The news that Magia Record NA was closing hit me. Hard. This game was my second favorite of the gacha I currently play (oddly enough, my number one is Fate/Grand Order, another of Aniplex's titles). I've been playing since launch, invested a decent amount of money through monthly login packs and whatever I needed for a few of the guaranteed gacha (I estimate maybe $200 CDN or so?), and had a ton of currency saved for future magical girls (and a Lil' Kyubey) that I had my eye on. I know the game wasn't breaking the sales charts or anything (a lot of players got burned out due to the increased pace for events), but we were so close to catching up to Japan and their content, and having the strain of back-to-back events lessened. Not only that, Arc 2 brought a whole new story along wit gameplay enhancements that we'll never see, such as Spirit Enhancement and Coordinator Coins (that serve as an additional "pity" of sorts, where you can exchange for a banner magical girl after doing 300 pulls on a particular banner).
What I'll miss most of all though isn't the gameplay (though it was serviceable), it's the characters/story/world. I can count the number of gacha games where I actually find the story interesting on a single hand with three fingers, and Magia Record was one of them. It just frustrates me that I've grown to love these characters and knowing that there's more to tell that I'll never get a chance to experience (unless I read the story translated on YouTube or whatever, but it just isn't the same). Given Aniplex's backing, I was expecting the game to AT LEAST go up until it caught up to Japan, especially since we were as close as we were. Once that happened and the slower pace kicked in and Season Two of the anime starting (as well as the new gameplay enhancements I listed above), I truly believe it'd have a better chance at catching on with the more mainstream public. Unfortunately Aniplex felt differently, and decided to pull the plug on the NA server. Meanwhile, games such as Valkyrie Connect and Grand Summoners/Last Cloudia just keep chugging along, the former two regularly getting collaborations. It boils the blood.
This is honestly the biggest disappointment I've had with a gacha game closing on me, the other being Chain Chronicle. I loved Chain Chronicle too, but MR was even more important to me and the fact that we didn't even have the slightest inkling that a server closure was imminent makes it even harder to accept. There were a few typo's with recent events and we missed out on a small login story that was supposed to be accompanied by Iroha + Yachiyo's event, but I just contributed that to strain issues. We also didn't have an event in-game for Iroha's Birthday (which every other server celebrated) that we did last year, but we did get a Tweet post so it wasn't nothing. The last thing I expected to log into was a server closure announcement and yet, there it was.
Damn, typing this all up has me depressed again. I think I'll do a couple Rank Up quests in Fate/Grand Order to get my mind off things.
