Even though I've been playing XB2 and mostly enjoying it, the whole "Gacha" gameplay feature of the RARE Blades is by far the worst aspect of the gameplay. Not only does it "lock" skills you need to use in order to access game content behind a random number generator when you "pull" the cores and hope you get lucky, but it makes it all but impossible to be able to easily do anything with ease, since a lot of the time when you start on the sidequest you'll run into these gates of Field Skills which are tied to the rare blades, or needing to complete a Merc Mission which is also tied to skills. And if you have neither then you're blocked from progression.
In the few Gacha games that I've tried and hated on mobile devices, this is pretty much the norm for these kinds of games, though instead of course in those cases you pay actual money to get the content and then spend a ton of time "grinding" with these characters hoping to again access those parts of the "gameplay" and progression of the story. It's all incredibly tedious and the whole concept of Gacha just seems antithetical to respecting a players time.
And yet, these games are just so popular, especially in Japan where so many RPG's are now going the "Gacha" route, in spite of how it makes worse gameplay and worse stories because they are locked and segmented with all this "live service content" that is doled out in droves but has no cohesion or narrative flow to it.
And then of course, one day, the servers will go down, and all the money and time invested in purchasing all that content will be completely erased. That in and of itself just rubs me the wrong way.
Heck, just imagine what if Nintendo had implemented a microtransaction element to the XB2 Rare blade system? You basically would be even more screwed if you wanted to experience the game's full content unless you paid more.
In the few Gacha games that I've tried and hated on mobile devices, this is pretty much the norm for these kinds of games, though instead of course in those cases you pay actual money to get the content and then spend a ton of time "grinding" with these characters hoping to again access those parts of the "gameplay" and progression of the story. It's all incredibly tedious and the whole concept of Gacha just seems antithetical to respecting a players time.
And yet, these games are just so popular, especially in Japan where so many RPG's are now going the "Gacha" route, in spite of how it makes worse gameplay and worse stories because they are locked and segmented with all this "live service content" that is doled out in droves but has no cohesion or narrative flow to it.
And then of course, one day, the servers will go down, and all the money and time invested in purchasing all that content will be completely erased. That in and of itself just rubs me the wrong way.
Heck, just imagine what if Nintendo had implemented a microtransaction element to the XB2 Rare blade system? You basically would be even more screwed if you wanted to experience the game's full content unless you paid more.
