Honestly it's kinda like a gatcha trope at this point, I've played quite a few with gritty or depressing stories. Idk why but at some point lots of gatcha stories get all sad.
Well, yes, but not all of them are apparent, especially in the archon quest. Furina's and Nahida's was right there in the archon quest, while the rest, you had to do a few more quests. Very effecient for lazy people.
>sad backstory to get you to pull
Feels like ptn's modus operandi lol. Personally, I find the rely on sadness and tragedy waaay too much but many people love it so I'm in the minority.
Well to be completely honest I'm pretty sure any new archon could have the personality of wet cardboard and ppl would still pull, genshin is really popular and everyone wants archons bc they're generally the best of their element.
You're not wrong tho, making ppl feel for characters def helps with convincing ppl to pull, which honestly is a really interesting ethical dilemma if you think about it, like is making a well written character that must be purchased a form of manipulation to get ppl to spend acceptable? If so does that mean characters can't have any emotional attachment to them? It's prob a consequence of the gatcha model but a interesting question that I don't see brought up often.
Tbh im probably looking way too into this but idk I've been noticing this sad/gritty trend as of late.
That's just silly. Are restaurants manipulative for making good food to entice people to spend money to eat there? The characters are the products, their writing associated with them is one thing you're spending money on.
Yeah I personally don't mind lol, if a characters is well written and enjoyable then I think it should be rewarded (nahida is def my fav gatcha character so far), I just wanted to bring it up bc I thought the idea was interesting
actually, restaurants try to pull in the rich with history/lore of said restaurant building/location. Most obvious ones are the restaurants that advertise how they're a "family" run business, and the recipes are inherited from their great great grandma who was a great person who survived the great depression and economical collapses and hardships just for her family.
Lmao I always find this funny. Like in the new genshin story after you beat the boss and have a heart to heart moment with it, you go out of your way to it's home and beat it up for resources lol. Like I thought we were friends or at least cool, but nah gotta beat it's ass for them mats lmao
They have to in order to reset the story.
If nothing but good things happen the story does not progress and becomes stale.
Basically the bad things happen so the good times stand out more.
Dude I played a cute dress up gacha game for girls called Love Nikki for a few years.
Starts off all cutesy. The MC Nikki gets caught up in a civil war and political coup by the end of Chapter 7 and ends up holding the body of her dying friend Lunar whom you meet in Chapter 1.
Sounds great lol. But nah never played it, It gets too taxing to play too many gatchas. I think I'm currently playing like 3 or 4? 5 at the very most. Of those I only play like 2 daily, the others I just jump in from time to time. I just started snowbreak and it's alright so far, the games fun (it's also going through a fanservice resonance lol)
This. Blue Archive has a story where the entire point is that *it could have been worse* but it very explicitly didn't because Sensei is there. That was the entire point of the introduction scene with the General Student Council president, to have sensei go back in time and make everything not shitty.
Blue Archive's story is basically you playing the Golden route where everythint goes right with only the occasional hiccups. People wank off on the Volume F "what if" scenes and use that as a "omg dark story stuff!" when the entire point is that the story **didn't** go that route. But gacha gamers love pushing the whole "no really our story gets DARK" angle for some reason. Blue Archive's whole appeal is the comfy absurdity of it, and the writers certainly know that.
I wouldn't say that's the entire point. I think it's more accurate to say BAs story is about overcoming those tragedies and hardships which is what makes it a happy story in the end
eden treaty for example had a bad situation go from bad to worse, but the story is about how everyone overcomes the awful situation they're put in. the other volumes are less complex, but the "omg dark story stuff" is undeniably there in the background.
It's just that BA focuses on the resolution instead of wallowing in the angst, which is why despite everything it maintains a hopeful atmosphere
I just see it as an *It could had gotten worse* situation...
Granted, I don't feel like even the Golden Route would save Blue Archive from having [Warp Corp](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V00OK5m4zag&pp=ygUJV2FycCBDb3Jw) be their mode of transport
the video was good but that was the dumbest story, like a 14 year old read junji ito and tried to write a twilight zone episode. like none of the mechanisms or rules are consistent, everything is just handwaved for shock content
Fair, but given what we do know and what we don't (W-Corps' Singularity is a "Reset" that copies and pastes people while the "supposed Singularity" (that W-Corp doesn't even know whom originally had it) is a wormhole into another dimension where time is very different from our dimension), I'd figured it would be a good pick.
Apparently not as much as hoped.
I dont want to invalidate your feelings about the story because I think the core of it is a tried and true introspection about the nature of humanity and how fragile society can be. But if you see my other comment in the thread, there’s simply too much bloat and implausible shock factor bits that remove me from the main premise that I can’t overlook. I know its going for a particular psychological horror feel but personally I think if you go that route its better not to try to explain it as itll start breaking down real fast.
Haven't watched the video because I can't stand whathisface, but if he's just doing a recap of the story as it is in the game he either did a shit job at it or you got it wrong
In the oc, everything is consistent and there's a very specific reason it works like that, and that reason would hold true irl as well if the scenario were to present itself in our world.
I’ll give it some benefit of the doubt but things like pausing death due to slower time flow (consciousness would also stop) makes 0 sense. Then there was some weird shit about putting everyone back in their seats to reset them, it would’ve been way cleaner to explain warps actually make a copy of you and your original is doomed to eternity. If you just boil it down to the basic premise of being stuck in a train forever would make you crazy, sure I can believe that, just make a scifi lord of the flies. But all the extra stuff like melding people together just pulls me out of it.
Yeah, the melding people and stuff is related to jae hon and Elena (that's their shtick) more than the w train itself; it's an extra but not related to the main thing, which is the waiting
The time doesn't get stopped, but gets subtracted as It passes; to achieve this the people on the train have to live through it
The reset, rather than the duplication, is necessary for 2 reasons:
* duplicating the passengers would amount to an infinite money glitch
* the technology just couldn't do that. It moves things, doesn't duplicate them
Lastly, consider that it's a 5 minutes story at best, it can't reach the depth of lord of the flies
Consider that, in universe, this is all made to maximise profit
The wild and depressing side isn’t that Sensei needed to be there, but that she >!needed to not be there in his way. That Sensei being there wasn’t enough to avoid the bad end route because a fully functional General Student Council was a hindrance.!<
This setting could have been utter tragedy. Instead it’s just a few close calls and some unavoidable troubles.
GFL's depression is just a reminder that the real world doesn't play out like storybooks. Heroes die, and the ones who don't realize they have to answer to politics, so the rich and powerful are gonna have their way no matter what you do. Saving the world's out of scope, so best we can do is protect the little things.
Honestly the whole "Love and Hope" meme unironically describes GFL really well. As you pointed out, one of GFL's central themes is that every second of peace and happiness must be bought in blood. Which is precisely why those fleeting moments must be treasured and why you can never stop fighting for them no matter how hopeless things look.
There are depressing moments to set the tone before everything becomes better.
And there are depressing for depressing sake to milk the suffering porn.
BA is the former, and GFL is the latter. Guess which one is more popular ?
BA, but because objectively it's the more approachable game, story has little to do with popularity when people are coming for the cute girls first,
I wouldn't call GFL's story a suffering porn either, the entire theme of the story is to keep on fighting even when things are not looking good.
edit : wordings
GFL is more popular in gacha history. Before it, there was only Azur Lane. After it, everyone and their mother want to be the next depressing anime game with gun-toting waifus. The east like it, the west like it. The otakus like it, the gun nuts like it, the soldier boys like it.
Every game you look at will probably have a GFL mod made by hardcore fans: Darkest Dungeon, Fallout 4, XCOM 2, Call of Duty, Heart of Iron... you name it. Even a no nonsense mil-sim like Door Kickers 2 has a GFL mod. All thanks to its unique "fighting a losing war" story.
Cunny Archive is currently the most popular gacha. In term of porn that is, with even more porn than the likes of Touhou. The story is just yout typical happy and sunshine story with slight hiccups here and there. It's not remotely dark or depressing. Cunny Archive players over-fapped to the "what if" chapter is because they will never get dark stuff like that again in this game.
It doesn't set the tone and nothing will become better because it's already the golden timeline where everything automatically works out well.
Nah, Blue Archive IS more popular than GFL ever been in his life. Just like you said: AL and Arknights actually got more traction to the genre than GFL. If it was only GFL on the sea of gachas that was before, they wouldn't have the hype they would have before.
Downplaying Blue archive plot just because it got a popular porn side, is like telling Fate series is bad just because it got a lot of porn too. So calling it cunny archive is not a demerit.
You can see an actual example: GFL is now getting a new game and is falling hard because is not that good, and even his popularity cant save him. While BA is only getting better.
The new GFL 2 game is falling hard because chinese cuckolds keep cucking themselves. It had already been debunked in this very same subreddit some time ago. Besides, it's not the only GFL related game. Neural Cloud is still staying afloat and fans still hype for Bakery Girl remake even after its third delay or so.
I'm not downplaying Cunny Archive's plot. It's as generic as can be for a gacha game. And comparing it to Fate series is the dumbest take I've seen. Cunny Archive plot can't even match other original gachas like Arknights and PGR, let alone a franchise spanning multiple games and other forms of media with many interwoven storylines like Fate.
AK and AL were carried by GFL's hype. This is from someone who actually played all 3 games on CN servers and experienced that time period when military themed anime media were popping up like mushroom after GFL hit the western world and charmed them with its grim, gritty, down-to-earth "fighting a losing war" storyline: you are not a hero, not the chosen one, only a chess piece on the board. You can't and shouldn't save the world, only those close to you.
Btw, calling the game Cunny Archive is not a demerit. I'm just pointing out what it actually is: a cunny game.
The story always had some light and dark mixed in it. I agree that people just jump all over the depressing side and miss the rest.
Climatic chapters are going to be heavy, but it’s not all that.
Pfft. Blue Archive never got that bad. They still had bright and humorous moments even with the world on the brink of extinction. Like the Sushi Sentai nitwits actually being heroes in their giant robot!
Path to Nowhere, on the other hand... well, it started off dark.
Blue Archive have good mixture of cute/funny and dark/depressing, most of the time you'll be laughing and have a good time but that just make it so when it gets dark, it hits way harder.
BA is still mostly wholesome and funny but it can be depressing/dark if it needs to.
It also helps that event stories are canon which just strengthens the setting and characters which also gives the "valuing everyday life" feeling which is the main appeal of BA.
Considering the game is based on the Divine Comedy, Limbus Company may actually get *less* depressing as time goes on.
...But not before it gets worse.
Limbus kinda just jumps back and forth in terms of tone.
Canto 1: Almost every side character introduced dies in gruesome ways, the focal character fails in a pivotal moment and generally everything went to shit.
Canto 2: Wacky casino heist where at one point the plot progresses because the little German boy knows how to shake those marracas.
Canto 3: Said little German boy is confronted by his past failures as his hometown has been turned into an execution site at the hands of a former friend leading a zealous cult that fetishizes the human flesh.
Canto 3.5: You have to cook a good dinner for a giant chicken. A stoic Frenchman breaks into rap.
Don't forget :
Canto 4: Man was depressed to see his former colleagues and wished to end it all, got stabbed by a golden bough or branch (correct me if i am wrong) from his white haired colleague and killed his friend turned enemy with a glass shard
Canto 4.5: Don speaks broken English of wanting to play beach volleyball
Canto 5: let's just say that the big brother beats sinners ass, mermaids, ishmael compulsion, motherfucking ahab, and pallidification
Canto 5.5: Wacky holiday special, featuring evil Santa and people becoming gifts
For moar clarity:
Canto I - We get to deal with 12 various Sinners, and the fact we can revive them. Despite this, we get to see The Smoke War, nearly die, and watch the one morale support known as Yuri get devoured by an apple and Gregor becoming too broken to stop his mother and her crew as she takes the Bough from us.
Canto II - We engage into a Casino Heist lead by two reasonable folk (which we fuck up absolutely entirely), and through Heathcliff bashing stuff, Sinclair dancing with the repressed energy of a broken killer, Ryoshu's book of words against a gang who will shit talk you down to the dirt like an artform, and a successful bluff from Rodion, we succeed while finding an underground mining colony (that somehow Gregor rallied), and given the second bough from Rodion's old friend and run from an angry Baba Yaga.
Canto III - We *try* to go to K Corp, but thanks to Don being **Don** we have to fight the police drugged up on Ampules and get absolutely demolished by a Grade 1 Fixer. We then take a detour before Nagel Und Hammer says fuck our bus and forces us to try and stop them, leading to running into a Spamton Meme turned Flesh Fetishistic Cult Leader and former friend of Sinclair as we go try to kill her (we succeed).
Intervallo I - We come to K Corp, and we're called by a would-be baseball star to help with a distortion involving a man controlling Headhens. And we agree on the ordeal of endless chicken from the "victim". Heathcliff gets taken over by a headhen (for a while), all 12 of the Sinners are split into two teams, and chaos ensures as an terrible bunch of cooks (Gregor's Crew) and a crew solely relying on Sinclair (Ryoshu's Crew) to make something that'll rattle the Distortion's memories and failing...*twice* (With the first time having him get a debuff ***from Ryoshu's Cooking***), and things only change when Heathcliff, when asked if anyone's ever tasted this food (which was under the order of the War Hero Gregor) slams it into Meursault's face. Cue a multi-paragraph description assigned towards the failings of his own crew (especially Yi Sang) from the man who barely spoke a damn word throughout all 3 Cantos while Outis overthrows Ryoshu and insults her own team with (mostly) fake reasonings (including one that renders Faust speechless), with her cooking doing the trick...*only to reveal the distortion's mother actually just wanting Pizza* as well as the "victim" actually being the person responsible for this fucking mess. And yes, the Distortion recovers
Honestly it’s kinda nice because it starts off at a low point so it makes the happy parts feel much more impactful. Seeing the sinners start to work and respect each other, or experience growth despite how shitty it all is kinda comes off as inspiring.
Instead of losing one’s happiness the story is more about clawing at what happiness you can find despite it all
One of the few where thr depresso is served straight into your veins and end up in some monthy python black mirror episode where you don't know if you should laugh or cry
I think that the intent of it is that some people have mixed or negative feelings when it comes to the tone switching but I consider it a massive draw for me and many others because it feels strangely human... Like yeah it's fucked up but at the same time good things happen and sometimes you gotta laugh at a situation because the other option is to despair.
yup, thats my impression of limbus company. Feels like a satirical cyberpunkian depiction of humanities plights and problems condensed into psychological depiction of things. With literature inspirations adding onto it, Yi sangs tale being about a man who lost contact with close friends after an argument, sinclair losing his childhood too early on, ishmaels obcession. Many things which could and do happen today without realizing it
I'm the same. I thought Sinclair was going to be the beloved younger brother type in need of protecting when I started the game, but to find it was actually >!Yi Sang!< made me equally so happy and so sad.
When he smiled... God. Immediately shot to my favorite sinner. I will protect that smile.
Me playing NIKKE:Goddess Of Victory "whoa jiggle physics"
The lore: this character doesn't like Christmas because before they became cyborgs her friend died in her arms in an orphanage due sickness and protecting her from beatings from the orphanage owner
Genshin's gameplay: Look at these silly Hilichurls. They're so lazy, all they want to do is sleep and eat meat. They like to dance and keep slimes as pets. They talk funny. They're so fun to watch.
Genshin's lore: >!Hilichurls are the cursed survivors of a country that defied the gods. They wear masks because their own faces drive them insane. This cave is where they go to die because it's the only place they *can* die. Their very existence is suffering.!<
No clue, but honestly, given the state of it in the login screen and the fact that pieces are falling to the ground, I imagine there's no one up there maintaining the place. IIRC, there's also a line in the manga about it very slowly getting closer, which could mean it's just straight falling down.
wish i hadn't clicked this..i was expecting it to be dark lore but holy shit that fuck up
https://preview.redd.it/04s08dlctggc1.jpeg?width=200&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=8e358a6c87ba38f4a9dfef794d8487933a70f4f8
Oh dont worry. Its implied the little sprites you follow around that lead you to chests basically had the same fate prior, but are now cursed to forever look for a home that not only no longer exists, but also no longer remember!
Yay primos!
>!your tutorial partner became a later boss and you manage to get her back only for the enemy to divebomb her turning her into a vegetable state. Luckily, she still remembers you!<
God, I love Nikke.
>!and then you let her go and never see her again (In chapter 26 you meet with her caretaker and ask about her wellbeing and that it)!<
https://preview.redd.it/ulosncqttggc1.jpeg?width=200&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=4cffb876277006491966b9d72d23c020fbbd4c21
>!and they told you that that person is extremely sad and angry because we left her. But now she becomes understanding!<
This one genuinely hurt so much
People say Blue Archive is disturbing, but then it's what-ifs and chapters before Sensei arrives and makes things better.
If anything, BA is one of the softest gachas on the market.
Most BA players don't even say that lol. They explicitly tell everyone that BA is mostly a light hearted game and that is the exact appeal.
I have no idea where this idea of BA players selling everyone on dark and depressing moments comes from.
Most long time BA players, when asked to talk about Volume F, will focus on Sensei's absolutely chad moments or the Kaiju scene. Not the dark depresso stuff.
I guess some tourists became new players because of the PV and played it for the "dark and depressin" stuff.
Yeah BA is a lighthearted game, but it gets dark when it needs to. I get that some people prefer dark and depresso stuff over happy and light stuff, but dark and depresso doesn't equal being good. It was already stated in Volume 3 about happy endings being cliche and generic. Also, will never forget that kaiju battle scene.
There's no rerun banner for Limited Characters like W. You gotta have to spark them during a Limited Banner and buy them from the Store. W is available to spark during the Anniversary Limited Banner (like Lonetrail's banner), not the Summer or the Sui banner.
Unfortunately, it is 300 Pulls to get 300 Tokens for you to exchange one Limited Character. You could also somehow got lucky and hit W as an off-banner 6 Star but it is highly unlikely. This is why its a pain in the ass to get Limited Characters that you missed if you're a F2P.
funnily enough Epic Seven kinda went the opposite way. Arc 1 and 2 were pretty dark but 3-4 were slightly more laid back. But then again, I guess once your second arc involves fighting a Royal guardsmen possessed by a greater God (for reference, E7's world lies on the corpse of a *lesser* god. Or I guess they are called "stars" in the lore) who is used to open a warp gate to allow him to pass in....
Yeah, I guess scaling it back down to country level politics is one of the two inevitable solutions (the other being crazy powerscaling a la DragonBall Super).
------
Surprisingly, Magicami kinda sorta chilled a bit too. First two arcs were super dark, the first being discovering how Magical girls work in the universe, and the 2nd being an exploration of a few doomed worlds. 3rd arc (the last we get on Global RIP) was more about recruiting the demon girls to your side and nowhere near as gritty on the girls themselves.
But Magicami works on "infinite universe, infinite possibilities" logic in the dress stories, so you can find any amount of pallete cleansers or cursed scenarios as you wanted. the choice is yours! (and ofc they aren't canon lol)
Honestly the setting may be dark but I find most of PM games have pretty hopeful stories. not in the sense that bad thing never happen but that people can overcome it if they are determined enough.
Limbus company world consistently gives the middle finger towards the people living it.
I mean death murder and killing is so common that people who live in that world don't even care anymore someone could be getting mauled and mutilated in a random corner and they would barely care
To be fair, Blue Archive shows you a dying student in the first 5 minutes and has you take a bullet to the head. I get majority of the advertisements don’t signal this at all, but the game itself makes it very clear what kind of story you’re getting into.
Ehh, I think the funny scene of Yuuka shrugging off a bullet and declaring that she will ban hollow point bullets in her academy sells the kind of story BA will tell in the future better.
Or Sensei defeating the infamous terrorist (Wakamo) by inexplicably making her fall heads over heels for him on the first encounter.
Honestly, I think that's good. I like it better when games have that balance in between being silly and depressing, you know?
Like, if a game is always depression everywhere and takes itself too seriously, it starts losing it's emotional stakes and gets stale
Meanwhile, if it's just fun and games without any real conflict it's harder for me to be invested in the story
Can it really get any worse than >!having to destroy hypothetical earths with varying degrees of opposing systems with the kicker being the genocide of innocents in the pursuit of restoring the "proper" world!<
Nikke shows a horrid world and then abruptly flips to a happy bottle episode for some of its event stories. Blue Archive is a happy world with brief dives into disaster before moving back to happy world. So Nikke is more like FGO in story tone than Blue Archive imo.
Blue Archive maintains an overall light tone. It only occasionally gets deeply serious, and never for long. Often they inject some brightness into the serious moments, so it never gets TOO serious.
Kind of. iirc, for the most part the depresso espresso story has already happened. I.e., this is why a certain character is this way is because of story.
BA, in a bit of a twist of these types of story, is a story about how life gets better.
Just think of BA as the combination of every SoL CGDCT anime out there (K-On, Bocchi, Yuru Yuri, etc), but with guns. That's the status quo.
Occasionally there would be something that would try to disrupt it, but Sensei's presence prevents it from ever being truly destroyed.
Seriously, the game sometimes likes to go meta about the tropes they use, and one notable example is how Sensei warps the meta narrative to be a happy one.
Like, there's an antagonist that goes on about how the story will never be the same and how it'll get really dark, and Sensei just says no.
I think that's why it works with BA, it's a happy and cheerful world, crazy and absurdly fun at times, that's why when things get really dark and grim or in the face of actual death when everything is so "cheerful" it hits like a train.
Yeah, I play both but prefer Nikke due to its tone, also the gacha rates and overall quality are higher imo, the default live2D in characters kills BA png for example, also the character designs in Nikke are much more detailed. You go and try it if you have some free time, in the end it will depend on your specific taste.
Well, it is the Cerebus Syndrome in effect. But then again, that one only says that when comedic/lighthearted works get longer, the story gets more coherent and the plotlines get thicker, making it much likelier to get more dramatic, but not depressing, so maybe it is just that gacha games have a particular affinity for having comedy shift into depressing
The recent world 18 story on gurdian tales was quite depressing. All the tragedy happened on season 2 story was all for a one wish to meet someone again and he was so close to achieve it but sadly, guardian put a stop to it and saved the demon world.
It was a bittersweet ending and another mystery that with no answers has been added to make the story more confusing.
Dont ask me for spoilers, because i willingly watched kr gt players stream to get spoiled. If yall play the game, then world 18 is coming on tuesday on global.
Is curious that most depresive gachas are chinese, in comparison you see more variety in japanese and korean gachas.
For example, two korean gachas, Blue Archive is 90% happy 10% depresive, and Counterside is 50%-50%.
Is normal to have some depresive parts in a story, but chinese games usually have more depresive things even in games that at first don´t seems depresive, like Genshin with all the shit in the lore.
if you saw how it is like to live in china, youd be surprised how much chinese culture is nowadays "no war in bang sin see" with the CCP trying their hardest to do everything in 1984 and people barely having much choice in their lives... yeeh i can see now why alot of chinese gachas are depresso espresso express to the veins
Most gacha is just utsuge VN (VNs with depressing stories from start to end) with extra features.
Though, Blue Archive can be a Nakige ala Rewrite. Can equate it with Grisaia trilogy too (though iirc Grisaia is also Utsuge kind of thing).
Blue archive fans always talk about how dark their story is when in reality it only happens for one volume
It's like a one and done kind of thing unlike other gachas That incorporate their dark story throughout their game
Azur Lane has a few sentimental moments and some sad/bad things will happen, moments but it's unusual and I barely think about the game as "depressing" or "sad"
Disagree. Especially when SI stuff ends up affecting the rest of the cast by forcing them have some unfound reverence for your character.
FEMC or bust for me
It sounds like you're talking about bond stories in gacha games. In BA's situation, sensei has no romantic relationships with other characters in the main story.
That why i olayed brave exvius or the alchemist code,shit happens on chaoter one,more shits happen everytime with some happy moments.
You cant be more depressed if the story is sad from the start
I play the occasional waifu gacha but mostly I play gachas made for women and husbando ones.
Even those are like this for some reason 😂
My two favorites: Twisted Wonderland and Love Nikki
Love Nikki is a dress-up gacha game. It starts off really cute and wholesome. Just exploring this world where all conflict is solved by having an impromptu fashion show. By the end of Chapter 7, you’re embroiled in a civil war and a huge political coup and the MC holds her friend Lunar’s body (whom you meet in Chapter 1) as she is dying from a fatal wound 🙃
Twisted Wonderland, how it started: silly anime boys at a silly school doing silly things. How it’s going: Someone had a mental breakdown and became corrupted by evil magic because the corrupted spirit of his younger brother (whom he was partially responsible for getting killed) convinced him to release demons into the world.
Another character has a mental breakdown because his father figure has lost his magic and is slowly dying but won’t tell anyone and is going to just F off and die alone so he won’t be a burden to anyone. Meanwhile the MC, this character’s first friend in 170 years of life, also dropped a bomb that they’ve finally found a way home and is leaving forever. Cue corrupt magic mode putting everyone in the school and on the island into an endless dream sleep while their bodies slowly wither to death on the outside.
Same thing with Nikke. The advertisements are all about boobs and ass but the story is basically a depression and war crimes simulator with your 3 brain cells.
Honestly it's kinda like a gatcha trope at this point, I've played quite a few with gritty or depressing stories. Idk why but at some point lots of gatcha stories get all sad.
Probably to get you to swipe the card. I know Hoyo definitely gave all the recent archons a sad backstory to get you to pull, just look at Furina.
The audacity! They playing with our feeling! They must be paid for this! 😡
>They must be paid for this! 😡 Oh we're paying them alright.
YEAH! WE SHOULD BOYCOTT THEM! /j just in case since im on reddit
actually all the archons had sad backstories, Furina’s is just done extremely well.
Well, yes, but not all of them are apparent, especially in the archon quest. Furina's and Nahida's was right there in the archon quest, while the rest, you had to do a few more quests. Very effecient for lazy people.
>sad backstory to get you to pull Feels like ptn's modus operandi lol. Personally, I find the rely on sadness and tragedy waaay too much but many people love it so I'm in the minority.
Well to be completely honest I'm pretty sure any new archon could have the personality of wet cardboard and ppl would still pull, genshin is really popular and everyone wants archons bc they're generally the best of their element. You're not wrong tho, making ppl feel for characters def helps with convincing ppl to pull, which honestly is a really interesting ethical dilemma if you think about it, like is making a well written character that must be purchased a form of manipulation to get ppl to spend acceptable? If so does that mean characters can't have any emotional attachment to them? It's prob a consequence of the gatcha model but a interesting question that I don't see brought up often. Tbh im probably looking way too into this but idk I've been noticing this sad/gritty trend as of late.
That's just silly. Are restaurants manipulative for making good food to entice people to spend money to eat there? The characters are the products, their writing associated with them is one thing you're spending money on.
Yeah I personally don't mind lol, if a characters is well written and enjoyable then I think it should be rewarded (nahida is def my fav gatcha character so far), I just wanted to bring it up bc I thought the idea was interesting
actually, restaurants try to pull in the rich with history/lore of said restaurant building/location. Most obvious ones are the restaurants that advertise how they're a "family" run business, and the recipes are inherited from their great great grandma who was a great person who survived the great depression and economical collapses and hardships just for her family.
It's like you're asking if people are buying books because of their good characterization and story. The concept is just the same.
Nikke: .>!Hey, shoot that girl who just became your best friend!<
Lmao I always find this funny. Like in the new genshin story after you beat the boss and have a heart to heart moment with it, you go out of your way to it's home and beat it up for resources lol. Like I thought we were friends or at least cool, but nah gotta beat it's ass for them mats lmao
The f up part is after this event the next part they shows you is their gacha. Literally saying, hey your nikke died so now roll for a new one. Wtf.
Making you feel sorry for the hard life the waifus have
Hey it works tho, lots of ppl really empathize with the waifus and pull
They have to in order to reset the story. If nothing but good things happen the story does not progress and becomes stale. Basically the bad things happen so the good times stand out more.
Dude I played a cute dress up gacha game for girls called Love Nikki for a few years. Starts off all cutesy. The MC Nikki gets caught up in a civil war and political coup by the end of Chapter 7 and ends up holding the body of her dying friend Lunar whom you meet in Chapter 1.
You know I think I heard about this one, ppl kept talking about this. Sounds like an interesting game tho
Did you play Memento mori? Literally every single character has a sad history. No exceptions!
You mean that idle game that has slideshows in lieu of actual gameplay?
exactly that one
Sounds great lol. But nah never played it, It gets too taxing to play too many gatchas. I think I'm currently playing like 3 or 4? 5 at the very most. Of those I only play like 2 daily, the others I just jump in from time to time. I just started snowbreak and it's alright so far, the games fun (it's also going through a fanservice resonance lol)
"Pay the fee or we make your lolis sad." No, Noooooo. Take it! Take my house. Anything, just make them smile again.
Blue Archive is still mostly a happy game. I feel like some players overwanks Blue archive's few depressing moments like it's GFL.
This. Blue Archive has a story where the entire point is that *it could have been worse* but it very explicitly didn't because Sensei is there. That was the entire point of the introduction scene with the General Student Council president, to have sensei go back in time and make everything not shitty. Blue Archive's story is basically you playing the Golden route where everythint goes right with only the occasional hiccups. People wank off on the Volume F "what if" scenes and use that as a "omg dark story stuff!" when the entire point is that the story **didn't** go that route. But gacha gamers love pushing the whole "no really our story gets DARK" angle for some reason. Blue Archive's whole appeal is the comfy absurdity of it, and the writers certainly know that.
I wouldn't say that's the entire point. I think it's more accurate to say BAs story is about overcoming those tragedies and hardships which is what makes it a happy story in the end eden treaty for example had a bad situation go from bad to worse, but the story is about how everyone overcomes the awful situation they're put in. the other volumes are less complex, but the "omg dark story stuff" is undeniably there in the background. It's just that BA focuses on the resolution instead of wallowing in the angst, which is why despite everything it maintains a hopeful atmosphere
I just see it as an *It could had gotten worse* situation... Granted, I don't feel like even the Golden Route would save Blue Archive from having [Warp Corp](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V00OK5m4zag&pp=ygUJV2FycCBDb3Jw) be their mode of transport
the video was good but that was the dumbest story, like a 14 year old read junji ito and tried to write a twilight zone episode. like none of the mechanisms or rules are consistent, everything is just handwaved for shock content
Fair, but given what we do know and what we don't (W-Corps' Singularity is a "Reset" that copies and pastes people while the "supposed Singularity" (that W-Corp doesn't even know whom originally had it) is a wormhole into another dimension where time is very different from our dimension), I'd figured it would be a good pick. Apparently not as much as hoped.
I dont want to invalidate your feelings about the story because I think the core of it is a tried and true introspection about the nature of humanity and how fragile society can be. But if you see my other comment in the thread, there’s simply too much bloat and implausible shock factor bits that remove me from the main premise that I can’t overlook. I know its going for a particular psychological horror feel but personally I think if you go that route its better not to try to explain it as itll start breaking down real fast.
I wouldn't blame ya for that mindset
Haven't watched the video because I can't stand whathisface, but if he's just doing a recap of the story as it is in the game he either did a shit job at it or you got it wrong In the oc, everything is consistent and there's a very specific reason it works like that, and that reason would hold true irl as well if the scenario were to present itself in our world.
I’ll give it some benefit of the doubt but things like pausing death due to slower time flow (consciousness would also stop) makes 0 sense. Then there was some weird shit about putting everyone back in their seats to reset them, it would’ve been way cleaner to explain warps actually make a copy of you and your original is doomed to eternity. If you just boil it down to the basic premise of being stuck in a train forever would make you crazy, sure I can believe that, just make a scifi lord of the flies. But all the extra stuff like melding people together just pulls me out of it.
Yeah, the melding people and stuff is related to jae hon and Elena (that's their shtick) more than the w train itself; it's an extra but not related to the main thing, which is the waiting The time doesn't get stopped, but gets subtracted as It passes; to achieve this the people on the train have to live through it The reset, rather than the duplication, is necessary for 2 reasons: * duplicating the passengers would amount to an infinite money glitch * the technology just couldn't do that. It moves things, doesn't duplicate them Lastly, consider that it's a 5 minutes story at best, it can't reach the depth of lord of the flies Consider that, in universe, this is all made to maximise profit
Appreciate the explanation but yeah probably just not my cup of tea. I would’ve assumed this was a much longer story than 5 min
The wild and depressing side isn’t that Sensei needed to be there, but that she >!needed to not be there in his way. That Sensei being there wasn’t enough to avoid the bad end route because a fully functional General Student Council was a hindrance.!< This setting could have been utter tragedy. Instead it’s just a few close calls and some unavoidable troubles.
And his constant reminder that he can fix it... by opening his wallet lol.
I think HI3rd started the whole thing
GFL breathes depression as if it were oxygen.
GFL's depression is just a reminder that the real world doesn't play out like storybooks. Heroes die, and the ones who don't realize they have to answer to politics, so the rich and powerful are gonna have their way no matter what you do. Saving the world's out of scope, so best we can do is protect the little things.
Honestly the whole "Love and Hope" meme unironically describes GFL really well. As you pointed out, one of GFL's central themes is that every second of peace and happiness must be bought in blood. Which is precisely why those fleeting moments must be treasured and why you can never stop fighting for them no matter how hopeless things look.
There are depressing moments to set the tone before everything becomes better. And there are depressing for depressing sake to milk the suffering porn. BA is the former, and GFL is the latter. Guess which one is more popular ?
BA, but because objectively it's the more approachable game, story has little to do with popularity when people are coming for the cute girls first, I wouldn't call GFL's story a suffering porn either, the entire theme of the story is to keep on fighting even when things are not looking good. edit : wordings
GFL is more popular in gacha history. Before it, there was only Azur Lane. After it, everyone and their mother want to be the next depressing anime game with gun-toting waifus. The east like it, the west like it. The otakus like it, the gun nuts like it, the soldier boys like it. Every game you look at will probably have a GFL mod made by hardcore fans: Darkest Dungeon, Fallout 4, XCOM 2, Call of Duty, Heart of Iron... you name it. Even a no nonsense mil-sim like Door Kickers 2 has a GFL mod. All thanks to its unique "fighting a losing war" story. Cunny Archive is currently the most popular gacha. In term of porn that is, with even more porn than the likes of Touhou. The story is just yout typical happy and sunshine story with slight hiccups here and there. It's not remotely dark or depressing. Cunny Archive players over-fapped to the "what if" chapter is because they will never get dark stuff like that again in this game. It doesn't set the tone and nothing will become better because it's already the golden timeline where everything automatically works out well.
Nah, Blue Archive IS more popular than GFL ever been in his life. Just like you said: AL and Arknights actually got more traction to the genre than GFL. If it was only GFL on the sea of gachas that was before, they wouldn't have the hype they would have before. Downplaying Blue archive plot just because it got a popular porn side, is like telling Fate series is bad just because it got a lot of porn too. So calling it cunny archive is not a demerit. You can see an actual example: GFL is now getting a new game and is falling hard because is not that good, and even his popularity cant save him. While BA is only getting better.
The new GFL 2 game is falling hard because chinese cuckolds keep cucking themselves. It had already been debunked in this very same subreddit some time ago. Besides, it's not the only GFL related game. Neural Cloud is still staying afloat and fans still hype for Bakery Girl remake even after its third delay or so. I'm not downplaying Cunny Archive's plot. It's as generic as can be for a gacha game. And comparing it to Fate series is the dumbest take I've seen. Cunny Archive plot can't even match other original gachas like Arknights and PGR, let alone a franchise spanning multiple games and other forms of media with many interwoven storylines like Fate. AK and AL were carried by GFL's hype. This is from someone who actually played all 3 games on CN servers and experienced that time period when military themed anime media were popping up like mushroom after GFL hit the western world and charmed them with its grim, gritty, down-to-earth "fighting a losing war" storyline: you are not a hero, not the chosen one, only a chess piece on the board. You can't and shouldn't save the world, only those close to you. Btw, calling the game Cunny Archive is not a demerit. I'm just pointing out what it actually is: a cunny game.
The story always had some light and dark mixed in it. I agree that people just jump all over the depressing side and miss the rest. Climatic chapters are going to be heavy, but it’s not all that.
Pfft. Blue Archive never got that bad. They still had bright and humorous moments even with the world on the brink of extinction. Like the Sushi Sentai nitwits actually being heroes in their giant robot! Path to Nowhere, on the other hand... well, it started off dark.
"Fuckers took my sinners, Can't have shit in DisCity"
Could be worst, it could be the City from Limbus Company
https://preview.redd.it/1f92h3yl1pgc1.jpeg?width=1125&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=8efed00bcaf4f94a4625ae95032a1e0e14f8da7f
"Sinners" Image cuts to an absolute nightmare that is KCCO mechanized deathstacks in GFL
Blue Archive have good mixture of cute/funny and dark/depressing, most of the time you'll be laughing and have a good time but that just make it so when it gets dark, it hits way harder.
BA is still mostly wholesome and funny but it can be depressing/dark if it needs to. It also helps that event stories are canon which just strengthens the setting and characters which also gives the "valuing everyday life" feeling which is the main appeal of BA.
you chose the worst screenshot possible to show Arius squad
Yeah, this whole image is super misleading.
Limbus Company: You are in fucked up world to begin with. No, we won't hide it how violent people are in The City. Deal with it
Considering the game is based on the Divine Comedy, Limbus Company may actually get *less* depressing as time goes on. ...But not before it gets worse.
Limbus kinda just jumps back and forth in terms of tone. Canto 1: Almost every side character introduced dies in gruesome ways, the focal character fails in a pivotal moment and generally everything went to shit. Canto 2: Wacky casino heist where at one point the plot progresses because the little German boy knows how to shake those marracas. Canto 3: Said little German boy is confronted by his past failures as his hometown has been turned into an execution site at the hands of a former friend leading a zealous cult that fetishizes the human flesh. Canto 3.5: You have to cook a good dinner for a giant chicken. A stoic Frenchman breaks into rap.
Don't forget : Canto 4: Man was depressed to see his former colleagues and wished to end it all, got stabbed by a golden bough or branch (correct me if i am wrong) from his white haired colleague and killed his friend turned enemy with a glass shard Canto 4.5: Don speaks broken English of wanting to play beach volleyball Canto 5: let's just say that the big brother beats sinners ass, mermaids, ishmael compulsion, motherfucking ahab, and pallidification Canto 5.5: Wacky holiday special, featuring evil Santa and people becoming gifts
For moar clarity: Canto I - We get to deal with 12 various Sinners, and the fact we can revive them. Despite this, we get to see The Smoke War, nearly die, and watch the one morale support known as Yuri get devoured by an apple and Gregor becoming too broken to stop his mother and her crew as she takes the Bough from us. Canto II - We engage into a Casino Heist lead by two reasonable folk (which we fuck up absolutely entirely), and through Heathcliff bashing stuff, Sinclair dancing with the repressed energy of a broken killer, Ryoshu's book of words against a gang who will shit talk you down to the dirt like an artform, and a successful bluff from Rodion, we succeed while finding an underground mining colony (that somehow Gregor rallied), and given the second bough from Rodion's old friend and run from an angry Baba Yaga. Canto III - We *try* to go to K Corp, but thanks to Don being **Don** we have to fight the police drugged up on Ampules and get absolutely demolished by a Grade 1 Fixer. We then take a detour before Nagel Und Hammer says fuck our bus and forces us to try and stop them, leading to running into a Spamton Meme turned Flesh Fetishistic Cult Leader and former friend of Sinclair as we go try to kill her (we succeed). Intervallo I - We come to K Corp, and we're called by a would-be baseball star to help with a distortion involving a man controlling Headhens. And we agree on the ordeal of endless chicken from the "victim". Heathcliff gets taken over by a headhen (for a while), all 12 of the Sinners are split into two teams, and chaos ensures as an terrible bunch of cooks (Gregor's Crew) and a crew solely relying on Sinclair (Ryoshu's Crew) to make something that'll rattle the Distortion's memories and failing...*twice* (With the first time having him get a debuff ***from Ryoshu's Cooking***), and things only change when Heathcliff, when asked if anyone's ever tasted this food (which was under the order of the War Hero Gregor) slams it into Meursault's face. Cue a multi-paragraph description assigned towards the failings of his own crew (especially Yi Sang) from the man who barely spoke a damn word throughout all 3 Cantos while Outis overthrows Ryoshu and insults her own team with (mostly) fake reasonings (including one that renders Faust speechless), with her cooking doing the trick...*only to reveal the distortion's mother actually just wanting Pizza* as well as the "victim" actually being the person responsible for this fucking mess. And yes, the Distortion recovers
I started that game recently and one of the first things the main characters do is fucking kill each other lol
Dantehhh. The sinners were arguing over the last pancake and it was annoying. You have to rrvive them now manager.
Honestly it’s kinda nice because it starts off at a low point so it makes the happy parts feel much more impactful. Seeing the sinners start to work and respect each other, or experience growth despite how shitty it all is kinda comes off as inspiring. Instead of losing one’s happiness the story is more about clawing at what happiness you can find despite it all
One of the few where thr depresso is served straight into your veins and end up in some monthy python black mirror episode where you don't know if you should laugh or cry
I think that the intent of it is that some people have mixed or negative feelings when it comes to the tone switching but I consider it a massive draw for me and many others because it feels strangely human... Like yeah it's fucked up but at the same time good things happen and sometimes you gotta laugh at a situation because the other option is to despair.
yup, thats my impression of limbus company. Feels like a satirical cyberpunkian depiction of humanities plights and problems condensed into psychological depiction of things. With literature inspirations adding onto it, Yi sangs tale being about a man who lost contact with close friends after an argument, sinclair losing his childhood too early on, ishmaels obcession. Many things which could and do happen today without realizing it
Jist like Warhammer 40K, Limbus Company become so grimdark that entire setting become normal.
No joke, Canto 4 made me ***cry.*** The first piece of media to make me cry in what feels like years was from Limbus Company. I love Project Moon.
I'm the same. I thought Sinclair was going to be the beloved younger brother type in need of protecting when I started the game, but to find it was actually >!Yi Sang!< made me equally so happy and so sad. When he smiled... God. Immediately shot to my favorite sinner. I will protect that smile.
Heck the first thing that happened to us and our group. Is get beheaded and die
Limbus Company: "We won't sugarcoat it!" **"VINE BOOM INTENSIFIED"**
Me playing NIKKE:Goddess Of Victory "whoa jiggle physics" The lore: this character doesn't like Christmas because before they became cyborgs her friend died in her arms in an orphanage due sickness and protecting her from beatings from the orphanage owner
Genshin's gameplay: Look at these silly Hilichurls. They're so lazy, all they want to do is sleep and eat meat. They like to dance and keep slimes as pets. They talk funny. They're so fun to watch. Genshin's lore: >!Hilichurls are the cursed survivors of a country that defied the gods. They wear masks because their own faces drive them insane. This cave is where they go to die because it's the only place they *can* die. Their very existence is suffering.!<
......Genshins gods give greek gods a run for there money for cruelty and pettiness
How many people/gods are even up there rn? Isnt it just that kiana clone?
The answer is a resounding *shrug*
No clue, but honestly, given the state of it in the login screen and the fact that pieces are falling to the ground, I imagine there's no one up there maintaining the place. IIRC, there's also a line in the manga about it very slowly getting closer, which could mean it's just straight falling down.
wish i hadn't clicked this..i was expecting it to be dark lore but holy shit that fuck up https://preview.redd.it/04s08dlctggc1.jpeg?width=200&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=8e358a6c87ba38f4a9dfef794d8487933a70f4f8
Oh dont worry. Its implied the little sprites you follow around that lead you to chests basically had the same fate prior, but are now cursed to forever look for a home that not only no longer exists, but also no longer remember! Yay primos!
Also child sacrifices and genocide.
>!Didn't care, if they said "YA!" I'll still beat their ass!< >!Still, Celestia took the word return to monke too seriously!<
they probably deserve it tbh or simply in the crossfire. Dealing with the abyss is bad stuff. Also Celestia only struck if abyss related.
>!your tutorial partner became a later boss and you manage to get her back only for the enemy to divebomb her turning her into a vegetable state. Luckily, she still remembers you!< God, I love Nikke.
>!and then you let her go and never see her again (In chapter 26 you meet with her caretaker and ask about her wellbeing and that it)!< https://preview.redd.it/ulosncqttggc1.jpeg?width=200&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=4cffb876277006491966b9d72d23c020fbbd4c21
>!and they told you that that person is extremely sad and angry because we left her. But now she becomes understanding!< This one genuinely hurt so much
Blue Archive is still overwhelmingly positive and light-hearted. Now Nikke, that is a gacha with a lot of depressing moments.
People say Blue Archive is disturbing, but then it's what-ifs and chapters before Sensei arrives and makes things better. If anything, BA is one of the softest gachas on the market.
Most BA players don't even say that lol. They explicitly tell everyone that BA is mostly a light hearted game and that is the exact appeal. I have no idea where this idea of BA players selling everyone on dark and depressing moments comes from. Most long time BA players, when asked to talk about Volume F, will focus on Sensei's absolutely chad moments or the Kaiju scene. Not the dark depresso stuff. I guess some tourists became new players because of the PV and played it for the "dark and depressin" stuff.
Yeah BA is a lighthearted game, but it gets dark when it needs to. I get that some people prefer dark and depresso stuff over happy and light stuff, but dark and depresso doesn't equal being good. It was already stated in Volume 3 about happy endings being cliche and generic. Also, will never forget that kaiju battle scene.
In Arknights, you're already depressed as you start.
Sadness with a touch of war crimes
And don't forget the child soldiers.
Still waiting for W's banner to get my favourite war criminal.
There's no rerun banner for Limited Characters like W. You gotta have to spark them during a Limited Banner and buy them from the Store. W is available to spark during the Anniversary Limited Banner (like Lonetrail's banner), not the Summer or the Sui banner. Unfortunately, it is 300 Pulls to get 300 Tokens for you to exchange one Limited Character. You could also somehow got lucky and hit W as an off-banner 6 Star but it is highly unlikely. This is why its a pain in the ass to get Limited Characters that you missed if you're a F2P.
I know all that. That's why I'm not rolling anything rn, since I'm aiming for those 300 pulls
Ah okay gotcha.
Nikke, Path to Nowhere, and Arknights basically all start the game with a kick to your kidneys.
funnily enough Epic Seven kinda went the opposite way. Arc 1 and 2 were pretty dark but 3-4 were slightly more laid back. But then again, I guess once your second arc involves fighting a Royal guardsmen possessed by a greater God (for reference, E7's world lies on the corpse of a *lesser* god. Or I guess they are called "stars" in the lore) who is used to open a warp gate to allow him to pass in.... Yeah, I guess scaling it back down to country level politics is one of the two inevitable solutions (the other being crazy powerscaling a la DragonBall Super). ------ Surprisingly, Magicami kinda sorta chilled a bit too. First two arcs were super dark, the first being discovering how Magical girls work in the universe, and the 2nd being an exploration of a few doomed worlds. 3rd arc (the last we get on Global RIP) was more about recruiting the demon girls to your side and nowhere near as gritty on the girls themselves. But Magicami works on "infinite universe, infinite possibilities" logic in the dress stories, so you can find any amount of pallete cleansers or cursed scenarios as you wanted. the choice is yours! (and ofc they aren't canon lol)
Limbus: ***HOLD OUR BEER***
Honestly the setting may be dark but I find most of PM games have pretty hopeful stories. not in the sense that bad thing never happen but that people can overcome it if they are determined enough.
Not to mention how it plays with characterization (and anti-characterization) so damn well.
Yeah while the setting is that the theme of the stories is moving forward and trying to be better
LIMBUS: ***MY DRINK IS CURIOSITY***
Limbus : ***PLEASE FLY BROKEN WINGS.***
I swear that Limbus Company is the reverse of what the OP said!
*Fly, broken wings*
Y'all don't even wanna know what's going on in granblue
Limbus company world consistently gives the middle finger towards the people living it. I mean death murder and killing is so common that people who live in that world don't even care anymore someone could be getting mauled and mutilated in a random corner and they would barely care
Yeah! I think the setting of Project Moon make people don't want to try it because most people say "if the setting is unforgiving,why bother!"
To be fair, Blue Archive shows you a dying student in the first 5 minutes and has you take a bullet to the head. I get majority of the advertisements don’t signal this at all, but the game itself makes it very clear what kind of story you’re getting into.
Ehh, I think the funny scene of Yuuka shrugging off a bullet and declaring that she will ban hollow point bullets in her academy sells the kind of story BA will tell in the future better. Or Sensei defeating the infamous terrorist (Wakamo) by inexplicably making her fall heads over heels for him on the first encounter.
Honestly, I think that's good. I like it better when games have that balance in between being silly and depressing, you know? Like, if a game is always depression everywhere and takes itself too seriously, it starts losing it's emotional stakes and gets stale Meanwhile, if it's just fun and games without any real conflict it's harder for me to be invested in the story
Can it really get any worse than >!having to destroy hypothetical earths with varying degrees of opposing systems with the kicker being the genocide of innocents in the pursuit of restoring the "proper" world!<
What a dogshit and misleading way to use Blue Archive in this meme.
Jokes on you, my gacha game has been depressing from the start.
Hey, BA is actually the longer it is the more happy endings!!
Also gacha games in relationship stories: Commander/Dokutah/Sensei, brush your teeth properly, stay hydrated, don't go exhausted and sleep well!
This is false. Doktah is constantly overworked by their CEO daughter.
If I play Blue archive, can I expect the same style of storytelling like Nikke?
Nikke shows a horrid world and then abruptly flips to a happy bottle episode for some of its event stories. Blue Archive is a happy world with brief dives into disaster before moving back to happy world. So Nikke is more like FGO in story tone than Blue Archive imo.
Blue Archive maintains an overall light tone. It only occasionally gets deeply serious, and never for long. Often they inject some brightness into the serious moments, so it never gets TOO serious.
like as in animation or the depresso espresso story?
Depresso espresso story, the whole its a happy story before turning into a tragedy that makes you question life
Kind of. iirc, for the most part the depresso espresso story has already happened. I.e., this is why a certain character is this way is because of story.
BA, in a bit of a twist of these types of story, is a story about how life gets better.
It is the opposite, Nikke is like 90% dark and 10% happy, BA is the other way around. Since I prefer grim stories I like Nikke the most.
If you like dark and grim, have you given Path to Nowhere a try?
Seriously? I did not know that. Feels weird seeing a happy story and a small amount of dark.
Just think of BA as the combination of every SoL CGDCT anime out there (K-On, Bocchi, Yuru Yuri, etc), but with guns. That's the status quo. Occasionally there would be something that would try to disrupt it, but Sensei's presence prevents it from ever being truly destroyed. Seriously, the game sometimes likes to go meta about the tropes they use, and one notable example is how Sensei warps the meta narrative to be a happy one. Like, there's an antagonist that goes on about how the story will never be the same and how it'll get really dark, and Sensei just says no.
I think that's why it works with BA, it's a happy and cheerful world, crazy and absurdly fun at times, that's why when things get really dark and grim or in the face of actual death when everything is so "cheerful" it hits like a train.
Yeah, I play both but prefer Nikke due to its tone, also the gacha rates and overall quality are higher imo, the default live2D in characters kills BA png for example, also the character designs in Nikke are much more detailed. You go and try it if you have some free time, in the end it will depend on your specific taste.
We are already in the 6th layer of hell in FGO at this point. I want them to wrap this up so badly.
Glad we started rock bottom depressing in Limbus Company so the only way remaining is the way up... Innit?
Do you watch any flashgitz video about Honkai Star Rail?
Nope but I'm into the game so I already braced up
Well, it is the Cerebus Syndrome in effect. But then again, that one only says that when comedic/lighthearted works get longer, the story gets more coherent and the plotlines get thicker, making it much likelier to get more dramatic, but not depressing, so maybe it is just that gacha games have a particular affinity for having comedy shift into depressing
The Yoko Taro philosophy. If you don't know what I mean, google up yoko taro presentation or this the title "Making weird game for weird people"
The recent world 18 story on gurdian tales was quite depressing. All the tragedy happened on season 2 story was all for a one wish to meet someone again and he was so close to achieve it but sadly, guardian put a stop to it and saved the demon world. It was a bittersweet ending and another mystery that with no answers has been added to make the story more confusing. Dont ask me for spoilers, because i willingly watched kr gt players stream to get spoiled. If yall play the game, then world 18 is coming on tuesday on global.
BA's story is really good tho.
Yeah you’re right about that
Is curious that most depresive gachas are chinese, in comparison you see more variety in japanese and korean gachas. For example, two korean gachas, Blue Archive is 90% happy 10% depresive, and Counterside is 50%-50%. Is normal to have some depresive parts in a story, but chinese games usually have more depresive things even in games that at first don´t seems depresive, like Genshin with all the shit in the lore.
if you saw how it is like to live in china, youd be surprised how much chinese culture is nowadays "no war in bang sin see" with the CCP trying their hardest to do everything in 1984 and people barely having much choice in their lives... yeeh i can see now why alot of chinese gachas are depresso espresso express to the veins
Most gacha is just utsuge VN (VNs with depressing stories from start to end) with extra features. Though, Blue Archive can be a Nakige ala Rewrite. Can equate it with Grisaia trilogy too (though iirc Grisaia is also Utsuge kind of thing).
Meanwhile Another Eden just introduced mechas.
Didnt AE always have Mechas? I recall the whole Synth Hydra vs Giant Mecha fight happening a long while back
There's nothing more depressing than waking up to realise GOZ is the next raid.
Goz raid is more depressing than some alternate timelines in BA.
I mean dokkan battle is depressing but for entirely non story reasons
A good gacha lore should sometimes be wholesome, sometimes depressing. Well actually, I just want to embrace more charming waifus.
Guardian Tales did a parkour
Yeah, Blue archive on bluestacks is really like that, but I still love that game
Nikke inovated being depressing since the prologue
Blue archive fans always talk about how dark their story is when in reality it only happens for one volume It's like a one and done kind of thing unlike other gachas That incorporate their dark story throughout their game
one volume? the story was fucked up in several ocassions
Nikke: Hold my beer
Azur Lane has a few sentimental moments and some sad/bad things will happen, moments but it's unusual and I barely think about the game as "depressing" or "sad"
Nikke was depressing immediately from the start
Too bad the existence of Sensei turns me off, otherwise I'd probably try Blue Archive tbh
You're turned off by your own existence?
I don't read self-insert stuff, so I guess. I wouldn't be me.
You can read it without being too much of a self-insert though. But different folks, different strokes I guess.
Disagree. Especially when SI stuff ends up affecting the rest of the cast by forcing them have some unfound reverence for your character. FEMC or bust for me
It sounds like you're talking about bond stories in gacha games. In BA's situation, sensei has no romantic relationships with other characters in the main story.
Still a pass if the MC is a SI
If that's your taste or preference then it's yours.
Not The Battle Cats, though.
Come play Dokkan battle we replace depression with monkeys
I don't know, I like it when they jerk tears from more than one place.
Nikke has been depressing from the get so I can only imagine what it'll be like in a few years
PGR (forbidden name here, I know) : hold my beer
That why i olayed brave exvius or the alchemist code,shit happens on chaoter one,more shits happen everytime with some happy moments. You cant be more depressed if the story is sad from the start
NGL, I think its 2-3 years ago, I was crying for Honkai to give Kiana a happy moment. I believe I was close to begging for it.
I play the occasional waifu gacha but mostly I play gachas made for women and husbando ones. Even those are like this for some reason 😂 My two favorites: Twisted Wonderland and Love Nikki Love Nikki is a dress-up gacha game. It starts off really cute and wholesome. Just exploring this world where all conflict is solved by having an impromptu fashion show. By the end of Chapter 7, you’re embroiled in a civil war and a huge political coup and the MC holds her friend Lunar’s body (whom you meet in Chapter 1) as she is dying from a fatal wound 🙃 Twisted Wonderland, how it started: silly anime boys at a silly school doing silly things. How it’s going: Someone had a mental breakdown and became corrupted by evil magic because the corrupted spirit of his younger brother (whom he was partially responsible for getting killed) convinced him to release demons into the world. Another character has a mental breakdown because his father figure has lost his magic and is slowly dying but won’t tell anyone and is going to just F off and die alone so he won’t be a burden to anyone. Meanwhile the MC, this character’s first friend in 170 years of life, also dropped a bomb that they’ve finally found a way home and is leaving forever. Cue corrupt magic mode putting everyone in the school and on the island into an endless dream sleep while their bodies slowly wither to death on the outside.
BanG Dream’s gonna get there soon enough probably.
EVEN COOKIE RUN, **COOKIE RUN**, BECAME DEPRESSING. WHY????
Not with skip button!
Same thing with Nikke. The advertisements are all about boobs and ass but the story is basically a depression and war crimes simulator with your 3 brain cells.
i wish there were more happy nice nothing goes wrong stories in gachas ngl