Anime. Games. Anime is cool. Games are cool. Logic follows that by combining anime and games, one should have an anime game that is super cool. Instead, anime fans are often let down by the most mindless cash grab nonsense that I’ve ever seen. The mobile game market is already filled with tons of trash designed to do nothing but waste your time and drain your wallet. This is why there’s the stereotype that mobile gamers aren't “real” games and mobile games aren’t true “games”. And for many fucking cases I’d have to agree. But nothing is quite as egregious, quite as soul crushing for me as seeing anime mobile games that offer dogshit to the consumer. They offer dogshit and they know it will sell decently because us dumb anime fucks will buy anything that has our favorite characters on it. That’s what they hope, anyway.
Don’t get me wrong for a second, I love Blazblue Central Fiction. It was the first fighting game that I took seriously, that I strove to get better at. Kagura is still probably my favorite character I’ve ever played and no other character has captured his unique playstyle. But that doesn’t absolve the production team for their sins. Blazblue Alternative: Dark War was a shitty mobile gacha game that launched last year. Most fighting game fans instantly saw it for a shitty cash grab and held no interest. You see, going from a gacha to a fighting game can be quite hype, take Granblue: Fantasy Versus for example. However, going the opposite route is not so true. Darkwar never captured much Western attention and it must not’ve captured much Eastern attention either because the game has announced it will shut down soon on January 31, 2022. This is less than a year since its launch on February 16th, 2021. Admittedly the notice claimed to say sorry to the near one million players who tried out the game, so many did check it out. After watching some gameplay though I can’t imagine anyone sticking around for more than 10 minutes.
No...no thanks. I'll pass.
This one announcement is only part of the reason I decided to write this article. You see, unbeknownst to me, another fucking anime mobile game just died in a similar fashion. Apparently a mobile game was made for Saga of Tanya The Evil. The game, Saga of Tanya the Evil - Thus the Mages Did Clash, launched in December of 2020. Which means it also did not survive more than a year. God damn. How much money does it take to develop these games that die in a year’s time I wonder? I know making shit is expensive. I’m not 100% sure after watching the trailers if this is a true gacha experience or not, but it has in-game purchases. I know that gachas and similar free games with in-game purchases can rack up a ton of money from the whales. And hell it’d be one thing if these games looked fun and engaging...but god damn they look shit. Judging from the comments on gameplay videos, they’re about as fun as they look too. Watch the following video at your own risk.
Unfortunately, I have one last piece of news to cover. This time, they took the fight straight to my home. They launched a fucking Code Geass mobile gacha game. Why does God forsake me? It launched back on October 4th of this year, but I had no knowledge of its existence until Kinky told me about it recently. I try to see the good in it, I do, but it’s a damn auto-battle gacha. You collect units and let them battle it out so you win stuff. Awesome. I get it's a mobile game, it’s something you’re supposed to do while you’re mobile and don’t have much time, but holy shit what’s the point of collecting units that auto duke it out? And WHAT is the point of spending money to acquire said units? Genshin Impact can be a cuckfest of a game, but at least acquiring a new character is a huge deal that can change the gameplay and your strategy entirely. The worst part is I have to fight my monkey brain not to try it out. I mean, it’s a game for one of my favorite series. My natural reaction is to want to try that bad boy. But I know it wouldn’t be a good time. I know it.
My face when Kinky showed me the Geass gacha game.
On the brightside, this Code Geass game probably won’t last a damn year and will be gone soon enough, never to tempt me again. In this article we covered several updates on anime mobile games and it really opened my eyes. Even some big name anime games produced for consoles with actual budgets behind them are broken or boring messes that continue to worsen the “anime game” stigma that a ton of people have. And damn after seeing some of these mobile game announcements I can’t blame them either. I surmise that eventually as people speak with their wallets and demand higher quality, anime games will rise up in quality and be treated equally. I just don’t know how long that’s gonna take. Did you play any of these mobile anime games, or any similar ones? What do you think about the stereotype that most anime games are shit, even the console ones? Will these games improve in the future as anime becomes more mainstream, or continue to get worse as they target larger audiences? Earn currency, roll the dice, fail to get the SS character, spend money, and regret it in the comments below!
