UPDATE 1: With half anniversary coming in, it´s a good chance to look back and see how game has evolved and what we can expect. First: I went from daily login to 3 times a week to maybe like 10 days a month?. They are really struggling with player retention because the gameplay is really unfun and massively skewed towards having multiple dupes of SS. New content is literally called whale content by the community, even if day 1 f2p with luck could barely clear some of it it's generally considered to be a significant step back. No update on main story for 4 months already I think?, which also means no way to upgrade your units further except pulling the gacha for dupes. They also did a very sketchy move with the Ichiko SS release just after massively nerfing Ichiko A. TL;DR: Story is still nice, daily gameplay is bottom 10 of games I've tried, extremely boring and repetitive and even if daily missions give a decent amount of gacha currency I literally can't bother caring enough to login and do that boring and repetitive RNG grind. Still worth the install and play one day every week for updates, just not worth playing it daily or expecting a good direction on content balancing into the future, game is becoming more and more heavily p2w with each day.
This should be a premium game, honestly. No bugs or hitches at all, amazing graphics, amazing OST, 99.9% voiced. Honestly, it's really impressive the production values all around.
And then, the story, so far it's not been anything surprising, if anything it's quite a common setting, but the MC interactions with the rest of the cast and the comedy are amazing, and VA only enhance this point even further.
Ok, so, what about gameplay? A mixed bag of sorts, it's essentially a single player turn based RPG with some classes and roles, nothing really original or innovative, there is lack of variety in enemies so far as well. You can see that the gameplay is not exactly the selling point of the game, however, even if the gameplay is simple, it's not bad by any means, if you enjoy classic turn based RPG you'll find yourself at home.
If anything, the whole of the game is unfortunately dragged down by the gacha aspect. This doesn't mean the game is unplayable without whaling (so far), but you'll definitely need to play a lot better and be much better prepared without high tier units.
Honestly, compared to other mobile games I've played, it's definitely top tier.
Just a heads up, there's an additional 1.8gb download after you finish Day 12 story or Chapter 2 Day 1.
--Worth trying?
Shortest answer: Sure, it's not bad unless you don't like the game mechanics.
Very long answer:
Since it's Key. It leans heavily towards Visual Novel. (it only has jp version)
If it's not for you but can get passed that, then it is for the art and music.
If you're waiting for global, then you might just try it now because I so far haven't seen any news about it getting a global one. I also kind of doubt it'll get one because of how much they have to translate if they did.
If you're a casual player, then I don't think so. Why? Because of 1 ally death = defeat. Which could be pretty punishing for some.
If you like pulling on banners a lot then, probably not. Getting currency on banner takes time like you need to progress story to get a good amount. Unless you're fine with pulling a lot by rerolling.
Which also means you're stuck with the units you'll get on the first single and 2 multis since finishing Day 7 Story is necessary for 3rd multi. So I suggest rerolling for a good team or for your waifu. Just make sure the roles and elements are not all the same.
Also worth noting that rarity A really only has 1 skill. S and SS rarity has additional skill/s but needs to be unlocked by farming mat and reaching a certain lvl on your unit. Which can also mean that Having A rarity of the unit will always be obsolette if you have an S version and it's obsolette if you have SS version. Go to my Gacha part if you want more info.
--F2p? Depends on your criteria. But mine is being able to finish content with starters which is the free SS of mc and bunch of A rarities. It's a no right now. A rarities just don't have the stats for later stages. Max lvl will also be an issue and those only have 1 skill. There is however an event. If ever a player can finish chapter 1 with starters and is able to do the event to get the S unit. Then there's a chance that it can be f2p in a distant future if more of those events show up.
--Combat? Depends.
Turned based
all units attack in succession per turn.
3 offensive units and 3 backup units. You can switch between those units.
I can sum it up to: Break enemies shield and eliminate them.
There's auto combat and auto farm on some kind of practice arena which you can earn gp, a currency to buy chips, it has fixed stats so that's great.
Auto seems to only be good in early game because ai use heal skill like there's no tomorrow. You can turn off the auto on heal but, I don't know if the ai will ever use it when it's really needed.
There's also somekind of tower dungeon.
Then somekind of saoub style gameplay after Day 7 story where it's a side scroller where you move the character to destination while it becomes pokemon like game in a cave where the enemy can ambush you anywhere. Which means, more combat. In this mode all SP/energy you used/saved and hp/shield left will be carry over till you finish the stage. Seems like the ultimate boss stage resets this.
--Gacha?
Decent unit pool.
Like I said, the currency takes time to get. Like you need to finish this story day number to get this amount of currency. There is log in bonus but not sure if it's perma and even if it is, it's pretty low especially if you get stuck.
Some units also have higher rarities of themselves. These versions can't be used in 1 party (putting 2 SS, S and A rarity of mc as example). Also rarities of 1 unit all have the same element so far. The only difference is A only has 1 skill. S has 2 and SS has 3. But you need to unlock the 2nd and 3rd skill which you need to farm mats and have the specific lvl to unlock it. Not to mention their starting max lvl are different. A (45) S (60) SS (90).
An A Rarity can increase max lvl through quest event with character. it gives A rarity fragment. If you max the A rarity, I think the fragment will become universal to the specific unit, like for S or SS rarity of it.
Other way is by getting exact dupe of the unit on gacha.
With all that said, so far I think all rarities of the same unit takes its highest lvl and max lvl. Like if you received an S version and you were using the A version before like lvl 10 already, then if you switch to the S version, it'll still be lvl 10 and both S and A version will have max lvl of 60.
-Unit Roles to my knowledge:
-Breaker (Breaking enemy shield faster)
-Attacker, Blaster (Can't seem to tell the 2 apart since both are just use for offensive after the shield is down and I don't use Blaster much but it's been said that it's for longer battles.)
-Healer (They can heal ally shields, but not hp and cannot bring back shield since they just always miss allies without shields so far, cannot heal shields on backup. Skill can only be used 5x)
-Debuffer (Chance to stun, def down, seal enemy skill that's all so far)
-Buffer (Increase allies atk of offensive units through skill so far)
-Defender (Attracts enemies to attack them more)
-It's also essential to know that there's color/elemental weakness in here as well. The damage feels reduced or increased by half due to it. Breaking enemies shield feels also faster if your unit is strong to it rather than using Breaker that's weak to it. This also means that you might need to lvl up different units with different elemental strengths, but that's just me.
1. Maeda Jun stories are still good as always
2. The graphics has it own uniqueness compair to other games
3. The songs are not something superior but they do the job well as to support the game ( impactful and sometimes gimme the chill)
4. About the gameplay. You should try to make the best team that you can, meanwhile play story with a weaker team ( with their levels close to the requirement), that will help your experience more fun and thrilling, and to save you from boredom. Tl:dr: there should be a team for combat and a team for clearing games content or it will be bored
5. Value? I would say that it helps me understand how weird a personality can be, just like what I need lmao.
Edit: The game character mechanic is very interesting and unique.
Key famous for its nakige top quality, full voiced scenarios and developed by WFS that listens to the players: Heaven Burns Red is truly loved premium gacha story-driven JRPG game.
If you're familiar with FGO, its gameplay is definitely not FGO with attack cards. With six characters in party, you attack Cancers for few turns with appropriate effective types while gaining Skill Points per turns. Instead of attack cards, you use skills to deal high damage to them and of course HBR has special skills for high costs. And what's nice is, you can switch your characters during your turn unlimited, which is actually nice.
I super recommend you to get Tama SS. She helps me tons to keep up with high difficulties since well, there's a reason: you gotta win with all characters alive or 1 fallen comrade for total defeat. That's where she comes: full DP revive skill. DP is your life point in this game while your HP is your emergency life point. Super need.
Once again, premium quality gacha game. I spent a $100 on HBR I couldn't help it, but of course it's Key after all so definitely worth its effort and all the investment! And I'm not gonna say anything about the story other than: it's easily make you invested if you understand enough Japanese and you just have to experience it yourself!
Easy 5/5.
Dailies playtime requirement:
Once you unlock the ability to use your "Life" it can be as short as a couple minutes if you just do "hangouts"; maybe 10mins if you do prism battles; and if you're crazy, you can do dungeons which cost 2 Life and can take like 15min alone. You have a maximum of 5 Life.
Top tier art, graphics and music. There isn't much to say about that since it's apparent in the available preview images and trailers.
Gameplay is mediocre; the usual rock-paper-scissors combat but the graphics and cute girls make it less of a chore.
I don't think the gacha aspect really weighs the game down too much, but power creep is definitely a thing, as it should be. The only minor-ly "broken"(not really) character I'm aware of is SS Tama since she can restore broken shields. However, even with that the game is still mostly F2P since there is no PvP i.e. no meta.
***There is Full Auto gameplay and farming is easy. You can literally run the game in your sleep. You clear whatever stage you want to farm in the Arena, turn on background play and then go to sleep/leave the app.***
Story is average as well but the selling point for me is the dialogue. I love that the entire cast has personality and love tsukkomi.
After a few days playing, I must say this game is one of my favorites. The graphics are superb, the soundtracks/BGM are worth dancing to, the game play for me is entising and it's not just a boring turn-based blow exchanges. With the variety of decision making you can make for every skill use and/or every time you recover DP based on multiple factors like enemies count, priority enemy, type advantage/disadvantages, character switch, break timing, overdrive timing etc... it is quite interactive. Sure that it is still turn-based but the character skillsets and level designs are already good enough to justify a supposedly boring type of game play. In fact I enjoy it quite a lot more than most other turn-based RPGs.
As expected of Jun Maeda and Key, the visuals are amazing and the story is engaging. Well of course you'd miss the story part if you cannot read/listen to Japanese, but regardless, the level of investment is very huge (almost every line is voiced except for narrative lines) and this will give you an enjoyable experience nonetheless. The story's setting is a bit weird for my taste but after going through it all, the Cancer - Seraph settings are mostly auxiliary, while the character-to-character interactions and dialogues take the main spotlight for the story.
I have zero complaints, there's no bugs or glitches, there is little to be improved. One that I can think of is the interactions tied to SP recovery skills, but it's a very minor detail and it's not even a concern for most. SS characters are also way stronger than S characters, but S characters have up to 10 breakthroughs so it's not a big deal at all. Gacha is expensive, but you don't need overpowered characters to play a single-player game. Gear progress may be a bit slow but again, it doesn't matter very much.
Overall it's definitely a top-tier game. For me it's worth playing, and all the expectations I've had since 2020 are already fully satiated
I've been playing this game from D1 released till now. Finished all event stories and the newest main story (chp 5a). I gave out a 5 star rating at first, but I decided to lower it for several reasons:
1) Content drought (there was also a month or two when there's literary nothing new or updates in game)
2) New players probably aren't able to clear the main story due to the increasing of its difficulty spike (although the dev will lower or nerf the difficulty later on when new chapter is going to be released)
3) Unnecessary layers of RNG in crafting and leveling skill
4) Introducing new items to boost charas status (dapne or dafune), but it's very rare and limited, also limited for those who paid in this game. 😅
5) QoL update takes too long (esp in terms of faster and easier way to add equipment)
HBR is getting good and be better. But the only minus is it takes damn time for new Main Story but it make sense that they're working it for longer time since there's factor that crucial with how they represent the game story.
Having Story with Full Voice definitely something that I really want as Story Rich seeker and the vibe itself really match as you play a Visual Novel, you can choose your own option, good & bad ending, special scenes as well. Main Story has that all, meanwhile Event Story is pretty straightforward but that's fine as well the quality still stand better.
Turn-base gameplay is good and now with more options to set more skill, learn more skill and now has Characteristic-skill in recent update which good for Simp-chaser like me. But still you need some of impactful unit like Buffer/Debuffer, Blaster & DPS for tougher enemies but everything is nothing hard once you learn how to make your own recipe. Surely Meta matter in one sight but now with more updates there's some Mechanic where you can Ignore Meta and continue stand with your own favorite character/group and beat the contents. Appreciate for the flexibility of difficulty on this game for Score Attack, Hard Mode, Solraker, etc. It also have offline-grind mode, otoge mode if you like Rhythm Gameplay.
With more story, this game also produce music with group called "She is Legend" which now has been popular at least in Japan & some overseas countries. Soundtrack also perfect-match with Story vibe and the SiL song make it stronger against intense story battle.
Another point that I need to mention is every unit have their own characteristics which continue their consistency in every story (even applied in some of Style they release in Gacha Banner), then connection between characters, example correlation between Charlotta-Ruka, Hisame-Inori, Yuina-Miya, etc. Gag-humor also right there even some of them could be a bit annoying but if you can appreciate it then it won't be an issue.
I give it solid score for everything, it just I need to wait more more time for new Main Story.
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