If one were to ask me what games I play, I'd say story-driven games in genres like FPS (Halo) and RPG (Final Fantasy, Persona), though I can get into racing games and rhythm games as well. Enquire which games I spend the most time on, however, and my answer becomes "gacha games".

GACHA! GACHA! GACHA!

A humourous look into the mind of a player who's only in it for the thrill of gambling.

"Gacha" comes from "gachapon" machines, where you pay for toys in capsules. However, there's no guarantee your first one has the item you want.

Gacha games are thus notorious for having low rates - chances of getting the rare character, weapon or item you want can go as low as 0.7%. In Western gaming circles, this mechanic was known as "loot boxes", popularised by games like Overwatch and FIFA before regulation around the world put a stop to the extreme ways game developers were implementing them. 

So how did I fall into "gacha hell", as players like to self-deprecate?

I guess it was a matter of exposure. Prior to 2016, my understanding of video games was limited to the games I played on the various Xbox consoles I owned (Halo: Reach and the Forza Motorsport franchise in particular count among my all-time favourites), or what I'd see in copies of the now-defunct Official Xbox Magazine, including an ad for Final Fantasy XIII-2 on the back cover of a certain issue.

It wasn't until sometime in the third quarter of 2016 (July to September) that I would be properly introduced to the Final Fantasy franchise through the animated movie Kingsglaive: Final Fantasy XV, a prequel taking place before the events of the 2016 game of the same name. It would become my gateway to the franchise and later on Japanese role-playing games (JRPGs), but that's a story for another time.

During this period, I was pretty much obsessed with Final Fantasy, and to satiate that I looked for ways to engage with the franchise. This was where Mobius Final Fantasy came into my life as my first gacha game.

MOBIUS WAS FAR FROM PERFECT.

The battle UI of Mobius on the Steam port.

Mobius was my first contact with the gacha mechanic, and boy was it painful. I came to understand the meaning of "Rate Up is a Lie" as I saw the currency I had worked for by advancing through the story quests turn into duplicates of the most common cards.

In the time I played it, I'd only gotten 2 of the rare Supreme cards (Neo Exdeath: FFV and Yiazmat: FFXII), though I was fairly lucky with job cards (Lightning, Cloud and Y'shtola if I recall correctly).

Yet for all that, it was fun. Between the turn-based battles that used the cards and jobs you got from the gacha, cross-compatibilty with multiple devices including a Steam release and the memorable characters, I had never experienced a game like that up to that point.

I also installed Final Fantasy: Brave Exvius, though I would uninstall it after a while because I'm not particularly into the pixel-art aesthetic of older JRPGs that it was emulating (confirmed by my attempt to play an emulated copy of Final Fantasy VI that glitched out at an early boss fight), and I didn't quite like the gameplay either.

THEN I STOPPED PLAYING MOBIUS.

A small sample of the many RPGs that 2017 gave us.

From Horizon Zero Dawn and The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild to NieR: Automata and Xenoblade Chronicles 2, RPGs had a renaissance of sorts in 2017. Besides NieR, one caught my attention - the English release of Persona 5.

This game alone made me regret buying the Xbox One. My brother actually wanted a PS4, but I insisted on the Xbox for FM6 and the then-superior controller (I've held the DualSense controller that's designed for the PS5 and was quite tempted to buy one). In hindsight, this was the better timeline - I could experience Xbox exclusives (Halo 5: Guardians is the only mainline Halo game not on PC) and now enjoy PlayStation ones on PC (except rare cases like Bloodborne).

So enchanting was Persona 5 that, again, I sought more. And I found it, first through YouTube videos of the Persona 4 Golden cutscenes (I would buy the game soon after it was released on Steam in 2020) and watching the anime, then going to the high seas and obtaining a copy of Persona 3 Portable. For the rest of 2017 and the early months of 2018, I was emulating P3P on my phone through PPSSPP while following guides to ensure I made it to the final boss with the best possible setup.

This naturally meant I spent little to no time on Mobius, and eventually I uninstalled the game from my phone. This would not be the end of my gacha game experience, as soon I would find myself diving into gacha hell for real.

~ Wei Feng

Cover image: Photo by Finn on Unsplash

Images: GameWatcher, Wccftech