Outerplane is one of the latest gacha game releases, coming out in May 2023. It is published by Smilegate, better known as the publishers of Epic Seven. It is for that reason mainly that I gave it a try for about a week, only to realize I’m better off sticking to Epic Seven.

Story: A boy named K is summoned from Earth to another world, where he becomes a hero. However he is betrayed and almost killed by his closest allies, and is saved by the efforts of an automaton named Eva. After regaining his strength, he sets out on a journey of revenge, finding new allies along the way and learning to trust again.

Typical isekai story setup. The interesting part comes after you finish the first 10 chapters and beat the boss. You get the chance to… see some things differently, if I can be non-spoilery about it. I was interested in seeing how things played out, but the stages were tough and would have required me to level up my characters, and I wasn’t prepared to do that.

It’s already been some time since I dropped it, but IIRC my deal breakers were:

1. Having to farm weapon, armor and crafting materials over and over and over again a la Epic Seven. Been there, done that, bought the T-shirt. I like Epic Seven, but one such game is enough.

2. Having the option to skip stages, but having that tied to skip tickets that were never in sufficient supply. Think Princess Connect. Either don’t have skipping because you think your gameplay is so wonderful (whatevs) or let me skip whenever and however I wish.

3. The stages take forever to play through in auto-battle. And I had the game installed on my phone out of dumbness, so I had my phone locked up for lengthy periods of time. Unforgiveable. Combat is also the usual boring 3-stage thing, running from left to right and beating enemies along the way. Again, I already have Epic Seven to scratch that… itch?

4. The extra gameplay modes like the Tower thing and that roguelike place were both very boring, and the gameplay still boiled down to fighting random mobs.

5. Honestly the story wasn’t that great, even with the alternate options. The characters didn’t grab me. Especially “Eva” who was supposed to be an android with no emotions except she had pleeeenty of emotions and was always whining and wishing she could be this and that etc etc. I don’t have patience for that kind of thing. Inconsistent characterization is frustrating. Character designs were meh too. The music… wait, was there music?

TL;DR Outerplane is a mediocre game. It’s playable if you have nothing better, but a lot of it feels like Epic Seven crossed with the late Princess Connect, so for someone who has played both, there’s no appeal. I don’t know what I was expecting when I tried it, but whatever it was I didn’t get it. Logging in to do dailies quickly became a chore, so there was no point in prolonging the suffering. Done, dusted, on to the next game.