|OT| This is GachaCouncil - Playing with money

[Ascheroth]

Been playing Heaven Burns Red today

My thoughts after playing for a couple hours (am in the middle of Chapter 1 Day 7 right now):

• The music is great
• Game looks pretty good. The 2D art is gorgeous and while the 3D assets definitly are mostly low-poly and low-resolution textured, it looks good (the character models probably also do some heavy lifting).
• The atmosphere is pretty great. It's neat seeing all these other characters in the background while moving around the school
• The combat is kind of whatever. I mostly just put it on auto and let it do its thing.
• The story premise is not exactly novel, but the writing is entertaining enough so far even though it's clear it's still in the setup and buildup phase (very curious when the first big payoff will happen and how that will manifest). The comedy is kind of hit or miss with me so far. It's basically all a "1 or more characters say stupid stuff -> another character loudly reacts to it" or "let's repeat the same line again and again for comedic effect" routine. (The writing is pretty loud in general, lol). Some of it leaves me completely cold, some of it I actually find hilarious.

Overall I'm enjoying it well enough for now (or I wouldn't have played so much already ) and I'm looking forward to seeing where things go.

 

[Cacher]

• The story premise is not exactly novel, but the writing is entertaining enough so far even though it's clear it's still in the setup and buildup phase (very curious when the first big payoff will happen and how that will manifest). The comedy is kind of hit or miss with me so far. It's basically all a "1 or more characters say stupid stuff -> another character loudly reacts to it" or "let's repeat the same line again and again for comedic effect" routine. (The writing is pretty loud in general, lol). Some of it leaves me completely cold, some of it I actually find hilarious.

Yeah, I think this is the relatively controversial aspect of HBF. The comedies are hit-and-miss and some people may find them off-putting. Personally I really like them in prologue and chapter 1 because, well, honestly there are not many hilarious games in the market.

 

[Vantr]

Playing Heaven Burns Red as well. Enjoying it a lot.

Pretty much agree with Ascheroth on all their points. The main menu music and battle music are absolute bangers.

• The story premise is not exactly novel, but the writing is entertaining enough so far even though it's clear it's still in the setup and buildup phase (very curious when the first big payoff will happen and how that will manifest). The comedy is kind of hit or miss with me so far. It's basically all a "1 or more characters say stupid stuff -> another character loudly reacts to it" or "let's repeat the same line again and again for comedic effect" routine. (The writing is pretty loud in general, lol). Some of it leaves me completely cold, some of it I actually find hilarious.

This felt very Key to me. Early on is usually slice of life and really abusing idiot + straight man combo a lot for comedy to set up the lightheartedness tone and then they hit you with the emotional damage later on for that emotional whiplash. I always enjoyed this pacing set by Key VNs so I gotta pick the dumb choice for the comedy. It's also rather refreshing to experience in gachas because other gachas I've played the tone is usually very serious and one-track.

Also Cacher just trying out some of this arena stuff but isn't this powersaver auto-battle OP? Normally you have limited stamina to use on EXP or raising characters but in HBR you can just AFK all day or go play other gachas.

 

[Ascheroth]

Just finished Chapter 1 in HBR. Really liked the ending to that.
There's so much stuff opening up...
...including a rhythm game - hell yeah!
They also completely dump a crapton of money and upgrade mats on you after Day 11 :O
I wanna get a few more SSRs before really starting to spend a lot of resources though.

Story thoughts:

Spoiler

I like how 31A has come together. They are a bunch of idiots sharing a single brain cell + Yukki, but when it matters they get work done.
I should have seen the 31C progression going from "haha, look at these dumb weirdos" to "...oh no. Oh no " coming, but it still got me.
The stage music on Day 12 was great and the concert was even better.
At first I rolled my eyes at Karirin having a split personality with a crazy serial killer that constantly yells and makes weird sounds cause it's just soooooo extra, while also being kinda generic, but having Karirin on clean vocals in the band with Karrie doing screamo is hilariously genius and I'm now completely on board with her character.