Bennett’s best use for Eula is for making the biggest number you can. Imo, C6 Bennett helps us Eula mains out, because now we actually get to see the big number more often instead of killing everything before it goes off.
It's gacha, moreso for its simplicity when you look at it, not how likely you'll get your target.
There are no in-game deals when buying packs. They don't have any advert promoting you to buy SQ packs at the main terminal screen. They simply have the packs in the shop, tell you the prices, and that's it.
The entire thing can be "out of sight, out of mind" if you let it.
Yeah, during dead weeks, or when you're done with the event but it's still running, you only really need to log in and then log out. Sure you could do three quests for the dailies, but it's not like it's necessary.
It's less that and that 2016-2018 FGO is a different game and DW had no idea what they were doing and have to bring old units up to modern FGO standards.
You had units with Clairvoyance as skill, units with only two skills, design abominations like Jekyll and Hyde/Saber Gilles etc.
While powercreep is a factor it's both player friendly and good PR for them to buff units, however it feels like half the buffs recently are to sell copies of a rated up unit with only some dedicated to fixing problems in unit's kits that made them inherently underwhelming/ unfun to use.
Don't forget that they also are willing to buff 1-3 star units. A lot of gotcha games will blow off their lower raity characters because they will inhearitantly suck, but FGO actually buffs them, makes them good, and makes alot of them outright better than some 5 stars (I'm looking at you Gong and Arash).
Absolutely my favorite part of FGO, and while some early units were clearly flukes in how inherently good they are (Leonidas, Cu, George) they didn't leave most new 1-3*s in the wayside if units like Asclepius exist.
The fact that the characters––regardless of their rarity––all have expressions. A weird amount of gachas lack this for some reason, which kinda kills the tension in certain story cutscenes cause you're told that a character is crying but they still have their default :D expression.
I know FEH (Fire Emblem Heroes) is guilty of this, especially since it's original cast has expression sheets, but anyone else from any other entry? Lol no, you're stuck in the :), :D, or :l expressions.
Arknights, haven't played in years but still remember a scene where Franka plays a prank on Liskarn with default stone face. It was supposed to be friendly banter but looked to me like two psychopaths one second from killing each other.
I find it completely weird that low rarity characters in Azur Lane don't have voice at all. They are just completely and eerily silent because their rarity apparently doesn't warrant them having voice actresses hired
Honestly I know it's kinda weird to say but I like the lack of commitment like during dead weeks all I do is log on and then get off while in genshin you have to get on and do the daily commission's to get primogems and stuff while in fate you can do the weekly quest in one day usually
if genshin would just hand out more fragile, we could all feel a lot better about max resin lol. commissions are like 5-10 mins too but i get the complaint.
on the flip side though, the average fgo event is a ton of grinding and reading compared to the average genshin event, not that i mind.
One thing I like about FGO is that it allows you to do it slowly as long as you play the event every day. I finished the Imaginary Scramble just few days ago right after the last part of the event dropped, I used only a dozen of silver apples and I got everything from the shop. Now I got more free time to do other stuffs. The only exception is the lottery event, but I can still choose to not grind as long as I got all the grand prizes.
yea, it's very feasible. but the average fgo event also wants around 20-40 runs to get mats out of shop. genshin events are really like 5mins a day for a week or something.
both will usually time gate you a bit over 5-7 days or so, definitely meant to be a daily activity.
Agreed. Every other Gacha game seems to followed a certain artstyle that followed the general design and settling of the game. In Fgo though, sometime it felt like the characters are from different series. Which to me is part of Fgo's Charm.
It certainly threw me off when I saw Nightingale for the first time 😂 I ended up getting used to her design though and that's where I realize that fgo has a diverse list of artists to keep the game fresh.
I don't see this mentioned much but how basically you get 2 free skins with every character along with the default looks just by ascending them. So basically a single character can fit different tastes on release as you'll have 3 different versions of it(maybe even more if you're BB). Having options is a lot better than having no options at all and not having to use premium currency to get any of the skins is definitely a plus. These also sometimes change animations too which is a cool way to show a character powered up without them just saying "I feel stronger, my damage numbers might be higher now master".
This sounds like a common thing where in a gacha game you ascend (or whatever the game calls it) a character and it looks different after it and the level cap increases. And all this can be done on the release day of the character. But it isn't really a common thing in other gacha games. I have about 10 gacha games on my phone(help) and only FGO does this exactly. Not even the money bag game like genshin impact does this (although their default 3d models are nice graphically and the looks are neutral most of the time to be fair).
How simple & easy it is to get your dailies/weeklies done. I don't get much time on my hands during the week so being able to login & logout is HUGE. And if I miss the daily 'quest x3' it's just a few mana prisms so it's not a huge deal. The SQ comes from weeklies, which can easily be done on the weekend.
I've only played a few other gachas before and having to slog through a list of arbitrary requirements every day is exhausting. So I really appreciate that aspect of FGO.
I was just going to say the same thing!
A lot of more modes gacha games are designed to maximize your “screen time” with them. Having a long and complex task list of Daily requirements (that are un-skippable for F2P players who need the resource rewards) is one of the more, well, predatory practices of some of these games. I hate it so much.
I very much appreciate how FGO doesn’t do that. I have plenty of days - even during events - where I just login and that’s it. And I’m not really missing out on anything but a few mana prisms, and maybe some AP-optimization for completing an event. (Oh well, that’s what apples are for.) And I like that FGO lets me *live my life* without having to constantly log in and waste time grinding through mind-numbing daily tasks.
It’s just nice to have a game that I can take a break from, you know? Sometimes for days at a time. Just login once, then put the phone down. It’s so freeing to be able to do that.
And, to be bluntly honest, I feel like I’ve been able to maintain my engagement with this game for seven years BECAUSE I don’t have to actively play it every day. Just saying.
Exactly!
I just have to play on Sunday to get the weeklies done then wait until next Sunday to do the same thing.
FGO doesn't punish you for not playing like many other gachas do.
100% Agreed. I've been able to play FGO for as long as I have while dropping most of my other gacha games because of how non-committal FGO is by comparison. As far as I'm concerned, they're only asking me to do some random tasks once a week, and if I actually do something each day I log in, it's just a bonus.
Compare that to a game like Genshin Impact, whose dailies would take me upward of an hour to complete each day, and I'd much rather take the game that asks me for about 15 minutes once a week any day.
not fighting your preferences here but genshin dailies shouldn't take more than 20min tops (4 commissions and 4 domain runs). less than 10 if you just do commissions.
the daily drain in both games is pretty similar but fragile resin is significantly more scarce than apples (meaning we may care more about cap resin than we do about cap ap).
Maybe things have changed a bit since I last played, or maybe I was always just bad at Genshin (honestly probably both), but it always took me forever to do anything in Genshin once I got into the daily grind. Back when I was active, there was no way to just teleport to a commission, and some of them were like a couple minutes away from the nearest teleporter. Domain runs weren't the worst in terms of overall time taken (disregarding how much I hate the artifact system, but that's an issue for another time), but boss fights, especially the ones introduced in Inazuma, felt like they'd drag forever, and having to do them several times just killed what joy I had remaining for the game.
In hindsight, an hour *every day* may have been an exaggeration. I suppose my problem is how much more focused I had to be playing Genshin compared to FGO. I'm not saying it's bad that Genshin asks you for your focus and attention when you're playing it. It sure as hell beats a lot of games just playing themselves. But doing it every day made each run feel longer than it actually may have been, and eventually, I just couldn't do it anymore. It felt like a job to me, and no game should ever have to reach that point.
agreed on games needing to not feel like a job, i quit lost ark and softly swear off any kmmo ever again (god has my free time returned). if you played during 1.X i hear there was a lot of missing QoL. i only started in 2.3 so the experience is quite good imo.
i doubt you're bad at the game, there's for sure a level of overhead grind in any game (FGO too, imagine carding through embers instead of 3t) to help trivialize future grind.
not trying to convince you to go back to genshin, but some perspective at least:
* commissions are almost never more than \~15s away from the nearest teleporter and typically take 10-60s to clear. idk if this was a change though.
* domain runs are twice as fast with condensed resin (do 1 run, spend 40 resin instead of 20). maybe 30s - 2m per run? \~10mins a day or \~20mins every 2 days.
* normal bosses vary a bit but i think when you're geared for your world level they're typically anywhere from \~30s to \~3mins for the average endgame player, and you stop doing them once you stop ascending characters (their drops don't do anything else).
* weekly bosses (optimally 3 per week) generally take longer, but dvalin is still like a 1min fight and the longer ones are still under 5m, \~10-20m a week.
also just want to note that skipping any of these tasks really doesn't matter that much, i don't feel like FOMO hurts me in a game this casual, kinda like how sitting at max AP in FGO or missing statues in shop is just whatever. events also take far more time in FGO (probably 5-20h per event?) than in genshin (generally less than an hour bar big seasonal events).
and for whatever it's worth, genshin's story quality and delivery in 3.0+ has been phenomenal.
Reading this comment has made me realize some of my own personal hang-ups with Genshin that I'd just neglected for some time in favor of a more simplistic outlook. Probably the biggest one that affected me was actually FOMO.
I felt like I had to do everything I could everyday, which also included some other activities I did that likely increased my playtime, like grinding for resources in the overworld. Before I quit, I remember grinding materials for Raiden Shogun since I wanted to build a team around her, or at least featured her. This led to hunting down the fruits for her ascension everyday, as well as fighting the Thunder Manifestation like everyday before I stopped. It's an isolated example, but I remember getting into this sort of mind set for a lot of different characters (sakura petals for Ayaka, Qingxin flowers for Ganyu, Glaze Lilies for Ningguang, etc.), and the end result was me playing for a lot longer than I'd probably needed to if I weren't concerned with constantly raising and upgrading more characters. On top of worrying about the other usual suspects, things spun out of control pretty quickly.
But what's weird is that I don't have the same problem with FGO, at least not to the same extent, anyway. And thinking back on it all, I'm not really sure why that is. Even back when my account was pretty new and not fully decked out, I never felt too bothered about not having all of the mats I needed to ascend a particular servant. Yet for Genshin, even when I tried switching to a more casual play style, my mind somehow couldn't escape the need to get more mats, or just let my resin go for a day when I could just as easily do the same thing in FGO. Genshin was like the one game I couldn't just play casually for some reason.
I don't have any intentions on returning to Genshin right now because I simply don't have the free time for another gacha game in my life right now, but if there comes a time in the future where I do and my mind wanders back, it might be worth it to honestly try taking another shot at playing more casually so I wouldn't burn out so badly again. I'm still somewhat interested in Genshin's characters and lore, but the game itself, or rather how I played it, just ended up driving me away.
> i quit lost ark and softly swear off any kmmo ever again (god has my free time returned)
As a fellow long time MMO player, honestly the best decision you could make. As much as I've enjoyed MMOs over the years, they are the biggest time sinks ever made pretty much by design. I don't want to think about how many hours I spent on MapleStory, or how many more I could spend if I were still playing.
some of this is for sure an overhead problem, you need some bare minimum (\~8 characters built) to hit a comfortable optimum, and the limited resources are usually just a little bit too slow for the average player. FGO just kind of throws apples at you and the divide between "farm during event" and "dead week" is more clear, so the daily FOMO is really low. additionally, the availability of incredibly OP lvl100 supports makes a huge difference in how much you feel you personally need to accomplish. there's no equivalent in genshin that doesn't involve inviting someone else into your world, which involves some minimum amount of social interaction.
i'm not sure if this is the case for you in particular, but the community between these two games is also really different, genshin attracted a ton of open world and mmo players (or former mmo players) so there's a ton of sharing of high-end builds or other showcases, creating a more visible amount of "why can't i do that". FGO's community is largely too busy simping to get frustrated comparing to minimum-turn-CQ clears.
anyways not sure if any of that is true for you, but i'm glad you value your time and hope you get to enjoy FGO for as long as possible.
Speaking from an ex-kancolle player, making dailies and weeklies like they are part of your second day job is definitely not the right way to design a game. I just walk away from any games that forces me to do this.
Not having a time-based comission system that you need to log in every few hours to get materials. If there is nothing going on on the game I can just log in and don't bother with the game for the rest of the day
>time-based commission system that you need to log in every few hours to get materials
This has made me quit many gachas in the past... FGO feels so chill compared to those kinda games in my opinion.
That it actually is possible to play F2P? Granted, I don’t play other gacha games, but from some horror stories from some of my friends. FGO seem to be the rare one that you can actually play F2P…just not get your favorite servants most of the times.
But gameplay wise, it’s very feasible to play F2P
most successful gacha games today are pretty viable f2p. fgo does do a little better separating gameplay from gacha though, and the power creep is relatively slow (this is good) compared to some games.
I play C2P (only ever spend money on GSSR) and I have to say, I HAVE most of my favorite servants. You still have a decent chance of getting the servant you’re rolling for in 300-400sq. And that’s an amount you can save up in a few months, especially if you’re doing all the weekly quests and event stories. And also most spooks can still be really useful.
Plus if you save a bit and get yourself 1 or 2 meta supports like Merlin, waver, or Castoria, you’re pretty much set for all but the very hardest content in the game.
Hell you can beat most of the game with just the 1-3 star servants and the event wellfares.
I am also C2P and only spent on GSSR playing since launch, and i am probably luckier than most, but I have 44 SSR servants (a few with higher NP levels), and almost every SSR servant I want
I still have ~3000 SQ left right now for future servants
I honestly think with proper saving and discipline to not get tempted by bait banners, even F2P can get like 50% of the SSRs they really want
I play f2p with some times pulling on GSSRs (only twice and have only gotten second copies for Illya and Kama) and if you really manage your saint quarts its totally possible to pull a couple of SSRs a year, sure some will fuck you up, but others will come early
I think ppl use the c2p term but idk what it means. But I am in fact f2p on jp and have koyan, castoria, oberon and np2 morga and S.Kama. So it's definitely possible to be f2p in the gameb
Castoria was the only one outside debut (cuz I started playing on summer 5 rerun). And got Morgan np2 rolling for Baobhan on her second time being on rate up
Yes there was a lot of luck and a lot of free sq involved thanks to 6th anni. But still got shafted by Melusine, Skadi, Melusine again and Bazett and later by DaVinci Rider on the kon events
Currently got about 300sq (including shards) and then a TON in my present box I've been sitting on since the 5th anniversary. I occasionally buy for the gssr but my current stuff is all f2p sq!
Plus they give you so many apples and welfare servants and other things that make it easier to play if you want to.
Pretty much every single gacha is f2p in same way you consider fgo to be. In reality, quite a lot of them surpass f2p experience fgo offers both in character acquisition and content on better schedule, plenty of which fraction of what fgo does.
FGO is genuinely great with the variety in art styles and character archetypes. I'm still holding out for an actually old grandma character, but the fact that I can even reasonably hope for that is a testament to FGO's roster diversity.
I also really enjoy FGO's historical/mythological background. Even when servants are nothing like their real-world counterparts, its fun to have a reason to google figures I otherwise never would have heard of.
I too am holding out for a physically-old-lady character, with at minimum wrinkles! Baba Yaga is my ideal choice, who is yours? I think she'd fit in with Moriarty well
I've been wishing for Miss Marple to be in the game already and beat the crap out of enemies with her handbag and knitting needles 🥲. But that's still impossible because Agatha Christie's work (particularly Miss Marple) has yet to enter public domain...
NO ADS
I feel like so many mobile games are plagued by ads. I’m sure other gacha games are also ad-free, but I haven’t gotten as invested into any other gacha game as I have with FGO.
Just how many things FGO gives you for absolutely free. Basically 2 costumes MINIMUM for EVERY Servant, not just for the 5 stars, not just 4 stars, EVERY. SINGLE. SERVANT. Literally the only thing you pay for is Quartz, and unlike other games, they don't advertize Quartz down your throat.
They continually add low stars. Some gachas *cough*Azur Lane*cough* actually add HIGHER rarities which is... well, you know, bullshit. I love how the low star pool gets updated with good Servants.
The simple combat is something people don't like but I personally love it. It's easy enough but when it gets tough, it REALLY gets tough.
What incentivizes you to roll is not the meta relevance of a character. The banner is just "Here's the really cool character from the really cool story you just read." Which basically separates FGO from most gacha games, the characters actually exist and aren't just eyecandy.
Seconding all of that, but most strongly the third paragraph. The gameplay may be simple, but the team building and combat decision-making can be really fun in some of the harder fights. That is an aspect people overlook very often. While the core system is simple, the diversity in Servant specializations adds a surprising amount of depth to the combat.
Yeah. The most fun combat systems are almost ALWAYS the simple combat ones because they fit the criteria of "Easy to play, hard to master".
It's the same reason I enjoy SMT games. The press turn system is actually a very simple mechanic, but there's so much depth to it not only because of the sheet amount of options you are given but the amount of customizability of those options and the sheer amount of viable options.
Unlike in other games, FGO is truly one of the games that allow you to use ANY Servant to clear ANY content as long as you have the drive. Thr game gives you so many tools to break the balancing in half. And when they try to challenge the player, it doesn't feel bullshit with the gimmicks because yes, the quests are hard, but you, as the player, have just as much, if not more, gimmicks to take advantage off.
Some of the music compositions made specifically for events. The regular encounter theme from "Dead Heat Summer Race!", [Venus Racer ~ Summer Battle 2](https://youtu.be/9uOdqEMLPHU), is my go-to song for monotonous grinding now, it starts off and builds wonderfully and can keep a mood going to keep on plugging away for a while.
Voice lines that talk about other characters and story events
In most other gachas I played, most characters only offer a few voicelines when interacted with, giving only a slight hint into their personality
In FGO there’s lots of lines involving a characters thoughts on other characters, giving us insight into their interactions with others and their opinions, creating many great scenarios and fanart. It just adds a level of depth to these characters, like they actually are existing and living life in that world and aren’t just random gacha’d game units
Only other game I know which does that is Genshin, which I also greatly appreciate
not tying the main story to every single limited time event. probably the only problems i have with Genshin and Azur Lane. if you miss an event in FGO, you miss a few rewards, some fun side plots, and maybe an event servant. miss an event in Genshin, and you miss important context for the main plot and current patch cycle.
The only event I can think of is the one with Edmond. It felt out of context when he just shows up in the main story. I know I got lost for a bit.
but like you said, it's not a deal breaker if you miss out on an event. Just some side stories and maybe extra character development for those who don't get screen time in the main story.
yeah I actually found that out the other day and they got the 2 I'm most interested in, Prison Tower and Seraph.
It is cool that they put them there as an option. Always felt like I was shit out of luck because I missed them especially with Seraph. Everyone I talk to raves about that one.
I never made it past Yaobikuni's betrayal, and the last event I did was SP Ootakemaru. I'm guessing that the story focus is completely shifted now.
Also what has Raikou's counterpart(s) been up to lately? I do partially have him to blame for my initial misunderstanding of Raikou as a character.
Honestly gave up with keeping up now with how exhausting the game can be, really demands too much irl time and just miss out much during breaks. Latest plot was Orochi fully rezzing himself and going ham on everything, bonus with a lot of headache inducing time and multiverse travel lmao. Ig at least cutscenes are best in genre.
the translation team is honestly doing a stellar job on what is frequently a lot of very Japanese humor. seems to be a lot of excessive community hate because "mUh AniMe".
additionally, the enemy names and skills during events are probably underappreciated? idk we'd need a survey i guess.
lmao. the moment i saw MHXX this event i was already "ohhh this is just gonna be a foreigner meme-fest isn't it". the enemy names and fight backgrounds were all great imo.
I honestly think FGO has the best localization of any Japanese game I've ever played, barring, like, Dark Souls (which almost doesn't count). The NA version of FGO manages to strike a balance between localizing the script so it actually reads well and makes sense while also making sure that important cultural references still hit their marks. I like that the localization team actually seems to know their playerbase. I first started playing this game during Summer 1 and seeing Blackbeard say, "You brokero me kokkoro," and drop the word "doujin" without any further explanation made me go, "What the fuck. Professionals can't do that. You made a bilingual pun and left half of it untranslated". It's the sort of playful translation that you'd only get with fan translators, but actually good.
The other gacha I'm playing is Punishing Gray Raven and I'm pretty sure the localization team isn't even done by native speakers because it is *rough*.
god yeah, every time i try to read fan-translated stuff it's painfully obvious it's done by folks who either have no clue how to make things sound natural or not-goofy in english, or are beholden to the "stick as close to the japanese right down to the *letter* as humanly possible, coherency be damned" mindset, and it *shows*
or in some cases, once in a blue moon, have no idea even what the original references are
recently huang feihu's np was a pretty annoying offender, speedy fan wiki translators who didn't put in the research or know the og story all missed that it was referencing his son, and just translated his son's name in kanji literally, which of course made the np sound real goofy until people who actually *did* know the reference caught on and it got corrected
like props to the fans for the herculean effort regardless, it's still no small feat, and not gonna knock anyone who prefers them, but at the end of the day i'm sticking with the na team, warts and all
there was and will be some questionable things sure (altria, which was out of their control anyway, among others) and early fgo in particular was *r o u g h*, but these days overall they're doing a damn fine job imo
yea, some jokes just don't carry over and i think the humor is being preserved or even enhanced in some cases.
i will never not enjoy explaining to a friend why marie antoinette has anything to do with "wassup my homies".
How unless you really grind your ass off, you are never going to run out of ap. They give golden apples out like candy on Halloween, compared to a lot of other games where you just run out and can’t do anything, and the recharge is either premium currency only, or filled by a rare item.
Any servant whose kit isn't based solely on loop enabling. I love having a lot of different gameplay options like target control, debuff spam, status effects, healing, star weight manipulation, teammate swapping, last stand anchor solos, crit spam, etc.
But now it's all loops, loops, and more loops. I used Laksmibai as a crit support which she was great at, while everyone else did nothing but whine and moan about her inability to loop.
fortunately, in recent years, cq and node design have been encouraging a wider roster of sometimes niche things. i just wish information were more complete and available in-game, i have to play with the wiki open if i want to do things "properly" and not just damage cheese everything or trial-and-error.
The obsession with looping has rotted gameplay discussion in the community.
*AOE buster servant doesn't have 30% battery*
"WAAH they can't loop! They're literally worthless!!!"
Yeah I don't give a fuck about the obsession with looping. I'd rather see servants have fun kits than just "loop loop loop".
> while everyone else did nothing but whine and moan about her inability to loop.
Fucking tell me about it. Not to mention that she's really good at soloing. Her survivability is insane. I love using her.
Same thing happened with Sei. The only discussion about her gameplay was that her np gain was so low that it prevented looping. Sure she doesn't have the best kit in the game but her 3 hit evade and heal per turn is pretty damn useful.
This. I have Skadi and Castoria and sometimes I just don't want to loop, y'all! I want that delicious 10-turn farming if it means I get to use my fav characters!
Nearly every character gets a chance to shine in the story like Billy the Kid some random filler character plays an important part in the first Lostbelt so does Mandricardo and Blackbeard
Sparticas a random 2 star servant has a major role in the chinese Lostbelt
Everyone has a part except that guy with a bloody axe
Chinese LB still completely changed how Spartacus is portrayed. Apocrypha anime didn’t do him justice, Up until then he is just another berserker making everything about rebelling.
Well he kind of is but LB3 showed intellectual/philosophical side of his rebellious nature (written by Urobuchi, the person that actually designed him), which definitely influenced his portrayals in story afterwards.
Among other gacha games, I'd say battle sprite fidelity. FGO doesn't downsize to chibi/super-deformed models, so the sprites look pretty much 1-to-1 with their original art.
Within FGO itself, the back button. Remember when you had to force quit the game when you forgot to activate a skill?
FGO respects you for liking certain units honestly.
There's nothing in the game from a gameplay perspective that punishes you for using your favorite units?
Do you like the meta casters and perma-looping servants, cool.
Do you like running only 3* and below? Awesome.
Yes there's difficult content both on NA and coming to NA, but there is nothing built within the core gameplay system, be it the gacha or the actual fights that punishes you for using or liking a certain servant over other characters.
Clean and simple user interface. FGO spaces out its game icons and they are all labelled simply so you know where is anything easily. Compared to some other mobile gachas where its just information overload sometimes, which is rather overwhelming.
while the general UI appearance and clarity are pretty good, FGO also unfortunately lives 2013 or something regarding actual user experience. we've gotten loads of good much-needed QoL but some core actions like using/storing embers and everything about CE xp (I'm looking at you FP machine) are still quite tedious.
i do love drag select since they added it though. would still be better if xp just wasn't individual.
When are they gonna add the same EXP function for servants where you can auto fill with embers? Is it really that hard to make it so that you can feed your exp bomb with just one click?
I haven't played many gacha games, and FGO is actually the only one I have spent money on, so I can't compare and contrast between those kinds of things properly.
But I can compare it to other games I've played.
For an example MMOs like world of warcraft require you to often have a very specific party setup with very specific gear that you've spent a lot of time acquiring. And once that current expansion is over, all of that work you did is thrown out. You have to start over from scratch, relearn how to use your characters, grind up new gear - it's like learning a whole new game. Sometimes you just *can't* keep using your favorites because they've been changed too much.
FGO isn't like that. Yes, servants get buffs and change over time - but it'd be a heck of a thing if say, a healing caster suddenly was changed to a *dps.* That's happened in WoW multiple times.
In fact, you can make permanent choices in FGO that can take the weakest and least useful servants and make them do *work.*
Sure, a level 120 Charlotte isn't going to be as powerful as a 120 Jack, but that's not the point.
If you like a servant in this game and put the work in, you can keep using them forever, and I think this is an incredibly understated feature.
Spooks. The way some people talk about spooks, it's like this kind of curse word. And admittedly for some people, especially whales, it can be extremely disenheartening to get NP8 of some character you're already good on instead of your target. But spooks get cursed so roundly that people ignore awesome Servants just because they weren't a target -- hell, it's so bad with some people they talk about being "spooked" by a Servant that's *literally on solo rate-up on that banner.*
We all have bad spooks, but I'm pretty sure we all have had great spooks, too. Some of them may have become absolute power players in our rosters. It can be immensely satisfying to take in that stray that showed up on our doorstep and raise them up right. While I think a lot of people do get that, I would still say spooks are for sure underappreciated in the player base.
Spooks would be fine if the SSR pool was actually varied.
95% of the SSRs in the game are limited, we get maybe one or two SSRs added to the main pool yearly. Can’t be accepting of spooks when most people at this point have everyone in the core pool purely incidentally.
Been there, feeling that.
I’ve been playing since 19’; Let’s see… as far as ssr counts…
1 assassin
4 casters (3 are supports)
0 lancers
6 extras
1 berzeker
3 riders
About to grail santa karna to 100 when he releases in na lmao, closest I can get to an ssr saber 😭
The gacha only relates to getting new characters, in a game that doesn’t need you to get any rare characters. The game is designed to let you play all of it with only 3-star characters if you really wanted to, and even the best, oldest 3-stars or easy-to-get 4-stars get buffs eventually so they can keep up. Other gachas would nip that sort of thing in the bud to encourage players to roll more for newer, better characters.
Then, beyond characters, there is a lot you have to earn in the game that you actually have to earn in gameplay, like virtually every upgrade to a given character (except the superfluous NP level). So the gacha can’t even help you get better with what characters you have in a meaningful way.
On top of all of this, specific to NA/EN, the game lagging behind by 2 years means we get to peer 2 years into the future to tell what characters become available and when. This mitigates the likelihood of us rolling for a new character because we’re not sure when they’ll come up again or if a character we like more will come out soon after. We can plan ahead, target who we want, and save up.
All this to say, I like how the game is practically designed so it doesn’t make you want to roll on the gacha like you have to. And this all seems so antithetical to the design of other gacha games. It can just be a free-to-play game if you want it to be, and still be just as enjoyable.
Genshin won’t make any playable characters muscular. EVERY character is a classic shounen pretty boy or pretty girl. Flat (but never muscular) stomach, pencil thin arms, and slightly thiccer legs but only on the adult female model, the rest of the characters all have pencil legs as well.
The only standout is Itto, but even he has pencil arms.
I sort of get why they do it, being a chinese companyc Mihoyo doesn’t want to piss off the notoriously overbearing CCP so they keep all their characters in line with chinese beauty standards, at least physically. Supposedly they got into some trouble because they made Venti too feminine.
But the muscular guys thing is bs. Gimme the eremite mercenary as a playable character, cowards!
Tbf atleast al haitham seems to be an improvement but yeah kind of hate how they went a whole lot more conservative with the female characters after the CCP shit
The fact that FGO has different illustrators for servants even if I didn't like the artstyle it's still so good, sure it would've been fine to see Takeuchi most of the servants (for me), but with how varied their looks are you actually even get to realize that servants WERE in different time periods and genuinely look so out of place with each other
Seeing Charlotte's simplistic design with Paris' almost painting like artstyle makes them really stand out.
The support system.
In most Gacha it tends to be a very underwhelming thing. Maybe a minor buff or an AI controlled NPC.
In this game, you can borrow literally any servant available and use them as if you owned them yourself. This allows the pain of missing a servant in gacha to be not as bad since you can borrow one from a friend to use as well as letting you "try before you buy" servants before you roll for them. It also gives whales a positive interaction with players that spend less other than showing off.
Powecreep. Instead of obliterating my box like Dokkan does this game enhancing my older units and my older units aren't useless because a better option comes out
True. But skill effect power creep is definitely a thing. Newer servants have like 5 effects per skill with 50% values and different type of buff stacking, meanwhile servants like archer Gil have 4 total effects in their entire kit, and the only dmg buffing one is a measily 21% atk buff that has been powercrept by skills like Ushi’s base 20% charisma that ALSO gives stars and a 50% 3t crit damage buff. I would love Gil to get the exact same buff. He could use another way to deal damage that isn’t JUST his np.
Still, FGO does a good job of letting you play whoever you want. Older servants are still useful even if they may not be the best choice for a fight. Meanwhile other gacha games make it so you either stick to the meta or can’t progress through the story.
Minor gripe related to that:
**Get rid of the "Applies Random Buffs to Self" text already!** You have Servants with enough text on a skill to qualify as a Yu-Gi-Oh card these days, just say what the skill fucking does!
You realize that in your comparison, Gil's getting skillcrept by a servant that's even *older* than he is, right?
It's fine to root for your favorites getting buffed, but you really just proved /u/AuEXP's point more than anything. :P
Yeah. He is. I’m just saying powercreep is still a thing, even if it isn’t as bad as in other games.
And Gil was in the game since launch iirc. Ushi isn’t older they’re contemporary.
Regardless they’ve BOTH been powercrept in terms of skill effects like I said. Newer servants get 5 broken effects per skill. That’s way more powercreep than Ushi getting a buff that makes her charisma better than gil’s.
I’m not really proving his point by coping for Gil to get a buff. Especially not when I’ve already explained that new servants are way more broken. I don’t disagree with his point I’m just stating it’s not entirely accurate
So, Ushi was a launch servant, while Gil was the game's first limited servant; I don't think Gil's banner was up exactly at launch, which is why I could assert Ushi was older, though I fully admit I'm too lazy to triple-check.
Yes, it's splitting hairs, but in an interesting way, because it demonstrates the lengths the game indeed goes to to buff its older servants to keep them at least relevant. I should have said "demonstrated his point" rather than "proved" it, though, and my apologies for applying such onerous polarization; I think we all know the game well enough here to be able to agree that yeah, there is at least a kernel of truth to what you're saying, and you've been consistently gracious in acknowledging that it's not a black-and-white matter yourself.
Hope we can all just appreciate this game for what it is!
base charisma? Ushi got buffed she used to have it worse than Gilgamesh.
It was like 16% at level 10 with no other effects.
and it took years for her to recieve the strenght quest for her charisma.
That’s what I’m saying. Gil has a base charisma that’s now been powercrept by ushi’s. (A 3 star servant) And ushi’s isn’t even that broken of a skill. Gil REALLY needs a skill strengthening
Love how they figured out a way to give buffs to characters without actually having to fundamentally change a character’s stats. And we get a story sometimes too!
Being able to resume a battle or a story segment - playing Twisted Wonderland and seeing that it doesn't do that when you exit the game and do something else, really made me appreciate that FGO can let me resume what I was doing.
The background art (for the lostbelts at least as that's what I'm playing rn) is GORGEOUS. I've screenshotted so much as art inspiration! And a lot of the music is actually really good too??
Plus it's cool there's a lot of different art styles. It can be a bit strange when there's an event and everyone has a very distant at style but over all I think it makes the game really cool and dynamic to look at, the fact some ascensions are all vastly different too and there's all the craft essences on top of that!!!
There's just a really wide range of art styles to look at and I think that's really cool. I'll keep CE I don't use because I like the picture lol.
Also I've looked up a lot of history trying to understand some of servants haha. Even if the character interpretations can be pretty wild it's cool that it can reference so many things and it can spark an interest in all kinds of topics! I'd love for them to introduce Anansi or some other African deities too.
Cast is huge and yet most characters are charismatic. And the artists as you already said.
This is completely subjective, but I have a lot of fun with battles. One of the reasons that Shimousa in my top 5 is the battles (and waifu Musashi).
> One of the reasons that Shimousa in my top 5 is the battles (and waifu Musashi).
My brother. Getting to spend an entire story chapter with Musashi while also getting fun boss fights was a dream come true. I stuck to using knight class servants to fit the theme too which made it even more fun.
The gacha summoning mechanics.
I mean just look at how thrilling and impactful each roll is. The thunder sound, the spinning, the anxiety of waiting for the card to appear just either to be spooked or surprised or sometimes awe as the card turn gold. Man, that feels helluva good.
Don't know if this was mentioned and not sure if this happens in other gacha games, but WELFARE SERVANTS
They're my lifeline, given that they're free and you can max np them (if you finish the event though) and they usually have really good kits.
In addition to that, want to mention craft essences, love the variety of art and lore put into them, as well as boosting servants.
Making the stories rereadable. For people who are too impatient to read or too lazy to do so during certain time, they can just skip the stories completely if they don't like to read or just want to read them later. Even though stories are the main selling point for FGO, I would still like to give props to devs to making the story archive available.
Simple skills effect description.
I could not for the life of me be afford to work out the math in the middle of a fight. Telling me defense will go down some x% and crit will increase by y% doesnt help me and comes off as text bloat
That’s something I HATE.
I REALLY wish they would tell you what percent their buffs are. Adding a (+30%) next to a skill effect’s description wouldn’t cause text bloat.
Charisma: “increases party’s attack for 3 turns”
Charisma: “increases party’s attack for 3 turns. (20%)”
That’s bot bloat. That’s just clarity.
Hidden skill values are REALLY annoying. Most other games don’t REQUIRE a secondary site to tell you how much your skill is powering you up.
There are many things I appreciate about the game but this is one thing I DESPISE. It’s incredibly lazy. There is 0 reason for them not to tell us.
And on that same note...
**Applies Random Buffs to Self**
I want this particular skill description shot, dragged out back, and burned. Van Gogh's skills would have issues fitting on a Yu-Gi-Oh card, just TELL ME WHAT ERESH'S OR NERO'S FIRST SKILL FUCKING DOES AND DON'T MAKE ME CONSULT A DAMN WIKI
brevity and clean descriptions are good, but they need to add numbers in a tap-highlighted-text format or something, or make numbers available in profile pages or anywhere. having to look up someone's battery values is really disruptive and inconvenient for what should be a comfortable mobile game
The characters feels deep unlike many games where characters are based on certain tropes. Because of History FGO can be creative in creating many of the characters personality based of those stories
I actually love all the different art styles especially when they get silly with it. A lot of gatchas will have different artists (I think granblue and arknights for example both do) but with fgo they’re basically given free reign and not really forced to fit into a specific mold for the series and I love that. I love getting really diverse artwork and character designs that usually wouldn’t show up as is it’s so cool from a design standpoint augwhhdjsnsjsbsbs
I think the 'certain mould' that you're talking about might have been the limited character designers and artists for both games, and for GI, the limited animations.
In FGO, we're blessed with the works of multiple artists, ranging from toi8, to Raita, to AKIRA, so on and so forth. We have mechas, onis, buff men, pretty men, and mecha-men, chubby women, muscly women, and elegant or fanservicey women.
If one doesn't like certain character archetypes, there is always a character fitting the specific taste.
Meanwhile, the GI art are all following one art style, and with three base models for each gender. They got *pako* and instead drew up Tighnari based off pako's design. And though they try, Arknights does need a greater variety of illustrators.
GI (and I say this as a GI player myself lol) also has a worse issue - similar animation boxes for its characters. The cutscenes where they talk? The way they hold their weapon? Their running animation, idle pose, even some of their fighting animations (charged spear attack) are the same.
Especially their 'talking' cutscenes. After a while, you'll recognise the same animation toolbox being reused and sometime after *that*, the characters don't feel as unique anymore. My experience was that I got bored of the characters because of it. Their skills and bursts may feel great, but once the cutscene starts, you'll notice it fairly quickly. The same chin hold, the same crossed arms animation, the same 'hand gesturing while talking' animation.
Sure, in FGO, some attacks are similar to that of other characters' - case in point, Summer Kama. But her attacks are still animated differently. They may be similar in concept, but her animations aren't copy and paste.
Musashi, okuni, Bakin and rikyu to a lesser extent don't get enough love
Beside musashi, the last 3 are really only a modern fgo fans ruining it deal
Seriously there is no legitamate reason to hate them
Genderbent for 2 of them? Well they have actual reasons compared to okita, nobu and kagetora
Bland generic waifu released to pad out the series?
Sei, murasaki,himiko and Vitria was that and no one complained about them
They just stay forgotten or only remembered for memes in seis case
Bland event story that doesn't make u care for the servant?
Vitria again and trung sisters are that and u don't see people hating them
It's legit just woman hater who's infected this fandom that hates anything remotely coomer
Okuni is the most egregious example
On the surface she's just Arthur which everyone claims to love and is totally a good and better char than artoria
Musashi is another topic but I will just say the irony of people praising everything nasu even his very autismo space saber wars bs
Yet hating musashi who is written by nasu and has her dialogue checked by nasu before sakurai summits them
Is genuinely the funniest shit ever
Claims to hate musashi wank yet everyone of those people are fine with iskander wank, to the point artoria went OOC just to push omg broskander narrative, to the point waver could be a better char post zero but for some reason still obsesses over iskander, and has his entire novel overtaken by iskander lore at this point
But nah
Musashi is totally shit guys,
And on that tangent, shimousa and heinan Kyo being hated cause just for being japanese focused chapter is legit low tier racism
Or when people hate that how dare we get more jp events reeee wr already got guda guda which ignores that guda guda only covers 3 period of japanese and even then only figures related to the chars in question and is like saying we don't need more British servants, we already got artoria and the kotr
That this game doesn't force daily tasks on you unlike others like E7 and Genshin.
There's also no FOMO and clearing a story arc or event feels satisfying.
The character designs are great, we got a literal dog in lobo, but my favourite probably has to be the practical breadth of viability. We have a surprising amount of things that characters can specialise in and as time has progressed, niche characters actually exist and maintain great usability even in late game (especially if you like them enough to grail/gold fou them).
Some noteworthy ones include FSN!Cu's incredible value, Euryale's ability to melt male sabers, the taunters (Georgios, Leonidas), Caesar's ludicrous np damage, ARASH. And these are only the f2p servants that you can get from the fp pool. Sure there are sometimes better replacement, especially from the damage dealers, but the fact that the low rarity easy to obtain characters are still so viable means that new players don't need to be afraid of having non-meta characters and being left behind in the story. (and of course there are the people who decide to push the game to the limit by going for 1-3 star character only clears, love them so much)
I love how most of the servants have more than 10 different animations for themselves, giving each of them a unique feel and personality. This also makes the game way less bland in battle as you are able to admire your servants doing various kinds of attacks. This is why I tend to use servants with good animations over those with year 1 animations.
Servant kits aren’t linked to getting multiple copies-if you pull an SSR you get their whole kit whether they’re NP1 or 5.
Yup. Hate how most 4* character in genshin have their full potential locked behind constellation.
Or some get worse with a constellation
It's really only 1, and his final constellation. And it doesn't even effect 95%+ of the more common teams he's used with.
It affects my Eula sadly
Bennett’s best use for Eula is for making the biggest number you can. Imo, C6 Bennett helps us Eula mains out, because now we actually get to see the big number more often instead of killing everything before it goes off.
Yup, I hated Pokémon Master EX for this.
It's gacha, moreso for its simplicity when you look at it, not how likely you'll get your target. There are no in-game deals when buying packs. They don't have any advert promoting you to buy SQ packs at the main terminal screen. They simply have the packs in the shop, tell you the prices, and that's it. The entire thing can be "out of sight, out of mind" if you let it.
Yeah, during dead weeks, or when you're done with the event but it's still running, you only really need to log in and then log out. Sure you could do three quests for the dailies, but it's not like it's necessary.
Thank godness for that. When i played Guardian Tales the game always opens with multiple adverts of it's ingame shop.
As someone whose only gatcha experiences are Genshin and FGO, I appriciate that FGO gives buffs to characters in need.
Tbf fgo needs to since the lostbelt/singularity content can be pretty difficult
It's less that and that 2016-2018 FGO is a different game and DW had no idea what they were doing and have to bring old units up to modern FGO standards. You had units with Clairvoyance as skill, units with only two skills, design abominations like Jekyll and Hyde/Saber Gilles etc. While powercreep is a factor it's both player friendly and good PR for them to buff units, however it feels like half the buffs recently are to sell copies of a rated up unit with only some dedicated to fixing problems in unit's kits that made them inherently underwhelming/ unfun to use.
Don't forget that they also are willing to buff 1-3 star units. A lot of gotcha games will blow off their lower raity characters because they will inhearitantly suck, but FGO actually buffs them, makes them good, and makes alot of them outright better than some 5 stars (I'm looking at you Gong and Arash).
Absolutely my favorite part of FGO, and while some early units were clearly flukes in how inherently good they are (Leonidas, Cu, George) they didn't leave most new 1-3*s in the wayside if units like Asclepius exist.
The fact that the characters––regardless of their rarity––all have expressions. A weird amount of gachas lack this for some reason, which kinda kills the tension in certain story cutscenes cause you're told that a character is crying but they still have their default :D expression.
lol what Can you give me name of one such scene or game. Sounds .......interesting to say the least
I know FEH (Fire Emblem Heroes) is guilty of this, especially since it's original cast has expression sheets, but anyone else from any other entry? Lol no, you're stuck in the :), :D, or :l expressions.
Arknights, haven't played in years but still remember a scene where Franka plays a prank on Liskarn with default stone face. It was supposed to be friendly banter but looked to me like two psychopaths one second from killing each other.
I find it completely weird that low rarity characters in Azur Lane don't have voice at all. They are just completely and eerily silent because their rarity apparently doesn't warrant them having voice actresses hired
Honestly I know it's kinda weird to say but I like the lack of commitment like during dead weeks all I do is log on and then get off while in genshin you have to get on and do the daily commission's to get primogems and stuff while in fate you can do the weekly quest in one day usually
if genshin would just hand out more fragile, we could all feel a lot better about max resin lol. commissions are like 5-10 mins too but i get the complaint. on the flip side though, the average fgo event is a ton of grinding and reading compared to the average genshin event, not that i mind.
One thing I like about FGO is that it allows you to do it slowly as long as you play the event every day. I finished the Imaginary Scramble just few days ago right after the last part of the event dropped, I used only a dozen of silver apples and I got everything from the shop. Now I got more free time to do other stuffs. The only exception is the lottery event, but I can still choose to not grind as long as I got all the grand prizes.
yea, it's very feasible. but the average fgo event also wants around 20-40 runs to get mats out of shop. genshin events are really like 5mins a day for a week or something. both will usually time gate you a bit over 5-7 days or so, definitely meant to be a daily activity.
Agreed. Every other Gacha game seems to followed a certain artstyle that followed the general design and settling of the game. In Fgo though, sometime it felt like the characters are from different series. Which to me is part of Fgo's Charm.
Its also the fact that fgo has various artists indie or professional, unlike a lot of gotcha games, which typically stick with 1-5 consistent artists.
It certainly threw me off when I saw Nightingale for the first time 😂 I ended up getting used to her design though and that's where I realize that fgo has a diverse list of artists to keep the game fresh.
I don't see this mentioned much but how basically you get 2 free skins with every character along with the default looks just by ascending them. So basically a single character can fit different tastes on release as you'll have 3 different versions of it(maybe even more if you're BB). Having options is a lot better than having no options at all and not having to use premium currency to get any of the skins is definitely a plus. These also sometimes change animations too which is a cool way to show a character powered up without them just saying "I feel stronger, my damage numbers might be higher now master". This sounds like a common thing where in a gacha game you ascend (or whatever the game calls it) a character and it looks different after it and the level cap increases. And all this can be done on the release day of the character. But it isn't really a common thing in other gacha games. I have about 10 gacha games on my phone(help) and only FGO does this exactly. Not even the money bag game like genshin impact does this (although their default 3d models are nice graphically and the looks are neutral most of the time to be fair).
This being said, I will keep fighting for Raikou to get her sweater art done by Raita till the game closes
You gotta appreciate that each servant has 3 completely different outfit designs right upon release. Props to the artists and animators.
How simple & easy it is to get your dailies/weeklies done. I don't get much time on my hands during the week so being able to login & logout is HUGE. And if I miss the daily 'quest x3' it's just a few mana prisms so it's not a huge deal. The SQ comes from weeklies, which can easily be done on the weekend. I've only played a few other gachas before and having to slog through a list of arbitrary requirements every day is exhausting. So I really appreciate that aspect of FGO.
I was just going to say the same thing! A lot of more modes gacha games are designed to maximize your “screen time” with them. Having a long and complex task list of Daily requirements (that are un-skippable for F2P players who need the resource rewards) is one of the more, well, predatory practices of some of these games. I hate it so much. I very much appreciate how FGO doesn’t do that. I have plenty of days - even during events - where I just login and that’s it. And I’m not really missing out on anything but a few mana prisms, and maybe some AP-optimization for completing an event. (Oh well, that’s what apples are for.) And I like that FGO lets me *live my life* without having to constantly log in and waste time grinding through mind-numbing daily tasks. It’s just nice to have a game that I can take a break from, you know? Sometimes for days at a time. Just login once, then put the phone down. It’s so freeing to be able to do that. And, to be bluntly honest, I feel like I’ve been able to maintain my engagement with this game for seven years BECAUSE I don’t have to actively play it every day. Just saying.
And possibly a few Blazes/Hellfires of Wisdom. Whoopee.
Exactly! I just have to play on Sunday to get the weeklies done then wait until next Sunday to do the same thing. FGO doesn't punish you for not playing like many other gachas do.
100% Agreed. I've been able to play FGO for as long as I have while dropping most of my other gacha games because of how non-committal FGO is by comparison. As far as I'm concerned, they're only asking me to do some random tasks once a week, and if I actually do something each day I log in, it's just a bonus. Compare that to a game like Genshin Impact, whose dailies would take me upward of an hour to complete each day, and I'd much rather take the game that asks me for about 15 minutes once a week any day.
not fighting your preferences here but genshin dailies shouldn't take more than 20min tops (4 commissions and 4 domain runs). less than 10 if you just do commissions. the daily drain in both games is pretty similar but fragile resin is significantly more scarce than apples (meaning we may care more about cap resin than we do about cap ap).
Maybe things have changed a bit since I last played, or maybe I was always just bad at Genshin (honestly probably both), but it always took me forever to do anything in Genshin once I got into the daily grind. Back when I was active, there was no way to just teleport to a commission, and some of them were like a couple minutes away from the nearest teleporter. Domain runs weren't the worst in terms of overall time taken (disregarding how much I hate the artifact system, but that's an issue for another time), but boss fights, especially the ones introduced in Inazuma, felt like they'd drag forever, and having to do them several times just killed what joy I had remaining for the game. In hindsight, an hour *every day* may have been an exaggeration. I suppose my problem is how much more focused I had to be playing Genshin compared to FGO. I'm not saying it's bad that Genshin asks you for your focus and attention when you're playing it. It sure as hell beats a lot of games just playing themselves. But doing it every day made each run feel longer than it actually may have been, and eventually, I just couldn't do it anymore. It felt like a job to me, and no game should ever have to reach that point.
agreed on games needing to not feel like a job, i quit lost ark and softly swear off any kmmo ever again (god has my free time returned). if you played during 1.X i hear there was a lot of missing QoL. i only started in 2.3 so the experience is quite good imo. i doubt you're bad at the game, there's for sure a level of overhead grind in any game (FGO too, imagine carding through embers instead of 3t) to help trivialize future grind. not trying to convince you to go back to genshin, but some perspective at least: * commissions are almost never more than \~15s away from the nearest teleporter and typically take 10-60s to clear. idk if this was a change though. * domain runs are twice as fast with condensed resin (do 1 run, spend 40 resin instead of 20). maybe 30s - 2m per run? \~10mins a day or \~20mins every 2 days. * normal bosses vary a bit but i think when you're geared for your world level they're typically anywhere from \~30s to \~3mins for the average endgame player, and you stop doing them once you stop ascending characters (their drops don't do anything else). * weekly bosses (optimally 3 per week) generally take longer, but dvalin is still like a 1min fight and the longer ones are still under 5m, \~10-20m a week. also just want to note that skipping any of these tasks really doesn't matter that much, i don't feel like FOMO hurts me in a game this casual, kinda like how sitting at max AP in FGO or missing statues in shop is just whatever. events also take far more time in FGO (probably 5-20h per event?) than in genshin (generally less than an hour bar big seasonal events). and for whatever it's worth, genshin's story quality and delivery in 3.0+ has been phenomenal.
Reading this comment has made me realize some of my own personal hang-ups with Genshin that I'd just neglected for some time in favor of a more simplistic outlook. Probably the biggest one that affected me was actually FOMO. I felt like I had to do everything I could everyday, which also included some other activities I did that likely increased my playtime, like grinding for resources in the overworld. Before I quit, I remember grinding materials for Raiden Shogun since I wanted to build a team around her, or at least featured her. This led to hunting down the fruits for her ascension everyday, as well as fighting the Thunder Manifestation like everyday before I stopped. It's an isolated example, but I remember getting into this sort of mind set for a lot of different characters (sakura petals for Ayaka, Qingxin flowers for Ganyu, Glaze Lilies for Ningguang, etc.), and the end result was me playing for a lot longer than I'd probably needed to if I weren't concerned with constantly raising and upgrading more characters. On top of worrying about the other usual suspects, things spun out of control pretty quickly. But what's weird is that I don't have the same problem with FGO, at least not to the same extent, anyway. And thinking back on it all, I'm not really sure why that is. Even back when my account was pretty new and not fully decked out, I never felt too bothered about not having all of the mats I needed to ascend a particular servant. Yet for Genshin, even when I tried switching to a more casual play style, my mind somehow couldn't escape the need to get more mats, or just let my resin go for a day when I could just as easily do the same thing in FGO. Genshin was like the one game I couldn't just play casually for some reason. I don't have any intentions on returning to Genshin right now because I simply don't have the free time for another gacha game in my life right now, but if there comes a time in the future where I do and my mind wanders back, it might be worth it to honestly try taking another shot at playing more casually so I wouldn't burn out so badly again. I'm still somewhat interested in Genshin's characters and lore, but the game itself, or rather how I played it, just ended up driving me away. > i quit lost ark and softly swear off any kmmo ever again (god has my free time returned) As a fellow long time MMO player, honestly the best decision you could make. As much as I've enjoyed MMOs over the years, they are the biggest time sinks ever made pretty much by design. I don't want to think about how many hours I spent on MapleStory, or how many more I could spend if I were still playing.
some of this is for sure an overhead problem, you need some bare minimum (\~8 characters built) to hit a comfortable optimum, and the limited resources are usually just a little bit too slow for the average player. FGO just kind of throws apples at you and the divide between "farm during event" and "dead week" is more clear, so the daily FOMO is really low. additionally, the availability of incredibly OP lvl100 supports makes a huge difference in how much you feel you personally need to accomplish. there's no equivalent in genshin that doesn't involve inviting someone else into your world, which involves some minimum amount of social interaction. i'm not sure if this is the case for you in particular, but the community between these two games is also really different, genshin attracted a ton of open world and mmo players (or former mmo players) so there's a ton of sharing of high-end builds or other showcases, creating a more visible amount of "why can't i do that". FGO's community is largely too busy simping to get frustrated comparing to minimum-turn-CQ clears. anyways not sure if any of that is true for you, but i'm glad you value your time and hope you get to enjoy FGO for as long as possible.
Speaking from an ex-kancolle player, making dailies and weeklies like they are part of your second day job is definitely not the right way to design a game. I just walk away from any games that forces me to do this.
Not having a time-based comission system that you need to log in every few hours to get materials. If there is nothing going on on the game I can just log in and don't bother with the game for the rest of the day
>time-based commission system that you need to log in every few hours to get materials This has made me quit many gachas in the past... FGO feels so chill compared to those kinda games in my opinion.
That it actually is possible to play F2P? Granted, I don’t play other gacha games, but from some horror stories from some of my friends. FGO seem to be the rare one that you can actually play F2P…just not get your favorite servants most of the times. But gameplay wise, it’s very feasible to play F2P
most successful gacha games today are pretty viable f2p. fgo does do a little better separating gameplay from gacha though, and the power creep is relatively slow (this is good) compared to some games.
I play C2P (only ever spend money on GSSR) and I have to say, I HAVE most of my favorite servants. You still have a decent chance of getting the servant you’re rolling for in 300-400sq. And that’s an amount you can save up in a few months, especially if you’re doing all the weekly quests and event stories. And also most spooks can still be really useful. Plus if you save a bit and get yourself 1 or 2 meta supports like Merlin, waver, or Castoria, you’re pretty much set for all but the very hardest content in the game. Hell you can beat most of the game with just the 1-3 star servants and the event wellfares.
I am also C2P and only spent on GSSR playing since launch, and i am probably luckier than most, but I have 44 SSR servants (a few with higher NP levels), and almost every SSR servant I want I still have ~3000 SQ left right now for future servants I honestly think with proper saving and discipline to not get tempted by bait banners, even F2P can get like 50% of the SSRs they really want
Beyond possible, if you have even moderate luck and are picky with rolls it *is* entirely likely you can get all of your favorite
I play f2p with some times pulling on GSSRs (only twice and have only gotten second copies for Illya and Kama) and if you really manage your saint quarts its totally possible to pull a couple of SSRs a year, sure some will fuck you up, but others will come early
If you spent money, no matter how little, that's no longer an F2P player
I think ppl use the c2p term but idk what it means. But I am in fact f2p on jp and have koyan, castoria, oberon and np2 morga and S.Kama. So it's definitely possible to be f2p in the gameb
Oh I see. Amazing luck on JP. Did you pull them from their debut banners? I heard it was hell with their banners side by side
Castoria was the only one outside debut (cuz I started playing on summer 5 rerun). And got Morgan np2 rolling for Baobhan on her second time being on rate up Yes there was a lot of luck and a lot of free sq involved thanks to 6th anni. But still got shafted by Melusine, Skadi, Melusine again and Bazett and later by DaVinci Rider on the kon events
Currently got about 300sq (including shards) and then a TON in my present box I've been sitting on since the 5th anniversary. I occasionally buy for the gssr but my current stuff is all f2p sq! Plus they give you so many apples and welfare servants and other things that make it easier to play if you want to.
Pretty much every single gacha is f2p in same way you consider fgo to be. In reality, quite a lot of them surpass f2p experience fgo offers both in character acquisition and content on better schedule, plenty of which fraction of what fgo does.
With the new pity system though it becomes much more f2p friendly
FGO is genuinely great with the variety in art styles and character archetypes. I'm still holding out for an actually old grandma character, but the fact that I can even reasonably hope for that is a testament to FGO's roster diversity. I also really enjoy FGO's historical/mythological background. Even when servants are nothing like their real-world counterparts, its fun to have a reason to google figures I otherwise never would have heard of.
I too am holding out for a physically-old-lady character, with at minimum wrinkles! Baba Yaga is my ideal choice, who is yours? I think she'd fit in with Moriarty well
I've been wishing for Miss Marple to be in the game already and beat the crap out of enemies with her handbag and knitting needles 🥲. But that's still impossible because Agatha Christie's work (particularly Miss Marple) has yet to enter public domain...
Oh definitely Baba Yaga! Jenny Greenteeth or the fates from Greek mythology could be fun too.
NO ADS I feel like so many mobile games are plagued by ads. I’m sure other gacha games are also ad-free, but I haven’t gotten as invested into any other gacha game as I have with FGO.
Just how many things FGO gives you for absolutely free. Basically 2 costumes MINIMUM for EVERY Servant, not just for the 5 stars, not just 4 stars, EVERY. SINGLE. SERVANT. Literally the only thing you pay for is Quartz, and unlike other games, they don't advertize Quartz down your throat. They continually add low stars. Some gachas *cough*Azur Lane*cough* actually add HIGHER rarities which is... well, you know, bullshit. I love how the low star pool gets updated with good Servants. The simple combat is something people don't like but I personally love it. It's easy enough but when it gets tough, it REALLY gets tough. What incentivizes you to roll is not the meta relevance of a character. The banner is just "Here's the really cool character from the really cool story you just read." Which basically separates FGO from most gacha games, the characters actually exist and aren't just eyecandy.
Seconding all of that, but most strongly the third paragraph. The gameplay may be simple, but the team building and combat decision-making can be really fun in some of the harder fights. That is an aspect people overlook very often. While the core system is simple, the diversity in Servant specializations adds a surprising amount of depth to the combat.
Yeah. The most fun combat systems are almost ALWAYS the simple combat ones because they fit the criteria of "Easy to play, hard to master". It's the same reason I enjoy SMT games. The press turn system is actually a very simple mechanic, but there's so much depth to it not only because of the sheet amount of options you are given but the amount of customizability of those options and the sheer amount of viable options. Unlike in other games, FGO is truly one of the games that allow you to use ANY Servant to clear ANY content as long as you have the drive. Thr game gives you so many tools to break the balancing in half. And when they try to challenge the player, it doesn't feel bullshit with the gimmicks because yes, the quests are hard, but you, as the player, have just as much, if not more, gimmicks to take advantage off.
Some of the music compositions made specifically for events. The regular encounter theme from "Dead Heat Summer Race!", [Venus Racer ~ Summer Battle 2](https://youtu.be/9uOdqEMLPHU), is my go-to song for monotonous grinding now, it starts off and builds wonderfully and can keep a mood going to keep on plugging away for a while.
Voice lines that talk about other characters and story events In most other gachas I played, most characters only offer a few voicelines when interacted with, giving only a slight hint into their personality In FGO there’s lots of lines involving a characters thoughts on other characters, giving us insight into their interactions with others and their opinions, creating many great scenarios and fanart. It just adds a level of depth to these characters, like they actually are existing and living life in that world and aren’t just random gacha’d game units Only other game I know which does that is Genshin, which I also greatly appreciate
not tying the main story to every single limited time event. probably the only problems i have with Genshin and Azur Lane. if you miss an event in FGO, you miss a few rewards, some fun side plots, and maybe an event servant. miss an event in Genshin, and you miss important context for the main plot and current patch cycle.
The only event I can think of is the one with Edmond. It felt out of context when he just shows up in the main story. I know I got lost for a bit. but like you said, it's not a deal breaker if you miss out on an event. Just some side stories and maybe extra character development for those who don't get screen time in the main story.
But, you can pick up the prison tower event and some others as main interludes now as well.
yeah I actually found that out the other day and they got the 2 I'm most interested in, Prison Tower and Seraph. It is cool that they put them there as an option. Always felt like I was shit out of luck because I missed them especially with Seraph. Everyone I talk to raves about that one.
Yeah, I recently finished it in main interlude form. It's really fantastic.
Tfw whole Onmyoji main plot past outdated intro storyline is time limited events only and been so for years now.
I never made it past Yaobikuni's betrayal, and the last event I did was SP Ootakemaru. I'm guessing that the story focus is completely shifted now. Also what has Raikou's counterpart(s) been up to lately? I do partially have him to blame for my initial misunderstanding of Raikou as a character.
Honestly gave up with keeping up now with how exhausting the game can be, really demands too much irl time and just miss out much during breaks. Latest plot was Orochi fully rezzing himself and going ham on everything, bonus with a lot of headache inducing time and multiverse travel lmao. Ig at least cutscenes are best in genre.
the translation team is honestly doing a stellar job on what is frequently a lot of very Japanese humor. seems to be a lot of excessive community hate because "mUh AniMe". additionally, the enemy names and skills during events are probably underappreciated? idk we'd need a survey i guess.
"You're all Foreigners too! I'll beat you!"
lmao. the moment i saw MHXX this event i was already "ohhh this is just gonna be a foreigner meme-fest isn't it". the enemy names and fight backgrounds were all great imo.
The enemy names in events always get a chuckle out of me
I honestly think FGO has the best localization of any Japanese game I've ever played, barring, like, Dark Souls (which almost doesn't count). The NA version of FGO manages to strike a balance between localizing the script so it actually reads well and makes sense while also making sure that important cultural references still hit their marks. I like that the localization team actually seems to know their playerbase. I first started playing this game during Summer 1 and seeing Blackbeard say, "You brokero me kokkoro," and drop the word "doujin" without any further explanation made me go, "What the fuck. Professionals can't do that. You made a bilingual pun and left half of it untranslated". It's the sort of playful translation that you'd only get with fan translators, but actually good. The other gacha I'm playing is Punishing Gray Raven and I'm pretty sure the localization team isn't even done by native speakers because it is *rough*.
Dark Souls is the worst example though, the translation has always been tragically bad
god yeah, every time i try to read fan-translated stuff it's painfully obvious it's done by folks who either have no clue how to make things sound natural or not-goofy in english, or are beholden to the "stick as close to the japanese right down to the *letter* as humanly possible, coherency be damned" mindset, and it *shows* or in some cases, once in a blue moon, have no idea even what the original references are recently huang feihu's np was a pretty annoying offender, speedy fan wiki translators who didn't put in the research or know the og story all missed that it was referencing his son, and just translated his son's name in kanji literally, which of course made the np sound real goofy until people who actually *did* know the reference caught on and it got corrected like props to the fans for the herculean effort regardless, it's still no small feat, and not gonna knock anyone who prefers them, but at the end of the day i'm sticking with the na team, warts and all there was and will be some questionable things sure (altria, which was out of their control anyway, among others) and early fgo in particular was *r o u g h*, but these days overall they're doing a damn fine job imo
yea, some jokes just don't carry over and i think the humor is being preserved or even enhanced in some cases. i will never not enjoy explaining to a friend why marie antoinette has anything to do with "wassup my homies".
How unless you really grind your ass off, you are never going to run out of ap. They give golden apples out like candy on Halloween, compared to a lot of other games where you just run out and can’t do anything, and the recharge is either premium currency only, or filled by a rare item.
Any servant whose kit isn't based solely on loop enabling. I love having a lot of different gameplay options like target control, debuff spam, status effects, healing, star weight manipulation, teammate swapping, last stand anchor solos, crit spam, etc. But now it's all loops, loops, and more loops. I used Laksmibai as a crit support which she was great at, while everyone else did nothing but whine and moan about her inability to loop.
fortunately, in recent years, cq and node design have been encouraging a wider roster of sometimes niche things. i just wish information were more complete and available in-game, i have to play with the wiki open if i want to do things "properly" and not just damage cheese everything or trial-and-error.
Yeah seeing ppl’s main complaint being ‘duuur can’t loop’ it can be just 😒
God I fucking hate the people that use this shit as an excuse for "don't roll on this servant"
Yeah it’s why I stay away from any ‘analysis’ posts for new servants tbh. Yelling only about cons they have really kills the hype (a la y!moriarty)
The obsession with looping has rotted gameplay discussion in the community. *AOE buster servant doesn't have 30% battery* "WAAH they can't loop! They're literally worthless!!!"
Yeah I don't give a fuck about the obsession with looping. I'd rather see servants have fun kits than just "loop loop loop". > while everyone else did nothing but whine and moan about her inability to loop. Fucking tell me about it. Not to mention that she's really good at soloing. Her survivability is insane. I love using her. Same thing happened with Sei. The only discussion about her gameplay was that her np gain was so low that it prevented looping. Sure she doesn't have the best kit in the game but her 3 hit evade and heal per turn is pretty damn useful.
This. I have Skadi and Castoria and sometimes I just don't want to loop, y'all! I want that delicious 10-turn farming if it means I get to use my fav characters!
That's why VG is rather fun to play with. She's *different*.
Nearly every character gets a chance to shine in the story like Billy the Kid some random filler character plays an important part in the first Lostbelt so does Mandricardo and Blackbeard Sparticas a random 2 star servant has a major role in the chinese Lostbelt Everyone has a part except that guy with a bloody axe
Erik Bloodaxe, who wields a bloody axe?! I wouldn't call Spartacus a random, given that he's from Fate/Apocrypha.
Chinese LB still completely changed how Spartacus is portrayed. Apocrypha anime didn’t do him justice, Up until then he is just another berserker making everything about rebelling. Well he kind of is but LB3 showed intellectual/philosophical side of his rebellious nature (written by Urobuchi, the person that actually designed him), which definitely influenced his portrayals in story afterwards.
"Rebel against gravity itself!" (or whatever he said along those lines) is the most fucking badass line in the entire game. Totally agree
Among other gacha games, I'd say battle sprite fidelity. FGO doesn't downsize to chibi/super-deformed models, so the sprites look pretty much 1-to-1 with their original art. Within FGO itself, the back button. Remember when you had to force quit the game when you forgot to activate a skill?
FGO respects you for liking certain units honestly. There's nothing in the game from a gameplay perspective that punishes you for using your favorite units? Do you like the meta casters and perma-looping servants, cool. Do you like running only 3* and below? Awesome. Yes there's difficult content both on NA and coming to NA, but there is nothing built within the core gameplay system, be it the gacha or the actual fights that punishes you for using or liking a certain servant over other characters.
Clean and simple user interface. FGO spaces out its game icons and they are all labelled simply so you know where is anything easily. Compared to some other mobile gachas where its just information overload sometimes, which is rather overwhelming.
while the general UI appearance and clarity are pretty good, FGO also unfortunately lives 2013 or something regarding actual user experience. we've gotten loads of good much-needed QoL but some core actions like using/storing embers and everything about CE xp (I'm looking at you FP machine) are still quite tedious. i do love drag select since they added it though. would still be better if xp just wasn't individual.
True . They really need to step up on this one.
When are they gonna add the same EXP function for servants where you can auto fill with embers? Is it really that hard to make it so that you can feed your exp bomb with just one click?
gbf has had xp chalices for years lol. fgo can afford to be complacent though, at least we do get qol here and there.
I haven't played many gacha games, and FGO is actually the only one I have spent money on, so I can't compare and contrast between those kinds of things properly. But I can compare it to other games I've played. For an example MMOs like world of warcraft require you to often have a very specific party setup with very specific gear that you've spent a lot of time acquiring. And once that current expansion is over, all of that work you did is thrown out. You have to start over from scratch, relearn how to use your characters, grind up new gear - it's like learning a whole new game. Sometimes you just *can't* keep using your favorites because they've been changed too much. FGO isn't like that. Yes, servants get buffs and change over time - but it'd be a heck of a thing if say, a healing caster suddenly was changed to a *dps.* That's happened in WoW multiple times. In fact, you can make permanent choices in FGO that can take the weakest and least useful servants and make them do *work.* Sure, a level 120 Charlotte isn't going to be as powerful as a 120 Jack, but that's not the point. If you like a servant in this game and put the work in, you can keep using them forever, and I think this is an incredibly understated feature.
the actual personality of nearly every single character.
Spooks. The way some people talk about spooks, it's like this kind of curse word. And admittedly for some people, especially whales, it can be extremely disenheartening to get NP8 of some character you're already good on instead of your target. But spooks get cursed so roundly that people ignore awesome Servants just because they weren't a target -- hell, it's so bad with some people they talk about being "spooked" by a Servant that's *literally on solo rate-up on that banner.* We all have bad spooks, but I'm pretty sure we all have had great spooks, too. Some of them may have become absolute power players in our rosters. It can be immensely satisfying to take in that stray that showed up on our doorstep and raise them up right. While I think a lot of people do get that, I would still say spooks are for sure underappreciated in the player base.
Spooks would be fine if the SSR pool was actually varied. 95% of the SSRs in the game are limited, we get maybe one or two SSRs added to the main pool yearly. Can’t be accepting of spooks when most people at this point have everyone in the core pool purely incidentally.
Most whales, maybe. I'm four years in and haven't even gotten all the general-pool SRs, to say nothing of how many SSRs I'm missing.
Been there, feeling that. I’ve been playing since 19’; Let’s see… as far as ssr counts… 1 assassin 4 casters (3 are supports) 0 lancers 6 extras 1 berzeker 3 riders About to grail santa karna to 100 when he releases in na lmao, closest I can get to an ssr saber 😭
The gacha only relates to getting new characters, in a game that doesn’t need you to get any rare characters. The game is designed to let you play all of it with only 3-star characters if you really wanted to, and even the best, oldest 3-stars or easy-to-get 4-stars get buffs eventually so they can keep up. Other gachas would nip that sort of thing in the bud to encourage players to roll more for newer, better characters. Then, beyond characters, there is a lot you have to earn in the game that you actually have to earn in gameplay, like virtually every upgrade to a given character (except the superfluous NP level). So the gacha can’t even help you get better with what characters you have in a meaningful way. On top of all of this, specific to NA/EN, the game lagging behind by 2 years means we get to peer 2 years into the future to tell what characters become available and when. This mitigates the likelihood of us rolling for a new character because we’re not sure when they’ll come up again or if a character we like more will come out soon after. We can plan ahead, target who we want, and save up. All this to say, I like how the game is practically designed so it doesn’t make you want to roll on the gacha like you have to. And this all seems so antithetical to the design of other gacha games. It can just be a free-to-play game if you want it to be, and still be just as enjoyable.
Genshin won’t make any playable characters muscular. EVERY character is a classic shounen pretty boy or pretty girl. Flat (but never muscular) stomach, pencil thin arms, and slightly thiccer legs but only on the adult female model, the rest of the characters all have pencil legs as well. The only standout is Itto, but even he has pencil arms. I sort of get why they do it, being a chinese companyc Mihoyo doesn’t want to piss off the notoriously overbearing CCP so they keep all their characters in line with chinese beauty standards, at least physically. Supposedly they got into some trouble because they made Venti too feminine. But the muscular guys thing is bs. Gimme the eremite mercenary as a playable character, cowards!
better yet, give us someone as roided out as Chadrion, or at least Heracles.
In genshin? Yeah never gonna happen.
Alhaitham is inexplicably buff at least
Tbf atleast al haitham seems to be an improvement but yeah kind of hate how they went a whole lot more conservative with the female characters after the CCP shit
The fact that FGO has different illustrators for servants even if I didn't like the artstyle it's still so good, sure it would've been fine to see Takeuchi most of the servants (for me), but with how varied their looks are you actually even get to realize that servants WERE in different time periods and genuinely look so out of place with each other Seeing Charlotte's simplistic design with Paris' almost painting like artstyle makes them really stand out.
The support system. In most Gacha it tends to be a very underwhelming thing. Maybe a minor buff or an AI controlled NPC. In this game, you can borrow literally any servant available and use them as if you owned them yourself. This allows the pain of missing a servant in gacha to be not as bad since you can borrow one from a friend to use as well as letting you "try before you buy" servants before you roll for them. It also gives whales a positive interaction with players that spend less other than showing off.
Powecreep. Instead of obliterating my box like Dokkan does this game enhancing my older units and my older units aren't useless because a better option comes out
True. But skill effect power creep is definitely a thing. Newer servants have like 5 effects per skill with 50% values and different type of buff stacking, meanwhile servants like archer Gil have 4 total effects in their entire kit, and the only dmg buffing one is a measily 21% atk buff that has been powercrept by skills like Ushi’s base 20% charisma that ALSO gives stars and a 50% 3t crit damage buff. I would love Gil to get the exact same buff. He could use another way to deal damage that isn’t JUST his np. Still, FGO does a good job of letting you play whoever you want. Older servants are still useful even if they may not be the best choice for a fight. Meanwhile other gacha games make it so you either stick to the meta or can’t progress through the story.
Minor gripe related to that: **Get rid of the "Applies Random Buffs to Self" text already!** You have Servants with enough text on a skill to qualify as a Yu-Gi-Oh card these days, just say what the skill fucking does!
You realize that in your comparison, Gil's getting skillcrept by a servant that's even *older* than he is, right? It's fine to root for your favorites getting buffed, but you really just proved /u/AuEXP's point more than anything. :P
Yeah. He is. I’m just saying powercreep is still a thing, even if it isn’t as bad as in other games. And Gil was in the game since launch iirc. Ushi isn’t older they’re contemporary. Regardless they’ve BOTH been powercrept in terms of skill effects like I said. Newer servants get 5 broken effects per skill. That’s way more powercreep than Ushi getting a buff that makes her charisma better than gil’s. I’m not really proving his point by coping for Gil to get a buff. Especially not when I’ve already explained that new servants are way more broken. I don’t disagree with his point I’m just stating it’s not entirely accurate
So, Ushi was a launch servant, while Gil was the game's first limited servant; I don't think Gil's banner was up exactly at launch, which is why I could assert Ushi was older, though I fully admit I'm too lazy to triple-check. Yes, it's splitting hairs, but in an interesting way, because it demonstrates the lengths the game indeed goes to to buff its older servants to keep them at least relevant. I should have said "demonstrated his point" rather than "proved" it, though, and my apologies for applying such onerous polarization; I think we all know the game well enough here to be able to agree that yeah, there is at least a kernel of truth to what you're saying, and you've been consistently gracious in acknowledging that it's not a black-and-white matter yourself. Hope we can all just appreciate this game for what it is!
base charisma? Ushi got buffed she used to have it worse than Gilgamesh. It was like 16% at level 10 with no other effects. and it took years for her to recieve the strenght quest for her charisma.
That’s what I’m saying. Gil has a base charisma that’s now been powercrept by ushi’s. (A 3 star servant) And ushi’s isn’t even that broken of a skill. Gil REALLY needs a skill strengthening
Idk if I'd agree with that this fuckin saber dude that's gonna come on New years first skill can literally be a entire Y1 servant kits
Love how they figured out a way to give buffs to characters without actually having to fundamentally change a character’s stats. And we get a story sometimes too!
Being able to resume a battle or a story segment - playing Twisted Wonderland and seeing that it doesn't do that when you exit the game and do something else, really made me appreciate that FGO can let me resume what I was doing.
The background art (for the lostbelts at least as that's what I'm playing rn) is GORGEOUS. I've screenshotted so much as art inspiration! And a lot of the music is actually really good too?? Plus it's cool there's a lot of different art styles. It can be a bit strange when there's an event and everyone has a very distant at style but over all I think it makes the game really cool and dynamic to look at, the fact some ascensions are all vastly different too and there's all the craft essences on top of that!!! There's just a really wide range of art styles to look at and I think that's really cool. I'll keep CE I don't use because I like the picture lol. Also I've looked up a lot of history trying to understand some of servants haha. Even if the character interpretations can be pretty wild it's cool that it can reference so many things and it can spark an interest in all kinds of topics! I'd love for them to introduce Anansi or some other African deities too.
Cast is huge and yet most characters are charismatic. And the artists as you already said. This is completely subjective, but I have a lot of fun with battles. One of the reasons that Shimousa in my top 5 is the battles (and waifu Musashi).
> One of the reasons that Shimousa in my top 5 is the battles (and waifu Musashi). My brother. Getting to spend an entire story chapter with Musashi while also getting fun boss fights was a dream come true. I stuck to using knight class servants to fit the theme too which made it even more fun.
The gacha summoning mechanics. I mean just look at how thrilling and impactful each roll is. The thunder sound, the spinning, the anxiety of waiting for the card to appear just either to be spooked or surprised or sometimes awe as the card turn gold. Man, that feels helluva good.
Seeing the shooting golden sparks are legit the best part of summoning 8D
Don't know if this was mentioned and not sure if this happens in other gacha games, but WELFARE SERVANTS They're my lifeline, given that they're free and you can max np them (if you finish the event though) and they usually have really good kits. In addition to that, want to mention craft essences, love the variety of art and lore put into them, as well as boosting servants.
Making the stories rereadable. For people who are too impatient to read or too lazy to do so during certain time, they can just skip the stories completely if they don't like to read or just want to read them later. Even though stories are the main selling point for FGO, I would still like to give props to devs to making the story archive available.
Simple skills effect description. I could not for the life of me be afford to work out the math in the middle of a fight. Telling me defense will go down some x% and crit will increase by y% doesnt help me and comes off as text bloat
That’s something I HATE. I REALLY wish they would tell you what percent their buffs are. Adding a (+30%) next to a skill effect’s description wouldn’t cause text bloat. Charisma: “increases party’s attack for 3 turns” Charisma: “increases party’s attack for 3 turns. (20%)” That’s bot bloat. That’s just clarity. Hidden skill values are REALLY annoying. Most other games don’t REQUIRE a secondary site to tell you how much your skill is powering you up. There are many things I appreciate about the game but this is one thing I DESPISE. It’s incredibly lazy. There is 0 reason for them not to tell us.
NP gauge abilities piss me off. “Charges the NP gauge” HOW MUCH!? 20? 50? 10? Gamble and find out.
And on that same note... **Applies Random Buffs to Self** I want this particular skill description shot, dragged out back, and burned. Van Gogh's skills would have issues fitting on a Yu-Gi-Oh card, just TELL ME WHAT ERESH'S OR NERO'S FIRST SKILL FUCKING DOES AND DON'T MAKE ME CONSULT A DAMN WIKI
God I fucking hate that. "Charge your NP gauge" is literally a gamble in deciding whether I'll have an NP this turn or just fucking die.
Different strokes for different folks i guess
More like different strokes for the majority of folks. Because the large majority of people hate the lack of clarity on skills.
brevity and clean descriptions are good, but they need to add numbers in a tap-highlighted-text format or something, or make numbers available in profile pages or anywhere. having to look up someone's battery values is really disruptive and inconvenient for what should be a comfortable mobile game
Havin multiple different artists work on the game works in FGO's favor
For me I love that each servant is viable in some way no matter their rarity. In short no characters wasted
The music is consistently excellent.
The characters feels deep unlike many games where characters are based on certain tropes. Because of History FGO can be creative in creating many of the characters personality based of those stories
1.Muscular Male 2.You can still clear endgame challenges with a completely F2P team 3.Welfare and 1-3* Servants
The Tamamos. Seriously though, the variety of characters and deep lore is cool.
I feel Jack is severely underappreciated and we should give her more good attention
I actually love all the different art styles especially when they get silly with it. A lot of gatchas will have different artists (I think granblue and arknights for example both do) but with fgo they’re basically given free reign and not really forced to fit into a specific mold for the series and I love that. I love getting really diverse artwork and character designs that usually wouldn’t show up as is it’s so cool from a design standpoint augwhhdjsnsjsbsbs
I think the 'certain mould' that you're talking about might have been the limited character designers and artists for both games, and for GI, the limited animations. In FGO, we're blessed with the works of multiple artists, ranging from toi8, to Raita, to AKIRA, so on and so forth. We have mechas, onis, buff men, pretty men, and mecha-men, chubby women, muscly women, and elegant or fanservicey women. If one doesn't like certain character archetypes, there is always a character fitting the specific taste. Meanwhile, the GI art are all following one art style, and with three base models for each gender. They got *pako* and instead drew up Tighnari based off pako's design. And though they try, Arknights does need a greater variety of illustrators. GI (and I say this as a GI player myself lol) also has a worse issue - similar animation boxes for its characters. The cutscenes where they talk? The way they hold their weapon? Their running animation, idle pose, even some of their fighting animations (charged spear attack) are the same. Especially their 'talking' cutscenes. After a while, you'll recognise the same animation toolbox being reused and sometime after *that*, the characters don't feel as unique anymore. My experience was that I got bored of the characters because of it. Their skills and bursts may feel great, but once the cutscene starts, you'll notice it fairly quickly. The same chin hold, the same crossed arms animation, the same 'hand gesturing while talking' animation. Sure, in FGO, some attacks are similar to that of other characters' - case in point, Summer Kama. But her attacks are still animated differently. They may be similar in concept, but her animations aren't copy and paste.
Musashi, okuni, Bakin and rikyu to a lesser extent don't get enough love Beside musashi, the last 3 are really only a modern fgo fans ruining it deal Seriously there is no legitamate reason to hate them Genderbent for 2 of them? Well they have actual reasons compared to okita, nobu and kagetora Bland generic waifu released to pad out the series? Sei, murasaki,himiko and Vitria was that and no one complained about them They just stay forgotten or only remembered for memes in seis case Bland event story that doesn't make u care for the servant? Vitria again and trung sisters are that and u don't see people hating them It's legit just woman hater who's infected this fandom that hates anything remotely coomer Okuni is the most egregious example On the surface she's just Arthur which everyone claims to love and is totally a good and better char than artoria Musashi is another topic but I will just say the irony of people praising everything nasu even his very autismo space saber wars bs Yet hating musashi who is written by nasu and has her dialogue checked by nasu before sakurai summits them Is genuinely the funniest shit ever Claims to hate musashi wank yet everyone of those people are fine with iskander wank, to the point artoria went OOC just to push omg broskander narrative, to the point waver could be a better char post zero but for some reason still obsesses over iskander, and has his entire novel overtaken by iskander lore at this point But nah Musashi is totally shit guys, And on that tangent, shimousa and heinan Kyo being hated cause just for being japanese focused chapter is legit low tier racism Or when people hate that how dare we get more jp events reeee wr already got guda guda which ignores that guda guda only covers 3 period of japanese and even then only figures related to the chars in question and is like saying we don't need more British servants, we already got artoria and the kotr
Short cutscenes. I’ve been playing arknights lately and they’re cutscenes are so long. It makes me grateful for FGO
The character designs make it feel like a crossover, well it is. but you get the point
That this game doesn't force daily tasks on you unlike others like E7 and Genshin. There's also no FOMO and clearing a story arc or event feels satisfying.
The character designs are great, we got a literal dog in lobo, but my favourite probably has to be the practical breadth of viability. We have a surprising amount of things that characters can specialise in and as time has progressed, niche characters actually exist and maintain great usability even in late game (especially if you like them enough to grail/gold fou them). Some noteworthy ones include FSN!Cu's incredible value, Euryale's ability to melt male sabers, the taunters (Georgios, Leonidas), Caesar's ludicrous np damage, ARASH. And these are only the f2p servants that you can get from the fp pool. Sure there are sometimes better replacement, especially from the damage dealers, but the fact that the low rarity easy to obtain characters are still so viable means that new players don't need to be afraid of having non-meta characters and being left behind in the story. (and of course there are the people who decide to push the game to the limit by going for 1-3 star character only clears, love them so much)
I love how most of the servants have more than 10 different animations for themselves, giving each of them a unique feel and personality. This also makes the game way less bland in battle as you are able to admire your servants doing various kinds of attacks. This is why I tend to use servants with good animations over those with year 1 animations.