Wake up kid! We're gonna write our 30th game review!
Eh? Yeah yeah. alright... What are we in for anyway Sei?
Blue Archive! The one with that cute innocent looking girl as the icon!
Jeez... alright. Let's start Sei.
You've been wandering at qooapp, looking for games to play when you've suddenly saw this cute anime girl... you've read the title and it says "Blue Archive".
You've told yourself: "This looks interesting!" and proceeded to download the game.
Is that what happened to you? Well, if it is then we're the same! Because I'm a sucker for cute anime girls.
So what do we have on this game Sei?
Oh! Yes! I've said it earlier. Cute anime girls.
Angelic anime girls. And not just because they're too cute. It's also because each of them have halo!
All of them! Maji Tenshi!
But objectively? Yostar or whoever did all of the character design on this really have done well.
The game have this really "brand new" feel to it. Everything feels popping and fresh and it really attracts you as you navigate through the menu, the story, the gacha, everything that you'll probably will see on the interface level of the game really pops!
I know it's not the game itself but it really is the one of the things that I have noticed. It really is well-made.
How about the gameplay Sei?
Well... we used to play priconne (Princess Connect) before right? It kinda is like that. But....
Wait for it...
In 3D!
Everything is better in 3D! Just kidding.
They also have guns! Lots of them! Because FREEEEDOOOMM!
But in seriousness, the gameplay feels like priconne with a mix of also a Yostar game, Arknights.
It really just an auto game while you just tap the character portrait for them to perform their special move with an added Arknights twist of somekind of energy bar so you wouldn't be able to spam them. (Just correct me on this term lol)
What's that? The auto will automatically do the special move for you without tapping?
Yes! yes! But does anybody really play at full auto anyway? I guess if you kind of want to not have much of interaction on the game and your girls OP, just go.
Other worth note-taking thing on the game is the visual novel like aspect that shows how well-made the art is and kind of a breath of fresh air on the action-packed stuff this has. It will also give you a chance to try other characters aside from the ones you have. Real nice if you ask me.
How about the gacha Sei?
Ah... gacha... I haven't really have read about the rates but as usual for JP gachas, you won't really have pity pulls on this one. But it doesn't matter really... You remembered that I've said it's like priconne? It's because..
Introducing! The best system you'll ever get on a gacha game! (joking) Whale tears!
Whale tears is an specialized gem that can be used to buy at the whale shop for the character fragments. This way, you can farm for the waif- *ahem* angel student you want.
Note: Student-Teacher relationship is prohibited.
And yes, I forgot to tell that you're kind of a teacher here.
Also they can pronounce your name on the game.
Really Sei?!
Yep, if you have written a Japanese name.
I really haven't tried it. But that's what my friends have said. So... I just believed them.
Yes, I have friends.
Any final notes Sei?
Final notes eh? Well, the game is fun. But in all honesty? It will bore you after a lot of stages. One thing that could make it fresh is you having a lot a team setup to shuffle from.
The game is rewarding for beginners as a lot of mobile games are but I really see that it will really come to the point where you'll be bored. Well, the game is quite young and surely, improvements and events will come.
Just try to enjoy yourself on the Arknights like aspect of the game wherein you can also strategize based on your team composition. If you enjoy games like that? This game surely will fit you.
Cute Angelic Anime girls,not angelic because they are too cute(even tho they are) its because they literally are angels. Wait is this heaven or something?we've been playing too much helltaker and gacha hell ges I guess.
Character Animations....THE BEST! Gacha rates : Awesome! the menu and everything has a unique pop up style which is cute in its own way.2.5% For 3 stars i think but you get the characters too often and gacha currency is super easy to get!
Story? we'll you've been appointed as a Sensei/Teacher in heaven and you'll just have to find Miracles in daily life...jist kidding...it's good(use a screen translator if you really wanna enjoy the story)
Gameplay....hmm.... kind of like a 3D combonation of Arknights,Priconne and Girls Frontline... the characters shoot on their own and they have their type(like tank or sniper) according to which they are placed front or back and they move accordingly. All you have to do is use their skill by pressing or dragging the skill button. also the is a skill point bar similar to arknights so that you can't spam skill(skills have cooldown and costs skill point)
MOST IMPORTANTLY, THIS GAME HAS THE CUTEST LIVE2D YOU HAVE EVER SEEN IN YOUR LIFE,INCREASE YOUR BOND WITH A STUDENT AND YOU MIGHT UNLOCK HER LIVE2D!!!!
Don't trust anyone from the start, that is including me.
The game itself is F2P friendly, every time they do maintenance = appologems, 1200 pyrox, if there was additional maintenance hours, then you get more. And you said the gachas is bad? YES, but compared to FGO, BA is far more better. I did managed to get all limited students, except 3 (1st summer event, and N.Y Mutsuki) and all I do to get them is just doing daily, weekly raids, pvp (managed to reach top 185 in lvl78 bracket and constantly defending), clearing normal and hard stages, etc. That's enough to get you most of the limited students if you just pull on limited gachas. What's more, it's not time consuming like AK which is you need to do annihilation where you need around 12mins or more on auto battle (no skip animations) to get 300 orundum (max 1600 but you can increase the cap) alone, that's sounds painful lol if you played it on mobile compared with BA which have auto grind systems. Also, benefits for reaching max levels is you can convert all the energy for tickets to exchange them to get shards, exp reports, and t2/t3/t4 equipment blueprint. So for example you spend 20 energy on 1 stages, you also get 20 tickets. Equals 1:1 and capped 12600 each week, sounds good right?
Also, because yostar increased the level cap, that means all the stages level enemies is also increasing, including raid boss which is now lv80 on extreme.. But no worries, if you managed to reach only Hard (lv50 boss), that is already enough to get you 800 pyrox every week, if you can pass 1 level more, you secured 1200. More pyrox for your gachas.
Ending story, it's all F2P friendly. If you stumbled on any reviews that is not F2P friendly, ignore it. Believe on your own RnG.
Updating as of April 29th
Tl;dr this game is pretty good to play casually, but if you are like me and seeking something on the level of arknights' gameplay then this probably isn't for you.
Pro:
+ Gameplay is okay, wonky AI sometimes is annoying and frustrating.
+ Cute, well-made graphic, music is good also.
+ Team building
+ Fast farming without skip ticket, perfect for just login periodically, do daily stuff and get out if you are tight on time. (to finish daily stuffs roughly take somewhere between 5-10 minutes).
+ Some high rarity character can be farmed.
+ Has raid battles with multiple variety (pure single boss, mobbing boss and multiple phase boss).
Cons:
- Fragment and sushiman stages does not guaranteed drop ... making a grind is already long take longer (especially if you have bad rng after rerolling and lack units to progress)
- No pity system mean you might experiencing bad rng, although there is a spark system at the cost of 200 rolls.
- Very meta heavy when it comes to raids.
- Progression can be hammered if you have terrible luck, and investing in a temporary unit is very expensive (there is almost no cost difference between raising a natural 1* and 3*, and raising 1* is much more costly if they need to be 3* to be worth using, take Asuna for example).
Everything from the designs to soundtracks is amazing. The gameplay.. not so much. It's a typical auto battle with manual skills in campaign, in pvp the auto skill is absolute braindead, it's horrible, either you have maxed out meta students or you just stay at rank 5k or above. The gacha if you don't pay or save for more you won't get the rate up students, and from my experience I got no rate up students straight up 4 new banners now and that's that, all >80 rolls and amount to nothing and dups for the one I already 5 starred. Still a great game to kill time if you don't mind the crappy pvp or the rate up, the cute characters and awesome ost was what made me kept playing.
I'll say it's pretty different from other games out there.
It's a top down semi auto battle game (4 on field units and 2 support units= 6 active skills) where we can use skills manually or go full auto, the difference from other games here is that your units auto moves from cover to cover (some don't and just go within enemy range and attacks) and do passives and auto attacks while we can use the skills. Note that the active skills are cost based. There's only 3 active skills we can choose at any given time and will not change unless we use one.
Characters are 3d chibi on gameplay and on dorm-like feature but has regular 2d and live 2d art on homescreen. Note that live 2d art is obtainable by reaching a certain affection level. It will have the similar of the typical strengths and weaknesses like this color beats this color and if it's not either then it's neutral. Also terrain strengths and weaknesses, yes there are 3: urban, rural and indoors. On some stages we could have a map like gfl where it's turn based to move and attack before going into combat mode. There's also an auto pvp here where we set up defensive and offensive units. I played using the low rarities/starters on story before and I'd say they're holding up well. Just needs higher lvl than usual, we also need unit tokens to unlock extra passives, increases rarity. One way is to farm hard stages(limited tries daily). We get universal tokens by pulling and use those on shop to buy the unit tokens. There are also other stuff out there like grinding stages where we can do SKIP if we 3 star a stage, which is really nice for some. There's also boss fight and ways to increase affection but I think this is good enough for those who are deciding to try it.
Start:
So.... I downloaded this game two days ago because I was bored and wanted some supplements to fill up especially coming from a Genshin Impact player here. And I got to say, this game is awesome!!!
Rating:
Usually when it comes to games, I demand good gameplay and sometimes the story too. And this game has both of the elements executed pretty nicely. This despite being a gacha game as well, it is still pretty F2P friendly too. Even though I got lucky and got 5* 3* on my first 60 pulls... But I did play it without gacha rolls at first and it is F2P friendly enough to play in my opinion. And oh, the graphics are amazing too in both 2D and 3D aspects. And the BGMs are a fire and my kind of style as well!!!
Overall:
There is really nothing to say really, is just a really good and cool game for me. A refreshing game to just casually play after playing Genshin. Although, there is one more thing that I will mention in a separate comment because it just dosen't really fit in here.
✓ Beautiful artwork as well as some L2D backgrounds for some of the characters.
✓ Pretty good storyline with top tier voice acting.
✓ Simple enough combat system (however some research has to be done to fair better in Raids and Arena).
✓ Yostar has been pretty generous with the apology gems so far.
✓ Active english discord so you can always ask questions.
I'm from the SEA region, and I didn't need a VPN. All beginners get 6,000 starting gacha currency as of this review.
× Sources of early gacha currency ×
• Progress through story.
• Read the unlocked story chapters.
• Every new high record in arena (highest source).
All in all, a very F2P friendly game that provides abit of a boost to people who are willing to pay small amounts of money.
Great graphics, easy to understand how to play the basics even if it's in Japanese. Love how the auto-replaying of a stage does not show you the whole battle all over again. Battle style is semi-auto as you can't control where the characters move, but just when to trigger their skills and it's target. The deeper meta of the battle about which char is good for which environment and their weapon type is strong/weak against what type of enemies needs some understanding. What mats for leveling up their skills and equipment still messy for me as I don't understand the Japanese language. Currently level 29 for myself and stuck at Scenario 5-1. It takes some careful planning and a bit of luck to get full 3 stars for each scenario (all chars survive, complete battle under 120secs and get S grade for all 3 battles in a scenario). A bit bored now cos need to grind to level up my chars and get 3 stars for the scenarios. Guess you can try to clear them by getting 2 stars, but you can't unlock auto for it.
Update 8 Mar: Got a few L2Ds but no more mood to play as it's just repetitive now. Stuck at grinding to level up so that i can level up the characters. New event is just banner to get different char, and same battle mode but different storyline. Going to uninstall it. May if a global version comes out,the story line might be interesting for me to play it again.
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