Fate/Grand Order 5th year

  Before 2022 wraps up, I am using my last post for FGO which will be mostly criticism about the state of this once great Gacha game. This post should have been written last month but my passion toward this series just dropped so low by the 5th year considering the state of the Fate/Grand Order is very abysmal. Fate/Grand Order was a big name back in its debut, but mainly due stupid corporate politics in Japanese gaming industry, the game has stagnated badly yet simply refuse to improve itself which results in severely falling behind against the fierce Chinese Gacha game competitors. This very situation  could have been easily averted if the Devs put some effort because FGO have one of the more dedicated fanbase but no serious attempt have been done which makes once devoted fans like myself lose faith and go somewhere else. I have even known one of the Great whalers in the Game who practically have NP5 for most of the SSR servants simply give his account to his friend and never turning back. For someone who have spent ten thousands or maybe hundreds just simply gave up with the game, there must be something wrong with Fate/Grand Order.

Of all Gacha games that i have played, FGO is still one of the least generous high profile Gacha Game out there. Combined with no Auto Grind, horrible Gacha rate and monotonous gameplay, i am not surprised if the playerbase of FGO kept shrinking because this game repels new players like no one else. There are simply no possible way for a player starting now to catch up with old player accounts due to the immense gap other than buying accounts. While Genshin has the same issue of bad Gacha Rate, the game is constantly improving itself with each iterations and the amount of contents to be enjoyed without paying is just jaw-dropping. While Genshin might face the current issue of FGO, with the amount of effort put by the dev team, this issue will probably appear in a year or two which could easily fixed starting with GSSR. The only thing that FGO still reigns supreme are the quality of the waifu selections which unfortunately does not truly resonate to the current demographics who are mostly college kids with the tendency of having more deviant taste of preference.

Arknights Myethos 1/7 Skadi Alter

 One of the most hyped PVC figure for Arknights fans like myself since the prototype reveal few months ago. The orca waifu Skadi got yet another amazing PVC figure for her Alter version and this one is by Myethos. Scheduled for November 2023 release, Myethos 1/7 Skadi Alter will come in 2 version, Regular and Deluxe with 899 Rmb and 1699 Rmb Price tag each. The deluxe version which is around 31000-34000 Yen will come with additional Sea Born Leviathan effect parts which is very humongous to be honest.

Skadi Alter is the 6* alternate version of Guard Operator Skadi which serves as an excellent buff supporter operator. This version of Skadi is the possible future for Skadi who succumb to her Seaborn blood who proceeds to join her race crusade to eradicate any living being in Terra save for Doktah whom her affection still remains despite already losing her own humanity. I think for the time being i will just get the regular version and save for Deluxe version for her Priestess outfit which is quite possibility with Skadi's popularity.

Isekai Ojisan

 Another Isekai manga that I binged recently which gained recent popularity due to anime adaptation and this one took slightly different approach yet again. As the name implies the main character of this manga is mid 30s man who have just returned from his Isekai adventure after 17 years in coma, and now he lives with his nephew and support himself with his magical abilities carried over from his adventure which obviously cause some shenanigans.

 The story of the series is mostly about the Uncle character retelling his adventure to his nephew and nephew's girlfriend. Despite having a Neet behavior and look, the Uncle guy surprisingly an accomplished adventurer and manage to make some waifus fall for him. For an Isekai series, the author surprisingly able to make some well designed waifu especially the tsundere elf and the Author managed to exploit the advantage of maintaining the romcom tensions between the Elf waifu and protagonist to keep the reader interested. Isekai Ojisan no doubt did well to catch the reader attention but time will tell if this series can be conclude itself as a good isekai title

Dead Cells Castlevania Crossover DLC announced!

 I don't know if i need this but this is a very pleasant surprise indeed! Dead Cells, a successful indie metroidvania game had their Devs recently announced Castlevania DLC slated for Q1 2023. I never expected Konami is this generous, but this is certainly a blessing for Igavania fans like myself because Bloodstained are just not sufficient enough to scratch that classic metroidvania itch.

 A brief introduction for Dead Cells, this game is one of the Metroidvania game that incorporated Roguelike genre successfully where gains from each playthrough will always benefit your initial position. I have played the GOTY version sometime ago and managed to complete one playthrough and the contents of this game can keep you entertained for hundreds of hours.

As for the Castlevania crossover, I will be really looking forward to the DLC which apparently will be sold for 10 USD. The DLC content will include new Biomes, Weapons and Character skin including the iconic Alucard and Richter Belmont. As long as this Dead Cell Castlevania DLC able to satisfy the Gothic Horror Adventure need of the Igavania fans, the future of Dead Cells Devs will be even brighter. To be honest as much as I hate Konami for the blunders by their Execs over a decade, it seems there are someone competent has been taking in charge for past few years as Konami have been making some good strategical moves for their past Popular IPs like Castlevania and Suikoden.

Early December 2022 Loot

 Even if i have left my previous job from Toy Distributor company for few months already, my toys collecting hobby are relatively unchanged and got myself another solid batch this time. For this loot collection, it come from several different sources and not strictly Preorder items only and as usual the loots are predominantly Mecha stuffs or else from gacha game that i played. 

For this batch i bought retail stock of Earnestcore after the RB13V Valhallan catches my attention and might as well secure the recent models before they are out of market considering these types of products tend to be very difficult to find once the initial batch are out for quite sometime. From my trip to AFASG22, I got myself some collectible merchandise which are acquired from Hakken Flashsale and Genshin booth. Will definitely join the flashsale with Hakken again should they consider doing it again in next AFA. Lastly out of this loot the items that i hyped the most would be Armor Plus Kourin Seiji and Ensemble Dendrobium, the former because it completes my Yoroiden collection while Ensemble Dendrobium is the biggest addition to my Ensemble collection, hopefully it will worth its hefty pricetag.

A year with Final Gear

  Not many Gacha Games that i played survived for a year but yet non AAA Gacha managed to make it into its first year which is Final Gear. To be honest Final Gear have many glaring flaws and one of the most time consuming Gacha Game that i currently play. However despite the rocky journey over this past one year i still managed to keep playing this game due to my passion for mecha and at least this game managed to stay true at this aspect for now. For my progress throughout past one year, i managed to crawl into Top 30 players for all 3 Rank boards since I keep doing my daily grind everyday and the premium monthly pass do help to catch up the one month gap with Players who played since the server opened up. I would say Final Gear is the Gacha Game that i spent the most for this year though it will get lesser later on as i have purchased all of the available battlepass. To be honest Final Gear devs could use better paid scheme if they wish to earn more money.

 These are my roster for the 4-team Mecha units. By this point, i can breeze through all of the available PVE contents but will still get defeated in PVP contents due to sheer power imbalance for UR units and my UR choice which Noctris  is still far from finished. Personally i would love to see Final Gear Dev to create more PVE contents that could utilize lower rarity units because this game had great potential on the Army building genre but this probably  present a challenge for a company size like Flashwing which appeared to be lacking of funding and fresh talent. To be frank the reason why i put up with Final Gear glaring flaws is due to its sheer potential for Mecha niche which even Artery Gear created by the Devs that left Flashwing didn't even reached that high. In order to survive as a long term game, Final Gear will need to step up its gameplay mechanics and do make collab content from time to time which Sakura Taisen 3 collab would be nice.