Best Gacha Game Posts – Reddit
As a long time gacha game player and a long time Project Moon game player, now that I’ve had a bit of time to get familiar with Limbus Company’s monetization and game system, I figured I’ll write something up for people that’s up in the air for the game.
Before we even start — PMoon game and world building is definitely NOT for everyone, this has been the case for every single one of their games. However, Limbus Company especially is in a strange spot because it is free to play and is by the monetization system, a gacha, and thus is in a totally different market from Pmoon’s usual niche. This is post is not here to comment or defend Limbus’s gameplay(game’s been out like…not even 24 hours, we wouldn’t know the details yet) but to make sure people who walk into Limbus Company know what is going on and what they’re getting into.
TL;DR
All the old Pmoon followers knew this, but Project Moon is bad at advertising, and the trend continued to Limbus Company. Limbus Company is not inherently a bad game, but it does not meet the GENERAL expectations of the genre Project Moon advertised the game as (gacha), which may cause some miscommunications between the players and what the game is actually trying to do. You might like it, or you might hate it.
If you’re a PMoon lover but are hesitant about the gacha game monetization – try Limbus Company out, roll for your husbando or waifu’s cards and just move on. The game is NOT designed to cater to Gacha players – it’s catered for you guys but advertised horribly. Think of it like a free trial roguelite Library of Ruina-esque game except you grind each “card” individually for a different playstyle to make teams. If you like the game while playing for free (e.g. a free trial), buy the monthly pass (base game), then each battle pass after the first, think of it like an expansion. If you really want to support the game or company or simply want to vroom-vroom more playstyles at the start, pay as you desire.
If you’re a gacha gamer or a first time Pmoon player – If you think the dark story and world building is your type, and you love the music you hear at/near the tutorial, go play Library of Ruina (or if you’re a hardcore management game gamer, Lobotomy Corporation). If you like Ruina, you can come back to Limbus and probably miss very little (it’s a PVE game and rarity simply opens up deck options rather than flat upgrades), if you don’t like Ruina, or single player strategy games as a whole, you can skip Limbus Company because it will not meet your expectation if you go into it expecting a classic gacha game of any sort.
It is VERY free-to-play friendly btw, just that the gameplay AND gameloop were not designed to be a classic gacha game style.
Reason for f2p: everything is grindable, also go and check the Dispense and see the stat/skill difference between 000 rarity and 00, there is miniscule differences. The 0 rarities are upgraded FOR FREE and they are actually incredibly good statwise. As a side note, go check 000 rarity Ishmael’s skill and passive and tell me that shit is better than her 0/00 rarity without having to work your team around it (BASE VALUE 2 DICE WITH +5 COINFLIP AND PASSIVE REDUCE HER OWN SP PER TURN KEKW).
Now for the wall of text.
Why is Limbus Company a bad GACHA game?
I will say it right now – gacha game as a genre is designed to cater to “fast and easy”. Most gacha players don’t play GACHA for both active and semi-grindy gameplays. If a gacha player wants those things, they go and play a single player game. It’s not that gacha gamers all hate active games, it’s just not the expectation when you tap into one.
Everyone who tried Limbus company probably can already tell where this is going.
That’s right, Limbus Company comes with one of the most convoluted MOBILE GAME (NOT PC game) combat systems, with an auto system that will get you killed in pretty much most maps with any difficulty (especially abnormality fights).
The game is designed to be played slowly and manually, money gets you nowhere except collection, 3 stars (000s) are not strictly an upgrade from their 00 and even 0 counterpart, and the gameplay itself is not one you’d see even remotely similar to other games in the gacha genre (not a good or bad thing as a game, but certainly a disadvantage for gacha genre where games are expected to make sense at least somewhat when you load into the first battle).
BUT.
Let’s take the gacha system out of the equation momentarily, and assume that Limbus Company is a SINGLE PLAYER GAME ON FREE TRIAL (playable on phone and PC), STARTING WITH NO CHARACTER EXCEPT THE DEFAULT RARITIES.
You have:
A decent opening starting “cards”, where combinations of certain characters are designed to work together, as well as an EGO that compliments the “card” given.
A built-in character shard grind system that is time-gated by stamina but designed to be played at your own leisure because you can stack daily stamina infinitely into the tokens to enter the map (Mirror Dungeon), so on a busy day your only maintenance is to log in every like few hours and just hit the “convert to module” button.
The “true” game loop mechanic that is unlocked at the end of chapter 2 – the Mirror Dungeon, is designed to be actively played and grinded, with the CONSISTENT rewards being your character’s levels and more cards unlocks designed NOT to replace your current roster but to expand it for more gameplay variety.
A complex (but also not for everyone) gameplay and team building that is centered around A LOT of reading, experimenting, and for the lack of better words, getting wrecked as soon as the game becomes difficult.
A FREE for all contents game where everything is CONSISTENTLY unlockable if you play long enough. You only pay for QoL, and it’s a cheap price of 10 bucks(Battle Pass). Reminder that ALL character at ALL rarity, as well as ALL EGOs (BP ones are added later) are grindable.
(A IAP shop that most people couldn’t even find at first, never mind them trying to push it in your face.)
A bonus for Pmoon lore followers but a detract for new players– an absolute PLETHORA of callbacks to the old games and plots.
What do those systems sound like?
That’s right, a regular single player, buy-to-play, grind-to-unlock-functions roguelite deck builder game with a slight aspect in collection, with a story plot and music made by a company that was made famous by those aspects even in the competition of PC games.
In fact, every aspect of Limbus Company that I’m seeing screams “I am a continuation of Library of Ruina, with a slightly different combat(but still difficult in later contents), equally massive amount of reading for mechanics and a equally terrible tutorial that glazes over important mechanics with 1-2 lines of text, but now I’m free to play but if you like me, please consider sending me a few bucks, and in exchange you get to unlock some cards faster for funky fun decks (but I hope you know how to use them! or they’ll kill you instead!)”.
Every gacha system that is present in Limbus Company can be removed and the game and gameloop would play almost no different from what it is now(except I wouldn’t be able to start with Hawaii T-shirt Hong Lu which would absolutely detract from my enjoyment of the game). The only reason they’re there that I can think of, is because Project Moon saw it as the best way to do a live service style game without making it pay upfront.
This is further noticeable by the fact that the game is TOTALLY unoptimized for phones (I had no issues with it, but the amount of people complaining about it makes it clear Pmoon was not prioritizing phones, which is where the gacha genre LIVES in).
Basically:
They made a PC style single player buy-to-play game, but wanted it to be a live service free-to-play game without making it an expansion-based mechanic, and thus they packaged the game in a VERY generous (but grindy) gacha style. But in doing so this both scared off old players due to the stigma of gacha game as a genre while also failed to meet the expectation of gacha players the game is advertised towards.
However, if you approach the game from an expectation that it was trying to go for (but did not advertise properly) — single player grindy roguelite with a somewhat convoluted gameplay and dark world building — the rough around the edge game stability aside (again, par for the course for Pmoon) it actually is pretty up-to-par with what you’d want/expect.
How the game will pan out financially will remain to be seen. I personally am enjoying the game and hope it succeeds, because coming their old game, it’s clear they put in a lot of effort into the game. The system is also INCREDIBLY friendly for low paying players, which is always a plus in my book, also I love the husbando representation.
