Depending how I'm feeling at the moment I might answer Dorohedoro or Blame! as my favorite manga of all time, so I was pretty bummed when I saw they were going with CG for the animated version of Dorohedoro. But they really put a lot of heart into it - those EDs are incredible, but the background art is really something. Glad they did the baseball episode justice. SHOCKING!
Surprised to see Arknights - it doesn't get enough respect. If I were to recommend one gacha game to people that'd be it. It's very fair, gameplay is actually engaging, and doesn't take much of your time for the day-to-day which is the big killer for these games.
I put Genshin Impact in my #1 spot because of how enraptured I was by its world, exploration and gameplay even though I dropped it after a couple months. The live game aspects of it were the least interesting part, but they don't diminish the things I like about it. I simply don't want to log in every day and do dailies, it feels too much like WoW busywork that I got burned out on years ago. Arknights on the other hand does the daily gacha check-in so well it earned a high spot on my list.
The funny thing is my actual GOTY was Dwarf Fortress though I left it off. Hopefully the Steam release makes it next year and I can put another bazillion hours into it.
I know Vinny didn't mean anything bad by the 'that's not a real game' comment but Arknights is a really good tower defense mobile game. No PVP garbage, low time commitment per day compared to most gacha games, fair for low-spenders and some really well-done event content. Also a bangin soundtrack. Before Genshin it was the only one of these I'd actually recommend to people.
@mistercoke: I'm not going to criticize the guys harshly for guessing that the game is going to nail you hard with F2P bullshit later on, because that's a pretty fair assumption to make considering how F2P mobile games usually are.
But even as a gacha veteran this game has actually surprised me with how...reasonable it is? For example, I went to go craft a 4* sword - since the game has a 'forge queue' I assumed it was gonna hit me with the ol' Warframe trick and slap a 48 hour timer on it. Nope, forged in 3 seconds. And not just that - F2P games LOVE to nickel and dime you on things like inventory space. This thing? Functionally limitless space as far as I can tell.
But it's not a pretty-looking game with generous F2P mechanics because they're being nice. It's because the gacha model is THAT lucrative.
@mistercoke: I feel like the safest way to play these games is to spend what you think was worth what you got out of it, or not at all. The rates are so bad that if you spend $50 on rolls expecting to get something it will, statistically, crush your dreams. I feel like a good balance is to get whatever $5/month daily crystal subscription is on offer and MAYBE the battle pass - if you don't play past a month or two then just don't re-sub. No big loss.
But yeah these games are so heavily subsidized by insane whales that the f2p experience is actually pretty good if you've got an iron will. It won't barrage you with ads and (in this case) you won't run into a PVP frustration wall. Experienced gacha players will have a good time and the community I roll with is all over Genshin Impact right now. But the cynic in me looks at this game as a way to grab players who AREN'T experienced and see if they fall for the same old tricks. I'm lucky I learned my lesson with Fire Emblem Heroes instead of getting taken to the cleaners with something like Fate Grand Order, at least.
Mupod's comments