Even if the layers of freemium crap we're stripped away, you'd still be left with a pretty bland game.
So, here's what I think: The game is fun. I'm a sucker for bullet hell/shmup. And it throws in the old RPG elements. Awesome. I don't want to repeat what everyone's said. Now, about the freemium model, I think I understand it: Ever play Final Fantasy Record Keeper? That's the freemium model pretty much used here. Unsurprising, it's Squeenix. It's not a bad model-quite to the contrary. Anyways, the progress is similar to that, where it mostly relies on your gacha and if you get good stuff early on, you can breeze through easy. Except that's not how it works right now, thanks to power creep. The "good stuff" now will probably be pretty bad as time goes on, because levels will get harder and Squeenix will release cooler "banners" for the players to compensate. So basically, if you save as much as you can and play the waiting game, you'll end up with enough to get that thing you reeeeally want later. And as time keeps going, they get nicer. 11x pulls will guarantee an item of X star rating soon. I'm 90% sure 5* will be added to the gacha. Etc, etc. So, hoard your stuff, wait out until events make it more worth it to pull.
An update to a 30 year old game gives me hope square-Enix will give me a premium einhander port on iOS or pc.
FYI: I used 25 Regalite to pull a character, ended up getting a dupe, the app said my dupe character was turned into a Knight's Soul and would be delivered to my Gift Box. So I went to my Gift Box and I never received this Knight's Soul. If rerolling's a thing, I might as well give it a shot I guess. EDIT: I found the Knight's Soul under Menu, Key Items. Clicked on it, but have no idea what it's used for. The menus shouldn't tell us it's sent to the Gift Box if it is just added to our items. Hope there will be a tutorial on using it eventually.
I ended up deleting this after playing for an hour or two -- I don't necessarily mind gatcha mechanics, but I'm not a fan of shooters / bullet hell games. But some of the writing was legitimately funny. The sidequest for my free roll character was all about how he was a muscle wizard.
Ehhhhh and nope, it's not even power creep that gets you, it's the bosses. At least that's how it seems to me. They're not all brick walls, but I blew through 30 regalite on continues for one of them (the ice tortoise) and now I'm stuck on another. The controls are manageable but they're simply not precise enough to dodge all the obstacles, let alone the bullet patterns, and the proper bosses give you literally a split second of grace to attack them in between evading (the tortoise, for example, finishes his spin attack, waits for less than a second and then starts something else). It's a battle of attrition chipping their health bar down a tiny, tiny sliver at a time. Yeah, the thief can jump and counter, but 1) that's not reliable in my experience, and 2) the bullet patterns go on for long enough anyway that there's every chance he'll simply land right in the middle of it when he's done and promptly take damage (again, the move is not reliable enough for you to keep jumping and countering right the way through the bosses' attacks). Not to mention unless you're massively over-leveled you will take huge amounts of damage. I do still sort of want to keep trying... I was really enjoying it! But I'm seriously thinking nope, don't bother, even if you push past this bit it'll only get worse. It might be doable for hardcore GIT GUD 1337 GamR types ("Watch me do a no-damage run on this boss with a party of 1-star heroes" etc.), but for someone like me it feels effectively impossible without feeding it credits (or the modern-day equivalent).
I've been retooling all morning. I've gotten 3-star characters to start all but one time. That one time, I got a 4-star character! And a few times I've been able to get one 4-star character with one of my four pulls after the beginning. So, I've had a team of one 4-star and three 3-star characters. I think my goal is to get two 4-star characters in my setup from the beginning. We'll see if I can get one to start again, then pull one. Might take all day. But it's a fun meta game.
Got past the Chapter 3 boss quicker than I thought (it's still absolute BS, but it didn't take as many continues as the Chapter 2 one). I do think it's worth reiterating there is no energy meter - even with the spiraling cost of upgrades it feels quite startling to be able to just keep going... and going... and going, whereas with, say, Terra Battle I got seriously annoyed the moment I saw the stamina meter going down. Certainly the most entertainment I've had out of a gacha game for a long, long time - I've not played them that much but I've tried a few and none of them felt like this (the Yokai Watch one was pretty good, but I could feel the power creep spoiling my fun very early on). I'm on three 4-stars (Shapur, Kaliva and Karen) and a 3 (Cielo) for my regular party, and outside of these horrid difficulty spikes/moments of cheese it's posing a decent challenge. Grinding some of the events for resources actually makes combat start to feel like a proper test of skill, not a slap in the face. So I'm still plugging away!
Japan free games use this model a Lot no energy stamina and I dont mind that at all makes it worth playing
It's amazing just how many freemium mechanics you can stack onto such a simple joyous gameplay element from 30 years ago. It's weighed down with so much unnecessary nonsense that only exists to push gacha and leveling up mechanics at you for every element in play. It's crazy. How can anybody come into this and not feel overwhelmed? We already have people restarting the game over and over again just to reroll a four star character. I can't do this stuff anymore. I'm going back to Ramp Champ.
I signed up for their Pre-Launch Me' gift and since we are waiting on that i thought i'd have some fun with all three
Why 3 stars? I'm not understanding what's so overwhelming about this game. Check out FF brace EXVIUS if you want to be overwhelmed. This is pretty good so far and they give you premium currency pretty regularly.... it's a gotcha game and these are one of my favorite types of games. 4.5/5
Welp, I'm done. The first reverse-scrolling stage is... not good. Defeat the boss before the timer runs out, or die, try again, no continues allowed - and my four-star heroes who've been raised to the first level cap with a bunch of extra skills and reforged weapons still get killed in a matter of seconds. It might be doable if you're a really, really GIT GUD sort of gamer, but I just don't find it fun trying over and over. (I mean, the only reason it forces you to do it without continues is to try and persuade you to pay real money to level up your heroes faster.) The controls just aren't up to actually playing it like a challenging action game - not to mention it repeatedly spawns my next heroes inside the boss, meaning that when I clip out of it I'm touching the bits of it that do damage (you can't avoid doing that, its entire front edge damages you) and oh, look, dead again before I even got to do anything. Plus it's only on that stage for some weird reason, but one hero's specials drop the framerate into single digits and show up a bunch of texture seams, every single time. All in all I was um-ing and ah-ing over whether I should really keep trying to feed the gacha and I think that's the push I needed to say no, thank you. A shame, since I was really having fun up until then, but... uninstalled.
It's a good game with a bit too many IAP/F2P mechanics. I'm enjoying it for what it is, but again, it's another game that would be so much more enjoyable if it wasn't F2P, and only had IAP for more levels or cosmetic stuff. EDIT: Not to mention, online only and being stopped from playing by maintenance... like now.
Well, after getting a Aurelaine and Barusa on my iPad, I finally got a decent start on my iPhone. I settled with Shapur, Barusa, and Typhon all 4-stars. Not a bad starting team. Also have a few 3 and 2-star characters. I really wanted to get a 4-star Ray Jack, and it's got to be possible... but after 3 and a half days of rerolling, it's time to start playing on my iPhone. Shapur seems to be a decent leader. Normally, I hate these F2P gacha games, but this seems to have NO energy. So, endless arcade fun. So, I can't be too hard on the F2P element if it is literally a free arcade game. And I figure that I'll have Ray Jack and the four retro characters to look forward to getting eventually.
