elster's journey is similar to my own

except im human
and i'm not a robot
and i'm not in space
and not in a relationship at all
and on top of all of this I'm a he/they black man from chicago

but we're basically the same

Great fun when I played, but the more time passes, the less and less I like the game. It's a visual novel so, obviously, I care about writing most. It's not great. The honeymoon phase being over fully now, the game not having a real story, just a lot of individual stories that mostly end up being unfinished makes me feel like they thought about things happening and were content with superficiality. Stuff happening in the world is just material for characters to talk about. The game is too short and they toss too much under the rug. I like most characters, but I didn't feel most of them were developed satisfyingly enough.

Most of the sexual themed jokes (which are plenty) feel like they're made by a teenager boy who found out lesbians are a thing. And when it's not between women, it's not much better. The writing when it involves anything sexual is very immature 9 times out of 10.

All in all, to end with, it's style over substance. I loved that style when I played, but it has worn out for me and the substance isn't anything special. Feels like it's considered so well written because people who played this probably didn't play any other visual novels.

Arknights is probably the best gacha game I've played purely in terms of production value and player retention. It has avoided many of the pitfalls that other games fell into over the years, and I've been pretty into it ever since the global server came out.

I find Arknights pretty hard to review because the game is always being updated and changed, and to really review it I need to generalize a lot. Bear with that.

What I love about Arknights more than anything is the character designs. Due to the game's world, Terra, being wildly diverse and taking a lot from our world, many playable characters and NPCs have tons of awesome designs that scratch every type of itch someone may have. You like streetwear? Done. You like knights? Done. You like officer worker mercenaries? Done. A design will eventually catch someone's eye.

The storyline. Note, I actually kind of hate the game's main story, where Arknights really shines is in it's side events that flesh out side characters and the world as a whole. These things are long. Like REALLY long. It's insane how much story they cram into some of these, it's even more insane that they're all written so well. Of course, some miss the mark or have their issues, but I've been satisfied with them generally, there are very few event stories I genuinely regret reading. This extends to character writing and world building, since characters come from all walks of life, tons of tropes and character personalities are there. The variety is very nice, and most characters have some complexity to them.

Third, the gameplay. Arknights is very unique, it's a tower defense gacha. The characters you roll are essentially towers that you place, letting their AI do the rest with you activating skills or placing down other units. The game does have a small powercreep issue, and many of the lower rarity characters lose their niche pretty easily. Thoguh I'd say Arknights is better than most gachas, broken units don't seem to shatter the game too much overall. (There are a few exceptions to this.)

Lastly the music. MMmmmm. That's some good shit. Go to Youtube right now and listen to some of it. The variety continues here, music matching where in Terra an event or battle is taking place, or maybe it's just gonna be some sick ass electronic music, who cares it's all fire.

Now, some criticism. The challenge content in this game is getting a little ridiculous. I understand challenge is in the name, but I generally don't like how Arknights handles difficulty longterm. Just stacking more HP or damage onto enemies without much else. There also have been some seriously scummy practices done by the devs, which is expected from gachas, but Arknights used to carry itself much better, now we get limited time units all the time, and a lot of harder content essentially demands the most OP units or a video walkthrough just to find any success. Lastly I mentioned this before but I do not like the main story. Mostly a personal thing but I find it annoying because I always love the side events so much.

Overall, Arknights is probably one of the most important games to me. It's art style and storytelling is unreal to me, and I do think it has wider appeal outside of gacha losers like me. I got many of my friends to try the game and they all liked it a lot.

I don't recommend gachas easily, but please try Arknights. It's free, do not spend any fucking money on it.

As of right now, I think this is the best gacha in terms of characters and story. Yes, it is a horny game. It's very clear in their intentions and honestly I respect that. They don't censor themselves and thats something I support because I hate censorship. Let's start with gameplay: imo it's not the greatest or anything, you mainly just point and shoot while occasionally triggering skills. Not really boring but not neccesarily all that fun. I do enjoy how they make the combat more engaging with the bossfights, having to hit certain weak points to survive and it can get hard. As for story; it's surprisingly great. It has a pretty iconic prologue and for good reason. It's a gut wrencher. I haven't caught up yet (I'm in chapter 12) but from what I'm experiencing so far I really enjoy it. The world building is great. The Events: honestly they are about as good and sometimes even better than the main story at times, at that's saying something. Overture, Red Ash, Snow Fairy are some events that are fucking incredible, my jaw was wide open by the end of them. I legitimately couldn't believe how good those events were. Music: the music is awesome. It's a general mix of dubstep and a sliver of metal, which are genres I really like. Characters: the writing in both story/events and character bond stories are all great. They take the time to humanize each NIKKE, showing you their goals, aspirations, hobbies, backstories, relationships and their overall growth as a character. Despite being machines, they feel more human than the humans themselves. I'm not sure what it Is about this game, but I really do feel like I have a bond with some of these NIKKEs, which every gacha I've played so far (like 15) failed to do (apart from some characters in HI3). Whatever it is though, I love it. The devs are also super generous. I mean, in the span of like 2 month they gave us like 100 pulls free. Speaking of which, the gacha: the gacha is fine. When you play this game for a while you'll find your inventory of NIKKEs to be full of SSRs. They aren't particularly hard to get but the gacha itself is still a little questionable. Finally, the character designs. I feel like this game has the best designs in gacha ever. I dont think ive disliked a single one.
Overall great game despite the fanservice. (Which I'm a fan of)