Not playing it and I'm sort of biased because I'm looking forward to ZZZ apparently on July 4th or so and that is a direct competitor.
From the reactions so far I think despite the terrible launch it will just float around the mid-high tier earnings charts, below HYV games and maybe they'll be happy to make FGO/Nikke level revenue.
The discourse is funny specialy from the CN side. CN mobile gaming is at an inflection point though, stupid people hyped this as the GI killer but realisticaly there is nothing to look forward now, HYV continues to dominate as predicted, which is awesome if you like their stuff but something something late stage capitalism monopoly.
This launch just shows how much investment and capital realy matters, to compete with HYV you need a lot of money and actualy invest into a massive technology stack(basicaly their own Unity version btw), massive repeating content, artists/musicians, community building and now even moving into other media(their own animation studio).
Its funny to watch history repeat again sort of how everyone wanted to copy WoW and failed, now lots of gachas want to copy GI and fail etc. Only Blizzard is stupid and HYV is actualy a decently smart company that actualy invests into themselves and not just hoard cash to get rich.
But I think WW will be fine if they keep up over the years.
I agree with you, and also looking forward to ZZZ. It'll be the first HYV game I actually get into too. Way too late for genshin and I don't like JRPGs in regards to HSR. I do like this game tho and I'm gonna keep playing until ZZZ and then weigh the pros and cons. I think the one thing this has on the other mid to high range gacha games is the open world aspect and the actual super fun combat, but you really have to get a huge audience to compete with HYV like people who don't even play video games loved genshin at its peak. Everyone at my college who hardly touched any game ever was raving about genshin to put in perspective, and it doesn't seem likely that wuwa has the means or potential to capture that market. Ofc I'll be so glad if it does because competition is good but yeah HYV monopoly is insane. Apparently they couldn't even add controller support on iOS because HYV has an exclusive deal with Apple about it. That's just rumors tho but if true that's wild
Arknights: Endfield is also an interesting conpetitor, its developed by hypergryph, who have a lot of everything you need to compete with HYV. They have tons of great artists, great game designers, developers, muscians, etc.
The game also has quite a bit of original ideas in it and is based on an already fairly successfull game, Arknights.
Is it actually open world tho or just 3d? And do we need to know anything about Arknights to get into it? Also I heard the combat is lackluster but that could be totally wrong. Regardless excited for anything competing with GI
I assume Azur Promilia will be more or less the same on release? Though that game at least seems to be gunning for a different genre (Palworld with less guns).
I didn't even know this existed until now, super interesting. Just pre-registered def gonna give it a try whenever it comes out. I never got around to playing Palworld even tho it looked really cool I was just busy, but it seems to have fallen off pretty hard
AP looks realy good on combat and exploration but I don't have much hope for longevity once the novelty wears off, as a live service what makes you come back after you "finish" the game? I'm not sure what is going to be the long term appeal of AP. Its like back in 2008 all these games must fight against WoW players deeply entrenched in their raiding guilds or RP servers, nothing will make them switch games because of the absurd sunk cost or social connections even if WoW was already stagnating, and HYV isn't even stagnating yet.
The combat itself is the bright spot but the story quickly became a slog for me. The English localization is pretty rough, which isn't solely an issue because I'm willing to switch VA over to other regions, but the subtitled dialogue also feels off in ways I cant quite explain. The lore dump from hours 1-3 (once you hit the city) is pretty rough and it feels like I haven't been in a combat scenario in forever.
I'll probably look up what end game fights look like soon to decide if I'll continue playing because if the content is difficult enough to keep me interested I'll probably stick with it. Art direction is gorgeous and the opening sequence has some awesome visuals/frames shots.
i noticed that what the voice actors say is not always the exact text, because i kinda like the en voices. (altough i agree they are not that good, after all i am used to arknights amazing va)
Apparently the deal with the VA is that they hired a bunch of really good British VAs and made them do American accents. And you can really tell too... I'm using the CN voice pack and it's nice. I agree about the subtitles, but it's not the worst thing in the world.
As for the story, yeah it's not amazing. But it did pick up a bit, just sucks that the main characters are sooooo boring. There's some really likeable characters that are actually super interesting like Lingyang but that charm is just not there with the main protags.
Combat is super fun but a lot of the movement is also jank af, I'm gonna keep playing until ZZZ comes out and weigh the pros and cons. Despite all this negative stuff I'm saying, I actually really like the game so far lol
yeah i think it runs worse than genshin and has a worse story/characters, but the combat is just awesome and i cant get enough of it. had a bit of a rough launch but i have high hopes things will pick up
performance seem to be just buggy from looking at the subbreddot, i personally prefer it over genshin storywise
My interest has been shut down by the hostility to running under Linux.
I no longer need to dual boot for Genshin, so expecting me to wade back into Windows for a new ritle is a big ask.
I don't even like playing it on PC due to 60 fps cap, I much prefer mobile & it's pretty nice there. Poorly optimized tho
Combat is fun and the pokemon gear is a cool concept but man playing this shit on mobile sucks. Typical gacha story that's just ass lore dump +1 for no gremlin mascot tho (that I've seen). Hope they port to console real soon cuz they got to compete with ZZZ which I'm way more pumped for
Playing on mobile has been great for me because I mapped my Gamesir X2 to the on screen controls, genuinely pretty flawless with that setup. But actually using on screen controls for this type of game sounds miserable yeah
