.

I had fun getting new characters, though. It’s nice for DFFOO to be generous with gems and tickets, but normally your pulling options are limited to a few rate-up character weapons in a banner. Which is nominally a good thing because you pull for weapons, not characters, and you need most/all of a character’s set of weapons to use them effectively. But when you play a game about lots and lots of Final Fantasy characters, naturally you want to pull lots and lots of FF characters.

The 5th anniversary banner was a rare opportunity, which I enjoyed to the max. Not only did I use all the free pulls but I also grinded the hell out of the Spiritus dungeons that give 400 draw tickets each. And I used all the tickets on the anniversary banner for even more characters. Somebody stop me! As a result, I got a lot of characters, but only a few weapons for each, so most of them are functionally useless, at least for now. But that’s totally not the point, so I’m okay.

Once the banner ended, there was nothing to keep me around. I’m not interested in the game’s story, and I still think the Force Era is too gimmicky and I still don’t want to fight any Shinryu damage sponge enemies. It was very much a “Wait… why am I playing this again?” moment. And I did get the answer to that question: to pull lots and lots of FF characters! Unlike most other games that make you work your butt off for less than a single pull (ahem Genshin Impact ahem), DFFOO hands them out quick and easy, which makes it a great source of that ever-elusive gacha dopamine fix.

dissidia final fantasy opera omnia gacha game 5th anniversary draw

AWWW YISSSS

So I’ll definitely be back the next time they do something similar, or whenever I just feel like it. I think it’s a very good game, actually. I’m just occupied with flashier, more/less demanding stuff. DFFOO requires more babysitting than I’m willing to give, but it’s not as engaging like peak Genshin Impact, for instance, so it’s in a weird spot for me. Just hope it doesn’t get cancelled before I can get back to it. Same with Romancing SaGa Re;Universe, which I want to try again for much the same gacha-pulling reason, once I’ve played a few Romancing SaGa games.

Aight, enough for one day. Back to the grindstone.

Gacha gaming update 2023: Love Nikki: Dress Up Queen

Might as well start 2023 with a look back on the games I spent the most time on in 2022. Second up, Love Nikki, which I’ve been playing since 2021. I’ve logged in almost every day minus a short break. I really like this game because there is a lot to collect and craft, and there is almost always an event going on. Some games you log on and there’s nothing to do, other games there is so much to do that you’re overwhelmed and stressed. Love Nikki is a nice, comfy middle.

The publishers have listened to some of the players’ complaints, so we’ve had some story chapter releases, and we have more frequent welfare (free) suits and housing pavilions running in addition to expensive diamond events. The events are easy to skip but the housing pavilions… I’ve gotta have them all, so now I’m running a serious diamond deficit.

Luckily there are no current or future events I’m super interested it, because I have enough clothes in almost all genres. The real holdup will be crafting diamond suits, since I’m almost out of diamond-free suits to craft. But I’ll cross that bridge when I come to it. The latest chapter just dropped, so I’ve got my hands full grinding for that, plus my first lifetime suit (Glimmer of Shine).

There’s really nothing to report for Love Nikki except I’m still playing it, I still like it, and I don’t intend to quit any time soon. And I don’t intend to write unnecessarily long posts just for the sake of writing something, so I’ll call it a day here. See you around!

Gacha gaming update 2023 – Princess Connect! Re: Dive

For lack of anything better to do, I’m going to start 2023’s posting season with a round up of the gacha games that kept me busy last year. Let’s kick things off with Princess Connect! Re: Dive, a game I keep coming to like a bad habit even though it’s not very interesting. I have tried and failed to figure out what I see in it, but at this point I must simply concede that it has a certain je ne sais quoi. That unknown factor isn’t enough to stop me from dropping it from the third time, though.

As for why I’m dropping it again, it’s the same old issue: I’ve been stuck on a roadblock boss for a while and I’m bored with not making any progress. That said, I did get quite a lot done in this most recent run from around December till today. I pulled NY Karyl and Neneka, and they made a tremendous and immediate difference to the strength of my party, unlike a certain overhyped Summer Saren. I was able to progress easily through several stages I hadn’t before, climb about 30 levels of the Tower of Luna compared to the previous time and actually make some contributions to Clan Battle.

I also geared up a large number of troops up to Rank 11 or 12. In addition to my staple party of Nozomi, Yukari, Summer Saren, Neneka and NY Karyl, I also built: Muimi, Jun, Grea, Miyako, Yui, Misato, Monika, Djeeta, Pecorinne, Kokkoro, Eriko, Shiori, Kaori and one or two others. I’ve taken my main team as far as I can with gear. I need to build a few of the very commonly used ones like Miyako and Muimi a little further, but I mainly need to get my levels higher and closer to the bosses I’ve been fighting. At present I’m at level 104 versus level 122-ish bosses, which is a bit steep even with the perfect party.

Yeah… that sounds like work, so it’s better for me to drop it for now and return whenever the urge strikes me again. The nice things about Princess Connect is that it will save a certain amount of stamina (a month’s worth?) for me if I ever want to jump back in again. I might time it with the next time they give out free pulls, but dupes aren’t very valuable in Priconne so maybe not.

Anyway, that’s it for the update on Princess Connect. I don’t read the story so I’m not invested in the characters, so I’m really really confused why I keep playing it. Hopefully the quitting will stick this time and I can stop disturbing readers with this game. Right now it looks like I just trot it out every couple of months to trash it, which isn’t true at all. The era when I played bad games out of morbid curiosity is well and truly over. Aight, enough typing for one day. Time for a well-deserved nap.

Gacha games that didn’t work out in 2022

I love the idea of free, addictive, high-quality games I can quickly and easily download and start playing. So, far from not starting new gacha games like I declared in January 2022, I downloaded and tried several new ones. Unfortunately my natural pickiness/laziness followed me into the realm of gacha, and though I was able to stick with a few of them (CounterSide, Dissidia Final Fantasy Opera Omnia) for a while, in the end I quit every new thing and returned to the old. I can’t even remember most of what I tried, but here are the ones that stuck in my mind.

CounterSide – I wrote about it extensively, so you can read why I dropped it here. The long story short is that it’s a fine game with interesting stories and characters but the PVE was lacking and the gear grind was even more boring and discouraging than Epic Seven‘s. Yes, that bad. That said, CounterSide isn’t dropped dropped, since I do enjoy the main and side stories. I think I’ll catch up again with developments in another year or two, assuming the game lasts that long.

Dissidia: Final Fantasy – Opera Omnia: I played it for a while, but never really wrote about it. I consider myself a Final Fantasy fan, but not that big of one. DFFOO‘s main gimmick is having characters from different series interact, so if you really, really like FF characters and really, really want to see them all hanging out, this is your game. They even bring back canon dead characters like Jecht and Braska and have them work things out with their kids, so if that’s your kind of thing, go for it.

The game is also extremely generous, with literally millions of gems available for new players. The catch is that most of it is locked behind grinds. If you’re wiling to put in a little bit of work, though, you can get stronger very quickly. DFFOO isn’t one of those games where a new player can never ever catch up to a veteran. You need all of a character’s weapons to make them strong, but once you do pull those weapons with your millions of gems, your Squall will be largely indistinguishable from Veteran Player X’s Squall. The developers regularly tweak older characters as well, so the chances that your favorite character is completely useless is quite low. IMO it’s a very good game for Final Fantasy lovers to try.

What made me quit was the introduction of the “Force Weapons” era. These are specific weapons capable of unleashing great power, but only if you fulfill certain conditions in battle. Some conditions are relatively normal, others are quite arcane, long story short you have to go through hoops to use them, and I just noped out of there. I hate gimmicky battle systems, especially with bosses that are huge damage sponges. If I can beat them in my own way with my preferred party, fine, otherwise I’m done. Nice game, though.

Tower of Fantasy: I didn’t buy into the “Genshin killer” hype, but I was looking for something big, colorful and expansive to play between Genshin map updates. Alas, Tower of Fantasy was too powerful for my desktop and kept crashing or even refusing to load. This is a killer in an MMORPG where you’re expected to team up with people to clear content.

What really killed the game for me, though, was the lack of any sense of progression. As soon as your level goes up a bit, the enemy level goes up to match, and you’re right back where you started. It’s not like in Genshin Impact where you can delay raising world levels or even lower it. What this meant in ToF was that I had to keep struggling against the same tanky mobs with no feeling of getting stronger. It almost felt like I was being punished for playing the game. I want to believe that this all resolves itself eventually once you reach a certain level, but between the crashes and the struggles and the story I didn’t care about, I wasn’t motivated to continue.

Tame stuff

Destiny Child: Can’t remember what made me start this. I think I heard it was a generous game. It’s also supposed to have a lot of fanservice, but that probably comes from the skins because the ordinary characters aren’t that skimpily dressed. I only played it for a day or two because I just couldn’t get into the battle system. I can’t even remember what it was like now, but it was all kinds of gimmicky so I lost interest. Also I’m not a fan of the kind of story with a protagonist who is being forced to do this and that and everything when s/he just wants to be left alone. I know that feel, bro.

Shin Megami Tensei L Dx2: I like SMT and Persona games, so why not try the gacha version? So I tried it, and I found out why not. It’s actually not a bad game. It has the turn-based press-turn combat from the SMT/Persona games, and a ton of demons from across the series to summon.

And there lies the problem. I enjoy the monster-collecting aspect of those games, but it’s no fun if the most powerful demons fall into your lap with a single summon. In every other gacha game I’m thrilled to get a meta-breaking SSR to break the game in half as soon as I start, but it just feels wrong in an SMT game. I’m used to playing for hours, collecting and leveling and fusing weaklings, then slightly stronger ones, then even stronger demons until I finally get my Megidolaoan-wielding behemoth to tackle the final boss with. I’ll just stick with regular games for this series.

Final Fantasy Brave Exvius: I think I joined this one too late. There was too much going on by way of characters, events, and grindables, and I couldn’t get into the story once Fina showed up. I started during an anniversary, so I was given loads of freebies to pull loads of characters. Unfortunately 99% of them are crap and only the rainbow “Neo vision” units are worth anything. That’s a bit sad. There were too many skills to grind and synergies to consider, and some of the bosses were huge damage sponges, all things I hate. I played it for a week or two but it just isn’t for me.

Octopath Traveler: Conqueror of the Continent: Finally got it to work on Bluestacks (use Pie-64 instance, not Nougat). It’s very similar to Another Eden, so TBH I don’t feel like playing it when I recall all I went through. And at least Another Eden had bright happy colors. CotC is just super dreary, I can’t stand it.

Also since there is “Octopath” in the title, I was hoping it would play similarly to Octopath Traveler where you have different main characters with different stories and path actions, but instead you have one boring main and have to tag along on the story characters’ quests. I’d much rather play Another Eden and get into the thick of things than be a perpetual hanger-on. I’d also much rather play Octopath Traveler 2 once it comes out and goes on sale.

Honkai Impact 3rd: Not much to say about this one except I’m sorry I spent so much bandwidth downloading it. The little story I read didn’t make any sense, the whole cast is just girls, girls, girls, the combat is clunky and awkward even with a controller, and there are too many different things going on in the menu. If not for Genshin Impact I would never even have tried it, but because of GI I gave it a few hours and felt very relieved when I quit. Now I’m having second and third thoughts about trying the other stuff Hoyoverse is developing like Honkai Star Rail and ZZZ.

SINoALICE: I know I played it, but I don’t remember much else. I don’t even remember what the battle system was like, or the story…? Was there a story? I know the whole game was themed around darker versions of fairytales, which IMO is really boring because every imaginable twist on a fairytale has been done by now, but whatevs. Why did I even play it, then? I think it was around the same time as Destiny Child and I was just downloading random stuff from the Playstore. Anyway, I dropped it pretty quickly and don’t recommend it for any reason.

Other: I think there was Grimlight and some simulation game, both of which I couldn’t get to load. There may have been one or two other games as well, but they aren’t worth the effort of trying to remember.

That’s it for the 2022 gacha roundup. I didn’t play any “proper” games apart from Xenoblade Chronicles 3 IIRC. This year I am resolved not to buy any new games until I finish everything I already own. And of course I still have my current mobile games like Love Nikki, Shining Nikki, Princess Connect, Epic Seven and Genshin Impact to keep me busy. It’s going to be an interesting year!