Just like I should, I'll [Gacha] good

Auralynx

Darkewolfe wrote: »

Sword of Convallaria is a pretty good game so far honestly. There's some decent Tactics gameplay, and more than enough content options. The... Time travel gameplay thing where you're also managing your town infrastructure and stamina of your characters is increasingly separate from the gacha. I feel like the real game is in that side, and the gacha side is just fun make the numbers go up stuff. Like I'm honestly surprised the gacha seems to have no impact at all on what feels like the main story?

Other than the localization being kind of iffy on some of the cutscenes, I'm rather enjoying it even if it's not quite got the depth of your FFT or Disgaea.

Reynolds

You can bring gacha characters into the story mode, and they're way better than most of the generic grunts you can recruit within that mode. Fool's Journey also shows you what's going on between stories and clarifies some plot points. They compliment each other well, although so far there's way too much main story while the Journey is hard gated by time and level.

Ianator

Does Sword of Convallaria have cross-platform saves?

Reynolds

https://www.siliconera.com/is-there-cross-progression-in-sword-of-convallaria/

Looks like it does, as long as you're careful which platform you start on, and link the right email.

Ianator

Frankly I refuse to reroll. Did it with Puzzle & Dragons, never doing it again.

Reynolds

Oh I pulled one of the worst 5 stars in Convallaria, I also never bother unless the game itself lets you reroll. Only downside to starting now is missing Gloria, but another top tier banner should be starting soon. And then there's more back to back after that.

Ianator

Convallaria progress: Pulled Miguel from my starter banner. Just wrapped up Chapter 0 and unlocked the dailies.

Took me a bit to figure out how to utilize duplicate pulls but now I've got a couple 3-stars in my roster. Weirdly I have no high-rarity breakers, just the generics.

chrono_traveller

Yeah, I've been playing some Sword of Convallaria for almost a month now (soon after it launched). Yeah, I've been actually liking the story mode quite a bit, and after spending a little bit of cash monies to get some starter stuff, I actually kinda like the story mode and how it is very separated from the gatcha. My two powerhouses are Col and Gloria (I got really lucky and got Gloria on my 3rd 10pull of that banner), and have just been pulling the Col/Beryl banner to try and get Beryl, and got Col 3 times before I finally got Beryl. So, my trio of Col, Gloria, and Beryl have been carrying me through the Fool's Journey quite nicely.

Edit: Also, I should add that I've been playing both on my phone and through Steam, and it switches back and forth nicely.

Reynolds

My current problem in Convallaria is needing to level more characters to have more chances to sweep daily content. I was sitting on stamina for way too long because I had no fast way to spend it.

Ianator

It appears there's no "direct" route to daily pulls or consistent way to earn these event Wish Tickets. Are these the things I should be spending the Hope widgets on?

Reynolds

Ianator wrote: »

It appears there's no "direct" route to daily pulls or consistent way to earn these event Wish Tickets. Are these the things I should be spending the Hope widgets on?

I think you exchange the pull currency for those tickets. Also you get like one pull each day for doing the daily quests. There's also two events going on where you can exchange things for more pulls, and there's a few more events that I finished but might still be active. Also you should try to max out your friend list to 100, and give/receive reputation points there every day, you can buy more stuff in the store with those. Guild also gives free rewards each week, Clash gives pull currency each day on top of quests that give you weapons and other bonuses.

Ianator

Alright, the game's starting to tug me in two different directions. Seems like The Fool's Journey is an important thing to do, but it's also suggesting I do this Spiral thingy to get the most story. I've jumped into the first "proper" chapter and wow this strategy layer is actually a bit intimidating in the "my choices actually matter" kind of way.

I'm on Week 3. Edda is a boss and this distraught lady is...

...totally the assumed-dead Princess, isn't she?

Reynolds

Fool's Journey is the standard story you'd expect from a gacha game, where you can (usually) use all the characters/gear you've built up. Spiral of Destinies is the full PS1 game story mode where you can recruit three of the characters you own, but without any of their levels, skills, gear, etc.

It's very, very in depth for being free, yeah. So much so that I haven't finished even one run yet, since the main game is plowing through event content to catch up with the main servers.

Ianator

Today's update:

- Finally hit Voyager Lv20! Now I can do the events... assuming I'm not completely underleveled for them.
- Speaking of underleveled, I think I'm starting to develop a core team. Should probably bump them up to 20 as well.
- I pulled Col. She is crazy lethal if given a chance.
- No Beryl yet. I couldn't even do like half her lab stuff in Spiral of Destinies because I'm having trouble levelling my party evenly.

Auralynx

If anyone was wondering what I meant re: unintentionally maining Gloria over in the Star Rail thread, I've now gotten her instead of the featured character on both banners since.

Also I have Rawiyah in some kind of unkillable movie-monster spec via a sword and trinket that also heal her, and it's hysterical.

Unrelated, but the Dantalion path gets dark, for those of you slow-rolling the story.

chrono_traveller

Reynolds wrote: »

Fool's Journey is the standard story you'd expect from a gacha game, where you can (usually) use all the characters/gear you've built up. Spiral of Destinies is the full PS1 game story mode where you can recruit three of the characters you own, but without any of their levels, skills, gear, etc.

It's very, very in depth for being free, yeah. So much so that I haven't finished even one run yet, since the main game is plowing through event content to catch up with the main servers.

Yeah, I find myself really gravitating more to the Spiral part than the Fool's Journey. Though one thing I'm confused about is with Beacons in the Spiral. Like I've used one to "have easier rep with the Papal states" on this current run, but I really don't see any particular differences. Previous Beacons show as "used" in my previous two runs (I've gotten two different endings, and yeah, both are rather surprisingly poignant, but also dark. One I realized where I mucked up, but the other I'm not as sure). Are Beacon's only usable once?

Small spoiler for a spiral decision early on, before you choose which faction

There seems to always come across this fight with Darklight, where the hanged men are fighting them, and at the end, they save you from like a suicide attack from the Darklight. The white hair spymaster lady Saffiyah(sp?) asks about if you're fighting for peace, and you have two options:
...
or
Something like fighting for peace is what the Sword of Convallaria does

And the second one I can't select (has a !) in front of it, and for the life of me, I can't figure out how to be able to choose that option. Does anyone have any idea?

Reynolds

I believe those beacons are exactly what open up those options. You get one during the default tutorial missions, then later on your first SoD run it gives you your first beacon and unlocks the option to wait and avoid an attack.

Auralynx

chrono_traveller wrote: »

Reynolds wrote: »

Fool's Journey is the standard story you'd expect from a gacha game, where you can (usually) use all the characters/gear you've built up. Spiral of Destinies is the full PS1 game story mode where you can recruit three of the characters you own, but without any of their levels, skills, gear, etc.

It's very, very in depth for being free, yeah. So much so that I haven't finished even one run yet, since the main game is plowing through event content to catch up with the main servers.

Yeah, I find myself really gravitating more to the Spiral part than the Fool's Journey. Though one thing I'm confused about is with Beacons in the Spiral. Like I've used one to "have easier rep with the Papal states" on this current run, but I really don't see any particular differences. Previous Beacons show as "used" in my previous two runs (I've gotten two different endings, and yeah, both are rather surprisingly poignant, but also dark. One I realized where I mucked up, but the other I'm not as sure). Are Beacon's only usable once?

Small spoiler for a spiral decision early on, before you choose which faction

There seems to always come across this fight with Darklight, where the hanged men are fighting them, and at the end, they save you from like a suicide attack from the Darklight. The white hair spymaster lady Saffiyah(sp?) asks about if you're fighting for peace, and you have two options:
...
or
Something like fighting for peace is what the Sword of Convallaria does

And the second one I can't select (has a !) in front of it, and for the life of me, I can't figure out how to be able to choose that option. Does anyone have any idea?

I'm hoping it's getting to an end that gives you info which could sway Dantalion to go after Darklight. There were some things in his epilog that made me suspect that, so
I went States on try 2.

I suspect it's a do-all-3-first unlock, though.

Ianator

Spiral of Destinies is giving me ideas for TTRPG campaigns.

Also picked up the game for the first time in a week and WOO GOT COCOA FIRST PULL

Madican

Resurrecting this thread because I've been playing Heaven Burns Red and want to see if anyone else is too.

If you don't know what that is, it's a new to Global turn based game published by Yostar and written by Jun Maeda, who you might recognize as the primary guy behind Clannad, Angel Beats, and Little Busters. It's also got some great music with more constantly coming because Jun Maedac has decreed that every new side event and chapter must have an original voiced song.

It's very fun, especially when it comes to characters. Lots of interactions and fun moments. Like the time when the protagonist wanted to try talking to an AI her teammate, a world renowned hacker, had made. She ended up convincing the AI its name was ASS and then quickly ran away before her teammate recovered from the mental stunlock.

Reynolds

I wanted to give that one a shot, but I haven't had time. Probably going to run into the same issue with Girls Frontline 2.

Mirkel

I tried HBR for a bit but it's just too much VN and too little combat and I got bored. The tone of the story didn't work too well for me either, it's goofy 95% of the time and then it's suddenly serious 5% of the time.

What I'm waiting for is Girl's Frontline 2, coming out on 3rd of December. XCOM-style gameplay should be a lot more fun than most current gachas. Playing Ash Echoes in the meantime which is surprisingly fun also.

Reynolds

About three years later, Alchemy Stars is shutting down. I'll just link my other post which is the only other time this game has ever been mentioned here.

The music was really good though!

Madican

I started playing Cookie Run Kingdom. Mostly because I watched someone else play it as part of a video where they were doing a self-imposed challenge to play various mobile games and if they gave him any kind of sale popup he had to buy it. His first video he played a Warhammer mobile game and his wallet barely survived.

Anyway I watched him play CRK and decided to give it a shot. And it's actually good? Still definitely a gacha, but the story is surprisingly nice for being what looks like a kiddie game where everyone is a cookie. To give an example, one of the recent chapters I did had some guy watch all his friends get Thanos-snapped out of existence, crumbling away into flour one by one, as he's begging for them to be spared by the villain they came searching for since said villain was inflicting a plague on their kingdom. The character designs and art are also pretty neat with how they use coloring and outlines to make the various components look like icing but also still "real" clothes and accessories.

Case in point, here's one of my current favorite designs: Golden Cheese Cookie


It even has a base building component like Dragalia Lost did once upon a time, but more in-depth with things like interconnected production lines a la Satisfactory. Like you have a lumber mill to mill wood, use the wood to make pickaxes, use the pickaxes to mine sugar, use the sugar to bake glass, use the glass to craft marbles, etc, etc, etc. Also upgrading buildings by using materials and waiting a period of time. It even has features, once you unlock them, that let you hide away all your producing buildings into a subspace area so you can use the entire available area to just decorate and make things look pretty.

metaghost

On my lunch, so thought I’d post some thoughts about Wuthering Waves now that it’s on console:

1. For better or for worse, I’m constantly amused at how the game is akin to a Mihoyo Megamix. I don’t know that there are truly original ideas in the gacha-space, but WW seems to be overtly iterating/hybridizing the Big 3 Mihoyo titles.

2. While I’m sure the endgame grind is just as grindy as elsewhere, I really enjoy how the Echo Gearing system makes overworld combat more purposeful. And it gives me pleasant flashbacks to the Dawn of Sorrow (etc)

3. Someone needs to disrupt the gacha industry and get these games to stop burdening players with ability text that is 90% Neologism by Volume. That each character has a “forte circuit” with uniquely named “ability currency” drives me mad.

In any case, I’m enjoying it for the time being. Picked up Carlotta, aka “White Girl Zhu Yuan”, and she’s making combat much more casual.

Mirkel

metaghost wrote: »

3. Someone needs to disrupt the gacha industry and get these games to stop burdening players with ability text that is 90% Neologism by Volume. That each character has a “forte circuit” with uniquely named “ability currency” drives me mad.

I agree with this so much. Girl's Frontline 2's skill points are "Confectance Index". Elemental damage is "phase" damage. I'd like to slap the face of whoever thought these were great.

Madican

A funny thing happened today in FGO. I went to max pity on the new banner for Beast Draco, except this is what came out on the final 2 for 1 pull.



Somehow the pity was not triggered by the first one, probably because it was in the same summon, so I rolled one AND got the pity copy. First time I've ever gotten two 5 Star Servants in one pull.

Polaritie

Unfortunate it went to the pity (terrible, terrible luck), but at least it doubled up for you?

Asthariel

Meanwhile, I saved up 120 pulls and failed to get her.

Since August 2024, I used up something like 1400 SQ on 6 different banners, and managed to get only one rate up SSR from them, together with 3 spooks or nothing at all.

Polaritie

Yep, that's F/GO for you.