Mobile Games, Gacha, Android/IOS games

[J1M]

Instead of playing slots where you can't win money, you could instead emulate SNES games on your phone.

[Tangerine]

You can gamble on sports like horse racing,

These are slot machines that pretend to not be slot machines. Do you think those are legal?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historical_horse_racing

Historical horse racing (HHR), originally known as Instant Racing, is an electronic gambling product that allows players to bet on replays of horse races or dog races that have already been run, using terminals that typically resemble slot machines.

[Val the Moofia Boss]

You can gamble on sports like horse racing,

These are slot machines that pretend to not be slot machines. Do you think those are legal?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historical_horse_racing

Historical horse racing (HHR), originally known as Instant Racing, is an electronic gambling product that allows players to bet on replays of horse races or dog races that have already been run, using terminals that typically resemble slot machines.

In Japan? I don't know. Since I can't find any info on HHRs in Japan, I'd assume no.

Reading the wikipedia article, it does seem odd that HHRs would even exist in the first place. I'd imagine that any state that bans slot machines would also ban the HHRs. Weird.

[Val the Moofia Boss]

Granblue Fantasy

The rerun for one of the story events (To Each His Ideal) in the Dragon Knights storyline happened. Now I am irate. The DK storyline up until this chapter had been moving towards being about three brothers and how one of the brothers had gone missing for years. In the prior event, it was revealed that the estranged brother, Lamorak, had become a wizard and joined some sort of cabal or terrorist group that go around trying to incite wars between nations.

Well in this chapter, Lamorak is showing the former **** (long story) around his secret laboratory where he is researching immortality. He shows her collection of kids stuffed in vats...




The heroes catch up to Lamorak and bust him. Sorry guys but it looks like your brother is gonna be executed for this one. But wait! Since this is being written by Jap pop-culture writers, we get this moral relativity spiel. Throughout this event, we have had all of these scenes of characters pontificating about how important it is to have an "ideal" to strive for, characters "finding their ideal" and proudly declaring that they will strive for it will the music swells and being patted on the back for it.




The former **** shows up to save Lamorak, and then he gets up and summons a dragon, and begins flying off into the sunset talking about how he has an ideal to pursue. This then leads into a CG where the characters are admiring him from the ground and the music playing is all nostalgic, as if he is supposed to be a heroic, likeable character. WTF! And then at the end, Lamorak is looking for a spot to establish a new workshop, the **** pledges to follow him as if he is some friend worthy of admiration (why does she even like him? Wasn't she horrified by the vats? Is she not afraid of becoming his next victim?). Presumably they will then go grab local kids and experiment on them and stash them into vats again. And ofcourse the music is all happy. The End! (To be continued in the next event when it reruns)




I really, really despise this moral relativity crap in Japanese media where the heroes are smiling towards the villains and their wicked deeds are swept under the rug and we are supposed to pretend that we want to see these characters again as if they are friends. Heinous villains are rarely judged or brought to account. GBF has had some wonky moments before but this is

[J1M]

Stuff like this is why I think sports anime works better than anything serious or political from Japan.

[Lhynn]

@Lhynn @SoLong @Breathe @Faceless_Sentinel and other HSR fans: I am finishing up an exhaustive review of Honkai Star Rail. Is there anything you think I should cover? So far I have focused on general visuals (character designs and variety, animations both in and out of battle, environment art, UI, music), the story (namely the wonky presentation and scene writing and stilted cutscenes), solid PC performance, the shortcomings of the 4 man party system with no character customization which leads to rigid parties, the costs of the game, and I think that has been it.

Uh, im seeing this too late probably. But Id mention the rampant powercreep and low budget storytelling, the frankly awful events and the safe and childish writing that seems to be a staple of Amphoreus.

Much like other Hoyo games it seems to be on a downward trend where everything just sort of gets worse.

[Val the Moofia Boss]

Honkai Star Rail

I am now on the patch 3.2 story. Amphoreus started off being so-so, but starting with 3.1 I have been getting more into it. The story has been picking up at the first Flame Reaver confrontation and when you meet Anaxa. Some neat scenes with the characters.

► Show Spoiler

The scene of Phainon and Mydei's bath contest was funny.










The scene where Hyacine impersonates the old man professor's voice was funny. Too bad you can't rewatch old cutscenes to record it.




It is odd that ingame, Phainon and Mydei are depicted still wearing their default outfits during the super hot bath contest. Couldn't even be bothered to model them in bathrobes. Meanwhile, the girls get a CG of them in the baths in appropriate attire.




It is odd how Tribios is supposed to be a young woman in her 20s in the story and the flashback CGs and with her voice, but then ingame the devs didn't bother to model her and instead just reused the little Tribbie model from after she was split into three.








Another issue is that there has been so much asset reuse across HSR for quests that it sometimes becomes difficult to deduce what exactly is supposed to be happening in the story. In this patch, Tribios is supposed to running away from the city of Janusopolis and gets caught by the guards. Up until this point, all guards in the cities on Amphoreus have been humans. Yes, Nikador and his forces apparently used to be friendly, but my understanding is that they were stationed in another city called Kremnos, not throughout all of the cities. There are no regular unmasked, unarmored humans in HSR used as enemy models. So when I saw this scene, I was confused if these were actually supposed to be humans and the devs were just using Nikador's stonemen as stand-ins like how Tribbie's child model was being used as a stand-in for Tribios who is supposed to be 20+ in this escape scene, or if these are actually supposed to be Nikador's stonemen. This has been a general presentation issue throughout HSR and Genshin. Genshin had a similar issue with one of the character's quest where in lore, you are supposed to be fighting a clone of a character, but ingameplay you fight an unrelated enemy model, not even a recolor of that character.




The combat animations continue to be impressive.








I like how the Flame Reaver is portrayed as just a guy (I already know his real identity), rather than a stereotypical invincible big bad who can never be hurt or blindsided.

I like how we get a character, Anaxa, who is not on good terms with the others. He is not friends with the heroes. He is not a part of their clique. He does not believe in the prophecy and does not want to be roped into becoming a legendary hero being sent on missions by Aglaea. Aglaea is trying to blackmail him into serving her. And we also get POV chapters where you play as him trying to navigate this and get out under Aglaea's thumb and advance his own agenda. He feels much more realized as a person than most of the other characters who feel like they are all samey nice do-gooders on the same team who can feel like they blend together. Anaxa is not evil, he just wants to do his own thing.






The Amphoreus locations are looking nicer.












The Xenoblade 2 twist of the Titans actually being the superpowered humans was pretty easy to predict. I guess Mydei would eventually become something weird like Nikador after a few centuries.



Castorice has become the embodiment of death, so she can never touch anyone without killing them. She gets somewhat enslaved/coerced by a city state to execute prisoners and give some sort of assisted suicide to old or ill people. The voice acting and then the 2D animation segment did manage to bring a tear to my eye.









Once again however the inconsistent appearances of the characters brings confusion. In the game, we see a flashback that chronologically takes place before Castorice becomes the embodiment of death, where she visibly appears to be grown up and looks just like present day Castorice. And then when when go the next ingame flashback after she had become the embodiment of death and was coerced by the city state into killing people, she retains the same appearance. But then in this 2D animation, we see Castorice look very young. Is that what Castorice was actually supposed to have looked like in those ingame flashbacks to earlier, but the devs just couldn't be bothered to model her?


It turns out that the Trailblazer is actually dead/undead/a hollow construct like FF10 Tidus composed of magic, so she can touch him. The only person she has ever been able to touch. A little emotionally manipulative but much more successful than the previous tragic waifu Firefly.








There was only 6 days left on the limited time bonus rewards for doing the new event, so I decided to do it now. It's yet another management sim/minigame where you go to a fairy village and help the furballs run a restaurant. As usual it is very difficult to actually lose since you don't have to pay any wages or bills. It is only mildly stressful in wondering if you have grown enough of the right crops to be able to produce enough dishes to feed all of your customers, since it would feel bad if a customer came in and requested a dish and you couldn't feed it to him and then left a bad review on the fake internet. Fortunately I cut close once or twice but that never happened. There were some funny skits.

[Val the Moofia Boss]

@Lhynn @SoLong @Breathe @Faceless_Sentinel and other HSR fans: I am finishing up an exhaustive review of Honkai Star Rail. Is there anything you think I should cover? So far I have focused on general visuals (character designs and variety, animations both in and out of battle, environment art, UI, music), the story (namely the wonky presentation and scene writing and stilted cutscenes), solid PC performance, the shortcomings of the 4 man party system with no character customization which leads to rigid parties, the costs of the game, and I think that has been it.

Uh, im seeing this too late probably. But Id mention the rampant powercreep and low budget storytelling, the frankly awful events and the safe and childish writing that seems to be a staple of Amphoreus.

Much like other Hoyo games it seems to be on a downward trend where everything just sort of gets worse.

The review hasn't been published yet but I'll probably try to get it out before I start playing the Trails in the Sky remake on Friday. Gonna add some stuff to it.

I have heard a lot of complaints online about the powercreep/HP inflation of the weekly 15 minute endgame content. However, the endgame of MoC/PF/Apoclayptic Shadow is such a small sliver of the game compared to the dozens and dozens of hours of main story content, which appears to be able to be beaten with any comp so long as you have at least one healer. HSR's endgame also doesn't give you anything massive compared to other gachas like GBF, where via farming the endgame for many, many hours you can acquire better weapons that make your team substantially better so you can do even more endgame farming. Whereas in HSR you just get a few hundred jades/a few extra pulls which pales in comparison to the amount of pulls you get from story patches. Apparently the reward for the new upcoming super difficult endgame mode (that requires full completion of MoC, PF, and AS) will be a Pom-Pom skin of him in night attire. That does not feel like something substantial to be missing out on.




I find the events to be a neat diversion. The combat and dungeon crawling is overall shallow and becomes samey given the length of the story. The large number of events with different minigames help spruce this up (though it'd also be nice to see the core gameplay loop improved, but there are fundamental issues here like autobattle feature + sheer number of respawning enemies/waves and the narrow ability kits here that are unlikely to be addressed). The events have funny skits. Probably the main issue with the events is that there is little tension since in most of them you cannot fail (or you would have to fail on purpose). So at times it can feel like you are just going through the motions until you reach the end.

The writing in Amphoreus has never felt really "bad" to me. I haven't noticed anything ergregious like in the prior arcs. Belobog had some wonkiness with how the writers seemed to have expected me to really care about Bronya when she only had 5 minutes of screentime. Xianzhou was offputting with these beautiful immortals living in a safe and extremely prosperous society were standing around complaining how bad they have. Penacony is probably the actually worst writing I have seen in HSR due to how schizophrenic it is. Sparkle, Robin, and Firefly are introduced and then just never do anything. You meander around for many hours with no clear plot objective until Aventurine and Sunday randomly decide to transform into final boss monsters and fight you for obtuse reasons. With Amphoreus, I actually know what we are doing and so far there hasn't been anything egregious. The main issue is the usual pacing issues (particularly in 3.0 with how long it takes to reach Nikador) and the presentation problems of the cutscenes and how the character models are used (or lack of).

[Lhynn]

In the latest drink mixing even you get a single scene with Kafka that is more interesting than anything in the past 50 hours of gameplay, and about as good as the previous time you got a scene with Kafka (Though that one is a dream you have to choose to talk to her).

She and Firefly are the only characters to have a real connection with the Trailblazer, and she, in particular, makes everything else feel so fake and uninteresting by comparison.

Anaxagoras is an absolute bro, I wish the Trailblazer had more of a personality, because he is the one Amphoreus character id befriend.

I just cant believe this game, so much content, so many hours of storytelling, but so little of it lands or resonates in any way. The best storybeats isolated to companion quests or events that we really dont get anymore. Like the museum event and Pela discovering the fate of her parents, or Yunlis sword quest. These moments become more and more scarce, as if the ones making the game realize that they are just selling toys instead of trying to make characters with humanity.

You definitely need to go through Wuthering waves bro. Camellyas quest, Shorekeepers quest, Phrolovas quest, so much quality writing.

[Val the Moofia Boss]

In the latest drink mixing even you get a single scene with Kafka that is more interesting than anything in the past 50 hours of gameplay, and about as good as the previous time you got a scene with Kafka (Though that one is a dream you have to choose to talk to her).

She and Firefly are the only characters to have a real connection with the Trailblazer, and she, in particular, makes everything else feel so fake and uninteresting by comparison.

Really? Kafka? I have never found her particularly likeable. She has an okay character design, but I find the actual character in universe to be unlikeable. My first introduction to Kafka was that she was a galactic terrorist on the most wanted list, and then she beams board our spaceship and begins prancing around gloating about how we have to break her comrade out of prison, and the scenes aboard the Luofu where she is acting smug when the authorities catch up to her. Very aggravating.








I was perplexed by that first person scene where you have a lot more dialogue options than usual and it feels like maybe it's supposed to be some sort of survey and I am questioning why the writers think I would in universe respond positively to her and say I want to see her again.




As for connections, the Trailblazer is surrounded by his very reliable comrade Dan Heng, Mr. Yang, and the pleasant March 7th. He has spent a lot of time with them. He is also friends with Yanqing. I would also say that he is becoming a little more than just acquaintances with the Amphoreus characters.



Firefly is not well executed IMO. She reads as a foolish young girl.

• She has joined two very dangerous galactic terrorists.
• There is that flashback scene in Penacony where she is riding in a car with Blade and she is talking out of her ***. I don't think having a supposed terminal illness (that does not seem to actually inconvenience her, let alone is actually clocking down because this game has been going on for years but everyone is the same age) would make her wiser.
• She meets the Trailblazer - some random guy - and then drags him on a midnight jaunt across the rooftops to go gaze at the stars and listen to a crappy pop song about love. If she wants a handsome man, why not go after Blade? It seems they have known each other for longer. Or ask Kafka to set her up with a good catch? (I guess my perception is that the Trailblazer seems to be of unappealing status to a woman. He dresses like a bum and is merely a passenger - not the owner - of the Astral Express who can be kicked out at any time. He does not actually have any assets to his name and no real skills besides fighting, which would make it difficult for him to support a family and thus entice a woman).
• And then there is the Penacony epilogue patch where she is on the cruise ship/yacht and enters the wolf's den to seek out the obviously wicked witch Jade who leads people to their ruin.

She reminds me a lot of Quess from the Gundam Char's Counterattack movie, a middle class young girl who fantasizes about being swept up in a romantic story, runs away from her loving home to chase after Amuro and then Char, doesn't pay attention to people's character and thus winds up falling in with and/or lusting after unstable amoral people, etc. Quess got blown up for that, and realistically I'd expect Firefly would perish in a last stand along with these other intergalactic criminals she has thrown her lot in with once they get tracked down by the authorities.

She just comes across as either a too conspicuous attempt at some sort of waifu for the player character, or a foolish person.

I wish the Trailblazer had more of a personality

Yeah. I wish he was an actual voiced character with his own backstory and desires, like a real JRPG protagonist. It seems like Mihoyo went with this for their next game ZZZ with Wise and Belle.

I just cant believe this game, so much content, so many hours of storytelling, but so little of it lands or resonates in any way. The best storybeats isolated to companion quests or events that we really dont get anymore. Like the museum event and Pela discovering the fate of her parents, or Yunlis sword quest. These moments become more and more scarce, as if the ones making the game realize that they are just selling toys instead of trying to make characters with humanity.

Yes, the humongous amount of time invested for so few poignant is abysmal. Other gachas like GBF have more entertaining moments much more often, and even the sluggish Trails series at least has a few neat scenes per game.

You definitely need to go through Wuthering waves bro. Camellyas quest, Shorekeepers quest, Phrolovas quest, so much quality writing.

I have tried to get into WuWa twice. Ultimately there are too many aggregate issues that have made me put the game down both times, and I have ancedotally heard a lot of unflattering things about it that makes me disinclined to pick it back up again in the hopes that it might "get good" later on.

• It is a frenetic action combat game which is typically shy away from.
• Your party members do not fight on the field with you. Instead, it has that unimmersive Genshin-esque instant swapping of characters on the spot.
• WuWa characters have more buttons than Genshin characters, with ability descriptions that are just as verbose, which made the experience confusing to me. It is very time consuming doing homework/research trying to understand how a character works and how you are supposed to play them, let alone multiple characters and how they synergize with each other. I had a talk about this with a coworker last month about how these modern game designers have lost the plot and made their mechanics so ludicrous that the game isn't fun anymore. Having to read long WoWhead guides to play your retail WoW class or a KeqingMains guide on how Genshin characters work or read Pyrdwen guides on how an HSR character works... it's just an unenjoyable use of free time. And because these are live service games that update often you have to keep checking up on guides often.
• The aesthetic of the game overall does not appeal to me. The landscapes have a rather generic, uninspired look to them. The character designs are weird, with too much detail and doodads, and I wasn't too into the tacticool look of the base game, and from what I have seen the skintight lingerie of the patch and expansion characters look tacky. The only vaguely, slightly cool-ish looking character in the roster is Xiangli Yao. GBF and HSR characters are overall much more appealing IMO.
• The soundtrack was completely forgettable.
• The story I found to be abysmal. I dropped around the part where you go to the abandoned cult village and Scar makes you run around clicking on stuff for half an hour.
• Anecdotally, I have heard that the post-launch story devolves into rummaging through new characters. New patch, new girl is introduced, new girl is pushed onto Rover, something supposedly big happens featuring that girl, and then she is discarded by the next patch. If Shorekeeper is supposed to be Rover's love, then why keep shipping him with these other girls rather than having stay with Shorekeeper permanently? Etc. There appears to be no central party or strong overarching plot to follow.

I have heard that there was a survey asking about mech characters, so maybe a cool mech character will get introduced in the 3.X expac. Maybe if it's the New Federation it will be a more cool looking place. But overall I am not really enticed by WuWa, and these 3D open world gacha games especially are humongous time commitments. Not only are the stories are long but travelling across the world to reach the next cutscene further bloats the play time. My time on this earth is limited and I have other things I need to do, and there are also fun things I can do for entertainment that provide much more fun in a shorter time frame like reading a book.

[ManjuShri]

Elder Scrolls Blades is no longer supported on Android

Currently have Slice and Dice, Shattered Pizel Dungeon, and Hoplite installed. No room for Puzzle Quest 3.

[Lhynn]

Really? Kafka?

► Show Spoiler

Kafka is the person that cares the most about Trailblazer. Remember that TB is a member of the Stellaron hunters, one of the oldest ones, I believe he was there before even Kafka.
She always keeps an eye out for him, like an older sister or a lover, the tension there seems to be between them makes me think its the later, but I think theyll go with a choice.
The thing about the Stellaron hunters is that they are forced to behave according to a script, they are all tragic figures that want to change their fate. Blade wants to die, Firefly wants to get healed from her chronic and fatal illness, and Kafka, as far as I know, just wants to save the TB.
The whole group is about personal stakes and doing what they must to get what they want.
The other thing, the only choices that seem to matter in the entire game revolve around Kafka, their meeting at the loufu and the meeting at the dream, those are the two moments in the whole story where what the TB says makes a difference.

The problem I have with the Astral express crowd is that they havent gotten any real character development, in fact Amphoreus may be the first time they do. With Dan Heng going preservation and March going Remembrance. We still havent gotten anything from Welt or Himeko, they are just entities that sort of hang in the background and act when **** hits the fan.

The game is really just at its best in Jarilo, patch 1.0 was peak, and everything thats come after has been less and less interesting, save a few very rare spots.

[Val the Moofia Boss]

Remember that TB is a member of the Stellaron hunters, one of the oldest ones, I believe he was there before even Kafka.

From what I recall from HSR's intro, the Trailblazer is some sort of artificially created being. Kafka found a Stellaron and stashed it into a puppet body nearby. So that makes Kafka some sort of creator to the TB. If the TB was supposed to have existed before this point and had been a friend to Kafka, then it'd have to be some sort of Ghost in the Shell ending or Fate/Stay Night ending situation where his body got blown up and this is a replacement body, his soul got transferred into that one, and then the stellaron got transferred into it and he woke up, but that seems convoluted and raises questions like how his replacement body got brought/constructed at Herta space station and why, etc.

[Lhynn]

From what I recall from HSR's intro, the Trailblazer is some sort of artificially created being.

No, hes a real person, just lost all of his memories and was given a Stellaron. Its all part of Elios script to save the world.

► Show Spoiler

I think I know where you are wrong. The reason Castorice can touch the TB is not because hes a puppet, its because he died by Nikkadors lance when he got into amphoreus, but because of some fuckery with Oronyx or some **** he had a few days before death caught up to him.
Castorice becomes death to save TB.

[Val the Moofia Boss]

Everytime Ellio and his future sight and leadership of the Stellaron Hunters gets brought up, I envision a wise prophet like Eli or Samuel with a grey beard.




He's probably going to become playable and will therefore look like yet another clean shaven young guy in his 20s. It's gonna be like Varka in Genshin where you envision a middle aged leader of the Knights of Favonius leaving the young juniors in charge at home while he sets off on an expedition far away from home, and then he gets revealed to be a twink.

[Lhynn]

He's probably going to become playable

Maybe, most people think its the ******* cat.

[Val the Moofia Boss]

Goodness gracious, a player spent $32,000 on maxxing out Castorice




Another person spent at least $16k maxxing out Acheron and then another $16k for Boothill




I wonder if this is why Greg Street left Riot games. Maybe Riot is not content with making a Runeterra MMO that is capped at charging $210 per year to play ($15 monthly sub + $60 box expansion every 2 years). They saw these gacha billions and want to construct their game with the possibility of extracting fabulous sums of money from leviathans.

From Jason Schrier's book on Blizzard, this is also why the second Diablo 3 expac was cancelled. The game was constructed so that the maximum amount of money that could be spent was capped at just a couple box purchases and the $15 Necromancer DLC. They wanted to construct D4 to have a higher extraction cap.

[Lhynn]

Goodness gracious, a player spent $32,000 on maxxing out Castorice

Na, I think the most you can spend with a ton of bad luck is 3k, the limit is E6 S5.
There are some whales that just spend absurd amounts of money, not sure why yet, maybe its money laundering or something.

[Val the Moofia Boss]

New trailer for ANANTA (aka ***** anime GTA). Rather irritating that they label it a "gameplay" trailer when it is not uncut gameplay.

[Val the Moofia Boss]

Just saw the leaked animations for Cyrene.

It'd be neat if she turned Phainon's ruined territory into that picturesque field.

These ginormous apocalyptic animations are cool, but it's gonna feel weird when it only tickles a boss for 4% of its HP.

Cyrene has the longest kit yet. She grants a different buff for each of the 12 Chrysos Heirs (3.X Amphoreus expansion characters). So she has 13 different buff skills, but her best buffs are far and away for Castorice and Phainon.




Right now this is causing consternation since it only further highlights the fundamental issues with the game design where you can't really mix and match your favorite characters into a party, but instead you buy into preset teams (ie your favorite character, and their BiS supports rather than other favorite characters you want since they don't synergize well together). This has already happened with the Phainon team and also this year's added Remembrance class team. The same thing has been happening with Genshin for the last year since the 2024 Natlan expac and now the just launched Nod Krai expac, and has also happened with ZZZ. Lots of fear that next year's 4.X Edo Star expac will be the same since apparently it will also introduce a brand new class called Elation, so there will probably be an Elation team you will be strongly incentivized to buy if you want to keep participating in the endgame modes (the only challenge and way to interact with your characters once you beat the story) with its inflating HP pools.

[Val the Moofia Boss]

It's September, which means a new event chapter in the Dragon Knights storyline in Granblue Fantasy.




The first two chapters were engaging with the urgency. It was pleasantly surprising to see things go badly for protagonist's country, with the town and house that Percival was assigned being burned down and a lot of people becoming homeless, Percival's army at the border constituting the bulk of Wales' forces apparently being annihilated, and now it seems like Wales might have been devastated for generations with large numbers of the male soldiery exploding into monsters and the kingdom being overrun. It will be interesting to see whether or not by the end of the DK storyline if the heroes will come back to Wales and everything will be magically fine with no lasting repercussions do to the devastation and loss of men providers for the householders.

The flashback was neat.





I was initially surprised to see Aglovale kill himself and was wondering if Cygames was actually going to follow through on it, but apparently not. Now that all three brothers are sharing 2/3rds of their lifeforce together, I wonder what limitations will be placed upon them. In the main story, early on it was said that Gran and Lyria can't be apart from each other without collapsing, but then in certain stories like Relink you have them on other sides of a skydom and still fine. I wonder if the brothers will forever have to travel together or stay on the island.

It is disappointing how once again you do not get to take out any of the bad guys. Lamorak and his former **** retainer have gone over to the heroes' side. Merlin, Morgan, and the crazy mother and her homunculus son are still at large. And now we have the introduction of an even bigger bad (who may or may not be Morgan). I really hope that the anniversary event is the end and all of these guys finally get taken out, but the ending screen said "to be continued" rather than "to be concluded" so this might go on for at least another two September events or two years... this cult storyline started in six years ago in 2019, getting one new event chapter per year and it's still not over yet. It would be nice if they didn't drag it out this long or released more events per year.

[Lhynn]

New trailer for ANANTA (aka ***** anime GTA). Rather irritating that they label it a "gameplay" trailer when it is not uncut gameplay.

Really looking forward to this game.


Heres the gameplay vid.

[Val the Moofia Boss]

New trailer for ANANTA (aka ***** anime GTA). Rather irritating that they label it a "gameplay" trailer when it is not uncut gameplay.

Really looking forward to this game.


Heres the gameplay vid.

Apparently it is following Duet Night Abyss which has stripped out its gacha system. There will be no character gacha in ANANTA. Looks like they are trying to avoid the WoW clone/Mihoyo clone icerberg given that Genshin and HSR have captured most of the market, with WuWa in a distant second/third place only has 25% of Genshin's/HSR's monthly $100 million USD revenue, and all of these other latecomer expensive 3D gachas would be fighting for the remaining narrowing slice of the gacha market pie. So it will be curious how they monetize the game. I wonder if these other latecomer 3D gachas like Azur Promilia or Silver Palace will follow suit.

[DecadeRiptide]

It's September, which means a new event chapter in the Dragon Knights storyline in Granblue Fantasy.




The first two chapters were engaging with the urgency. It was pleasantly surprising to see things go badly for protagonist's country, with the town and house that Percival was assigned being burned down and a lot of people becoming homeless, Percival's army at the border constituting the bulk of Wales' forces apparently being annihilated, and now it seems like Wales might have been devastated for generations with large numbers of the male soldiery exploding into monsters and the kingdom being overrun. It will be interesting to see whether or not by the end of the DK storyline if the heroes will come back to Wales and everything will be magically fine with no lasting repercussions do to the devastation and loss of men providers for the householders.

The flashback was neat.





I was initially surprised to see Aglovale kill himself and was wondering if Cygames was actually going to follow through on it, but apparently not. Now that all three brothers are sharing 2/3rds of their lifeforce together, I wonder what limitations will be placed upon them. In the main story, early on it was said that Gran and Lyria can't be apart from each other without collapsing, but then in certain stories like Relink you have them on other sides of a skydom and still fine. I wonder if the brothers will forever have to travel together or stay on the island.

It is disappointing how once again you do not get to take out any of the bad guys. Lamorak and his former **** retainer have gone over to the heroes' side. Merlin, Morgan, and the crazy mother and her homunculus son are still at large. And now we have the introduction of an even bigger bad (who may or may not be Morgan). I really hope that the anniversary event is the end and all of these guys finally get taken out, but the ending screen said "to be continued" rather than "to be concluded" so this might go on for at least another two September events or two years... this cult storyline started in six years ago in 2019, getting one new event chapter per year and it's still not over yet. It would be nice if they didn't drag it out this long or released more events per year.

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[Val the Moofia Boss]

It's September, which means a new event chapter in the Dragon Knights storyline in Granblue Fantasy.




The first two chapters were engaging with the urgency. It was pleasantly surprising to see things go badly for protagonist's country, with the town and house that Percival was assigned being burned down and a lot of people becoming homeless, Percival's army at the border constituting the bulk of Wales' forces apparently being annihilated, and now it seems like Wales might have been devastated for generations with large numbers of the male soldiery exploding into monsters and the kingdom being overrun. It will be interesting to see whether or not by the end of the DK storyline if the heroes will come back to Wales and everything will be magically fine with no lasting repercussions do to the devastation and loss of men providers for the householders.

The flashback was neat.





I was initially surprised to see Aglovale kill himself and was wondering if Cygames was actually going to follow through on it, but apparently not. Now that all three brothers are sharing 2/3rds of their lifeforce together, I wonder what limitations will be placed upon them. In the main story, early on it was said that Gran and Lyria can't be apart from each other without collapsing, but then in certain stories like Relink you have them on other sides of a skydom and still fine. I wonder if the brothers will forever have to travel together or stay on the island.

It is disappointing how once again you do not get to take out any of the bad guys. Lamorak and his former **** retainer have gone over to the heroes' side. Merlin, Morgan, and the crazy mother and her homunculus son are still at large. And now we have the introduction of an even bigger bad (who may or may not be Morgan). I really hope that the anniversary event is the end and all of these guys finally get taken out, but the ending screen said "to be continued" rather than "to be concluded" so this might go on for at least another two September events or two years... this cult storyline started in six years ago in 2019, getting one new event chapter per year and it's still not over yet. It would be nice if they didn't drag it out this long or released more events per year.

Content not viewable in your region

!!!

The imgur links aren't displaying? Which region are you in?

[Val the Moofia Boss]

Reuploaded the images to the vault.

[DecadeRiptide]

It's September, which means a new event chapter in the Dragon Knights storyline in Granblue Fantasy.




The first two chapters were engaging with the urgency. It was pleasantly surprising to see things go badly for protagonist's country, with the town and house that Percival was assigned being burned down and a lot of people becoming homeless, Percival's army at the border constituting the bulk of Wales' forces apparently being annihilated, and now it seems like Wales might have been devastated for generations with large numbers of the male soldiery exploding into monsters and the kingdom being overrun. It will be interesting to see whether or not by the end of the DK storyline if the heroes will come back to Wales and everything will be magically fine with no lasting repercussions do to the devastation and loss of men providers for the householders.

The flashback was neat.





I was initially surprised to see Aglovale kill himself and was wondering if Cygames was actually going to follow through on it, but apparently not. Now that all three brothers are sharing 2/3rds of their lifeforce together, I wonder what limitations will be placed upon them. In the main story, early on it was said that Gran and Lyria can't be apart from each other without collapsing, but then in certain stories like Relink you have them on other sides of a skydom and still fine. I wonder if the brothers will forever have to travel together or stay on the island.

It is disappointing how once again you do not get to take out any of the bad guys. Lamorak and his former **** retainer have gone over to the heroes' side. Merlin, Morgan, and the crazy mother and her homunculus son are still at large. And now we have the introduction of an even bigger bad (who may or may not be Morgan). I really hope that the anniversary event is the end and all of these guys finally get taken out, but the ending screen said "to be continued" rather than "to be concluded" so this might go on for at least another two September events or two years... this cult storyline started in six years ago in 2019, getting one new event chapter per year and it's still not over yet. It would be nice if they didn't drag it out this long or released more events per year.

Content not viewable in your region

!!!

The imgur links aren't displaying? Which region are you in?

Europe. I used to be able to use Imgur though. I went to their website just now and it gave a JSON response with the same error inside, so maybe their site is having issues or something? Haven't really been on it since the whole UK verification thing though

[DecadeRiptide]

Reuploaded the images to the vault.

I connected to Sweden via VPN and I can see the broken ones

[Val the Moofia Boss]

Looks like Mihoyo is putting their gacha billions to use and is making a themepark. What do you think the rides and attractions will be? A Mondstadt or a Penacony area? A dark ride through the fall of Khaenri'ah or Dottre's dark magic laboratory or a Luofu vs Borisin battle? A giant Sumeru tree? Maybe they will do something like Florida Walt Disney World's animal kingdom with a hybrid zoo and Natlan Saurian park.

[Lhynn]

So it will be curious how they monetize the game.

Cosmetics, mission packs too I imagine. Ultimately if they dont monetize the characters they can monetize everything else, as long as its handled prudently. GTA 5 made more money than god by doing just that, monetizing clothing, vehicles, missions, etc.