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!

Happy New Year 2023! And no resolutions because resolutions are so 2022!

Happy new year, everyone! Did you all have fun these holidays? I can’t believe work resumes on Monday already and school from Tuesday onwards. Normally I would say “Where did the time go?” but the older I grow, the faster the time moves and the more I get used to it. Make the most of each day, is technically my new year’s resolution, but I already spent most of today grinding hunts and runes in Epic Seven, so that’s out of the window already.

As for video game resolutions, I’ve given up on making those. If anything, it seems just resolving to play something these days makes me less likely to play it than not. Besides, I genuinely won’t have the time for most games this year, because I have a lot of personal admin to do such as considering whether to change jobs/go back to school etc etc. Video games aren’t going anywhere, but my peak earning years are dwindling. For the sake of a comfortable retirement, it’s go time! As long as I manage to finish Xenoblade Chronicles 3 and reach the end of Episode 4 in Epic Seven, that will be enough for me in 2023.

I do feel like I neglected this blog a lot in 2022, so I’ll try to post a little more often, at least once every 10 days. First up will be a roundup of all the gacha games I tried and dropped this year. My big “thing” at this time last year was sorting out my gacha games, dropping most of them and pledging not to start any more… but as I already said, I often do the opposite of what I said I would so instead I tried several other new games. I would try even more, but the majority of mobile games just don’t appeal to me. The gameplay is too simplistic, the characters are boring, similar-looking waifus, the story is meandering, neverending nonsense and the gacha is downright unfair. But never say never.

In the meantime, I’m off to bed. No more late nights for me from 2023 onwards… and I just jinxed it by writing it out. Happy New Year again!

Uninstalled CounterSide. I’d had enough

I’ve played CounterSide for approximately four months and seen pretty much all it has to offer. However I uninstalled it over the weekend for the following reasons:

1. I’d seen enough. It doesn’t offer enough new content or gameplay to make ongoing play exciting. There are regular events, but the gameplay is essentially the same and I got tired of watching the same old, same old every time. Pulling new characters didn’t excite me either because gearing them is the same old Cooldown set with the same substats for practically everyone, and deployment costs mean you can’t easily stack a deck with your favorite shinies. Some might call it strategic, all I know is it’s not my thing.

2. My phone was running out of space. Something had to give, and CounterSide wasn’t exactly thrilling me so it was an easy cut. I need to give more thought to getting a new phone next year, but I’ll finish 2022 with this one. Actually… do I really need a new phone or is mass consumerism getting to me? …And other such thoughts along those lines will be my focus for 2023.

3. I got tired of the constant crashes. Long loading times only to crash when I try to do PVP or raids took a toll on me. It was especially bad when the game took so long to load during real-time PVP that I would lose without lifting a finger. I’m no PVP juggernaut by any means, but I still have my gamer’s pride. Losing by default sucks.

4. The Re-Arm system lost me. Getting characters up to level 110 was already a pain and a half, now you have to do that AND collect dupes/decompose other characters plus spend a boatload of gold, etc etc. to get a character to its optimum state. Right now people might say “You don’t need Re-armed characters to beat the game,” but you know the game company is going to start developing content for the new higher level really soon.

It’s a normal part of gacha games to raise the level cap higher and higher with time, but TBH I find it tedious every time. If it happens before I start a game, I accept it, but if it happens afterwards, I usually bail. And that’s why I didn’t have an issue with the Shiryuu era in Dissidia Final Fantasy but dropped it shortly after the Force era started. Starting a game near launch has its advantages and disadvantages.

5. Time passed and I lost interest in the story. Chapter 7 came out globally the other day, but I already forgot what happened in the previous chapters. Something about replacers and stuff, everything being destroyed left, right and center. Now that I think of it, these “Everything has been destroyed, and everything is still being destroyed, and we can barely do anything about it” stories aren’t really to my taste. I like something a little more hopeful and active. Like the 7th Dragon games, for example, where mankind is in a similarly poor state, but where you are involved in various efforts to retake the planet (or at least just Tokyo) and restore your normal lives.

Now, to be fair, the fact that playing whack-a-mole with Corrupted Objects is a losing game is very much a plot point in CounterSide. Several characters have brought it up, and whole chapters of the story revolve around the bad guys trying to implement an alternative solution. If this were a regular console game with a fixed start and finish, I would be all on board for that, but gacha games run for years and years. I’m already tired of beating C.O.s and all the attendant doom and gloom. If I quit now, maybe I’ll have the strength to come back later and read the conclusion (I lied to myself and you).

TL;DR – As summarized in the title, I’ve had enough CounterSide for now. I might come back later, might not, but for now I’m putting it behind me and working on other stuff (ahem, Epic Seven, ahem). Dunno who needs to hear this, but the easiest way to quit a gacha game is to replace it with another, more enjoyable one. Cold turkey is just a waste of the bandwidth you’ll spend downloading it again. Anyway, there you have it. Now back to the other mobile games.