Hangames is a Japanese company that hosts browser games.
One of the games they host is Rakuen Seikatsu Hitsuji Mura.
I’m a regular player of said Rakuen Seikatsu Hitsuji Mura.
The company that makes Hitsuji Mura for Hangames to host is called Success.
Success has 4 other games hosted by Hangames.
Right now Success and Hangames are holding an event where you get rewards for playing all 4 games.
I want the reward for Hitsuji Mura, so I’m playing those games.
The first game I tried is called Makai no Pazuruka.

Is that enough backstory for you? Then let’s get on with it. Makai no Pazuruka is a match-3 card battling game. You collect powerful cards and use them in action against dungeon monsters and other players. There’s no story so you just dive right in and fight anything that’s available. “Combat” looks like this:

The pieces on the right side of the chain are your pieces, those on the left are the opponent’s. Match a piece with a sword icon on it with two or more other pieces of the same color to launch an attack. Match three shield pieces to remove all sword icons from the enemy’s pieces. Pieces matched also fill up the karma gauge of monsters with the same element (blue pieces -> water, red -> fire, etc) even if they don’t contain the sword icon. When the karma gauge builds up high enough, the card monster can use a special attack, complete with a special CG like so:

Battles versus regular enemies give you three moves for every move the enemy makes. Against bosses it’s 1-1. If you’re lucky enough and one of your moves leads to a chain of 5 or more matches, you get the “fever” status that lets you move one more time. That means you need a combination of really good cards, a moderate amount of skill at the match-3 game and a good amount of luck to get far in this game. Otherwise even the best deck in the world can’t save you if you don’t even get a turn because your enemy keeps triggering fever mode. That’s only happened to me once since I started two days ago, but it’s going to be something to watch out for as the stages get tougher, especially in player-versus-player situations.

Not that I have to worry about any of that, because I doubt I’ll be playing much Pazuruka once the collaboration event is over. Although I’m fond of match-3 games due to the influence of Candy Crush, matches in this game rarely last more than one or two moves per round with only 2-3 rounds per match. It usually takes longer for a puzzle to load than it does to play it.

Even worse, the AP cost for each battle is so high and your overall AP pool is so low that you’ll only be battling two or three times per login session. At level 27, my max AP is 29 but I need 11 AP per dive into a main dungeon. So I log in, “fight” two main battles, do one super-easy monster dungeon for 6 AP then that’s it for the next 3 hours. It takes 6 minutes for just 1 AP to refill so it’s not worth sitting around waiting either. It’s really unsatisfying all around.

Also I’m not really an expert on card battlers or anything – this is actually my first one – but I can tell just at a glance that any card less than an SR is just junk and filler, created only to be fed to your SR cards to power them up. There are a few problems with this. First, your rewards for dungeon-diving are usually N and N+ cards, i.e. rubbish you don’t really want. Secondly, while you do get money from the dungeons, the amount is so paltry and the cost for fusing is so high that the whole thing turns into a grind. You can see from the screenshot below that it’s going to take half my existing funds just to power up my card once. Fight, fight, fight, save, save, save, power up your cards once or twice and then start again from scratch.

The third problem is that SR cards don’t seem very easy to get.You either take part in events, which I have no intention of doing, or you pay for “gacha” which is a lottery where you give Success/Hangames money in exchange for the chance to get a rare card. I don’t know about Pazuruka, but I hear the chances of getting rare cards in other games can be as low as 3%. Dunno about you, but I’d rather spend that money on a physical game instead. Or heck, just a nice meal and a drink to go with it, then at least I know where the money went.

Plus even if you do get a rare card, these games are set up so your best cards quickly become obsolete and you keep having to get the latest and shiniest ones just to stay competitive. You can’t win. Not that this would deter me if I were actually determined to play the game, mind you. There’s plenty of fun to be had in seeing how far you can get without paying in a “free-to-play” game. In Pazuruka‘s case, though, the gameplay isn’t satisfying enough and the cards aren’t pretty enough or plentiful enough to hold my attention. Once this event ends, I am outta here. Time to try the next game, Eiyuu Chronicle!

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