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Bridging the gap between JRPGs and otome games. 🫡 |
I wasn’t gonna play yet another gacha game and most of the ones I have tried I quit within the hour of me opening it. However I decided to give this one a shot because it felt like they took the graphics in FF7R and put them into a mobile game (and I don’t mean that shitty FF7 Mobile game port that erased everyone’s accounts.) And here I am somehow playing non stop for 2 days until the game literally walls me because I’m a freeloader. 😂😂 (Please I just spent $700 on a new phone and I’m gonna need to lease a new car soon I cannot whale!)
So here we got Love and Deepspace, a Chinese created mobile game that stands out because of its gorgeous 3D graphics and with a voice dub available in English, Chinese, Japanese and Korean to tickle your fancy of voice actors. The creators are the same group who made Mr. Love Queen’s Choice which I somehow could not get into and I almost fell asleep watching the anime.
There’s a story about the heroine having some powers and being part of this crew that kills “Wanderers” in a futuristically themed setting. They kinda haphazardly threw in this “battle” system but honestly from a player POV, it’s just busywork to do daily missions to increase affection with your favorite dude. At least they kinda tried to have a story of some sort but after playing Dragon Raja, my faith in these types of game stories is extremely low lol. (;^ω^) That said at least the game provides auto mode for those who don’t give a rat’s ass about the battle system. In the end your battle skills aren’t what matters – it’s what cards the gacha rngesus throws at you that do. That’s how it works in Nier Reincarnation but Nier Reincarnation doesn’t let me do this:
Characters
There are 3 love interests at the moment: Homura (English: Rafayel), Seiya (English: Xavier) and Rei (English: Zayne). I’m really not a fan of the English names so I prefer to use the Japanese ones especially because I have my voices set to Japanese so in those they always call out the JPN names. So just keep that in mind that if you want consistency for text names and voices, you have to play in the same language. Also if you’re an otome game seiyuu hoe like me, you will enjoy Tachibana Shinnosuke voicing Homura, Sato Takuya voicing Rei and Kobayashi Yusuke voicing Seiya. (́◉◞౪◟◉) Personality wise, Homura is the playful artist who frequently has his back and forth trolling with the heroine. Seiya is the serious mystery man, and least of my favorites as I’m not huge on the quiet mysterious characters. And finally Rei is technically your childhood friend, but he’s a little older and he’s also now your doctor! He’s kind of a typical serious ossan at first but quickly turns into a kuudere (maybe tsundere sometimes?!) and he can be really cute (especially in that scene of him and the kitty cat 🥺). My favorite is Homura with Rei very close at 2nd.
The game is currently in its first launch week so there’s a lot of login rewards, a variety of codes you can get items for (but be careful they are limited) and a variety of missions that give you tons of free gemstones you can use to blow on the gacha to beef up your battle team. After all, if you do not complete battles, you will not be able to progress in the story and therefore by extension not be able to raise affection for your guy. I’m still learning on what the game offers but here are the few things I picked up on that you can do:
Memories
Memories are basically your collection of “cards” of the guys. They range from 3, 4 or 5 stars with 5 being the highest. The 5 star cards will have a video and voice scenario to go with them, the 4 star will just have a picture and voice scenario and the 3 star cards are …well for funsies and for free gems if you upgrade them. 😂 The more you level up all your cards, the more affection it will give to each respective guy so if you have someone you set your eyes on, make sure to boost and upgrade all of his cards as that is one of the quickest ways to boost his affection level with you. Obviously if the gacha gives you cards for a guy you don’t like well….I suggest just upgrading whoever you have the most rare cards with and then try to get your true love later. 😂😂 (Fortunately the gacha RNGEsus praised me and gave me 2 5-star Homuras.)
Dates
So this section has a few different things. The first one you unlock is photo booth where you can take really cute purikura style photos with your guy. As you raise the affection level (or you whale) you can also unlock different poses for your avatar, your man and couple poses. Another feature also catching stuffed animals from a crane game with your guy on a little “date”. You can either let him do it and cheer him on or you can try yourself. Warning: This is oddly realistic to actual Japanese crane game machines so there’s a chance the claw will simply drop or just not pick up the item at all lol. You can only do this free a few times a week so make sure you do it with the guy whose affection you want to raise.
With Him
This is a little section where you can decorate your “room” with items you get from interacting with your guy. You can also see little memos about the guys like their profiles, check your bond level with them and see some stories or little anecdotes about him.
Battle
So this is the battle section. The biggest reason to do this is to get parts to upgrade your memories and if you do one of the other battle sections, depending on the day you can do each guys specific battle section to raise bond points with them. Make sure you add a lot of friends to your list so you can also get stamina from them daily which means you can do more battles for more items!
Story
It goes without saying that like in most JRPGs in order to unlock stuff you need to progress the main story. This should be your first priority but if you play free you will find that you will frequently get “walled”. It seems like the only way to get exp is to complete missions or login daily which is pretty annoying. I frequently would hit a road block daily on the story and have to wait till the following day to get more daily exp bonuses to be able to level up and continue. So make sure to always check the “exp” section which shows what missions you can do and do whatever easy ones you can to get that exp. Unlike in most games and in Nier Reincarnation, you don’t get exp from doing battles. Battles appear to only be for gemstones or bond points or for completing a mission.
Wish and Shop
Wish is basically the gacha because you wish RNGesis would praise you and give you that 5 star card. 😂 The shop is where you can exchange a variety of currency for stuff. One of the things I hated in Dragon Raja was how there was a million currencies for exchanging everything. For example to exchange stuff you get from winning the crane game it’s the “Chocolate Shop”. To exchange gemstones from the gacha it’s another currency. To exchange SAND you get from getting the same card too many times it’s yet ANOTHER currency. All of this can become really overwhelming for new players and it’s such a stupid tactic to get people to spend more money lol. At the moment it’s only 5 currencies that I’m seeing but who knows if that will increase overtime. Nier Reincarnation did this too, so I imagine it must be a commonly used tactic in these gacha games. You really need restraint with these things so you don’t become a gambling addict and beg people for money to throw at the game (I sadly knew someone who did this once and it was really miserable to watch.
Message Log and Main Screen
And finally there’s 2 features where you can interact with the guy. One way is the message log where you can have video and voice calls with them as well as text messages to them. The main screen isn’t just the guy standing there. You can change his outfit, poke him, and depending on your bond level you can check his heartbeat (??), ask him what he recommends you have for dinner, and have some touchy interaction with him like the tweet I posted earlier. The chin grabby is the first one that unlocks but there’s a lot more as you strengthen your bond so that’s something to look forward to. ლ(́◉◞౪◟◉‵ლ)
TL;DR – IF YOU SEE A RED DOT ON ANY OF THE ICONS ON YOUR SCREEN JUST CLICK ON IT AND DO THE STUFF IN THERE AND YOU WILL GET LOTS OF CURRENCY TO THROW AT YOUR 3D MEN GACHA.
And finally I just want to say that while the character creation is VERY detailed and you can make some very unique facial features, unfortunately the hair leaves a lot to be desired. I’m guessing they wanted to keep the hair the same so that it would still be consistent in all the CGs and scenarios but at least in the photo booth you can customize it to look more like what you want it to look like. I honestly am not a fan of my character’s appearance outside the photo booth but I also low key wish that the heroine was “less” customizeable so that I wouldn’t feel like I have to “self insert” without actually really self inserting? If that makes any sense. The heroine actually has quite of her own personality and she says some really funny stuff to the guys. So I actually really like her as “her own” character and I don’t want to “self insert” into that. But at the same time, I love the one on one interactions with the guys so it’s kind of a weird back and forth in my brain lol. 😂
One thing I want to mention while the game has an “ongoing story” it’s not true to the “otome game story” you get in a console game. It’s just an after thought to have “sweet moments” with the gacha cards you get of each guy. Think of it like a stat raiser for each guy with the story kinda doing its own bullshit in the background. So if you’re looking for a fully developed story like in a console otome game, this ain’t it. This is more of a typical fanservicy gacha game so if you don’t mind just enjoying the bits and pieces thrown at you here and there or playing casually then it will probably work out. I think most mobile games now basically ride on the fact that nobody has 50 hours to sit on an otome game and they can just open the app, poke the bishie, see a 10 minute cut scene and log out. I still remember when our “hot dude poking” games were just stuff like the old Hakuoki apps lol.
As you can see, they’re aggressively promoting this game to audiences outside of Asian countries so hopefully it will last a decently long time before the inevitable “gacha game shut down”. So overall other than the annoying exp wall, I’m enjoying the game so far. There’s been a lot of missions and ways to get free gemstones so I was able to get quite a few 4-5 star cards and complete a lot of the battles. I managed to get myself to level 26 in days and level up Homura to level 30 for the bond points. I will keep going as far as I can and if I get walled off by P2W I guess I’ll stop. Though I have also said this about Nier Reincarnation and here I am 2 years later still quietly playing it on the side…😂
Sorry my friend list is currently 100/100 so I have taken down my friend code. Thank you for all of those who added me!
Bread Master Lee 
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