Mobile Games Need to Stop Lying

I don't hate mobile gaming as much as I used to.  Certain titles like Shin Megami Tensei Dx2 and Dragon Quest Rivals have changed my opinion on mobile gaming being a complete steaming pile of dogshit.  I'm not ashamed to admit now that sometimes in my downtime I'll go sniffing around the app store for a new RPG to have a go on or maybe find some kind of rhythm game that's just packed wall to wall with anime girls.

It's also not uncommon to see adverts for these games on social media.  Scroll through your Twitter or Facebook feeds and you're bound to see at least one advert for some kind of mobile game.  One thing I can't stand though is when these adverts flat out lie to you about the content of the game.  There was one I remember quite vividly for a game called Z Girls or something, some town building waifu game with zombies which in it's ads used a lot of images of Vocaloid characters.  It's not uncommon for some mobile RPGs to do vocaloid crossovers but these game was completely devoid of any of that.  It was just putting the characters on the ad to try and entice certain fans into thinking their shit game was worth playing.  The absolute worst offender was some Pay2Win menu based Romance of the Three Kingdoms strategy game that was using footage from some goddamn Dynasty Warriors game in its adverts.  How do they even get away with shit like that?!

Generally speaking if you see a game that has these kind of ads they are usually shit anyway and are trying to use the misinformation in the ad to at least get a download and bump themselves up a listing on the app store.  There are quite a few games however that don't lie to you and are actually pretty good such as Azur Lane and South Park Phone Destroyer.

Let's be honest though, if you really want some decent mobile gaming you're probably better off just buying a DS, Vita or Switch.

Card Game Meta Is Annoying

I remember way back when I used to play Yu-Gi-Oh and Magic The Gathering with my friends.  We would save up a little money, head down to the corner shop or the nerd store in central Manchester buy some boosters and play.  While it was frustrating to lose to a guy because his luck was better than yours there was something fun about being at the mercy of a booster pack.

Card games however are an expensive hobby so as I got older I drifted away from them.  I didn't have to give up completely though as thanks to games like Hearthstone, Shadowverse and Dragon Quest Rivals I can enjoy the TCG experience for free.  All of these games let you play for free and earn cards for free with the option to pay for boosters if you so wish.  

Now all of these games come with a ranked play mode and when I see that kind of thing of course I want to get as close to the top of it as I can.  While it is fun to collect cards, make decks and climb the ladder the higher you get the more dull these games get.  

There's a meta in each of games that, once you hit a certain rank, what decks you HAVE to use to see any kind of success.  If your not using one of these top tier decks that you can just google up you're basically doomed to sit in the middle of the ladder forever.  If your good you can get a bit higher but unless your a TCG god you ain't reaching the top without Professor Google.  

This is because getting boosters is just about playing a lot and instead of duplicates sitting in a shoe box for years they can be "dusted" which allows a player to craft specific cards.  So not only can you google a top tier deck but making it is a cinch so OF COURSE everyone is going to use them.  

That's not to say creativity is completely off limits.  Unranked play and the "random deck" modes keep the fun alive but the fact that ranked has to adhere to strictly to a meta makes things a little dull sometimes 

Dragon Quest Rivals First Impressions

Japan loves its card games.  Very close to my house there are about 4 stores dedicated to the buying, selling and playing of trading cards of which there seem to be hundreds of different games but you can also just hit up a used book store to buy individual cards for games like Yu-gi-oh and whatnot.  As well as that there are a bunch of digital trading card games some of which are exclusive to the arcade.  But the arcades not only have digital based card games but also games that actually spit out physical cards for use in the game, it's crazy.  Japan LOVES card games.

Japan also loves a bit of Dragon Quest which is basically one of the big boss boys of the RPG genre.  So of course Dragon Quest, like Warcraft, The Witcher and DotA have come out with their own card based video game for mobile platforms.  I usually avoid all the other card games on the IOS since I'm balls deep into Shadowverse and the idea of playing two different card games at the same time seems a bit pointless but the gameplay in DQ Rivals seemed different enough from something like Hearth or 'Verse to at least give it a go.

It's not completely unique, there are a number of similarities to Hearth.  The way the cards looks is pretty much identical and the idea that the character that you pick have their own special ability and cards sets seems ripped straight from that model.  Also the ranking system is basically the same as Hearthstone and of course it has that thing where you can earn "dust" in order to create individual cards if you're trying to make a specific kind of deck.  Basically out of the actual card combat they are fucking identical.

But the card combat itself is where things get interesting.  Each player has 6 blocks on their side of the field where they can play monsters and the positioning of your monsters is pretty important when it comes to battle strategy.  So for example, in Hearthverse you can attack the enemy directly pretty much anytime unless they play a monster with a defender ability.  In DQ rivals, you have monsters with that kind of skill but you can also put all your monsters in a row which will create a wall in order to defend your character.  Then on top of that, if you have a monster with a cool ability you don't want getting murdered you can play another creature in front of them in order to defend.  It's a cool mechanic that means that you not only have to worry about what monsters you have but also where you put them on the board in any given situation.  Your hero also has an ability that they have to charge but I wont go into detail about that because it's pretty much the same as Hearthstone.

Right now I'm pretty sure its exclusive to Japan but it seems like there has been a decent amount of effort made to make a game that's familiar enough to fans of this mobile card  game genre so they don't have  to relearn a fuckton of new systems but different enough to make it worth playing past the tutorial.  If you can get hold of it, give it a go.  Shit is free so you have nothing to lose