Seven Gacha Games that You Should Play

In today's mobile gaming, besides the popular games like Fortnite, Pokemon Go, and Candy Crush, there are a lot of games that provide entertainment in collecting different characters or items which, most of the time, affect the gameplay, thus providing a different kind of experience.

Gacha games are video games that adapt and virtualize the gacha (capsule-toy vending machine) mechanic. In the monetization of video games, it is similar to a loot box, in inducing players to spend money. Most of these games are free-to-play mobile games, which most of the picks in this post will focus on. So here are at least seven games that you should play.

1.) Final Fantasy Brave Exvius

The first entry comes from the famous franchise of RPG games from Square Enix. 

Final Fantasy Brave Exvius is a free-to-play mobile role-playing game developed by Alim and published by Square Enix for iOS and Android devices. A spinoff of the Final Fantasy series, the game marks as the first collaborative effort between Square Enix and Alim and draws elements from Alim's previous game, Brave Frontier.

Brave Exvius is designed as a turn-based role-playing game, using elements from the Final Fantasy series with those of Brave Frontier. As part of the game's gacha system, players can summon characters from other Final Fantasy titles, which players can use to build a party of five units. Characters are presented in a pixel art style. The game features exploration through towns in a classic RPG style.

I personally play this game for almost three years now, and they provide a lot of events on which are sometimes fun and sometimes compelling, and there is a robust community in Reddit and Discord and there are even Youtuber that provides character review as well as guides for people to take reference of during a boss battle or just to provide pieces of information.

By the way, in Spring 2020, War of the Visions: Final Fantasy Brave Exvius, a prequel on which the setting goes back a several hundred years before the time of the Final Fantasy Brave Exvius.

(Click here to pre-register)

2.) Fire Emblem  Heroes

Fire Emblem Heroes is a free-to-play tactical role-playing game developed by Intelligent Systems and published by Nintendo for Android and iOS. The game is a mobile spin-off of the Fire Emblem series featuring its characters and was released on February 2, 2017.

Just like the previous entry, ever since it's release, I have been playing it as I am a big fan of the Fire Emblem franchise and know the characters very well from its protagonist and villains, but also some of the side characters. Fire Emblem Heroes provide a compelling story and a pretty easy battle system compared to its console counterpart, but it still provides a relative challenge even for veterans of the series.

3.) Dx2

Do you like the Persona Series? Or even love Shin Megami Tensei? Then, this game is for you. Just like its predecessors, Dx2 or Shin Megami Tensei Liberation is a turn-based JRPG with gacha elements developed by Sega for mobile devices. In this game, you summon various deities and mythological creatures as demons of various rarities and use them to progress in the game by fighting other demons.

What I like about this game is that besides the collection of demons like its other popular counterparts like Persona 5 or Shin Megami Tensei Nocturne, is that it provides a whole lot more experience fusing demons or even powering them up, and it still gives you a lot of nostalgia in playing the Shin Megami Tensei series from before, though not a canon, it still can be considered as a derivative series of the SMT series. For example, the Persona or Devil Summer series.

4.) King's Raid

King's Raid is a free-to-play side-scrolling RPG mobile game developed by South Korean indie game developer Vespa and initially published by Thailand-based company GloHow before the Vespa took over the rights in June 2017. The game is described as "character collection SRPG" that allows players to create their party with characters of their own choice without the gacha system, real-time PVP arena, and various types of raid battles.

What I like about this game is that it give a generous amount of resources for players to be able to give its players a long time of gameplay as well as to discover all the facets of the game to the players early on. Besides that, there is a community at the back of the title that provides character reviews as well as fan-arts, that could sometimes be a little NSFW, but the community itself is as solid as steel.

And if you don't know yet, King's Raid was able to have a collaboration of the rising K-Pop Idol Group Dreamcatcher' and their special mini-album 'Raid of Dream'. This album was created as a collaboration project between King's Raid and Dreamcatcher which have a lot in common such as a similar debut period, having its own unique world and being loved by many fans worldwide. Especially, the title song 'Deja Vu' conveys emotions like darkness, loss, breakdown and rage that you have felt in 'King's Raid Pandemonium' very well.


5.) Arknights

Arknights is a Chinese mobile tower defense gacha video game. Developed by Hypergryph and Studio Montagne while published by Yostar, it was released in China in 2019 and worldwide in January 2020 for iOS and Android devices.

Arknights is a fairly new game as it was just released early this year, but, good games don't need to be young in the global market even before it becomes famous, as Arknights provides a completely different way of delivering Gacha games to your doorsteps. Compared to the other entries on this list, Arknights gives light to a completely new experience in tower defense genres.

Art is good as most of the characters as well as the background scenes are hand-drawn, music is compelling and blends well with the storyline, and most important is, every draw in their gacha doesn't feel wasteful as duplicate draws doesn't stay in your inventory gathering clouds of dust, but it either provides power-ups or increases your in-game currency for further power-ups.

6.) Another Eden

Another Eden: The Cat Beyond Time and Space is a free-to-play role-playing video game developed by Wright Flyer Studios and published by GREE, Inc. The game features the collaboration of writer Masato Kato and music composer Yasunori Mitsuda who both worked on Xenogears and the Chrono series of role-playing games.

If Arknights, the entry before this has good art, and if a good art gives you a reason to play a game, then Another Eden might catch your eyes. And if you loved the childhood game Chrono Trigger, then you are in for a treat, as the storyline of Another Eden and Chrono Trigger similarities are in plain sight: you are a chosen hero who must time travel to the future and the past to save the world from a powerful threat.


7.) Iron Saga

Moving from the traditional fantasy setting, we go to a more mecha fantasy type of RPG Gacha game. Kidou Sentai Iron Saga (I-Saga for short) is a Chinese mobile RPG-game centered around mecha warfare.

Despite the wonky translation of the story mode, the gameplay is pretty much simple as you just have to make sure to upgrade all the mecha. At first, it may feel like it was not worth a try to play a game like this, but what gave me a second look on to this game is that it provides a rather deep impression especially on the story, if you just not mind the translation. Also, there are tons of mecha that mecha lovers might drool on.