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.
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.