3.2
• GRAPHIC
The graphic is very good, almost unnecessarily so. A whole 3D waifus for a shootem up game. Which mostly only useful in home, and make the gameplay heavier. The skill cutscenes are mostly meh though, they all are unnecessarily flashy, that 90% of the time you don't even get wtf is going on. Definitely trying to torture people with epilepsy.
The story scenes are pretty good due to the 3D models, but they're all fairly short, and mostly use chat interface for storytelling.
• SOUND
Good i guess? i'm not very familiar with many retro games, but their soundtracks based on those games. Which is nice for a retro enthusiasts but kinda whatever otherwise.
• GAMEPLAY
It's a shoot em up games, STG, bullet hell, danmaku, whatever the synonyms are. You make a team consists of 5 casts, each with their own classes (tank/support/healer/dps) and a bunch of attack types (single, rapid, mini aoe, wide aoe, piercing, etc etc). Not to mention elements, so there are indeed wide choice to make your team adapt to the enemies.
The most concerning is the camera view, it use a free camera view and constantly rotates like crazy with glitchy effects and background, unnecessarily making things harder. You can use fixed above camera that gives you more stable view, but most of the time, far away enemies can't be seen as they're out of the screen.
There is auto mode but mostly only good when trying to dodge easy single bullets. When it comes to bullet hell they would just happily kiss the whole horde of explosives coming their way.
• STORYLINE
This is actually what lured me in to play. The setting is pretty interesting, you're playing as a citizen in a world dominated by SEGA ruling every aspect as the biggest company in the world. But as you about to get employed there, you suddenly shown their dark scheme.
SEGA has been turning their retro games into waifus called 'cast', corrupted them and used their power to change the world's history to their advantage.
Your task is to cleanse them and return the world's history back into it's original.
It is further revealed that there are other alternate world that ruled by other game companies such as Taito, Bamco, etc. Allowing other retro games from those companies to be added. So yeah, tldr: game companies turned bad, then turned their retro games into weaponized waifus.
• VALUE
The other points are good enough for me to keep playing except for the value. In the end, what motivates us to keep playing is how long can we enjoy it.
The game's gacha rate is 2%, fairly low, with a 200x pull required to spark. All the points are lost once banner ended, except if you're pulling on standard banner... which only give you standard casts. 🤷
You need
1500 to do a 10 pulls, and only get 20 daily. You get most income as newbie from pushing arenas and panel missions. Stage clears ONLY GIVES YOU
5 for a 3 star clear .Additional incomes comes from arena (mostly
10 daily, around 300 weekly depends on your rank), then colosseums (guild raid, 50 per season on casual guilds, more gems on competitive one 500+).So you mostly only get 10 to 20 pulls monthly with all the banners they constantly throwing at you.
It might sounds reasonable and all except for the fact you will also need figures (weapon) to match the casts (character). And you need BUNCH of dupes to get a high power, and the alternatives for these takes forever to grind. So yes, it's heavy P2W, but don't worry, not so many people is a whale here from what i see, they're mostly veterans who played longer and only pay occasionally. The game value talk for itself, not so many people would whale on games they don't think worth it.
The amount of time to actually build a single character is pretty long too, especially increasing the cast's version outside drop boost events. And farming accesories in the dungeon since it takes a whopping 150 stamina (for reference, your stamina capped around 100 on lv.50, though you can get 300+ staminas daily from missions alone). Increasing figure levels takes forever too, and the item for limit breaking & grade up high rarity ones are very rare. Basically a grinding hell bullet hell game.
If you love bullet hell games, don't care about not getting new and limited characters and their weapon, don't have epilepsy, undestand japanese, and willing to pay to get stronger, i will recommend you. Otherwise, just save your lifespan for better games.