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.

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!