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PREVIEW: Twenty Hours with the Princess Connect! Re:Dive Mobile Game




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Villain-chan





PostPosted: Tue Jan 19, 2021 2:54 pm Reply with quote
Haven't seen the anime (yet) and considering getting into the series and great review. There's 2 things that concerns me though. 1. The battles. That sounds boring and if u don't have the skip tix, u have to do battles which ia basically automated and a waste of time as a result... thats my first concern, the other is 2. This is a Crunchyroll game and I have NOT heard good things about their games... worst example I know of is the Is it wrong to pick up girls in a dungeon mobile game which had CR taken off of it due to how bad they treated the game, removed content, censored stuff and more. So my fear is the same is here for this game... (Never played a CR game b4 fyi, but every time i hear of their games its never good news...)

Edit: Side note: LOVE that pudding pic, Neptune would be proud haha
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Seagloom



Joined: 04 Nov 2017
Posts: 276
PostPosted: Tue Jan 19, 2021 3:03 pm Reply with quote
I had no intention to play this when the global release was announced back in December since story content can be found easily enough online. Still, I decided to give it a try after becoming addicted to all things Priconne following the anime and was pleasantly surprised to find it on my devices this morning. (Wasn't it originally launching in March?)

Honestly, I was not expecting the game to draw me in as much as it is. Really glad I could make the time today because what was planned as a quick session ended up lasting several hours. Forget gacha mechanics, the greatest danger this game presents is to my free time.

I thought not being able to direct the party would be especially dull, as that has been my experience with other games following that model. Strangely, it does not bore me here and I actually find myself enjoying combat more than expected. Being limited to the starter party and freebie has not led to amazing synergy despite choosing the best of two before linking my accounts across devices. There have been battles I could only narrowly win by reserving and timing union bursts which is engaging enough for me. Controlling Valkyrie Profile-style combat would be a nightmare on mobile anyway.

Also really digging guild customization. It is nothing revolutionary with limited furniture and décor options, but I can easily see this being expanded on.

No idea know how long I will stick around. For now, I can easily see it lasting a very long time taking a casual approach. I'm only in it for the story and characters, anyway. (Also looking forward to a playable Christina, among others.) This definitely feels like one of those games that is only as time consuming and resource intensive as one wants it to be. Reminds me of Guild Wars 2 in that respect.
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harminia



Joined: 24 Aug 2015
Posts: 1987
Location: australia
PostPosted: Tue Jan 19, 2021 4:56 pm Reply with quote
Quote:
namely Christina—and I may keep playing just to hoard free gacha gems to get her when she inevitably arrives.

hahaha good luck with that, she's suuuuuuuuuuuper limited. I thinks she's only been available in the jp gacha around 2 or so times.

Quote:
but 99% of the time you can simply set the union bursts to auto (i.e., have them go off automatically the moment they can)

I'm not like, a pro player but I feel it's best to control it yourself. i.e. I save the bursts until at least round 2 of a battle, and for stuff like single enemy burst skills, you want to save using them for one of the enemies with good defense, otherwise you just waste it on some weak enemy that you could've taken out normally.

I play the JP version (and have since it started, which I guess says something about it's appeal, though I'm not super far into the story), but I don't speak enough Japanese to fully appreciate it. So I'd like to play the EN version just to get a better understanding of the world and more importantly to read Akino's dialogue in English.

CR doesn't have a great track record for games so I wonder how long this will stay alive for.
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Covnam



Joined: 31 May 2005
Posts: 3629
PostPosted: Tue Jan 19, 2021 9:17 pm Reply with quote
Did this launch early? I was surprised to see it available the other day.

Thanks for the initial impressions. How gacha heavy is it? I'm not a big fan of the style where you need 5+ copies of a character to max them when they have a <1% drop rate =/
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zrnzle500



Joined: 04 Oct 2014
Posts: 3767
PostPosted: Tue Jan 19, 2021 10:06 pm Reply with quote
Covnam wrote:
Did this launch early? I was surprised to see it available the other day.

Thanks for the initial impressions. How gacha heavy is it? I'm not a big fan of the style where you need 5+ copies of a character to max them when they have a <1% drop rate =/


I had a feeling it would be out this week when I saw (Hololive EN) Kiara’s preview last week, as they had previously said her preview would be out the week before it was released. This is much earlier than the listed date in the App Store though.

As for the gacha, while I haven’t played as much as the author, I can say that once you get one copy, you don’t need to get the exact same character again (and again and again...) to max them out. All duplicates, including the lowest rarity characters, give items that can be turned in for the ascension item of your character(s) of choice. I’ll have to play more to unlock the PvP stuff to see how that mechanic affects the competitive aspects, though it’s probably too early in the game to properly assess that yet.
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harminia



Joined: 24 Aug 2015
Posts: 1987
Location: australia
PostPosted: Tue Jan 19, 2021 10:13 pm Reply with quote
Covnam wrote:
Did this launch early? I was surprised to see it available the other day.

Thanks for the initial impressions. How gacha heavy is it? I'm not a big fan of the style where you need 5+ copies of a character to max them when they have a <1% drop rate =/


You don't get copies in the game. You only get a character once. If you get a dupe in a gacha you receive Secret Stones (or whatever the name is. the amount given is dependent on the rarity of the character), which you use in the fragment shop to exchange for special stones (I don't know what the term is in the ENG ver, they're just like "[character name] pieces" which raise the rarity of your character and make you stronger.

You can get the secret stones via events, and the pieces via events and hard stages so you don't NEED to gacha, but it helps speed things up.
There are also sometimes special "prize gachas" where you get bonus items after drawing (you get different prizes based on a lottery type system for each roll).

It's not a game that's like "you have to whale to advance" but you will have to really grind and slog through it all after a point if you don't gacha much.
I'm a f2p user. The only times I felt like paying money are during the recent Christmas Akino gacha and the recent gacha that had the Princess ver characters + Christina (all really good, strong characters)

I'm also stuck at one stage in the main story because I can't beat the boss in time, and I haven't trained the specific characters the guide suggests using.
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Covnam



Joined: 31 May 2005
Posts: 3629
PostPosted: Tue Jan 19, 2021 11:10 pm Reply with quote
Thanks for the info zrnzle500 & harminia Smile

That does sound like more my kind of gacha, so I won't hold back on giving this a try Smile
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ThatMoonGuy



Joined: 13 Oct 2017
Posts: 364
PostPosted: Wed Jan 20, 2021 6:18 am Reply with quote
The gameplay and design in this game is really nice and seeing the HoloEn girls playing reaaally made me want to give this game a try. But since all characters are girls, I have a little bit of resistance to it since I really like to collect husbandos...
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harminia



Joined: 24 Aug 2015
Posts: 1987
Location: australia
PostPosted: Wed Jan 20, 2021 3:34 pm Reply with quote
Here are some tips for anyone reading this who is considering playing or just starting:
(Note I'm not 100% sure of terms, both in JP and ENG version)

1. Make sure to do the mana & XP groves every day. Stockpile that shit. It's so important and you'll get to a point where you have what looks like heaps, but you blow through it upgrading just one character.

2. Richard is correct in that when you level up or get stamina potions it ignores your stamina cap, however there is a max stamina cap of 999. If it caps you can't pick up any potions until you've gone suitably under. I believe when you level up when capped, it gives you a potion containing the amount it would've given you.

3. Make sure to do hard quests. Those pieces are very important. If there's a character you want to bump the rarity of, pray they're in hard quest and skip ticket their quests every day. This will be especially crucial when the 6 star rarity comes in (I assume it's not in but I have yet to check out ENG beyond reading the intro).

4. If you do the PVP arena battles, take note of the fact there's a cool down after each fight. You can ignore it by using crystals but it's kinda a waste of precious gacha money. Just do something else for 5 mins.

5. Check out the store that appears every so often after clearing quests. To buy stuff you have to use mana, so it's important to stockpile that. The shop tends to sell some pretty good stuff, usually the max rarity you've achieved via the story, and it says how many you have so you can spend your mana on something you have, like, 2 of rather than something you have 200 of. But the store is only available for 5 minutes. You can activate it again after by clearing quests, but the items will be different (except for the mana potions, which are always the same types), so you may miss out on something you really need.

I think that's it! I hope this helps someone.
Have fun.
Akino best girl.
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Juno016



Joined: 09 Jan 2012
Posts: 2377
PostPosted: Wed Jan 20, 2021 6:47 pm Reply with quote
Gacha rates are CyGames' usual 3% on the rare characters, but in terms of accessibility, you can earn enough gems to spark a character in two months time with regular play, which is insanely fast for a gacha game. I have every character I want and I ended up sparking most of them because bad luck. Haven't spent a cent (I have no monies).

Also, you eventually unlock the arena and princess arena, hard/very hard story modes, and more, so I've been invested for over 2 years now. I play it casually, but it's one of my clear favorites and despite thinking I'd get bored after a few months like most games, I haven't and still play it a lot. I love the events with their animated cutscenes. Hopefully EN players get to see the ReZero event! It's super cute~

I only ever play 4 games at once on my phone and so far, I've stuck with this game, Cinderella Girls Starlight Stage, Million Live Theater Days, and Granblue Fantasy. CyGames' games really are the best of the best... If I drop a game, it won't be Princess Connect, I know that.
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Villain-chan





PostPosted: Thu Jan 21, 2021 12:14 am Reply with quote
Finally got time to post an update to my prev post. Guess who marathon'd the whole anime yesterday? Guess who then got into the game and whose now Lv. 27? Yup, me. Dang if i don't love this series! The chars r awesome, the reviewer was right, the story is where its at, the anime sold me on it. (The story isn't the greatest thing ever, but u end up loving the chars and want to know more about them, the world and the story and lore behind whats going on) I haven't touched much of the story in the game due to trying to get stamina to where it can auto regen (Which i finally did) but the parts I did see were just as good as the anime, how crazy is that? (Pecorine, Kayrl, Miyako and Shiori r my favs) edit: Forgot to say the battles were more interesting than i thought they'd be, certainly not boring.

I urge anyone on the fence about the game/series to at least give the anime a try, if that don't sell ya on it I doubt the game will lol
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Covnam



Joined: 31 May 2005
Posts: 3629
PostPosted: Thu Jan 21, 2021 12:53 am Reply with quote
How do you get your stamina to auto regen?
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Villain-chan





PostPosted: Thu Jan 21, 2021 12:58 am Reply with quote
Covnam wrote:
How do you get your stamina to auto regen?
Simply go below the number the max number you can hold (Lv up lets you go over the limit you can hold) So for example, say you can hold 60 stamina, that's your max that won't go over that number unless you lv up. So if you use enough stamina to go under 60, the game will auto regen the stamina until it hits the 60 stamina number. I think it regens 1 stamina per 4-5 mins as i saw 3 and a half mins for it to regen 1 of my stamina. Hope that helps. As for how you accomplish getting there, simply play the game's main quests (and hard quests) and utilize those skip tix, you'll eventually hit around Lv. 27 like me and should be able to have the game start auto regening stamina at that point.
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Covnam



Joined: 31 May 2005
Posts: 3629
PostPosted: Fri Jan 22, 2021 1:30 am Reply with quote
Ah, I see what you mean, thanks for clarifying.
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