It looks like it's happened. I may have become a bit of a filthy casual. Earlier in the year, I'd picked up a small tablet on the cheap and hadn't been doing much with it besides streaming anime while playing Final Fantasy XIV on my laptop. A couple of weeks ago, though, I got curious about the games I could play on the thing so went and installed a bunch. Mostly RPGs and strategy games, mostly of the gatcha variety, and mostly with a suspiciously anime-inspired artistic motif.
There were a few that managed to hold my attention. Terra Battle is neat, Chain Chronicle has its moments, and Dragon Blaze seems alright, but the majority of my time up until now has been spent playing Age of Ishtaria. Surprisingly, it's by the same studio that developed Bravely Default Flying Fairy. I wasn't aware that they were doing mobile games since it's a realm of gaming that I've not paid much attention to before now.
Not surprisingly, it's a very simple game where one collects cards which act as the player's party characters and one embarks on a very simplified RPG. You go through one dungeon after the next which is just a straight line with a few points along the way marketed as a circle where players fight a group of monsters. Dungeon maps actually look more like subway maps because of this. So far the majority of dungeons I've been through have been ones with five encounters before completing them, but now that I'm hitting somewhat higher levels the places are capping around six or seven.
I think the main reason I keep playing this game is for the part where I can get new cards and the anticipation to see what the game gives me. Cards are divided into seven ranks, 1-star to 7-star, where 1 is the weakest and 7 is the strongest. So, seeing what one gets can be pretty exciting. Will I get something with five or so stars or a bunch of duds? More than likely you won't get much about a five, but the fun of getting new cards is still there. It actually reminds me of the only thing I like about Hearthstone: opening new packs. There's something about the process that taps into people's basic pleasure centers for getting shiny new things.
The cards themselves can be leveled up and enhanced in various ways, but it can get pretty grindy. For leveling, this is done by picking the card that you want to level up, then choosing other cards that will be sacrificed as XP toward said card. The game also gives various grimoires that can be used for the same purpose. You'll be doing this a lot throughout the game, pouring trash cards that you receive in dungeons toward leveling others that are actually valuable. Cards can also be enhanced by combining two of the same card, which raises it to a new tier, making it more powerful.
This is all well and good, but the problem comes in trying to get multiples of the six and seven star cards. It's hard enough to get one. Getting a second or third requires the stars to align just so. Up until now, I've managed to get one of each and I have a feeling that it's only because there was a thing going on where there was a special promotion going on that allegedly bumps up the likelihood of getting one of these by about 10X. Even then, I did this twice and on only one of these occasions did I get anything good. The really fancy cards don't exactly grow on trees in Age of Ishtaria. The publisher does throw players a bone occasionally, having recently given everyone a seven star card to celebrate two million downloads of the game, as well as another high rank card for signing in for a certain amount of days but this isn't terribly common.
They don't feel absolutely necessary from what I've played, though, and going into a dungeon with a well put together deck of 5-star characters is very doable, especially if you level them up a fair bit. Nonetheless, the higher end cards are nice to have and once they get going they can hit like a truck.
The things' designs definitely go the titillation route as most of the characters are of the well-endowed anime girl variety with the occasional lolita complex jail bait tossed in. There are a few male characters as well but they don't come up often and seem to have a thing for wearing glasses. I almost feel compelled to hold on to those cards just to make sure that there's at least a couple of guys amidst the legions of comely lasses that the game keeps throwing at me.
When it comes to the actual combat, things are very simple. All one needs to do is decide what combination to have the party members attack in. They'll be divided into three classes and the order in which they strike will impact the enemies in different ways doing things like making them lighter for better juggling, reducing their defenses for a turn, or making them attack for less. With this it becomes a race to take down the monsters as fast as one can, as they have a clock icon with a number next to it indicating how many turns until they attack. In some cases, if they aren't dealt with quickly, this could lead to powerful enemies really putting a dent in a party's hit points. So, it's all about efficiency during battles.
Occasionally, characters will use special abilities that make this a lot easier but they are by and large RNG and you don't have much control as to when they're unleashed. Each character has one special that actually can be used when their portrait begins to glow, but even the glowing is RNG so there's no way to completely escape it. Still, the abilities get used with a reasonable amount of frequency once a character learns it, so they are still quite useful.
What surprised me is how much all of this sucked me in. It's so simple, but I do enjoy firing the game up for a little bit each night so that I can stomp through some dungeons, level up my party to support more / better cards, level up said card, and earn points to get new cards. The whole thing just taps right into a very primal element of my psyche all while being conveniently ensconced in an anime veneer. It just makes for a nice time waster when I'm too tired to do anything else at the end of the night. Now I'm left wondering if this will just turn into a slippery slope where I start really diving down the rabbit whole that is Japanese gatcha games.
While I don't completely hate mobile games, they're something that I only really play when I've had a very long day and am way too tired to go with something that takes the slightest amount of effort. Even then, it's a toss up between a mobile game and watching some very laid back anime. So, mobile gaming really isn't something that is a priority in my life. Sadly, the only thing going through my mind as the realization of what Sega was doing sank in was the "Not like this" meme.
