Gacha Games I Played in 2024
Just some quick thoughts on the biggest time sinks of the year
Arknights
Babel & Absolved Will Be The Seekers (Ch 14)
Both stories were the highlight of the year for Arknights, with Babel showing us the important backstory of who the Doctor was, what happened before the main story and completely re-framing the story of the past 5 years.
Chapter 14 (Absolved Will Be The Seekers) also saw a grand conclusion to the current story arc, and it nailed it (mostly). I was popping off when a former low rarity unit returned and listening to Broken Sun on repeat didn't get old. It was peam.
Reverse 1999
Vienna 1914 Arc (The Prisoner in the Cave, E lucevan le stelle, Vereinsamt)
This arc cemented R1999 as one of my main games, the stories told and the characters explored gripped me and invaded my brain space. For the main story at least, they were able to keep me wanting more.
A large part of that was due to the amazing VA performances, especially for E lucevan le stelle where all the main cast were so so good. I really can't understate how much their voice work elevated the story.
And Vereinsamt really put the characters we had been introduced to through the wringer. One thing I really appreciated was that the new characters for each part never felt shoehorned in, which can happen easily in gacha games.
It was and is still peam.
Honkai Star Rail
Penacony Arc (Version 2.0 - 2.3, 2.6 - 2.7)
HSR put a strong foot forward with the launch of 2.0, with a visually impressive world and interesting story set-up laying out a lot of the mysteries. Unfortunately they absolutely did not stick the landing. After raising the stakes and a large confrontation that was supposed to be transformative for Penacony in 2.1, they veered hard in the next patches and yapped away anything that had happened. They also started forcing the new gacha characters very sloppily and with little justification. While the following unrelated story set back in the Xianzhou were a welcome bounce back, it was short lived and the check-in on Penacony after was boring and annoying, tempering my hope for the future.
Heaven Burns Red
Up to Global Current (Chapter 4.1)
Written by Jun Maeda (Kanon, Air, Clannad), it's still very much like his previous works, except it's all girls and they are gay for each other. Which makes the sorrow of the story sting even more. It released fairly late in the year but already I can see myself being quite obsessed with it for quite a while.
Genshin Impact
Also I tried to pick Genshin back up over the summer and try to catch up on several versions but my god it was so tedious and boring to try to get through all the previous content. Dropped again.