Meanie’s Rolling Admissions is a series of reviews of gacha games – games with a loot-crate or random draw mechanic. The gacha games I’m interested leverage a wide cast of characters as a primary driver of player interest. I will be reviewing them in chronological order of when I started playing. Up first is Fate/Grand Order.
Why Am I Doing This To Myself?
As summer turns to fall, and my seasonal depression melts into a humid and sticky memory, I find myself having more energy once again to waste on strange and garbage media. Gacha games and their ilk have been in my orbit for some time now. I played the Injustice: Gods Among Us mobile game in high school, and had a brief but disappointing affair with Raid: Shadow Legends while working a temp job.
This paltry level of dabbling can’t hold a candle to the way I was drawn into playing Mudae, a free Discord bot with both a primary gacha mechanic that allows you to witness the trash taste of anime and game fans everywhere, and a glut of side activities including a Pokemon slot machine. My friends and I took to this bot like termites with a juicy slab of pine. Wars were fought over the Gintama cast. Blood was shed when the Kaguya-sama student council appeared. Thanks to the user-sourced supply of new characters every three months, it never fully fell off our radar, and now we’re here, two-years-plus-change deep into this pointless waste of time.
You Didn’t Actually Answer The Question, Meanie
Let me wrap up the context. The primary benefit of Mudaebot is it has all the gambling fun with no actual money involved. When the urge to try different games came a-knocking, I, for one, didn’t feel like ruining my wallet. In turn, I devised this approach: I’ll play all of them simultaneously.
Because my brain works how it does, I’m inevitably comparing them to each other. Because my mouth works how it does, I desperately want to talk to others about it. Because seasonal depression works how it does, I just remembered I have this blog. So, without further ado, I will begin providing under-informed yet spirited reviews of these 401k-ruining games that have gripped the iPhone app store by the kishkas.
Fate/Spammed Orders
Being one of the longest-running and most profitable gacha games on my list, Fate/Grand Order holds the distinct dishonor of setting the bar for other gacha games to beat. I will say from the outset it’s very fun. They give enough resources for you to play without paying, and the story mode, while hackneyed and poorly written in the beginning, nonetheless leads you into the action and endears you to the characters.
It’s also fun when you spot historical figures you didn’t think would be named again in your lifetime, let alone as anime characters, like Charles-Henri Sanson, the guy who executed Marie Antoinette (who is also notably present), and famed fairy tale author Hans Christian Andersen, who is designed as a blue-haired lad for some reason?
Speaking of which, there’s a wide variety of character designs, which run from thought-through and unique (most of them), to suggestive and fanservice-y (Mata Hari, Ushiwakamaru), to uncomfortable (Elizabeth Báthory and basically every young girl, some of the darker-skinned characters are blatantly stereotyped), to straight up Danganronpa-esque (Mozart).
A downside, as detailed to me by my friend L. (no, not THAT L), is if you’re interested in watching any of the Fate franchises, Fate/Grand Order will spoil you basically immediately since you’ll always know who characters are as soon as they appear. Not a huge deal to me, might be a huge deal to you.
What’s In The Cards
The campaigns intersperse visual novel sequences with turn-based strategy, where you employ a selection of cards with various attack effects. Because you have minimal choice over targeting, you must anticipate the sequence of cards and the resources and damage accrued in order to efficiently handle each battle. It’s quite engaging.
If a character charges up enough meter they can unleash their special move, a Noble Phantasm. I enjoy many of these cinematics. Especially Chiron’s, where he just calls down an orbital laser from the Sagittarius constellation. If I could, I would too, bestie.
I won’t be deleting Fate from my phone, which is about as high praise as I can offer.
Pros
- Character designs stemming from a long-standing franchise with its own established aesthetic;
- Straightforward yet energetic turn-based battle system;
- Plethora of features and missions;
- Support for free-to-play gamers;
- Frequent side story events and a long main campaign.
Cons
- Character designs stemming from the most regrettable parts of the anime industry;
- So many fucking resources and items dear GOD it shows that this game has been running for the heftier part of a decade;
- Visuals and UI feel dated next to its competitors.
Fate/Grand Order’s Initial Impression:
B+
For each of these games my primary criteria for judgement are: the visuals, the gameplay (what kind of game it is and whether it is even fun), the viability of free-to-play approaches, whether the range of items and resources makes my brain short circuit or not, and the quality and smoothness of the user interface. You’re gonna spend a long time navigating menus. They might as well feel good to use.
Who is your Fate meow meow and are you more or less despicable for it? Confide in me privately, or comment below to reveal your sins to the world.