I had low expectations going in and I was kind of still disappointed maybe?

This isn't a rant about how I hate gacha games because let's be real here, every gacha player on the planet hates gacha. The only real complaint I have about that is how stingy this game is with summon resources. Surprisingly I think the pull rates are pretty fair.

The actual issue for me is the story's overall presentation and its style of narrative and just how much potential it squanders. It's got a lot of unique character stories and ALL of them are good, but they are also conveyed through completely 3rd person narration, and they are way too short for me to form any attachment to these characters. There is too little dialogue or internal monologue for me to truly understand how these characters feel, which is ironic because those sections play out like novels, the medium that lets you have as much dialogue as you want. It's the difference between being told this character was hurt, versus actually getting in their heads and spending time with them to know how badly they were hurt on a personal level. And yeah I know you unlock more chapters of these characters' stories later on and they are better but they are locked behind so much progression and tedious grinding that I don't feel it's worth it. Doesn't help that I don't particularly love the battle system you have to endure to get that progression and the difficulty doesn't scale very well. The event stories are interesting but suffer from the same problems imo

The main story is alright I guess. It's not the best thing Yoko Taro has written but it doesn't have those aforementioned problems since Fio and Levania are somewhat well fleshed out and I liked their arcs, their internal struggles, their character dynamic, and their conclusion a lot. The main story definitely became infinitely more enjoyable when the focus was on Levania because you got a lot of great banter and the story felt less dead. But I still feel like more could have been done with the concept. Yoko Taro is a talented writer and sometimes his writing does shine even in this game, but it feels like he's holding himself back a bit much. There is genuine effort and passion put in, and I still really like the art and the music, but alas, this game probably just didn't do it for me.

I'll come back if they do a Drakengard 1 collab or if someone convinces me the story actually goes crazy later down the line or something idk. Otherwise....... it's got a little something for everyone 8/10 still a better gacha than Mobage Transformers Legends