|OT| This is GachaCouncil - Playing with money

[Ascheroth]

Been playing Heaven Burns Red today

My thoughts after playing for a couple hours (am in the middle of Chapter 1 Day 7 right now):

• The music is great
• Game looks pretty good. The 2D art is gorgeous and while the 3D assets definitly are mostly low-poly and low-resolution textured, it looks good (the character models probably also do some heavy lifting).
• The atmosphere is pretty great. It's neat seeing all these other characters in the background while moving around the school
• The combat is kind of whatever. I mostly just put it on auto and let it do its thing.
• The story premise is not exactly novel, but the writing is entertaining enough so far even though it's clear it's still in the setup and buildup phase (very curious when the first big payoff will happen and how that will manifest). The comedy is kind of hit or miss with me so far. It's basically all a "1 or more characters say stupid stuff -> another character loudly reacts to it" or "let's repeat the same line again and again for comedic effect" routine. (The writing is pretty loud in general, lol). Some of it leaves me completely cold, some of it I actually find hilarious.

Overall I'm enjoying it well enough for now (or I wouldn't have played so much already ) and I'm looking forward to seeing where things go.

 

[Cacher]

• The story premise is not exactly novel, but the writing is entertaining enough so far even though it's clear it's still in the setup and buildup phase (very curious when the first big payoff will happen and how that will manifest). The comedy is kind of hit or miss with me so far. It's basically all a "1 or more characters say stupid stuff -> another character loudly reacts to it" or "let's repeat the same line again and again for comedic effect" routine. (The writing is pretty loud in general, lol). Some of it leaves me completely cold, some of it I actually find hilarious.

Yeah, I think this is the relatively controversial aspect of HBF. The comedies are hit-and-miss and some people may find them off-putting. Personally I really like them in prologue and chapter 1 because, well, honestly there are not many hilarious games in the market.

 

[Vantr]

Playing Heaven Burns Red as well. Enjoying it a lot.

Pretty much agree with Ascheroth on all their points. The main menu music and battle music are absolute bangers.

• The story premise is not exactly novel, but the writing is entertaining enough so far even though it's clear it's still in the setup and buildup phase (very curious when the first big payoff will happen and how that will manifest). The comedy is kind of hit or miss with me so far. It's basically all a "1 or more characters say stupid stuff -> another character loudly reacts to it" or "let's repeat the same line again and again for comedic effect" routine. (The writing is pretty loud in general, lol). Some of it leaves me completely cold, some of it I actually find hilarious.

This felt very Key to me. Early on is usually slice of life and really abusing idiot + straight man combo a lot for comedy to set up the lightheartedness tone and then they hit you with the emotional damage later on for that emotional whiplash. I always enjoyed this pacing set by Key VNs so I gotta pick the dumb choice for the comedy. It's also rather refreshing to experience in gachas because other gachas I've played the tone is usually very serious and one-track.

Also Cacher just trying out some of this arena stuff but isn't this powersaver auto-battle OP? Normally you have limited stamina to use on EXP or raising characters but in HBR you can just AFK all day or go play other gachas.

 

[Ascheroth]

Just finished Chapter 1 in HBR. Really liked the ending to that.
There's so much stuff opening up...
...including a rhythm game - hell yeah!
They also completely dump a crapton of money and upgrade mats on you after Day 11 :O
I wanna get a few more SSRs before really starting to spend a lot of resources though.

Story thoughts:

Spoiler

I like how 31A has come together. They are a bunch of idiots sharing a single brain cell + Yukki, but when it matters they get work done.
I should have seen the 31C progression going from "haha, look at these dumb weirdos" to "...oh no. Oh no " coming, but it still got me.
The stage music on Day 12 was great and the concert was even better.
At first I rolled my eyes at Karirin having a split personality with a crazy serial killer that constantly yells and makes weird sounds cause it's just soooooo extra, while also being kinda generic, but having Karirin on clean vocals in the band with Karrie doing screamo is hilariously genius and I'm now completely on board with her character.

 

[Cacher]

Also Cacher just trying out some of this arena stuff but isn't this powersaver auto-battle OP? Normally you have limited stamina to use on EXP or raising characters but in HBR you can just AFK all day or go play other gachas.

Yep. Just idle the game to grind. Since there is no player agency, I just completely forgot opening the game before working on other things lol. The gameplay is simply not good enough for me to care.

 

[Ascheroth]

Did the "3 Tickets for 1 SSR" in Heaven Burns Red today and I... got a Bun-chan dupe. This game has a billion SSRs and I get a freaking dupe for the one whose design I like the least. Incredibly demotivating, even if I don't even care about the gameplay. The next guaranteed SSR is at the end of Chapter 3, which is still gonna take forever.
Ngl my first gut reaction is "fuck this shit, I'm out" and maybe I'll just focus on reading through the GFL story in preparation for GFL2 potentially releasing in 2 weeks...
Especially since new Genshin areas are tomorrow and Infinity Nikki is also in 2 weeks, this is an easy excuse to make room for the other stuff, even if it's an irrational one.
I'm probably still gonna continue playing through the story though, lol.

 

[Cacher]

Did the "3 Tickets for 1 SSR" in Heaven Burns Red today and I... got a Bun-chan dupe. This game has a billion SSRs and I get a freaking dupe for the one whose design I like the least. Incredibly demotivating, even if I don't even care about the gameplay. The next guaranteed SSR is at the end of Chapter 3, which is still gonna take forever.
Ngl my first gut reaction is "fuck this shit, I'm out" and maybe I'll just focus on reading through the GFL story in preparation for GFL2 potentially releasing in 2 weeks...
Especially since new Genshin areas are tomorrow and Infinity Nikki is also in 2 weeks, this is an easy excuse to make room for the other stuff, even if it's an irrational one.
I'm probably still gonna continue playing through the story though, lol.

I honestly haven't touched HBF since gotten into GFL2 beta lmao. Very sorry to hear the Bunchan dupe...

Btw, do you have Aoi SS? She will make your life a lot easier during chapter 3 boss fight.

 

[Ascheroth]

Btw, do you have Aoi SS? She will make your life a lot easier during chapter 3 boss fight.

I haven't rerolled, so my SS situation is: Tama, free Rika, Bun-chan x2, Miya and Monaka.

 

[Cacher]

I haven't rerolled, so my SS situation is: Tama, free Rika, Bun-chan x2, Miya and Monaka.

I don't have the habit of rerolling, too. Not sure if EN has the feature, but in JP server there's a SS exchange shop by spending tokens earned from story event completion. The shop has Aoi SS and I got her from there. Her skill can nullify two attacks (even group attack).

 

[Ascheroth]

Infinity Nikki has a pre-release Special Program tomorrow



On the one hand I'm really curious what they have in store, but on the other hand I haven't looked a ton into the game and going into it blind should also be fun. I'll think about it.

 

[Ascheroth]

Ended up watching the stream and thought it looked really good.
They mainly showed new stuff for the launch, so as someone who hasn't really payed attention to the closed beta stuff, I guess I still know nothing about the beginning and premise of the game, only some later stuff, lol.

The concept of non-combat focused open-world game really interests me. The game seems to be mainly focused around platforming, mini-games, collection and exploration.
They showed a new area that looked pretty good and varied, a new ability for exploration/platforming and some early look at Housing which will still in-dev.
And tons of dresses.

 

[Dandy]

I definitely plan to try Nikki. No idea what to expect tbh

 

[Ascheroth]

I definitely plan to try Nikki. No idea what to expect tbh

Same, but that's what makes it more exciting for me, lol.
There's a few reasons I wanna check it out:
Part of it is academical, because I'm kinda interested in the industry trends and expect this to be big, so I'm curious to see how a female-targeted big AAA release lands and what ripple effects this could have. And also how the gameplay, design philosophy and story compares to male-targeted gachas.
Another part is just curiosity to see how it feels playing a game you very clearly are not the target audience but presumably like some stuff.
And then pretty things are pretty, I see not much difference between pulling pretty outfits in a game like this vs. pulling pretty characters in a male-targeted game tbh.

That said I'm, kinda going into this with the expectation that this won't be another game I will play all the time, more something where I play the launch content to satisfy my curiosity and maybe a few updates to see what kind of content pipeline they have and then fall off. But I'm open to being proven wong, lol.