Whilst every Medium of Media can reasonably tell almost any story, I gotta say that Hypergryph have some goddamn balls going with Gacha as the basis for their cyberpunk fantasy AIDS allegory. Because yes, this game which is about the sociopolitical fallout of a Magical disease and the treatment of the infected is told through the medium of spending $2 on hoping your waifu or husbando pops out of a duffel bag shaped slot machine.

And you know what, I thnk it actually works.

It's bolstered by a core strength of an incredibly strong aesthetic. The presentation in AK is absolutely phenomenal. Whilst there's a few weird character designs, most of them sell the techno-fantasy streetwear look really well, whilst also having enough variation to keep things fresh and interesting.

And fortunately the story is also actually pretty good - at least once you get past the first few pretty dry and boring chapters - but after that, it picks up massively, with each chapter effectively forming a small self contained story about the struggle and dilemmas of the fucked-up world the game takes place in. It's unusually mature and prepared to go to dark places a lot of the time, and frankly maybe less than half of the tales in AK get a happy ending - but it works. And the AIDS allegory stuff is honestly handled very well, focusing on both systemic discrimination and personal prejudices and treating it all with some surprising nuance. Blaze and Greythroat's relatioship in Chapters 5 and 6 is a standout in this regard.

It also, frankly, works well with the Gacha format, which basically demands an absolutely metronomic stream of content, which typically consists of story events which come basically every 3 weeks. And they're mostly pretty great. They do a great job of expanding the world, providing shorter, more focused vignettes, and diversifying the tone - going from full doomer (Darknight's Memoir, which is focused on a recurring antagonist's life as a mercenary) all the way to outright comedic stuff (Ceobe's Fungimist, which is literally about a sctterbrained character hallucinating on mushrooms). It really helps diversify the game, and the long form content structure of AK also ties in well with the 'endless struggle' motif, and that the problems that the player faction faces are systemic and are in there for the long haul. Whilst I'm far from fond of the Gacha mechanics itself, they're easily some of the better ones of the genre, all story content can easily be cleared with freebies, and the game definetly benefits from being a live service - honestly one of the very few I can think of.

Oh I guess there's also gameplay. It's fun - a unit based tower defense game that is frankly way too easy an awful lot of the time - but Harder content, in the form of the contingency contracts and the recent roguelike mode (which was actually better than most modern roguelikes somehow), can be great fun to try and work out strategies for - the only real shame in this is that the super-hard content is usually time limited, and often can also be brute forced by a few incredibly broken characters (Silverash, Eyjafjalla) that would have been nerfed a year ago if this game was in a genre that could get away with that. Avoid using those two if you try out the game for sure.

The overall package really just works better than it has any right to. It's basically the only world in this sort of game that i've ever been able to take seriously, and the story is actually worth paying attention to - whilst AK is also able to serve as an idle, comfort food sort of game at the same time.

So whilst I realise that I cash in every piece of clout I have reccomending this, I actually do. Especially if you can stomach the first few mediocre chapters of gameplay. And obviously dont touch this with a barge pole if you have any tendancies towards gambling or addiction - but if you can weather the urge to dump 100 pulls on the thicc gundam snek or alternative waifu of your choice, I would give it a go.

you can review phone games on here???

Anyway FMA VOICE CAT GIRL WAR CRIMES.

All the hype and media and praise Genshin Impact got this game should have gotten. Fun and engaging tower defense gameplay that can be won via common units. you can only really break the game but as a baseline everything is totally doable with common characters. the biggest thing tho is that rolls give you JUST CHARACTERS (if a f2p game gives you anything else, they're trying to bamboozle you out of $$$) with really cool and decidedly not softcore porn styled girls (personal favs being Edgelord Dweeb Shark Girl Skadi, 'Got lost on her way to Valkyria Chronicles and ended up OP in this Gatcha Game' Bagpipe, and Totally Not Russia Student Class President W/A Harpoon Gun Bear Girl Rosa).

but really, the best part is the vast majority of girls have painted nails.

I played this game for more than a year ever since release, and I have to say, I hate tower defense games, but who knew adding waifus to the game would make it exponentially better.

The story gets better the more you go deeper into it. Honestly, its mechanics are pretty dang nice and cool and I like how they add a twist every event. Contigency Contract is a great defining event that can really tests skills and units. As long as you don't consider the gacha aspect of the game, you can pretty much playthrough it and have fun strategizing (or copying strats on youtube/bilibili).

Unfortunately, I had to stop playing this because it got tiring eventually. Normal banners are forever 50-50s without spark (100% after certain amount of pulls). Which means, you can go 500+ rolls and if your luck sucks, then you simply won't get banner character at all. Limited banners do have spark but they reach all the way to 300. And in a game that barely gives any rolls to begin with, that's pretty bad. I don't really care if other people say I got X in only ___ number of pulls. Because at the end of the day, it's luck. It's not calculable, therefore it does not matter.

Don't let this ruin it for you to play it, however. Definitely a game worth trying, especially if you don't care about pulls.

As much as all gacha are products of hell and companies trying to emotionally manipulate you into spending money, this one is probably one of if not the best. Its forgiving, not at all pay to win or even pay to have fun, the grand majority of character have great character design, and its actually fun to play, if you like the type of game at least. It even has an auto farming option so you dont have to actively torture yourself farming, you can just do something else during that time.
So yeah, dont play it because gacha but if you want to its aight.