McRanter Reviews

It may have been said before, and it will more than likely be said even more in the future, but a significant amount of mobile games tend to rely on a pay-to-win strategy: the more (hopefully disposable) income you shell out, the more likely you are to be a top-tier player.  You may have heard the term whale before: a term used by mobile game executives in reference to those with high levels of disposable income, meant to be taken as a target for a game’s higher-prices purchasing options that range up to $100.  I guarantee you that any game with a leaderboard that has in-game purchases has players that spent money on the game in the top ten.  That isn’t to say that in many cases you can’t find high-tier players that don’t spend a dime, they certainly exist.  But many games encourage players to spend money, and far too frequently.

From a personal standpoint, one such game for me was King of Thieves.  The game itself has incredibly gameplay, very responsive one-touch controls, and a unique mechanic.  As the name implies, you’re a thief, and your goal is to sneak into other players’ dungeons and steal gems from their totems to take them for yourself.  You tap to jump, and you can jump off of walls to run in the opposite direction as you were running previously.  Here’s the catch, from point A to point B: Gems are worth certain amounts of points, and your total points equal your overall score.  You have a severely limited space for Gems, so you need to free up space to steal more gems.  This leads to the purpose of your totem: by placing Gems into the totem, you can combine them together after a “ritual” that takes about about 12 hours... so long as nobody steals from your totem.  Fortunately, you have the ability to rearrange your dungeon and its traps in any way you see fit, so long as you can complete it yourself, two times in a row.  At this point, everything is balanced, fair, and skill-based.

Then you get to the Jewels, the premium currency.  By spending Jewels, you can get better traps for your dungeon, and even spend an instant $2 to end a ritual right away.  There are also special sets you can get, including items to assist you, more Jewels, a subscription service that gets you a small amount of Jewels a day, and more.  Finally, each totem has a limited number of times you can use it for a ritual, so you’re eventually forced to “move out” and go to another dungeon, spending currencies to get traps for that one.  I stopped playing a couple years ago, so I can’t say if there were improvements made to balance out things, but I honestly doubt it, sadly.  If I’m wrong, I will be more than willing to eat crow by updating this article at a later date, but for now, I’m going to steer clear of that game.

I’m bringing this up, because I’m getting the feeling that I’m falling for the same tactics in another game, called Cookie Run: OvenBreak.  This game is a unique runner in the sense that you can have a group of up to 20 cookies and their respective pets run across different prearranged levels.  You can spend in-game currency of Coins to level up each cookie when you get multiple “cookie pieces” to increase their stamina, or the points they earn from collecting Jellies while running.  You can also collect materials to make a Magic Candy for some, giving them an additional ability to take into effect during a run, such as additional items appearing on the field that are worth many more points.

Once again, there are special bundles allowing you to get limited cookies for a small price, subscriptions for daily Premium Currency, and higher-priced bundles allow you to get incredibly rare Legendary cookies as well.  As an experiment, I purchased a bundle to see what would happen, and I saw instant improvement in terms of my high score.

Before I continue, I would like to state that in terms of either Cookie Run, or King of Thieves, it’s not the gameplay I’m complaining about, both games are incredibly fun as is, without the purchasing nonsense.  The issue I have is how they advertise their bundles and specials at a very frequent basis, moreso than I personally prefer.  And at this point, I think I may need to play Devil’s Advocate and note a significant difference between King of Thieves and Cookie Run: Since I’ve started playing Cookie Run, I’ve had a near-constant positive feedback loop for the game: I felt like that, regardless of purchasing anything, I would still improve as long as I kept playing and practicing.  The tone overall was light-hearted, and save for the advertising of the current special after you move past the title screen each time you load the game, it is essentially pressure free.

However, for King of Thieves, since the introduction of the PvP options after you progress through the game’s story mode, I’ve been under the impression constantly that unless I spend money, I won’t get a better score than at least one other player in each ranked group of players I competed with, simply because they spent money on the game.  I don’t get that feeling in Cookie Run, thankfully.  That said, I’ve only played Cookie Run for about ten days now, and regarding the previous purchase, I felt comfortable contributing to a game I think is fun.  I didn’t think King of Thieves was fun anymore because I kept feeling like I was being shaken down for lunch money by a high school bully, so I stopped buying and stopped playing.  Once again, the gameplay for both games is phenomenal, and well worth an in-game purchase or two.  But if the game keeps on encouraging purchases to that kind of extent, I’m worried about the priorities of the developers shifting to sharply toward profit over entertainment.

Fortunately, Cookie Run has a very unique way of addressing this: there are special bundles designed to reward you as you progress: the more you progress in the game, the more you earn, whether it’s playing through the unique levels in Memories Mode, or achieving a certain player level overall.  That sort of thing I can see being a fair reflection of time and money: I’ve spent long enough playing this game to get this far, so by purchasing this bundle, I can get bonus items and premium currency as an additional reward, as well as helping to fund the game I spent so much time playing.

Let’s get the summary out of the way: Chrono Magia is going to destroy any and all half-hearted Hearthstone clones in the iTunes store and the Google Play Store.  It’s not enough to dethrone Hearthstone itself, but that’s only because it released yesterday.  Give it at least a year.

Chrono Magia is a collectable card game by Gungho Entertainment, the same company that created the famous Puzzle and Dragon.  However, rather than focus on puzzle mechanics, it includes a significant amount of depth in separate aspects of both gameplay and deckbuilding that genuinely impresses.

The gameplay is done on a simple three-tile grid where your cards are summoned.  Each turn, you generate Magia Points automatically based on which Gifted is set for your Deck, which are used as cost to summon creatures and play spell cards.  Similar to a game like Magic: The Gathering, summoned monsters can’t attack until your next turn, but unlike Magic, in Chrono Magia, this is shown by playing the card face-down with its magia cost displayed above it.  And much mike Magic, certain monsters can be summoned face-up and capable of attacking immediately, even during your first turn.  However, this has its own risks: every time you attack your opponent directly, they gain Magia Points equal to the damage they take.  This provides a significant balance against non-AI opponents.  As a brief aside, the voicework for the Gifted is well-done, albeit the occasional exception where you can tell that a Japanese voice actor isn’t fluent in English, but there are quite a few who could consider that a charming selling point for each Gifted.

Now, let’s talk about the Gifted themselves.  The Gifted, story-wise, are on a quest to obtain the power to turn back time for their own personal reasons.  They do so by defeating other Gifted in battle and strengthening a unique item they have called a Skillgear.  This Skillgear is utilized in gameplay by giving you three unique abilities to use.  You can play one of them once per turn based on the prerequisite of having specific monsters on the field at that time.  As a result, deckbuilding is more nuanced in comparison to games where your representative character has only a single ability to use.

Next to discuss are the cards: they alleasily display their magia cost, attack power, and HP in an easily understood manner, as well as clear explinations of any abilities the cards have.  They also include symbols representing card types that are just as easily understood, as they relate to the previously mentioned ability requirements of each of the Gifted’s Skillgears.

The Gifted, as well as cards themselves, are beautifully drawn as expected from a game by Gungho, but for some reason, one particular aspect of the game really strikes as being truly unique.  Borrowing from the concept of Barcode battling games, Chrono Magia has a a special mode can be used to scan a QR code once daily and obtain a two-card pack.  This results in the fairly stingy nature of premium currency handouts being significantly alleviated.

The premium currency of Magia Gold, in relation to the 400 G price for a single five-card pack, seems a tad high if you compare it to a traditional trading card game’s asking price of $3.99 for a nine-card pack.  However, a ten-shot for 4000 G guarantee at least one Super Rare card, which isn’t necessarily guaranteed for paper TCGs, even if you buy a full $40 booster box.  But that said, the highest asking price for G is $54.99 for 10000G, rather than a blatant $99.99 for even more, so this is a significant point in its favor.

And speaking of Points, if you manage to get any extra copies of cards, you can break them down to get unique Suit Points that can be eventually used to purchase new cards to add to your collection, and even new Gifted to play as, resulting in additional strategy.

Online play is surprisingly fair, though there is the double-edged sword of a lack of communication with your opponent.  On the one hand, not even being able to say “Good Luck” or “Good Game” is a letdown, it is very possible that such things could be misused for irritation purposes.

Before I begin, I want to begin with a brief editorial about my writing style up until this point.  I’ve done my best to write my reviews in a mature, informative style while minimizing personal bias as much as possible.  That said, looking back, I can get the impression that some readers might read this style as condescending or conceited, which isn’t my intention at all, and I apologize.

Now, let’s talk about a single-purchase mobile game made by the developers of Kirby and Earthbound starring an adorable flying saucer working part-time jobs!

Part-Time UFO is about a little UFO from a distant planet who is sent to Earth to investigate Earth’s work culture.  Akin to crane games you see in arcades (alternately known as UFO Catchers in Japan), you control the UFO by moving them around the screen, and lowering their hook to pick up items of varying sizes to move them to their destination.It doesn’t necessarily mean every level will play the same, though.  Sometimes you’ll be making a salad, sometimes you’ll build a house, sometimes you’ll fight aliens on the moon, sometimes you’ll repair museum exhibits, it’s a pretty decent variety.  Plus, when you successfully complete your goals, you’ll receive currency (to purchase costumes that can potentially improve your chances at doing your jobs better,) and medals (gained by achieving specific goals mentions in picture form on the pause menu of the job).

If you've played The World Ends With You on the DS, and you've played The World Ends With You: Solo Remix on iOS and Android as well, THERE is where many players’ worries began... Microtransactions.  In a game like TWEWY, you gather materials to get new items by beating up enemies, and based on your level, you have the ability to lower your own HP to increase your own item drop rates in proportion to it.  It's an amazing system and promotes playing the game for a long time.  Meanwhile, the smartphone versions pretty much go, "Hey, you want some free stuff instead of grinding, pay 99 cents per pack of things, here ya go!  Also here's some SMART DEVICE VERSION-EXCLUSIVE TRACKS as well, no big deal."  That was when many players started to worry for a while, until they noticed... they didn't change the gameplay to lower drop rates at all, it was just another way to play for those that might not have enough time normally. Back to the topic of the Switch port, I've been hearing rumors that not ONLY will it have these microtransactions in the game, but ALSO be a full-priced game at $59.99.  On the one hand, video games are expensive to make and it's only fair we pay a little more to get newer games.   That said, I"m strongly getting the vibe that the Switch version plays like the smart device version... that sold for $19.99.  Granted, the Switch version will have new content, and if there's at least as much as a third of the original in-game content, I'm golden. But I'm both worried and excited for this because of a reason I'll fully admit is petty as heck: The Pins. In the game, Pins give you your attacks, and you can level them up with different kinds of XP.  Why is this important?  Because certain pins can evolve and become completely different pins (with different attacks) based on what specific kinds of XP you give them: beating baddies, playing the obligatory RPG minigame that everyone in-universe plays because of course they do, not playing the game for a while (you are literally rewarded for taking a break from the game, I love this) and Mingle mode.  Mingle Mode is the reason I'm most worried about this. Mingle mode is effectively the DS prototype for the 3DS StreetPass.  You go into a menu to activate Mingle mode, close your DS, and walk around hoping someone else has Mingle Mode on (they never do), and you not only get Mingle XP for your pins, but also a chance to buy pins and items the other people have.  Question: How the hell is that going to transfer to the Switch?!  The iOS and Android ports used Bluetooth to do it, and the end result was the same: nobody friggin used it, so the only way they could have people use the Mingle mode effectively is to use internet access and/or local communication for it, but if you're playing on the go, local is the only way to go.  And not a lot of people carry around a $300 tech item with them if it ISN'T a phone.

Fate/Grand Order is a mobile game that has been around for well over half a year now, having released in the beginning of summer of 2018.  For any game with the preface title of Fate, it would behoove of me to discuss its overall relation with another more famous game, a visual novel by the name of Fate/stay night.

The story of Fate/stay night follows a young man named Emiya Shirou, who is training to be a mage in secret and ends up getting involved in a magical ritual called the Holy Grail War.  In this ritual, seven mages summon forth seven powerful familiars that take the form of Heroic Spirits, heroes and significant individuals of legend and history.  There are seven different classes of Servant based on their class’ eponymous focus: Saber, Rider, Lancer, Assassin, Caster, Rider, and Berserker.

When summoned, the Heroic Spirit become the mage’s Servant, and the mage becomes a Master.  And each Servant has a special attack called a Noble Phantasm, an ability that is best described as a manifestation of the one thing that Servant was most famous for in their life.  The Servants fight each other and their respective Masters to the death during the Holy Grail War in order to achieve the ultimate prize: the eponymous crucible of unfathomable magical energy called the Holy Grail.

Due to the nature of aspects of the story of Fate/stay night taking a strong adult tone, it has yet to receive an official English release; however, there is an anime adaptation of one of the game’s three scenarios that suffices easily for enjoyment of the experience.  To a further extent, an anime adaptation of the story that occurs before Fate/stay night is also available in the form of Fate/zero, which I personally recommend watching after Fate/stay night due to that particular story spoiling part of the story of Fate/stay night.

Since the release of that first visual novel, there have been many games that take place in the same universe, each relating a differing variation of the Holy Grail war in general, additional Servant classes that exist based on certain specifications of a Holy Grail War (such as in the story of Fate/Apocrypha) or a scenario where a Master-Servant bond necessitates a Servant-versus-Servant confrontation.  One such game is the topic of discussion today, Fate/Grand Order.

In the story of the game, you are a mage called to Chaldea in order to train to use your magecraft to summon Servants and maintain the balance of history as it is observed with the usage of incredibly advanced magecraft.  However, events transpire to cause alterations to history called Singularities that must be corrected or else humanity will inevitably cease to exist within a decade.  To assist you is Mash Kyrielight, who through the events of the story will become your first long-term Servant, and the first Shielder-class Servant in Fate continuity.  I will not mince words: Fate/Grand Order is a gasha game, designed to encourage you to use your Saint Quartz (the premium currency) to roll for rare servants to bolster your library of Servants.

Combat in the game is performed with three Servants at a time.  Ther is no auto-play feature in this game, so if you prefer a set-it-and-forget-it approach, then this isn’t your game.  Each Servant’s attacks are manifested game-wise as a deck of up to fifteen cards, with each Servant contributing five of their own to the total of three varieties that perform certain actions: Buster cards that hit hardest; Arts cards that fill your Servants’ NP gauge, and Quick Cards that generate Critical Stars (used to improve the chances of a higher-damage-dealing critical strike and applied to your hand of five cards at random.)  Each has their own pros and cons: Buster Cards don’t generate NP gauge or Critical Stars: Arts Cards deal the least damage, and Quick cards deal slightly more damage than an Arts card, but generate much less NP gauge.  When the NP gauge is full, your Servant can then activate their Noble Phantasm.

There are, however, additional things to consider: for instance, if you use three cards from the same Servant, they can perform an additional attack on an enemy, and if all three cards are of the same type, their effectiveness is boosted significantly.   And additionally, by using Noble Phantasms in Succession, the second and third attacks are overcharged, with their effects improving even moreso than before. This may not seem like much at first, but think of this: what if all three of your Servants’ Noble Phantasms are ready to use, and they are all three the same type of card?

Like a lot of mobile games, a grind to level up is inevitable: not only do you need to grind to get special materials to level up Servants and their abilities, you also need to gain materials for their Ascensions as well, which unlock additional abilities and increase their level cap by ten each time.  the amount of materials needed to level up your Servant steeply inclines beyond level 50, but the end result is still rewarding if you’re patient.

What I find makes this game unique is its usage of premium currency: specifically, while it is fairly generous to an extent, this generosity stems primarily from the pricing of the gasha itself.  To roll for a rare unit, you spend three Saint Quartz for a single roll and 30 for a ten-shot, with a guaranteed 4-star card.  However, you don’t just draw for Servants, but also equip-able cards called Craft Essences that not only bolster your units’ attack and HP, but can give additional effects, so simply getting rare Servants isn’t your exclusive goal overall.

But what of copies of cards, you might ask?  Whether Servant of Craft Essence, they have their uses: by going into the Noble Phantasm section of the Enhancement menu, you can level up the Noble Phantasm of a servant up to Level Five by using up to four copies of that servant, one at a time, to improve the Noble Phantasm’s effectiveness and allow the NP Gauge to chage up beyond 100%, potentially up to 300% at base value. Combined with the previous scenario of three Noble Phantasms at once, your third attack could overcharge up to 500% (in increments of 100%).   Meanwhile, by fusing  four additional copies of Craft Essences into itself, the level cap of the Craft Essence increases with each copy; and by the fourth time, its special effects are boosted as well.

In terms of gasha rolls, many other games tend to average the ratio of 5:50 when pricing their one-shot:ten-shot gasha draws, with the latter of the equation being approximately $40 worth of in-game currency under the common mobile game business model of “the more you buy at once, the more free Premium Currency you get, and thus you get more value by buying a large amount at once.”  Fate/Grand Order’s 3:30 ratio and pricing is still no exception to that business model, and yet still presents a surprisingly inexpensive purchase price for that same amount, at approximately two ten-shots.  Allow me to explain by listing the pricing:

1  SQ - $0.99 4 (+1*) SQ - $3.99 12 (+4*) SQ - $11.99 25 (+11*) SQ - $23.99 42 (+23*) SQ - $39.99 86 (+54*) SQ - $79.99 (*these additional amounts are considered free Saint Quartz in the game)

Now, there is one exception to this: occasionally (read: currently have only been done once), there is a single-purchase ten-shot that guarantees at least one 5-star Servant, but it requires that you use 30 Saint Quartz that were all bought with money.  As a result, the slightly staggered purchase prices make is awkward to achieve this particular milestone. At a minimum, you would need to purchase $28.96 worth of Saint Quartz to purchase that 5-Star guarantee Ten-shot.  On the bright side, you still have the other 12 Saint Quartz available to use for the event gashas, which do not usually have such a limitation.  Now, for the important part: how difficult is it to get free Saint Quartz?  If you’re diligent, you can effectively get 5 a week, at minimum.

At the start of the week, you are given seven Master Missions of varying requirements that are completed by achieving specific battle objectives (defeating certain enemy types, gathering specific types of materials, et cetera.)  for each MIssion you complete, you get two Saint Quartz Fragments, and seven can be fused into a single Saint Quartz.  Seven missions, two fragments per mission, equals fourteen fragments to be converted into Two Saint Quartz.  Next, is the Log-in bonus. By logging in every day, you get progressively better log-in rewards: on day 2, you get a Saint Quartz, and by day six you get two more.  Combined with the master missions, and you can effectively get a ten-shot every six weeks.  And this doesn’t count the Saint Quartz you get by progressing through the story and going back through previously completed sections of each Singularity to get an additional Saint Quartz.  Not to mention the additional cumulative log-in bonuses, giveaways during the beginning of a new event by completing Facebook like/reblog goals (which are more than likely foregone victories at this point) and in-event giveaways within certain varieties of event quests.

As of this article, Digimon Links has been out for well over a year in Japan, but has been out for approximately two days in the US and Australia.  If Canada is included, I am willing to edit a post-script to indicate otherwise, but mroe important that technicalities is the game itself: is Digimon Links a good game?

Digimon Links is an mobile game, currently found on Google Play and soon available on the App Store for iPhone users.  The story is surprisingly engaging: as a user of an app that allows you to communicate with a universe both parallel and directly connected to our world’s internet, known simply as the Digital World.  This the home of the eponymous Digital Monsters in the game title. But as your tour of the Digital world begins, “something happens” that results in the Digital World becoming almost completely deleted.

I say “almost” because your guide in the introduction of the game, Hina, uses your mobile device as a quarantine space to prevent the deletion of the Digital World entirely.  Now, it’s up to you as the player to raise Digimon to collect data clusters to rebuild the Digital World.

Gameplay-wise, there are a few differing variations: exploring the different servers of the real world in the hopes of gathering more clusters to rebuild the Digital World; rebuilding the small patch of the Digital World by placing Facilities on an island in the style of resource-management town-building simulators; raising and Digivolving your Digimon; and a PvP Coliseum that as of this writing has yet to open.  As you progress through Story Quests while Exploring, you will unlock more Facilities and gather more Clusters that you use as the equivalent of in-game currency to upgrade different Facilities to improve what they do.  For example, upgrading your Restaurant increases your maximum stamina, which is expended each time you complete a Quest.

The small island you reside over happens to grow meat that allows you to grant small amounts of instant EXP to any Digimon you choose, per piece of meat.  Meanwhile, there is a Lab that allows you to train In-Training Digimon by leaving them in the Garden section of the Lab until they are ready to Digivolve naturally.  The Lab also houses the ability to perform a Version Upgrade of Digimon, or to Research Two Mega-level Digimon in an attempt to create a new DIgiEgg.  If the Base Mega Didigmon has Maxed out its Friendship, the Digiegg will be +1, improving the overall potential of the hatched Digimon.

Digivolution is the game’s way of improving the abilities of a Digimon, allowing a low-tier Rookie Digimon to become a Champion-level Digimon, then an Ultimate, and finally Mega.  Literally any Digimon can become a Mega-level Digimon if you’re patient enough.  But for those that want a Digimon with a higher level instantly, there is the Rare Capture area.  At the cost of 20 Digistones, the Premium Currency, you are guaranteed a Rookie Digimon at minimum, or a Mega-Level Digimon at most.  There may be variances based on events occurring at the time; for example, during the first month of the game’s release, there was a special Release Anniversary Megafest Capture, guaranteeing a Mega if you perform a 10-Digimon Capture.  There is also the Link Capture, where you spend Link Points to get In-Training Digimon.

But just because a Digimon is a low-tier Digimon doesn’t meant necessarily that it’s not going to be useful.  Sometimes, Digimon can also have Leader skills, offering passive buffs to your party when put in the leader slot of the team, or a powerful Legacy Skill, an attack that can be transferred to another Digimon with the use of the Dojo, another available facility, at the cost of the Digimon with the ability you want to transfer.  The Dojo also has the ability to add additional elemental resistances to a Digimon you have, by using smaller amounts of Digivolution Fuel and a copy of the same type of Digimon.  Next is the Chip Factory, where your Chips will be held.  By adding Chips to your Digimon, you can augment their abilities even further and improve your chances in the Quests.  The option to purchase Chips will presumably be available in the future, but as of this article’s completion date, they are not yet available.

In the Quests, you take a team of three Digimon into a server to do battle against multiple waves of enemy Digimon. The battles themselves run in a pretty straight-forward turn-based battle system: the top left circle to the upper right of each status box, next to each Digimon’s name, indicates how many attacks until that specific Digimon’s turn.  The bar beneath the Digimon’s name is their Health Points, and works the same as HP in conceivably almost any other RPG: it hits zero, that Digimon is defeated.  Below the HP is the AP bar, for Action Points, are they are used to perform A Signature and Legacy Skill of your choice.  Each time a new round begins, every Digimon gets one AP.  Each time a single Digimon’s attack lands with a Critical Hit, they gain an extra AP.  The quest continues until the enemy Digimon are all defeated.    There is also the Auto-battle button near the upper-right of the screen, which can be useful to getting lower-level digimon to level up via quests in you’re low.   But much like a lot of focus-intensive RPGs, if you just set it and forget it, eventually you will lose handily because you weren’t paying attention.  Still, if you have an idea of what all the Digimon in a level are weak to Resistance-wise, you can give it a shot anyway.

Afterward, your team of Digimon gain experience points, Clusters, and Digivolution Fuel.  They also let your Digimon attain Friendship Points.  After set intervals can improve your Digimon’s stats, encouraging you to battle with those Digimon frequently, even after maxing out their level.  There are also quests for gathering elemental Digivolution Fuel necessary for Digivolving higher-level Digimon.  Eventually, you will gain access to Advent Quests, special quests that grant you access to Mega-Specific Digivolution Fuel.