#hjp hype

[starzionn]

harry james potter is the prettiest sassiest sweetest most earnest brattiest snarkiest bravest sexiest most endearing cutest boy in the whole word. thankd for coming to my ted talk

[whinlatter]

something tells me you don't really like tonks, just a hunch xD

For the relationship ask if you're still doing it: harry and remus, molly and remus, teddy and adromeda. I would love to see what do you think <3

noooo i love tonks! i had a ball writing her and think that @evesaintyves’ rendering of her is one of fandom’s greatest gifts 😭 i just find it very funny that harry thinks she should low key get a grip. and as a clumsy young woman who should myself get a grip, i say: get off her case, hjp.

ok the remus + tonks/black extended family universe... hyped for this one. delicious choices, thank you anon. (i have a few more in the inbox i'm going to take a stab at but am trying to avoid spoilery ones or ones where i risk boring you all again by repeating old talking points, so if i don't get to one pls forgive me...)

right — to business. we begin with everybody looking at remus lupin waiting for him to put his crippling self loathing aside to write (1) singular letter to his dead friend's son:

i jest (to an extent). but i do think the entirety of harry and remus' dynamic is best encapsulated in one singular scene in PoA:

“When they get near me — ” Harry stared at Lupin’s desk, his throat tight. “I can hear Voldemort murdering my mum.” Lupin made a sudden motion with his arm as though to grip Harry’s shoulder, but thought better of it.

i know there's a very understandable move in AUs to imagine what would have happened if remus had raised harry - or, more often, if remus had been 'allowed' to raise harry by dumbledore. but looking past the whole plot-requiring-harry-to-be-at-the-dursleys thing, the truth is, canon remus lupin would never have put himself forward to raise harry, because of his own (not unfounded!) concerns about the precarity of his existence and the dangerousness of his condition. remus' sense of self - more specifically his fear of himself, and his very low self worth - consistently lead him to hold harry at arm's length from the moment he's introduced in the series until its bitter end. i don't think remus at all approves of the way harry is treated at the dursleys. but i can very much imagine that remus thinks it would still be better than the life he could have given harry if he ever had been called upon to serve as his primary caregiver. one of the most interesting implicit dynamics in the series is that harry notices this and does, to some extent, resent it (obviously the fact that he only ever calls him 'lupin' in his narration, though uses remus to his face, and also: 'Harry had received no mail since the start of term; his only regular correspondent was now dead and although he had hoped that Lupin might write occasionally, he had so far been disappointed.') while the harry & remus fight in DH is about harry's view of what remus ought to do re tonks and the baby, it’s also harry coming as close as saying to remus: you're letting your own child down like you let me down. ('I’m pretty sure my father would have wanted to know why you aren’t sticking with your own kid, actually... He had it coming to him,” said Harry. Broken images were racing each other through his mind: Sirius falling through the veil; Dumbledore suspended, broken, in midair; a flash of green light and his mother’s voice, begging for mercy… ‘Parents,’ said Harry, 'shouldn’t leave their kids unless—unless they’ve got to.')

molly and remus: i think this is a very, very underrated relationship! i know there’s a lot of molly-bashing around these days, especially if you’re a marauders and/or sirius and/or wolfstar stan. but i think it is very very overlooked that the person who looks after adult remus the most from 1995 onwards, and who shows him some of the deepest trust and roots for his happiness, is molly. for a man who has plainly known a huge amount of financial/food/housing insecurity, and who is so villainised in wider wizarding society, it is no small gesture for molly to not only provide for remus materially but also to trust him in a house with all of her children and encourage him in a romantic relationship he struggles to feel entitled to and worthy of. (i love sirius, but he is in no fit state to ‘look after’ remus in the last year of his life, and fandom’s continued unwillingness to recognise the importance of domestic/caregiving labour as a vital contribution to the resistance will never not be problematic af). remus clearly values and admires molly in return - the only time he actually ever entertains a parent/guardianship role is when molly is weeping over her boggart, crying onto remus’ shoulder (‘what must you think of me?’) and he assures her that if anything were to happen to her and arthur, he would be a part of the team making sure her children are taken date of (‘what do you think we’d do, let them starve?’) remus’ relationship with molly is often the more mild-mannered translator of her viewpoint to others (especially others with hot tempers), and mediator trying to find middle ground between molly’s protective instincts and the battle/ready instincts of others. (more grist to my sirius & ginny parallels mill — in DH, when a fuming ginny is desperately trying to sneak off to fight in the battle, it’s remus who appeals to molly and ginny to find the compromise of ginny staying in the room of requirement to know what’s going on but not actively fight, a mirror image of his role mediating the dispute between sirius and molly over harry’s right to know what’s going on at grimmauld in ootp…) molly accepts this compromise, a sign that she trusts remus implicitly (she never frets that a werewolf is living among her children in ootp onwards, and invites him to christmas readily even after months undercover with the pack) and also feels able to call him out (‘i’ve always said you’re taking a ridiculous line on this, remus’.) this is too long but basically — justice for molly and remus, unlikely buds!

teddy and andromeda: i weirdly think a lot about teddy lupin these days. i tend to imagine teddy as a very mild-mannered, affable, calm child, like who remus might have been had he not been bitten, with tonks' heart and sociability but also with something of remus' more philosophical disposition. i think he'd slip very naturally into a big brother role because, in part, he does see himself as having a responsibility to take care of people, and i think this would shine through in his relationship with andromeda. we know teddy was raised by his gran, and i imagine she feels enormously protective of him, perhaps bordering on strict in her desire to keep him safe from the harm that came to all the rest of her family. but i like to imagine teddy didn't act out against this too much, in part because he understands where it comes from and in turn feels very protective of andromeda. growing up in the aftermath of the war would make teddy as a child particularly aware of the grief and pain and the silences among the adults around him, and i think teddy would take any compensatory protective strictness on andromeda's part with good grace, and humour her for it. i like to think teenage/young adult teddy serves as the translator for any of his gran's more prickly edges, and that they have a very close relationship that both of them really treasure.

[camrensrealbish]

I'm really disappointed in myself for letting this PR ruin C completely for me. Like literally no excitement at all cause eventually I know she aka her team will follow up with PR. I remember getting really hyped about everything that she did, she posted, said etc even when she was with Ew. It was so exciting watching her and her career blossom like a flower only for winter to come and put everything to sleep. The only thing they didn't put in connection with him is the HJP but still overshadowed with PR, everything else was just ruined with that PR. It's painful to watch.

HJP?

No wonder it ruined C for you, because the only version of her we saw for the last year is the PR version, whose aim is to promote her boyfriend. We’re all tired

[noxtms]

❝       MINISTRY OF MAGIC ANNOUNCES DISSOLUTION OF THE NATIONAL HOLIDAY FORMALLY KNOWN AS HARRY JAMES POTTER DAY. also known as hjp day, the holiday marked the birthdate of the once named ‘chosen one’ and was observed on the 31st of july, annually, since it’s official registration by ex minister, kingsley shacklebolt. a statement issued earlier this morning from the desk of minister antonin karkaroff and shocking the nation, further explained the monumental decision made :

six years ago, the former classmates and close friends of harry james potter campaigned for, and succeeded in establishing, a national holiday which has been observed with utmost respect every year, since. with all due respect given to the individuals responsible for the creation and observation of this day of recreation, the ministry of magic pushed through this honour under the impression that the aforementioned subject had been martyred for a cause others fought valiantly and died tragically for. mr potter’s reappearance into our society directly contradicts the version of events that mr shacklebolt maintained each hjp day, to date, and thus, the ministry no longer deems the 31st of july worthy of the distinction it was allotted. after much discussion with our full wizengamot, and with the promise no decision has been made lightly, we have decided to remove harry james potter day from the registry for observed national holidays.    ❞

WHO, WHAT, WHEN, WHERE :  

for six long years, wix across britain have gathered on the weekend of the 31st of july to celebrate harry james potter day - a national holiday campaigned for by his former classmates in the wake of his death & pushed through by ( ex ) minister of magic, kingsley shacklebolt. in diagon alley, this meant slashed prices in stores and a strange sort of street festival ( though the poison apple on knockturn alley made waves, last year, by offering a free ‘daiqharry’ to everyone who purchased a ticket for their special party on the night of the 31st ). in hogsmeade, madam rosmerta opened her doors only to the hogwarts professors, friends and as good as family who wanted to gather and share a drink on harry’s birthday, with many using it as an excuse to get together and remember the boy they’d lost. godric’s hollow had the worst of it, by all accounts - the journey to the little town became a sort of pilgrimage, stops including a peek at the potters home, a chance to lay flowers at their hidden statue in the square, and a number of attempts made to find the cloaked graves of the ill fated family. 

thanks to the ministry of magic’s shocking decision, all of that is gone ! no one will be found searching a graveyard in vain, this year, and the three broomsticks will be welcoming in its regulars, as normal. you might still find a few stores trying to cash in on the hype ( notably, flourish & blotts is really pushing rita skeeters highly fictionalised biography on harry’s life ) on diagon alley, and the posion apple had too good a drinks menu for hjp day to let it go, now - but as surprising the decision was, this is the first real show of just how scandalised a lot of the community was by the reveal of harry’s ‘true fate’. it feels to many as if no one is up in arms about this - and why should they be, really ?

OUT OF CHARACTER:

first of all, allow me to say - you’re all welcome to use the above in your roleplaying these next few weeks, and delve into your characters feelings about the choice made. there are going to be characters who feel the injustice of it, since it is erasing an honour bestowed on someone who deserved it because the truth is now being called a lie. there are also going to be a LOT of characters who have no connection to the da or order, and who aren’t aware that it is a lie - i think it’s a nice opportunity to wade into how weird the whole thing might make someone feel, and how they mightn’t disagree with the ministry’s decision. consider the above sort of plot drop-y, because it does work really well as one and i’m interested to see what you guys can come up with ! 

in the tradition of hjp days past, however, the main attraction is not the hjp day of it, at all. for the next two weeks, and exclusively in our mini event discord, everyone is strongly encouraged ( & somewhat required ) to do at least two flashback threads set at any point in your muses past - even the last seven years - exploring anything that you want to explore. this can be a key event in your muse’s life or a general slice of life type thing, that’s entirely up to you. the IMPORTANT thing is that you should rp this thread with someone who you either haven’t done anything with yet, or who has a character that yours is implied to be connected to, but you haven’t gotten the chance to do much with, yet. i’m only putting two as a requirement, and they’re not per character, just in general - those two i’d like to see people branch out with, but you’re welcome to do as many as you like. there cannot be too many ! 

the mini event starts today ( with the posting of this message ) and will end two weeks from now, on august 14th. 

flashbacks are to be confined to the discord, and none should be posted on the dash, but you’re more than welcome to delve into how your characters feel about the ministry’s choice there ! that’s okay ! just no flashbacks

if you have any questions or concerns, please don’t hesitate to message the main ! please like this post once you’ve read it.

[stuckinapatriarchalbullshitland]

I remember emisonme saying something about how C maybe doesn't want her projects to be related to the circus and that's why she doesn't post anything about the movie or her music and that makes sense, a lot. Look what happened with the her podcast and the HJP - totally overshadowed by stupid rumors and the circus in general. And when you think about the movie, it's weird how silent she is about it cause it's her debut as an actress, the least she could do is keep the hype up until the release like the others from the movie do, but emisonme totally opened my eyes about it. C still has obligations to the contract so that's why her sm accounts turned into showmila shipper/susan stan accounts. So let's hope that they are gonna make smooth transition between the break up and her being a solo artist again. That stupid relationship will always be brought in connection with her name by the media, that's for sure. 

.

[murasaki-murasame]

I might not have gotten my pipe dream wishes granted, but the Dragalia Digest was still a very pleasant surprise overall, and I have a lot of thoughts on it now, lol

TL;DR: *Joe and Xania voice* mom said it’s our time to be meta flame units :)

I still want a Switch port for this game eventually, but I can’t complain about not getting one when basically everything else about the Digest was good, lol.

It ended up feeling a bit more . . . conservative with some of the announcements they made, but that might be for the best since the game’s in a bit of a precarious state. So playing it safe is probably a good idea.

I was a bit worried that they might announce more aggressive monetization schemes, but the New Years packs and stuff seem pretty much in line with how these things have been done up till now, and basically nothing else about the shop has been changed aside from the UI stuff.

The Agito fights and the 6-star weapons were my biggest concern going into this since it could make or break people’s patience with the game, but it seems on paper like it hits a good middle ground. The requirements to access the Agito fights seem relatively low, and the 6-star weapons seem to be be around the level of a HDT1, so I think that hits a good balance of being strong but not powercreep-y in a way that puts off people who’ve been grinding for HDT2 weapons. The fact that they announced in advance that higher difficulties for the Agito fights and higher tiers of the 6-star weapons will be added later makes me think that they’re trying to roll out this stuff much more slowly than the HDT stuff in order to control the powercreep more and not overwhelm people, which is a good idea. I imagine that Expert or Master Agito fights will probably expect you to have something like a HDT2 weapon, but by the time those fights get released it probably won’t be a big deal.

The Mana Spiral upgrades also seem way more potent than I was expecting, across the board. I can’t access the main website at the moment so I don’t have a full picture of what the buffs are like, but from what I’ve been reading they all sound like pretty huge buffs that will go a long way toward making more units more meta, or at least more accepted, in end-game content.

For one thing, the Mana Spirals are gonna let us level up a unit to level 100, which is a nice surprise. It seems like that alone gives units a pretty big upgrade to their HP and strength, which should make it way easier to meet certain thresholds.

It also looks like basically every single skill and ability of each unit is getting a new upgrade level, which is way more than I was expecting. I figured that only the second skill and one of the abilities of each unit would get an upgrade, but this is a way bigger buff than I thought. They even buffed stuff like skill prep/status resistance 100% abilities by adding new effects to them, which is great.

It looks like Ezelith and Naveed are going to be way stronger in general across the board, which I appreciate, but I’m more hyped for the 3-star Mana Spiral upgrades, since those seem like a really big deal. It sounds like basically every flame unit that got a Mana Spiral upgrade here can now inflict burn with basically any attacking skills they have, which seems like a really big deal. If Mikoto in particular can get an upgrade like that later, I have a feeling that Rena might fall out of favour in HMS due to there being way more options for burn enablers who don’t have to worry as much about stuff like getting stunned. In general the idea of Xania being able to inflict burn with both of her skills is kinda crazy, lol. It makes me relieved that I went ahead and got her to 50MC a while ago. I think she might actually be better than S-Maribelle with these upgrades [until she gets buffed too], but I really want to get more info on how her kit changes with these buffs. Sadly Marty doesn’t seem to be getting buffed yet since he wasn’t a launch unit, but hopefully everyone will get Mana Spirals in the long run.

It’s also exciting that they’re giving these upgrades to random 4-star units as well. It gives me hope that Thaniel will get buffed later on so that he’s closer to if not better than Jiang Ziya.

They also decided to give Botan and Cassandra buffs in this initial batch which is kinda funny to me. Botan at least makes sense since the event with her is getting rerun really soon so it’s a good time to buff her, but Cassandra getting buffed right out the door is so obviously them going ‘we’re sorry about the whole Gleo thing’, lol. They also apparently nerfed HJP in a way that makes bleed and poison way better against him, and I think they added poison to Cassandra’s kit, so it really feels like they’re trying to address the issues with HJP. Which I appreciate. And I think that this is probably the best way to handle it, since this makes it way more viable to have different types of team comps there than just four Gleos.

It’ll be interesting to see if we start getting characters soon who have their Mana Spiral upgrades built into their kits right away, while older units get theirs slowly patched in. I guess we’ll see what happens with the new zodiac units.

And on that note we’ve got at least some info about the new zodiac event/banner, and it all looks pretty neat. I was wondering how they’re gonna handle it, but it looks like they’re gonna do a really short rerun of the Ieyasu event to bridge Christmas and New Years before getting into a new raid event for the new zodiac units. Which seems like a pretty great way to handle it. I wouldn’t be too surprised if they do this every year from now on, especially if each new zodiac event story builds upon the stuff from the Ieyasu event story.

On top of it just being a relief that this isn’t JUST gonna be rerun central yet again, I’m really happy that the new units are gonna be [mostly] light-element, lol. That was my main wish for them, honestly. My light roster just feels really weak so I want more good ones, but I don’t want to bother chasing after DY-Malora. It’s kinda surprising that it looks like the main 5-star banner unit is gonna be a 5-star light dagger, while the 4-stars are a blade and a wand. I guess this makes it a bit less likely that Gala Luca will be a light dagger, so maybe he’ll be a light blade or something instead. With how . . . iffy daggers are as a weapon type, the new main 5-star unit doesn’t really seem like they interest me much, and Nobunaga being a 5-star flame blade is kinda annoying and unoriginal in general, but I’ll probably still summon on the banner. Hanabusa and Chitose at least look neat. One of them will probably be the welfare unit, but I hope that the introduction of Mana Spiral upgrades means that event welfare units won’t be held back by bad kits anymore. Botan’s getting some pretty big upgrades, so I hope the new welfare unit follows suit.

I was gonna complain a bit about this banner mostly being female characters, but the more I think about it the more I could see either Chitose or Mitsuhide being a boy, so I’m gonna just wait and see how it goes, lol.

It looks like the banner during the Ieyasu rerun is gonna just be a rate-up banner for the units getting Mana Spiral upgrades, and the new zodiac banner seems to have two 5-star adventurers on it [plus the dragon], so it’s looking like they might not be bringing Ieyasu back. Or if they do he might just not be on rate-up like what happens with gala units. Which would suck since I still want to get him, but it’s not a huge deal if I miss out on them. I’m still hoping that they might eventually add zodiac units into the permanent pool so that we don’t miss out on them permanently, but that’s a bit of a pipe dream.

The ‘prize showcase’ stuff seems . . . interesting, but I probably still won’t do more than just the free daily tenfolds for the next banner. I don’t want to be tempted right before the NY banner, especially since I already have all of the units getting Mana Spiral upgrades, so it’s a pretty useless banner for me.

I also just wanna point out that Ebisu is an EXTREMELY good cat dragon and I love him :)

It’s not a big surprise to me that we’re getting a platinum summon for the NY banner, but it’s interesting to me that you’ll be able to do the adventurer and dragon platinum banners three times each. I guess it’s their way of getting a bit more profit out of people, but it’s something I can deal with. It’s still a relatively low limit on how much diamantum you can spend on it, and it looks like there’s only gonna be three 5-star units to worry about, if you include the dragon, so you might not even need to summon three times on each one to get what you want.

To be completely honest I’m not a F2P player, but I doubt I’d do more than like one of the adventurer platinum summons. Mostly because the new 5-stars just don’t interest me a whole lot, from what we’ve seen of them. I’ll at least use my regular summoning resources first and see what I get. With the resources I’ll have stocked up by the time the event starts, I should be able to do over 200 summons on it right away, so hopefully that’ll get me what I want. Then I’ll start saving for the next gala.

Oh yeah and they also officially announced the Monster Hunter collab, to the surprise of absolutely nobody, lmao. I’m not into that series so I don’t really have anything to say about it, but I’m glad that lots of people seem excited about it. It seems a bit boring that we might only be getting a free dragon out of it, but oh well.

Anyway I’m pretty happy with everything they showed. All of the stuff with the new bosses, weapons, adventurer buffs, etc etc, really seem like they’re going to go a long way toward making the endgame less punishing, and team comps more varied. It looks like they’re addressing a lot of the main issues people have had, so I’m glad they seem to be handling it well.

[murasaki-murasame]

Lots of stuff’s been happening lately in Dragalia Lost lately, and I’ve also been trying to get into other gacha games on the side, so I suppose it’s time for another round of gacha game liveblogging, lol.

I ended up spending way too many resources on the second summer banner and the Valentines rerun, considering how little interest I had for the units in either of them aside from Summer Luca, but at least it all paid off with me getting some absurd luck on the current wind banner. I somehow managed to get all three of the new banner units in a single tenfold summon after raising my pity rate once, so that’s neat. I ended up pushing my luck and spending another tenfold voucher which got be absolutely nothing though, so I guess that was just the universe’s way of telling me not to get cocky. So now I’m just saving for the anniversary. I’m really tempted by Lin You being on rate-up at the moment since I really want her, but at this point I’ll just dream summon her for the anniversary so I’m just gonna skip this banner now that I have the new units on it.

I did manage to at least get Summer Luca, Summer Cleo, Pop-Star Siren, Valentines Orion, and Valentines Ezelith across the two previous banners, but in hindsight I really should have just quit after getting Luca. Oh well, lol. Funnily enough I ended up entirely skipping the dragon showcase [outside of free daily summons], since even though it was way better value than the Valentines rerun, I just have no real interest in pulling dupes of 5-star dragons I already have.

It also turned out I was totally right about us getting a Su Fang event rerun to start off September, so now I have my incredibly good wind dagger boi promoted to 5 stars with 45 mana nodes. The fact that I managed to get Vayu, and that we got a dagger skill damage wyrmprint, make me feel even better about investing in him. I’m also happy to get Peng Lai since he’s at least somewhat of an upgrade over Mercury who’s currently the only good water HP dragon I have.

Once the next MG treasure trove reward batch comes in, I’m probably gonna promote Noelle since she seems really good for Water MG. Which is good since my wind team is kinda lacking in terms of DPS, although the fact that I also have Victor now helps that a lot. I’m really curious to see if we get more support units like this that buff teammates of a certain element type. It’s a cool way to have support units that are really strong without being the absolute best unit to use for every single team.

I thought we were gonna get a Wu Kong banner here to go with the Su Fang rerun, but I at least ended up being right about it being a wind banner in general, and we got a 5-star wind blade and 4-star wind wand, which were the other unit types I was expecting to go with Wu Kong since they were some of the biggest gaps in the wind roster. At this point I can only assume that they might be planning a raid event or something where Wu Kong’s the welfare unit. But who even knows. Maybe they’ll do a banner for him at some random point down the road.

We’re also getting closer and closer to the anniversary, and we’re slowly starting to get news about what to expect from this month in general. I really wish we had more specific info about what the anniversary will bring so that I know what I’m saving for in the first place, but oh well. At the very least the gala’s always a good thing to save for, so that’s my fallback option if nothing between now and then interests me.

Thankfully we at least know now that we’re getting Chapter 10, HZD, and Void Nidhogg this month, so that’s neat. After how we didn’t get Void Nidhogg last week I thought we wouldn’t be getting HZD this month, but I guess this isn’t gonna be like HJP where we got the respective void battle before it came out. I did always think it’d make the most sense to release HZD for the anniversary to cap off the game’s first year, though, so this makes sense.

I’m really curious to see what Chapter 10 brings, with how much they’re hyping it up. Plus they dropped a not so subtle hint at the fact that they’re going to be ‘adding new summonable adventurers’ in the same timeframe as Chapter 10′s release. They typically don’t just randomly go ‘we’re gonna have another summon banner soon’ without giving some details about what it’ll be, so I think they’re intentionally keeping it a bit of a secret, but the timing makes it seem like it’ll be related to Chapter 10. And since they mentioned the chapter will involve the siblings coming into contact with each other, I guess it’ll probably be a banner with some of them on it. Which would [thankfully] be an easy skip for me since I’m not really interested in any of them as characters, and I’m not really in dire need to chase after new units just because they might be really powerful. Either way, if we get a banner like that next, I think the most likely candidates would probably be Chelle, Zethia, and maybe Emile or Valyx. They’re at least the ones that are more aligned with Euden so it’d make sense for them to be the first ones of the batch we can summon. Though I could see Zethia being the gala unit.

I wonder if they’d make a banner like that limited or not, especially when the anniversary events haven’t even kicked off yet. I feel like it’d end up just being massive bait if they make it limited, lol. But it also might be weird in it’s own way to make them regularly summonable units.

Since the anniversary is on the 27th, and that’ll probably be when the gala starts, I guess this might end up being the only banner between now and then, if it starts right after this banner ends and goes for about two weeks, but there might be another banner after it before the gala. I think it’d make sense if we get a banner associated with an upcoming anniversary event, which might not start until about a week or so after Chapter 10 comes out. They mentioned that there’ll be a pre-anniversary log-in bonus/limited endeavor campaign starting on the 19th, so I think that might be when the hypothetical ‘anniversary event’ starts, so I could see the next banner maybe running until then, with there also being a bit of a downtime week between the Su Fang rerun and the anniversary event. Though for all we know they might do a void endeavor week then and spend the entire second half of September on anniversary stuff. At least that way we’d get Void Nidhogg before HZD, which would be convenient. And it’d be better than getting no new events aside from Chapter 10 from between the current event ending and the anniversary stuff starting.

We’re also getting HZD on the same day that the pre-anniversary stuff starts, so that’s interesting. I don’t think we’d get any limited endeavors related to that, though, since I don’t think they’ve done that sorta thing with the previous high dragon trials.

I think the pre-anniversary campaign will be along the lines of the half-year anniversary one, and so we might get like 2k+ wyrmite from it, but I also have a feeling that we’ll get daily free tenfold summons. A week seems like a fitting length for that sort of thing to run for, and it seems like it’s a pretty common thing for gachas to do for their anniversaries. Who knows what else we might get. I think it’d be neat if they finally update the 5-star voucher pool and give us one for free, though. Something like a free dream summon is possible, but I think a free 5-star voucher would be more realistic.

It’s worth noting that they specifically laid out the fact that we’re getting astral raid battles for the entire month after the current raid event ends, which should mean that there won’t be any other raid events this month. So if we get some sort of special anniversary event, I think it’ll probably be the same type of event as the FEH one, since a facility event would be kinda . . . boring at this point. I also never actually played the FEH event even though I started playing during it, so it’d be fun to try out that whole gamemode for the first time.

My main bet for the anniversary event and it’s associated banner is that it’ll be either a collab event with something like Granblue Fantasy, or they might focus more on DL itself and have a banner with characters like Leif and Patia. Or we might finally get DAOKO as a unit. Who knows. I feel like a GBF collab of some sort is basically inevitable, but they might not do it for the anniversary. I think the only other collab event that’d make sense for the anniversary at this point would be Fire Emblem Three Houses, since we’ve already gotten one FE collab event. And Three Houses’ whole set-up works nicely with the idea of having a banner with three featured units on it.

One way or another I think we’ll get some sort of special limited banner to go along with the anniversary event, and on top of that we’d probably get a welfare unit like we did for the FEH event. Which would probably be the GBF/Three Houses protagonist if it’s a collab with one of those games, or it might be Leif if it’s a non-collab event.

I’m also hoping that we get a new story unit from Chapter 10, but that might be pushing it a bit. But if we do, I assume it’d probably be Leif, Zethia, or some sort of Euden alt.

Anyway, aside from all the DL stuff, I’ve also been trying over the last few weeks to get into some other gacha games. Not because I’m getting bored of DL or anything, but just because I feel like it. But it’s been a bit of a rocky experience, lol.

I’m probably going to eventually get into GBF, but I’m at least waiting until some sort of gala event since those seem to be the best times to start a new account. I’m a little put off by how grind-y it apparently is, but I don’t care too much about PVP competitiveness so it might be fine.

I was thinking about maybe checking out GrandChase, but that doesn’t work on my phone apparently, and DL’s taking up all the space on my tablet, so unless I wanna emulate it [which I don’t], I’m just gonna put that one off for the foreseeable future. But at this point there’s other options that interest me more.

I really like the sound of Another Eden, since it seems to basically just be a traditional JRPG that happens to have a gacha attached to it, and it seems to have very limited micro-transactions, but I’ve heard it’s getting a Switch port Eventually [tm] so I’m just gonna sit back and wait for that to come out. It does sound like my sorta thing, though.

But the first gacha game out of the whole list I tried to get into, and the one that ended up disappointing me the most, was Food Fantasy. Oh boy, that sure is a gacha game alright. It’s the sort of game that I WANT to love, since it has really great character designs, art, and music, but oh boy it definitely seems like an example of aggressively-monetized Chinese gacha games. Basically every single gameplay mechanic can be sped up and made more convenient with premium currency [which is pretty slow to grind out for F2P players], and it feels like basically everything is designed around the assumption that you’re pretty much a whale who’s always gonna have the premium currency to spend on stuff like event items and stamina refreshes.

Over the last few weeks I’ve been doing research into the game’s history and getting more and more put off by seeing how many events it has that basically boil down to ‘spend real-life money to get stuff’, which is probably my most hated type of event to have in a gacha game. But it seems to happen super often in this game. I think the final straw that’s gonna make me delete the game entirely is how a new summon banner event started where the only way to pull on it is to spend real-life money on event items from the store. Of which there’s ten bundles that are each worth about $10 USD. Which adds up pretty quickly, lol.

Then there’s the fact that the version of the game I’m playing had apparently already gone through most of the limited banner units I would have been interested in pulling for, and since we’re like 1-2 full years behind the Chinese server, I have a very good idea of what to expect for the distant future of the game, and basically none of it interests me, and it seems to actually get more and more aggressive with it’s monetized events as it goes on. So that sucks.

I know that there’s apparently a whole cultural divide going on here and that basically every Chinese-made gacha game is SUPER heavily P2W, but oh boy it sure is off-putting to try and play one if you’re not interested in spending money. Which is a shame since I think if the game had been made by, well, a completely different company with a completely different design philosophy, I could have really liked it. But alas.

Also the main gameplay loop related to the restaurant sim is neat in theory, but oh boy it sure is a whole bunch of tedious micro-management in practice where you’re expected to play the game at fairly specific time intervals to be properly efficient.

This is definitely the sorta situation where I only feel this negatively toward it because there’s parts of it that I really like, and it could have been really fun if it was just designed differently. If it was something I entirely disliked I’d just ignore it and not care, lol. But it always hurts a bit when it’s something that you think has potential, and which actually appeals to you in a lot of ways. But then it does everything in it’s power to drive you away.

I’d totally be all over an anime adaptation if they make one of it, though. The character designs and music would make it entirely worth it. And even though the story is incredibly barebones, apparently there’s gonna be some sort of complete revamp to it eventually so maybe that’ll make it interesting.

I can’t remember if I talked about this previously, but I also tried Crash Fever twice and ended up deleting it both times, and I don’t think I’m gonna try it a third time. The core gameplay is fun enough, but there’s like no real story to feel immersed in, and the game’s visual aesthetic is so garish and intense that it’s actually kinda painful to look at for more than like ten minutes at a time. I actually like the character designs, but most of them are so overdesigned that you can barely tell what the heck’s going on with them, and overall the game is just filled with bright flashing lights and screen transition effects. On paper it sounds appealing enough that the game’s aesthetic is ‘Alice in Wonderland-themed virtual space with lots of neon colours’, but in practice it’s just Too Much.

Then there’s a whole list of gacha games that I’m aware of but which either aren’t released in my region or aren’t available on any of my devices, like F/GO, Magia Record, etc. But none of them really interest me much so it’s not a big deal. There’s also Pokemon Masters which I think is globally available but isn’t available on any of my devices [which I’ve heard is more a matter of your devices’s technical specs than your region], but from what I’ve heard that’s not really a big loss. It sounds like a bit of a shallow cash-grab all around.

Oh and there’s also Fire Emblem Heroes but I’m not really interested in that since I can just get Three Houses once I get my Switch soon.

Thankfully I ended up finding King’s Raid, which I might actually stick with for now, which is a relief. It’ll be nice when I get an upgraded phone since my current one feels like it’s screen is a little too small to comfortably play it, and it’s kinda laggy, but it’s not unplayable or anything.

Mostly I just really like the character designs, and how F2P-friendly the hero collection system is, since the gacha mechanics are only for items, and you can just directly buy heroes with in-game currency you can slowly grind up, and you can slowly work at befriending and recruiting units from an inn. Which is a neat system for a game like this. I also like that basically all of the main NPCs in the story are all characters you can eventually obtain one way or another. I really wish more games like this did that, since they tend to have such cool designs that are wasted on characters you’ll never be able to play as.

I might be in the minority on this one, but I also really like gacha games like this and Dragalia Lost that use 3D character models in-game, although DL’s art-style in general is more bright and cartoonish, while King’s Raid is closer to something like a modern Tales game, in terms of being more realistic in terms of colour schemes and body proportions, but still anime-y all around. I like both of them for different reasons. Though I also really like how KR has lots of aesthetic customization options, with how you can buy accessories and costumes for your characters with in-game currency that you can mix and match [which also reminds me of modern Tales games, lol], and each unit gets an upgraded outfit as you ascend them.

Also it’s one of the relatively few gacha games I’ve seen that has a fairly even balance between attractive male and female character designs. Which is always appreciated.

Finally, I think I might also try out Epic Seven since I’ve heard good things about it, at least now that I’m way beyond my limit of patience with Food Fantasy and I’m probably gonna delete it soon once and for all. But I don’t know if I’d want to bother playing it in addition to King’s Raid, honestly. And tbh I’m a lot less interested in the character designs and animation style as a lot of people are. It’s fine, but it leans too much toward the bland mid-ground of anime-y character designs that don’t really stand out from the crowd, and also the animation style for the character sprites, which clearly well-made, feel kinda creepy and robotic to me. But that’s kinda just how I feel about Live2D sprites in general. I also don’t like how they look in games like Magia Record. But who knows, I might still end up playing it. It at least sounds like the sorta gacha game that’s continually growing and improving and changing itself, so that’s always a good thing.

Anyway the bottom line is that gacha games are a bottomless pit of hellfire that nobody should get into in the first place :)