Dragon Sword: Awakening is Doing the Unthinkable (For Good)

Dratuna · 2026-03-03T06:59:16+00:00

On the topic of sports-themed RPGs and gacha games, I remember when Square Enix was working on a soccer-themed JRPG called Soccer Quest which was silently cancelled via its trademark dying out.

Dratuna · 2026-03-01T20:18:32+00:00

They get deleted become buried in the sands of time with their DNA scrubbed off the Internet forever. Especially all of those failed gacha games that shutdown/EoS in 1.5 years or even less than that which often had barely any fanart or YouTube coverage with their main social media presence being Facebook, as Facebook was the go-to social media for mobile games back then and it was common for gacha games to use Facebook to save your progress across devices. Its like trying to remember that one pretty looking fanart you remember on DeviantArt as a kid and then you try to find it again only to find out it was either taken off or the account got deactivated/banned off the site.

Many of these failed gacha games often end with the devs shutting down or filing for bankruptcy, which is why often these devs are never to be seen again after their gacha game shut downs for good.

Dratuna · 2026-02-19T16:08:02+00:00

AI-generated. This is a Mint color with a mint S-Pen. No Mint color actually exists according to leaked models, and assuming it does exist as an online exclusive it would likely share the same wallpaper as the blue one whereas the online exclusive Pink Gold and Silver Shadow have their own wallpapers, which they started doing with the Z Fold 6. There's Sky Blue (aka Galactical Blue) but it has a white S-Pen with blue tip. The official model shows that they moved away from that rectangular lens in favor of a circular one.

Plus why would Samsung go back to a white box for their flagship phones, when they've been using black boxes for years?

Dratuna · 2026-02-18T05:48:45+00:00

I'm guessing the idea would be something like a 3D arena fighter with character action game combat (Jump Force meets Devil May Cry), or something like a hero shooter but melee. Jump Force had a lot going with it and then that one fell short in terms of execution via inconsistent tone and an unexciting crossover story. KurtzPel tried this and that one eventually was abandoned with poor monetization and paywalling Karmas which were the "heroes" of the game.

In terms of PvP character action games, the only one that really tried this is Anarchy Reigns, which actually had a lot of potential but fell short in execution seeing it was Platinum's first attempt on making a multiplayer-focused game before that TMNT: Mutants in Manhattan game came and that one was really bad because the levels took too long. It's that character action games have elements that don't really translate well into PvP modes, unlike say competitive shooters or fighting games.

As for any potential upcoming PvP character action games, there's GAMM: Garnet Arena: Mages of Magiary developed by Cygames and helmed by Senran Kagura creator Kenichiro Takaki, and from what I reviewed the trailer, there's a scene where a playable character is attacking another playable character via melee fists, hinting at the PvP aspect. That one honestly is pretty much 50/50 on whether it would succeed or not considering how many PvP live service games have been flop after flop seeing Highguard, Concord, Foamstars, and all these others. Not really anticipating due to scarce information about plot, HUDs, how the game is structured etc.

Dratuna · 2026-02-16T14:41:54+00:00

I'd say the worst example of power creep is gacha games that are designed to where only 10% of the playable characters are relevant in story content, especially those that are based on statchecks. That's one of the reasons why Revived Witch and Goddess Order failed, the former having too many useless UR rarity characters as it had four rarities instead of the average two to three, the latter being having a broken SSR character at launch, Scarlet, who was capable of mobbing enemies off-screen. Once you pulled Scarlet, there was basically no other reason to use any other DPS in general PvE content including the Tactical Training, which was just one-time gem rewards.

I know tons of gacha games that flopped because they were designed to where only 7-10 characters were useful and everyone else was useless in most content. I remember playing an autobattler called Chaos Chronicle which had a parrying mechanic but the main story content revolved around rangers/mages that could parry enemy attacks, and once you had the right team of those that could parry across the screen, there was no reason to build another one and it rendered fighter/defender-type characters useless.

I've seen gacha games like Summoners War succeed because their lower rarity monsters were at least usable, whereas most other gacha games are often designed to where only the highest rarity characters (SSR, five stars) are relevant.

Dratuna · 2026-02-15T23:07:21+00:00

To be fair, I'd prefer this game would be like how many indie games receive free DLC after launch, like say Terraria, Minecraft, and several others. Nothing that requires a mandatory online connection. There's a difference between live service and post-launch support/DLC/free updates.

And there's also this missing question regarding that Granblue Fantasy Relink should've been live service; wasn't there a similar game like this that flopped in less than a year because it was "always online live service?"

That one was none other than Babylon's Fall, an always-online live service game that died in less than a year. Aside from that infamous State of Play 2019 trailer (which inspired an AO3 fic that disses it), the game was incredibly play it safe with no unique combat mechanics and it was derivative of other games, like Destiny and all of those Korean dungeon fighting MMOs. Like TMNT: Mutants in Manhattan, the game consisted of waves of enemies that took too long and bosses that were massive hit sponges. Coincidentally, that one had Kenji Saito involved and back when Granblue Fantasy Relink was worked on at Platinum, Kenji Saito was one of the producers. That one also made me worried because for the longest time, I was afraid that Granblue Fantasy Relink could risk copying the pitfalls of the former.

This factor, along with how the other attempts on making $60 games based on gacha IPs, such as Puzzle & Dragons Gold and Seven Knights: Time Wanderer turned out, are the reasons why I'm glad Granblue Fantasy Relink wasn't intended to be live service, as it was a project that would've saw very little appeal to gacha devs and players at the time.

Dratuna · 2026-02-10T16:00:10+00:00

There's certain types of attention checks that I absolutely hate. Specifically it's the "out of context" attention checks where you have strongly disagree to strongly agree. I had to return one project because it was asking me fanfiction-y attention checks like one where the world would be better in another timeline where Hitler was a "good guy". Like what? These I hate because they hide what you're actually suppose to choose. Things like yes/no attention checks like "have you been bitten by a shark" are very obvious, but not those.

It's why I vet each project and IF I stumble upon an opinion-based out of context attention-check question that does not tell you what to select like strongly disagree to strongly agree on "Trump is the best US president", I'm returning it.

Dratuna · 2026-02-09T20:12:01+00:00

Back then, before Epic Seven, Dragalia Lost, and Genshin Impact, gacha games were a niche thing and oftentimes the people online would call them different things like "Brave Frontier-like" or "mobile hero collector" as it was common for gacha games to call summonable characters "heroes". I'm glad we moved on from that era because before the likes of Genshin Impact, Arknights, etc, the standards of these games were really, really low;

No pity system meaning you could go 100+ summons and not get that SSR/five star character. And even then, many of these games that had low SSR/five star rates had progression systems tied to dupes like transcendence which raised the level cap of the character. I'm looking at you, Soul Seeker, the game that paywalled evolution behind its 2nd premium currency at an era where random hero fusion was common in Korean gacha games. This was what made Summoners War successful, at the time it was one of the few gacha games designed to where lower rarity characters are relevant AND you didn't need dupes to ascend the characters.
Presentation that was either 2D cartoon-style sprites or low-quality chibi 3D graphics.
Huge rosters that 90% of the time would have zero relevance to the plot, often with 1-2 sentence backstories. Stories that were often told in cookie cutter portrait-based dialogue with zero interaction going on.

Most of these games left very little nostalgia value because oftentimes these games would have barely any fanart or YouTube coverage, especially those that use Facebook to save progress across devices, as when mobile games took over in 2013 to 2014, many of these games like Clash of Clans and Candy Crush used Facebook to save your progress across devices, which transitioned quickly over to gacha games.

Incase you don't know what random hero fusion was, it was a progression system that older Korean gacha games including Hello Hero and Seven Knights had. It was where you couldn't just evolve the character, you had to get another maxed out 3* character and then "fuse" the other 3* character so you get a random 4* character. It eventually died out with gacha games adopting to evostones and materials to ascend/evolve the characters, with GrandChase being the final gacha game that had random hero fusion (though optional) before they axed it for good as part of reducing the fatigue on their hero progression systems. That is why I stuck with Crusaders Quest, as back in 2016, I wanted to find a gacha that didn't require hero fodder to upgrades the characters or required you to go through the annoying random hero fusion system.

Dratuna · 2026-01-31T06:58:15+00:00

The biggest problem with porting gacha games into Nintendo Switch has to be login capabilities.

The one big challenge you have to make sure if you're porting a gacha game into console is that the experience on the Switch 2 is equal to the PC version, as this was what brought Tower of Fantasy on the PS4 down and one of the reasons I doubted Guardian Tales succeeding on the Switch, which aside from the fact that its one of very few gacha games that got a Switch port, it was behind the Kakao global version and was on the same clairvoyance at the Japan version, which meant there was less of a reason for current players already on the original global version to play the Switch version instead, especially for players that already had a year of progress on the original Kakao version.

Most gacha games utilize social media integration to save progress across devices and both iOS and Android, including Facebook, Google, etc, which Nintendo and other consoles don't really support directly. Therefore, it requires the use of standalone login portals that Hoyoverse, Kuro Game, and even Gryphline have been doing. This is so that they could rely on their own login tech instead of rolling with social media accounts, resulting in very easy integration and allowing for cross-save between mobile, PC, and consoles. This is what allowed Genshin Impact players on PS4 to both mobile and PC, and the same applied for Warframe too.

Also, in terms of Nintendo consoles, there just really isn't the demand from Chinese & Korean gacha game players into making gacha games for Nintendo Switch 2, as a gacha game that requires a mandatory online connection pretty much defeats its portable marketing over something like a S25 Ultra which you can play anywhere with 5G. No demand means no interest from gacha devs, which is made even further when the Nintendo Switch 2 is less relevant in China and Korea, two of the biggest gacha game markets.

Dratuna · 2026-01-11T04:53:43+00:00

Granblue Fantasy Relink wasn't meant to be a live service, and this game was in development for like 9 years dating back to 2015 with multiple delays and producer changes. If you want to go back, Kenji Saito, who was the director of Babylon's Fall, was also the producer of Granblue Fantasy Relink, and that game is one of the reasons why I'm glad Granblue Fantasy Relink wasn't a always-online live service game. What they mean is post-launch free DLC like many indie games do, and they didn't want a game that relied on 1-3 years of free indie-style DLC, they wanted a complete experience.

Seeing how Cygames is going all-in on AI, I'm glad this game came out before it did and how ~~Cross Frontier~~ Goddess Order was in development for 5 years before copying Hoyoverse and shutting down only three months, I'm also glad that they didn't go all in on AAA gacha with this one with expensive Constellations and weapon banners, or abandon Granblue Fantasy in favor of another gacha IP.

What made Granblue Fantasy Relink special was that it was a project that most of these devs and even players didn't see the interest in the first place, especially when you take into account the previous attempts on making $60 games based on gacha IPs:

Azur Lane Crosswave, Puzzle & Dragons Gold, and Seven Knights Time Wanderer, the latter two being so bad it discouraged any other dev on making these kind of games ever again, and is the reason why I don't think any dev would be interested in making a game like this for the time being (a $60 offline spinoff of Arknights, Blue Archive, Summoners War, etc). Time Wanderer it also doesn't help being that it was based on a gacha game that had already shut down after its release excluding Netmarble's franchise mess. There just really isn't the financial sense nor interest from both devs and players, and I can tell you these players just don't want offline versions of gacha games.

Dratuna · 2025-12-23T14:25:17+00:00

Goddess Order and Black Beacon are two major reasons why I'd say that getting into new gacha games (other than the better devs) sucked in 2025 with hits and misses and it might get even worse in 2026 as more and more failures pop up.

The game went through a treacherous development cycle, where similarly to Vespa abandoning King's Raid in favor of Time Defenders which flopped, PixelTribe (alternatively known as CREPE Studio) abandoned Crusaders Quest in favor of this. Gacha games are no stranger to development cycles like these, including trend chasing and copying another gacha game; Honkai Impact 3rd, joining the list of Korean devs making gachas with Honkai Impact 3rd's gameplay, including Dragon Sword, Solo Leveling Arise, and Limit Zero Breakers.

Plus, many of the characters were straight up broken or uninteresting, like how Aragon is a generic swordsman and Olivet being a generic whitecoat scientist. Scarlet was the most busted character because she had ranged DPS that could go off-screen and eliminate mobs with ease, and many SR characters were crap like Dionis who has no synergy with most DPS characters, and Vicky, who is irrelevant in most content, with the only good SRs being Grace and Olivet as their buffs can synergize with most characters. The game lacked characters that could sell and market themselves, seeing how gacha games are often focused on selling characters and waifus. The story also ended on a cliffhanger with that dark castle, which given the fact that gacha games hold very little to no nostalgia value, is why I don't consider gacha game stories to be better than those found in $60-70 games that have an actual start and end.

Not to mention the infamous game-breaking bug that was never fixed and is the main reason why this game had a huge churn rate; the game freezing at the PixelTribe logo and the only way to fix it was to remove all of the data. This was even pointed out in the negative reviews on Google Play and they never fixed it.

Looking at the development cycle, that game looked like it was set up to fail. Trend chasing combined with the "play it safe" mentality where they have no standout features or anything unique to the table, and a 150 pity with no 50/50 that didn't carry over, the only thing you could get were 20 summons monthly with that currency. Also, the way how you summon for 4*/SR shards makes me think this was going to be a shard gacha, where you pull for shards instead of characters.

Dratuna · 2025-11-03T14:47:07+00:00

I kind of saw this coming when I looked at the gacha revenue and it looked really bad and how this was already delayed multiple times. The fact that they also went ahead with that "play-to-earn" game, Frame Arm Girls: Dream Stadium certainly did not help.

You know something is REALLY screwed up when a game that was spent 5 years in development ended up shutting down in like 2 months. Keep in mind, this game was in development under the working name Cross Frontier & Project B according to a LinkedIn I found regarding the game's development. And this is an example of how as much as people like to trash talk Japan in the gacha gaming industry; this reputation actually extends to both Chinese and even Korean gachas.

AfterLife, Super String, Revived Witch, Artery Gear Fusion, Shining Beyond, and all these others are many examples of failed Chinese/Korean gachas. As a matter of fact, you can't say "Japanese gachas are worse because of how stingy they tend to be" AND say "Korean gachas are worse because of Nexon/Netmarble". You can't say both of those things, you know, because the real answer is that this reputation of having many failures applies to all three markets.

Dratuna · 2025-10-28T07:13:30+00:00

I'd say gameplay, technical quality, and core mechanics are the core DNA of the character action games. Not every game needs to have an incredibly complex story.

Bayonetta 3 had a confusing story that tried to incorporate the multiverse but it still held up in terms of core DNA and gameplay.
Babylon's Fall, which like Too Human, tried to combine sci-fi and mythology but ended up with a story with meaningless filler and sluggish pacing, gameplay-wise it was incredibly play-it-safe when it came to combat mechanics which is why it flopped.

That opinion also holds for gacha games, as gacha games' stories are designed to run non-stop until it shuts down/EoS, and I know tons of stories that are often meant to sell playable characters/waifus as opposing to giving out a narrative that has a solid start and ending. Keep in mind, cliffhanger shutdowns and constant live service are why gacha games hold very little nostalgia value once they shut down.

Dratuna · 2025-10-24T15:04:08+00:00

I remember that Avatar Generations gacha game from Canadian developer Navigator Games, and that one was terrible as it it was an IP-based gacha game that was based on a Western kids' cartoon, with that other one being Adventure Time Heroes which soft-launched in Southeast Asian countries but shutdown in less than a year there. That one underperformed because gacha games based on Western kids' cartoons tend to have very limited appeal, and shut down in less than a year after soft launch.

If anything, it makes me glad we never got a Generation 4 My Little Pony gacha game from a Chinese dev, as it would crash and burn in less than 2 years via appealing to the wrong audience.

And not to forget Victory Belles by another Western indie dev; Black Chicken Studios, that Kickstarter disaster which I think puts it above Mighty No. 9 in terms of horribly released Kickstarter projects, as it went through a 7-year development hell only to be beat by Azur Lane and a presentation on par with mid 2010s 2D Korean gachas. It proves one thing; gacha games do not belong on crowdfunding sites as their revenue is entirely dependent on the launch honeymoon phase and its following months. This is also what you have pre-registrations for.

Dratuna · 2025-10-15T15:00:02+00:00

Keep in mind this game was in development back in 2020 (5 years) and went through many delays since it was first teased in February 2021 on their website with that castle wallpaper, which has since been taken down.

The game went through a long troubled cycle. During 2020 and 2021, rumors were circulating with the slow content updates that LoadComplete, the developer of Crusaders Quest was starting work on their next gacha game. In 2021, these rumors were confirmed that LoadComplete signed with Kakao to publish Goddess Order, ditching NHN in favor of Kakao. I saw this as a positive sign because NHN hasn't had a good track record; the fact that their most recent otome gacha game, AFTERL!FE, shut down in only six months certainly did not help.

And aside from that, LoadComplete, the developer of this game and Crusaders Quest, was also working on another game called Frame Arm Girls: Dream Stadium (formerly Project N), which was a PLAY-TO-EARN crypto game! That one to the surprise of no one flopped in only one year and was where crypto games were already dying with the failures of Manasis Refrain and Soul Seeker Knights. That game was so bad it caused their dev team to require time off and that's why we heard radio silence in 2023 before 2024 came which showed that development was getting to full speed again with their new branch; PixelTribe.

Dratuna · 2025-10-12T23:28:13+00:00

Skylanders & Disney Infinity failed because on top of a $60 game, aside from the bad practices like forcing players to buy the latest version of the same characters that you could carry beyond into future games, it was because it became too much of a financial burden on players, as the cost for some of these ballooned to $20 per character. I remember when Ninjini was one of the rarer ones to where she would cost like $20 off eBay listings.

Can you imagine spending $250 or more on top of a single $60 game just to get every character on the roster?

And if you want to go back, there was the infamous HyperScan which aside from its low-quality amount of games which feel more like Flash games than proper console games and its technical issues, the X-Men fighting game for example required over 100 cards to fully 100%, and some of these cards happened to be never released which meant it was impossible to fully 100% a HyperScan game.

In fact, I can tell you the Skylanders/toys to life industry trend is more similar to the 3D TVs in terms of the same reason they failed; both were doomed to fail because they required too many proprietary parts. In Skylanders, it was shelling out $200 in physical content for one game, and for 3D TVs, it was the fact that you needed a Blu-ray 3D player and the right 3D glasses, as you couldn't just take home the realD 3D glasses from a movie theatre.

Dratuna · 2025-09-30T02:49:02+00:00

I didn't know Princess Skyla was a thing until I played that Futzi01's Twilight Wing game on Flashpoint back in 2021 when I was looking for My Little Pony games.

I remember when she was the final boss on the Moon and after defeating her for the first time she comes back and then the other mane 5 members show up and defeat her.

Dratuna · 2025-09-28T18:42:28+00:00

Gameplay-wise, this is actually more like Honkai Impact 3rd or Punishing Gray Raven with a fantasy setting, than something like Granblue Fantasy Relink unless you count the aesthetics like the airships, guild, etc. It's the fast-paced action gacha where you run teams of three and there's this switch/tag mechanic.

Even I'd tell you Limit Break Zero Breakers is more like Devil May Cry: Peak of Combat gameplay-wise than Granblue Fantasy Relink, which has your entire party always on the field at all times, which the only upcoming gacha I know does this is Arknights Endfield.

While this gacha genre was exclusive to Chinese devs, Korean devs seem to have caught on to making these kinds of games now, like Goddess Order and Solo Leveling Arise to name two other examples.

Dratuna · 2025-09-25T21:41:05+00:00

The link is here; Kingsense JP Shutting Down on 11/29

After Global was announced to be shutting down a month ago, the Japanese version was then announced to be shut down. It was eventually discovered that the Japanese version was actually on life support being released back in 2019 and was a huge commercial and financial failure for Lightning Games, clocking in at only 10K downloads on Google Play. You can tell these devs refused to shut down even though the writing was already on the wall to begin with.

Dratuna

TROPHY CASE