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Japanese Mobile Gacha Games: Gatcha hand on your wallet and I'm never letting go!

Hey! Welcome to this OT which covers Japanese (also Korean) F2P mobile gacha games. While the industry pumps out a lot of these games only a few get a steady foothold here on GAF so I and a few others thought that a general thread covering the whole genre would be a neat idea.

FAQ/General Guidelines

What exactly is a “gacha mobile game”?
We’re mostly going to be talking about games like Puzzles and Dragons, Monster Strike or Terra Battle. F2P mobile games that feature rolling for characters and a stamina system. Most of the time they’re created in Asia.

About what can I talk?
You can talk about almost everything, your impressions on new and upcoming games, tips, tricks, fanart or even your opinions on the “genre” itself, everything goes!

About which games can I post?
General discussion about every one of these games is encouraged, do note that the more popular games already have an OT for themselves so try to focus the conversation on the smaller games that don’t have an OT (yet).

How do I obtain these games?
Most of them are just available through the app store of your device, region-locked games are a thing but there are still ways to obtain them. QooApp for example.


Already existing OT’s

Games that don't have an OT [Work in Progress]
Game of Dice [Global]
Granblue Fantasy [JP]
Battle Girl High School [JP]
Hoshi no Dragon Quest [JP]
Soccer Spirits [Global]
Kingdom Hearts Unchained Key [JP]
Tower of Saviors [Global]
BloodLine [Global]
Brave Cross [Global]
Chromatic Souls [Global]
Kai-Ri-Sei Million Arthur[Asia]

Upcoming Games
Phantom of the Kill [Global] Soft launched in certain regions
Granblue Fantasy [Global] English Translation patch coming March 2016
The World End Eclipse [JP]
Valiant Force [Release: Early/Mid 2016] Pre Reg *New!*
PS: Any suggestions are always welcome!

And with all that out of the way, what mobile games have you been playing?
 

How is the Japanese version of the game? I've heard some varied opinions about it.

I guess the artwork looks nice at least.

I play Terra Battle and Fate/Grand Order. Used to play Love Live too.

They're trash, but I'm too far gone.

Throw this up there too - Super Gundam Royale |OT| War In Your Pocket

Cool added them, I just scrolled through the OT and didn't see the IBO characters, are they in it?

It's the only Gundam I've seen
 
How is the Japanese version of the game? I've heard some varied opinions about it.

I guess the artwork looks nice at least.

pretty interesting

it's fully voiced, the battle system is simple but works

there's a whole lot to do from raising characters, weapons and summons

the story's pretty intriguing from the small part I did

the gatcha system hates you

and it also runs like a complete mess
 
Why do I like these games they're horrible send help

Pretty much :| I have PAD, Monster Strike, ToS, TerraBattle, Crusaders Quest, OnePiece and DragonBlaze installed on my tablet.

Only actually play DB & PAD but still keep loging to the rest to grab daily rewards cause i might play them again someday(but probably will not)
 
For a sec, you made me think that GBF had been released in English :(
They announced an international version at TGS.

Anyways I'm active in JP PAD and have various levels of activity in Monster Strike, Summons Board, FayGO, and Dragon Poker.

Started playing some Tohaiden yesterday as well, it's an "all stars" Mahjong game based off of one particular Mahjong manga magazine.
http://tohaiden.jp
 
Cool added them, I just scrolled through the OT and didn't see the IBO characters, are they in it?

It's the only Gundam I've seen
I don't think they are. But I don't play it.
Gundam video games seem to be pretty bad with adding new characters in a timely manner. I mean, we don't even have G-Reco or Build Fighter characters in EXVS.
 

Red Mage

Member
I still play FF:RK. I used to play Terra Battle, but after Season 2, I said to heck with it. It seems built around long-time players who have maxed most of their characters waiting for it to be released. The first map on Season 2 beat me so bad I thought it was one of those mandatory-lose situations. = (
 

RalchAC

Member
One Piece Treasure Cruise and Chain Chronicle player here. I didn't play more games because I want to have a life too lol.

I'm a bit on the dedicated side in OP and more casual in CC. Both are great games with great communities, so give them a look!

I would only be able to help with the former though.

Edit: I've dropped Dragon Blaze, Record Keeper and the Dragon Ball game :p
 

Ruruja

Member
I've tried FF Record Keeper, DBZ Dokkan Battle, One Piece Treasure Cruise, Chain Chronicle, Terra Battle and some other lesser known ones.

I had to stop playing them as I didn't care enough to really understand what the hell was going on (there's a lot of screens and flashing specials and stuff), but I got the 'must login everyday' bug for them.

I might try just playing one of them in the future.
 

Azusa

Member
I have tried almost all games mentioned in OP.

At the moment I play FF Record Keeper, Chain Chronicle and Seven Knights. Sometimes I login in PAD and maybe do one dungeon for fun.

Why have you mentioned Battle Girl High School as hot? You have to grind way more in BGHS than in some Korean games like Seven Knights. So boring.
 
Granblue Fantasy is really good and has shit-ton of content.
Great art, music and VA. Can't wait for that english translation.

Hoshi No Dragon Quest is pretty fun too (came out a week ago), but has network issues if you play outside JP.
 
People keep trying to get me to play GBF but I have no idea what genre the game is actually in. From everything I've seen it looks like a casino with an RPG attached to it lol
 
I mainly play Divine Gate by Gungho (Japanese only). I love the art style and the mechanic of moving panels, while simple, is unlike any other of the puzzle/match/auto-battle mechanics that have been copied a lot. Exploring a dungeon is also much different.

After its first year it's been super generous with giving free premium currency. On average I say I get about 2 a day if not way more. Right now it's been exceptional because it's been the anniversary, more like 3 to 4 a day for a while.

I feel it has a pretty hard difficulty curve and I ran into a bunch of walls until I got good premium rolls. HP is usually very important in these games and I think it's more so in DG. You pretty much have to have a leader and friends both with 2x to 3x HP multipliers to survive late game and event bosses, in my experience. Also because of the panel mechanic you can get royally screwed if you have multiple rounds with little to no healing panels.

However it's changed a lot in two years from when it first launched and is much friendlier now. For example launch you could only evolve certain elements on specific days of the week (Fire on Tuesdays for example). That restriction is now gone. There is also a currency, tickets, you collect in dungeons and you can use it to buy runs in the daily experience-egg dungeons as much as you can afford without spending stamina. Maxing out and evolving units is pretty trivial compared to back then.

Overall I pretty much play it to collect characters for the art style. It also has a lot of different collaborations with anime series' that other games don't get.
It's had No Game No Life (my leader is Shiro), Magicka Madoka, Attack on Titan, Fairy Tail, A Certain Magical Index, Steins;Gate, Full Metal Alchemist, Durararara, Seven Sins is coming soon, etc.

It's also story heavy although it's kind of obscure. Every character version and dungeon level has a story associated with it and I liken it to Dark Souls in that it makes a lot of allusions that you have to piece together. However the writing style goes over my head with my level Japanese and even when I took the time to translate them I still had a hard time understanding. I found a blog that does a good job piecing it together in English and has helped my appreciation for it.
Since it's been out for so long and isn't exactly setting the world on fire in Japan I doubt there will ever be an English version, unfortunately.

I was also super into the Japanese version of Dragon Poker for a while which is also unlike anything else I'm aware of. With its ubiquitous multiplayer and its team hand building mechanic. The PVP coliseum that occurs every few weeks is one of the most fun experiences I've had on mobile in the genre. It can be very frustrating if your teammates make bad choices. On the other hand you can also get carried through tough content until you have higher level cards. This game is also probably the most generous with premium currency I've ever seen. I know there is the English version for the SE Asian region called Dragon Ace but I've never dabbled in it.
 

Kreed

Member
I was also super into the Japanese version of Dragon Poker for a while which is also unlike anything else I'm aware of. With its ubiquitous multiplayer and its team hand building mechanic. The PVP coliseum that occurs every few weeks is one of the most fun experiences I've had on mobile in the genre. It can be very frustrating if your teammates make bad choices. On the other hand you can also get carried through tough content until you have higher level cards. This game is also probably the most generous with premium currency I've ever seen. I know there is the English version for the SE Asian region called Dragon Ace but I've never dabbled in it.

I'm playing this version/I love the game. The only drawback is the time zone differences since new days start at different times than in the US. For a while it was really annoying getting into PVP Colosseum mode since it only ran late at night/early in the morning for US time zones, but they added multiple additional times since then which has really helped. Also since not many English speakers are playing this version it can be difficult finding out information on the game (forums, fan sites, etc...).

Otherwise the English translation is good (there are some issues with long card descriptions being too wordy/getting cut off, but nothing too serious) so I definitely recommend it to anyone who doesn't mind the hassle of downloading it outside of English app stores.
 
Yeah I was hesitant to recommend Dragon Ace over Dragon Poker at first because SEA publishers are infamous for fucking over their playerbase, but they've been refreshingly sane in that regards.

How far behind is SEA compared to JP right now? Do you guys have nuColo yet? Awakenings?

There is a fairly comprehensive fan-run wiki for Dragon Poker, however it's not public due to Asobism threatening to sue people who datamine the game.
 

JPS Kai

Member
PAD is the only one I'm 'invested' in.

Got an Arthur in MS and gave up pretty early on.

FFRK was fun for a small diversion but I've since stopped playing long before the multiplayer update or whatever that was.
 

chrono01

Member
Thanks for the OT, KenjiGlove! It's nice to have a central place to talk of this.

Speaking of, against my better judgement, I started Rune Story [White Cat Project last night] and...it's a lot of fun. Damn it, another gatcha game I'm addicted to. :/

The biggest positive Rune Story has going for it [for me, anyway] is zero need for stamina. That's right, you can do any mission you want, grind out any materials you want, and there's no stamina to worry about. No longer do you have to worry about wasted stamina, just play whenever you want and how much you want. That's great! There are still time restraints, such as when you're leveling your bases, but it's not too bad early on and it's mostly secondary. You can use in-game currency to speed up the process, as well as hire more workers to do the job(s) faster. For quests, though, there's nothing stopping you, from what I can see.

Gameplay requires you to touch and drag your finger on the screen to make your unit walk/run. Tap anywhere to attack and flick/slide your finger across the screen to evade. Touch your special attack icon when you have sufficient SP and you'll do your signature attack. There are traps and such to evade too, it's a lot more action orientated. You can switch between your current party members by touching their icon in the upper right of the screen. It all feels very solid.

There's a guild system too, where you can join a guild and run co-op missions with them. It handles like Monster Strike [if you've played that] where you start a lobby and then people from your guild can join. I haven't delved too much into it yet, but it sounds like it could be interesting.

I lucked out and my very first roll gave me a 4* unit [the highest you can get from the gatcha] and one of the "top tier" recommended ones [Hao]. He's versatile, with great stats and a nice special ability. I'll probably save my remaining in-game currency for an event. You can also use your currency to pull for a weapon [you get a free pull at the character and weapon gatcha for going through the tutorial], but I've read it's best to save them for characters since you can earn 4* weapons pretty easily for completing boss events. Speaking of in-game currency, the game is very free in handing them out [no surprise, given that it's early on] but there's a lot of quests/missions you can do that let you earn more, as well as the ones you receive for going through the story mode.

The story is...okay, I guess? I'm not too far into it yet so it could pick up, but it's serviceable. The character art is decent as well, although they replaced the 2D portrait art with the 3D render for the Global version which is a shame, since the 2D art is nice. The 3D renders are fine too, but I prefer the 2D portraits. The VO is in English [not Japanese], and it's about what you'd expect from a mid-tier dub. It does its job.

You level up your units with materials earned by playing quests. It's a type of "grid" system [like in FFX] where you increase stats/unlock abilities as you work your way through it. You can also upgrade your weapons with earned gold, to further bolster their stats. I think you can also craft weapons too, but I haven't looked too much into it yet.

So yeah, those are my quick impressions. I'll add more here, if people want, once I play more of it.

Edit: Oh, and nice OT title. :)

Edit: #2 As for me, the gatcha games I'm currently playing are:

- One Piece: Treasure Cruise
- Love Live! School Idol Festival
- Chain Chronicle
- Monster Strike
- Dragon Ball Z: Dokkan Battle [although lack of content is really upsetting me...]
- Puzzle and Dragons [only casually]
- Rune Story [newest addiction]

So yeah, busy times.
 

chrono01

Member
What is there besides simple quest missions? Raids?
There's boss events yeah, I haven't done one yet though. Aside from that, I'm not entirely sure. I'm still learning a lot about it. There's also a 2P/4P co-op section, it seems.

I'm not sure if there's specific raids/PVP yet, though.
 
I mainly play Divine Gate by Gungho (Japanese only). I love the art style and the mechanic of moving panels, while simple, is unlike any other of the puzzle/match/auto-battle mechanics that have been copied a lot. Exploring a dungeon is also much different.

oh, thanks for the impressions on Divine Gate

been meaning to try it out for the longest time and just never got around to it

I really should someday if I wasn't playing a whole bunch of other games >_>

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

speaking of which, here's all the games I been currently playing:

Monster Strike (global)
Chain Chronicles (japan)
Idolmaster SideM
Ensemble Stars
Idolish7
Granblue Fantasy

I did play some Tales of Link and Tales of Asteria but kinda fell off in playing those.
Also did FFRK and OPTC but dropped those too
Played the Dangranonpa Monster Strike clone for a bit too
Did Brave Frontier (Japan) when they had a collab event for Chain Chronicles lol

Never got past rerolling in PAD, Sangokushi Puzzle, Starlight Stage, that Bleach game
 

Kreed

Member
Yeah I was hesitant to recommend Dragon Ace over Dragon Poker at first because SEA publishers are infamous for fucking over their playerbase, but they've been refreshingly sane in that regards.

How far behind is SEA compared to JP right now? Do you guys have nuColo yet? Awakenings?

There is a fairly comprehensive fan-run wiki for Dragon Poker, however it's not public due to Asobism threatening to sue people who datamine the game.

We have the newer Colosseum but no Awakenings yet (had to go to the fan run wiki to find out what you were talking about). They started skipping around with the special dungeons however after the Dead Pirates one (first was the Elven Forrest, then a Halloween Rino dungeon, and now they are running the Witch dungeon), which upset a lot of people on the Facebook page since at the time the level cap was at 160 (it's 190 now) and it was too difficult to take on the highest dungeon difficulty.
 

Salex_

Member
I was looking for a new gacha game and I found this game called Dragon Heroes (terrible generic name, it's almost impossible to find anything about this game because of it). It's a shoot em up RPG gacha game. I played it for about 4 hours total and it's great so far. I have a good amount of 5*s and your skill can negate low level/weak heroes. I probably won't play it though because I can't find any community for this game.

It's a shame Monster Strike refused to add a better multiplayer option for the global audience. It's my favorite gacha game gamplay wise.

I wish this game came out in English
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=net.wrightflyer.shoumetsu
 

Tried it out after your post, also got Hao in my first roll (my brother got another 4* on his).

Gameplay kinda reminds me of BGHS which is neat, I don't really dig the artstyle though.

Any tips and tricks? Where is that tierlist of yours, I'd like to see it. Where do I spend my gems on?.

-----

PS: This guy is way too smug considering he doesn't really do anything.

BexxzFY.png
 

Azusa

Member
There was a community for Dragon Heroes at 4chan mobage thread but they dropped it after a month. I have tried it too and didn't like art.

Edit: #2 As for me, the gatcha games I'm currently playing are:

- One Piece: Treasure Cruise
- Love Live! School Idol Festival
- Chain Chronicle
- Monster Strike
- Dragon Ball Z: Dokkan Battle [although lack of content is really upsetting me...]
- Puzzle and Dragons [only casually]
- Rune Story [newest addiction]
speaking of which, here's all the games I been currently playing:

Monster Strike (global)
Chain Chronicles (japan)
Idolmaster SideM
Ensemble Stars
Idolish7
Granblue Fantasy
So how do you manage to play so many mobage? It's crazy. I hardly have time to keep up playing only 3.
 

chrono01

Member
Tried it out after your post, also got Hao in my first roll (my brother got another 4* on his).

Gameplay kinda reminds me of BGHS which is neat, I don't really dig the artstyle though.

Any tips and tricks? Where is that tierlist of yours, I'd like to see it. Where do I spend my gems on?.

-----

PS: This guy is way too smug considering he doesn't really do anything.

BexxzFY.png
Congrats on the Hao! He's still only Rank A [there's A+, S, S+, SS] that are above him, but he's still a decent unit. Just like all primary ones though, they're later outclassed quite a bit with later characters.

As for "smug guy". I had to laugh when he "saved the day" only for us to completely leave him behind. It's like "We have a Sky Island to find, see ya!".

As for the art-style, we were supposed to have some really nice 2D characters portraits, but for whatever reason we got the 3D models instead. It's unfortunate.

The tier list I've been using is this:

http://wiki.famitsu.com/shironeko/

I'm saving all of my gems for newer units, at least ones currently ranks S and above. There's not a lot of difficult content in the game right now, so assuming you get a decent pull [like Hao/Mira], it's probably best to save whatever you can for later.

So how do you manage to play so many mobage? It's crazy. I hardly have time to keep up playing only 3.
I can blow through my stamina on Treasure Cruise/Chain Chronicle pretty quickly. I only play School Idol Festival during events, and I haven't touched Dokkan battle [side from logging in for the freebies] in the last week since there's no content. I play a lot of them, but thanks to how fast/easy it is to spend stamina, it's not too bad.

You're right, though. I should probably cut one or two. I've already dropped Record Keeper, Brave Frontier, and Terra Battle. Dokkan Battle is next on the chopping block if we don't get something new soon...
 
We have the newer Colosseum but no Awakenings yet (had to go to the fan run wiki to find out what you were talking about). They started skipping around with the special dungeons however after the Dead Pirates one (first was the Elven Forrest, then a Halloween Rino dungeon, and now they are running the Witch dungeon), which upset a lot of people on the Facebook page since at the time the level cap was at 160 (it's 190 now) and it was too difficult to take on the highest dungeon difficulty.
I don't think you could please everybody, if SEA kept the "canon" dungeon order you'd probably get complaining about how magic box was doing nothing to address them being like a year behind JP.

Out of curiosity for the Titan/Pharaoh/Pirate events, were they regular special dungeons or did you have a "score attack" version of the dungeon? JP converted all their old score attack dungeons into regular type, which sucks cause score attack was super fun and also super good rank EXP.
 
I have been religously playing the Vita version of Million Arthur and High School DxD New.

Used to have FFRK on my crap phone until it started crashing, and Kai-ri-Sei Million Athur on my brother's better spec'd smartphone.


God help us.
 

Miracle

Member
White Cat Project finally got localized today!

Although now it's called Rune Story. Downloaded that immediately and playin it now.
 

commish

Jason Kidd murdered my dog in cold blood!
Bloodlines was released recently and seems pretty good. Haven't put much time into it yet.
 

diablos991

Can’t stump the diablos
Played a ton of these.

Currently playing OnePiece Treasure Cruise.
I am eagerly awaiting another one of these to come out. For some reason I like this style of game.
 
So how do you manage to play so many mobage? It's crazy. I hardly have time to keep up playing only 3.

work around the stamina bars and events lol

either blow through the stamina bar and wait a while for it to recover or work base off timings for each game's event

I will admit I only been playing Idolish7 during events and kinda half dropped Granblue but I do have interest to go back
 

Kreed

Member
I don't think you could please everybody, if SEA kept the "canon" dungeon order you'd probably get complaining about how magic box was doing nothing to address them being like a year behind JP.

Out of curiosity for the Titan/Pharaoh/Pirate events, were they regular special dungeons or did you have a "score attack" version of the dungeon? JP converted all their old score attack dungeons into regular type, which sucks cause score attack was super fun and also super good rank EXP.

They were score attacks which were definitely much more fun than the point exchange systems.
 

Falk

that puzzling face
Considering how each of these games are designed to suck you in and waste as much of your time as possible while making it as hard as possible for you to stop, I'm not sure gathering all of them in one place like this thread is a good idea.

You may just create a black hole and doom humanity.
 
Only One Piece Treasure Cruise and Chain Chronicle here.

Got in a One Piece fix after getting Pirate Warriors 3, and I like the art and the generic jrpg nostalgia I get from Chain Chronicle.

I'd probably recommend One Piece over CC just due them giving you the cash currency everyday but they're good time users if you're on a bus or something and got nothing else to play!
 

RedBoot

Member
Considering how each of these games are designed to suck you in and waste as much of your time as possible while making it as hard as possible for you to stop, I'm not sure gathering all of them in one place like this thread is a good idea.

You may just create a black hole and doom humanity.

I've found that playing one is fairly sustainable, especially if you have a lot of downtime/commutes and the like.

Playing more is when you start losing time for anything else. At my peak, I was playing Puzzles&Dragons, Quiz RPG (PAD clone with trivia, US version sadly seems to have been mostly abandoned by the devs), and the Vita's Destiny of Spirits. Just doing my daily checkins and the like took up way too much time (especially since Destiny of Spirits had abysmal load times).

Now I just play Treasure Cruise, which I enjoy more than any of the others I've tried (helps to be a One Piece fan). I'll try the Final Fantasy/Brave Frontier cross if it ever hits the US though.
 

Falk

that puzzling face
I've found that playing one is fairly sustainable, especially if you have a lot of downtime/commutes and the like.

Playing more is when you start losing time for anything else. At my peak, I was playing Puzzles&Dragons, Quiz RPG (PAD clone with trivia, US version sadly seems to have been mostly abandoned by the devs), and the Vita's Destiny of Spirits. Just doing my daily checkins and the like took up way too much time (especially since Destiny of Spirits had abysmal load times).

It's actually no big secret that they're all actively looking to cannibalize each other's user bases. That's why focus on retention is getting more and more important.

As to why there's 4 Final Fantasy (Pictologica, RK, EXVIUS, Grand Masters) who knows? They really believe in the branding maybe, heh.

(They all play significantly differently though)
 
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