OVERVIEW
Crunchyroll Games (and Cygames, funplex) deliver a spectacular rendition of Princess Connect! Re: Dive into gacha' game at its finest. Even if you have no clue what Princess Connect! Re: Dive is, this game is still a blast, it also goes through the story as seen in the anime but an extremely cut down version of it. This is super easy to get into, not overly complicated or taxing for grinding the bananas out of every small detail, nor is it so easy it loses appeal after a few days. This is a perfect blend of doing all the standardized gacha' game mechanics right with a ton of charm stuffed overflowing.
STORY & GAMEPLAY
If you're familiar with Princess Connect! Re: Dive or its anime (available to watch on Crunchyroll), then you'll be right at home with all of your lovable cast, and if you're still trying to figure out what in the world the title even means, well just ignore that and understand there's a ton, (a ton!) of female characters that basically befriend a guy who lost his memories. Him and his group(s) of friends help each other along the way as Yuuki (the main protagonist) slowly pieces together the shards of his memory. In this game that guy is essentially you, which means you basically just acquired 50 female friends.
When it comes to gameplay, I've seen a lot of gacha' games paywall all the "good" characters. There's still that wall that wants your money, but a lot of great characters, including all of Yuuki's initial guild (characters displayed in image, not video, below), are all either given or very easily obtained from the get-go. If you simply spend a day playing this game free and summon two or three times, you should have a majority of the 1 and 2 star characters in the game. That's about 20 to 30 of them depending on your luck. That's incredible considering every character in the game is a viable option for your teams based on all units can be "ascended" or upgraded in star stature. You may have a bit of extra work ahead of you, but the fact that every single character is usable is fantastic for this type of game.
Characters are a huge part, but what is there to do with them? There are various ways of interacting with them besides the routine storyline/quests. Quests are also divided into two segues, a Normal and Hard mode. Hard mode may also provide you with shards for characters to ascend their star value, which you will want to do to unlock all of their skills to make them stronger.
There's an assortment of other activities such as joining a guild, which is not the same as joining a clan. Typically a guild would consist of you and an assortment of random people or friends. In this game because of how Princess Connect! operates as a show using guilds, the "Guildhouse" is five characters of your choosing placed into a small house that you are able to decorate and accumulate free items over time. The actual guild you would join is a "Clan." Joining this allows you to interact with other people, request items you may need for equipment, and eventually "Clan Battles" when that feature is released. Outside of guild-like features, you have some unique ways of interacting with each character. There are specific story events for every character in the game and you can progress each character via "Bonds." Each character can level up these bonds to further unlock their storylines and you can do these via using the characters in quests or using bond items (food) in the Guildhouse on whichever character you prefer. If you don't care much about these individual stories, well you should start, as each character will get stronger and increase their stats every time a character story event progresses.
If you're in quick need of some training or mana, the Grotto is your place to be. Unfortunately this training section is limited to two attempts per day, and the mana quests at two as well. One of these is pretty self explanatory, but you may be wondering what does mana do? Hint, it's nothing to do with magic in the way you're thinking it does. Mana is a resource used for a lot in this game. Want to upgrade equipment? Uses mana. Want to purchase items in the shop? Uses mana. Upgrade character skills? Mana. Mana is probably the most important resource outside of getting jewels for summoning characters, which isn't overly necessary if you have a good pile of them already.
Quests are pretty self explanatory, but it's worth mentioning how great the animation and sound is, not just here but throughout the game as well. Every time a character is able to use their unique special attack, the game plays a quick cut scene animation depicting a glorious attack. Even though this is always the same scene, I've yet to get sick of it as there's so much pop and greatness to the way it works and typically destroys the enemies, changing the tide of battle. The fact that the character is also yelling whilst this occurs just makes it that much more exciting. Seeing what all the different people can do and playing around with team building is actually fun to do in this game.
CONTROLS & PERFORMANCE
Not a lot of control to speak of out of the ordinary. During a battle you can set the game to autoplay, which is great for early on, but you'll have to break that habit when things get a bit more challenging in the more difficult levels. The timing of when to press the special attack moves will matter, as you wouldn't want a healing character to cast when your party doesn't need it, but you'll learn as you progress.
This being a newly released game, I was weary of some hiccups popping up somewhere, but I haven't really come across any. I think they managed to mitigate any slowdowns by giving you the option to hear the audio for characters via download or to leave it silent with just the text. I like hearing the voice actresses as they line up with those from the show (Japanese version). It was great hearing their familiar performances and I find that to be going a bit above and beyond in a mobile game.
AUDIO
Mostly discussed this already with the Japanese voice actresses from the show having lines and dialogue for all of their characters in the game. These all sound terrific. One thing I found mildly irritating is when you go to the home screen they speak every time. This would be fine upon first loading the game, but every time you hit that home button it plays and it adds up quickly. Mild irritation at best, but still noted.
As for the background music, it blends well. At some of the menus it can seem a bit too much for just menus, but works much better within quests and other portions of the games. I'm no music snob, but it was all good minus my hot take on the menu music.
SUMMARY
Princess Connect! Re: Dive is the gacha' game everyone should play as it does everything well. It may not be the most flashy or edgy based property or mobile game ever, but as far as taking the show and putting it into game form, it highly succeeds on all levels. There's nothing missing, and a lot of features still to come. I definitely look forward to what the future holds for this game and hope you'll give it a try.
SCORE
9.0 out of 10.0
▣▣▣▣▣▣▣▣▣▢
+ Great assortment of characters, animations pop right out of the show, character
customization, interactive storylines both with characters and main story
+ Variety of content to do, as well as a bunch still coming
+ Nostalgic and at home feel if you're into the anime as well
○ Summoning characters can be exciting, but you'll get tired of seeing 1 and 2 star characters pretty fast
- Small percentage rates to obtain characters designed to get you to spend money to get them
- Music and character audio can be repetitive
- Features are blocked off as still in development/being implemented
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