Really burning out on this game with this plan to try and push me to the current content. Too much dialogue, too many gimmicks to try and get around the battle system they broke themselves, no skip for the long animations and no summaries when you skip the 5000th pointless story section. Granblue's been doing this for 8 years at this point. I was supposed to have LB6 done for the event that's currently ongoing but after a few hours of forced team compositions, lengthy dialogues and not understanding what's going on because I'm skipping most of it I've just sacked it off for now. Not sure if I'll go back.

Trying to catch up after a year and a half without a commute as the game wants me to complete 5.5 and 6 by next month for events. I feel like the game's losing its way; in terms of story it's feeling more and more formulaic (arrive in area, nearly get killed, find resistance, bad guy turns to your side, you carry on, stakes increase, big bad wasn't actually that bad, you win) and the battle system's just completely busted at this point. I'd mind less if you could skip NP animations or if you got a better heads up on which bits of text can be skipped and which are directly related to the story. If I'm in a hurry to get through then I'd rather be able to just ignore the stuff involving characters who will die at the end of the chapter.

(Epic of Remnant arc)

There’s still a lot wrong with the client (uses too much memory when lots of stuff is cached, slow loading, no Noble Phantasm skip) but it’s about as close to a visual novel as I’ll get on any system and the fact it’s on my phone is a big part of that. The writing has generally improved as it’s gone on and the scope has increased and I do find the battles to be interesting and fun. The Remnant arc is a kind of “chapter 1.5” between the first part of the game and the Lostbelt section which is ongoing - basically 2017’s added stories. It’s split into four instead of seven but it’s still a lot of reading and a lot of battling, especially with the number of events that go on. Summer event coming soon!

Shinjuku - a great start. Archer was a lot of fun, the setting was a bit meh but the setup and payoff at the end was great.

Agartha - the weakest of the four. An interesting setting that they kind of don’t really do much with, a weird and unsatisfying ending and some awful character artwork (Rider!). The character reuse didn’t do anything for me but at least Berserker reminded me of the ridiculous “Amazoness CEO” in last year’s Halloween event.

Shimousanokuni - possibly my favourite chapter in the game so far, right up there with Camelot in part 1. Musashi was a great character to be around, your non-fighting sidekicks keep everything moving, the reused characters were great - I particularly liked the use of Tamamo, and both Rider and Berserker were good interpretations of their existing characters. I appreciated the playing around with the rules and the little intros in the boss fights. The ending was great too.

Salem - for a while this was right up there but it kind of wound itself up quickly. The concept is really great and there are some great character moments but I was hoping it’d go a bit more into the other side of the story by the end. It’s like they ran out of time. Given how crazy the Chapter 2 prologue ended up being I suspect they had to move onto that to get it out for the end of 2017.

(Part 1)

Been chipping away at this one for the last year and a half or so. Very wordy, but some great character writing and a fun battle system. Less reliant on you having loads of top grade characters for success than other F2P games; I'd say that with a bit of effort it'd be pretty easy to get to the end of the story without any money spent at all.

The events are what made this for me though, the game throws all seriousness out of the window and just smashes these ridiculous characters together. The fourth-wall-destroying official parody comic leaking into the game is a lot of fun too, culminating in a one-day AR shooting gallery game being released.