Welcome to Gacha Hell, a new side thing for Indie Hell Zone where I liveblog my attempts at playing through gacha games until I inevitably get bored of them. I’ve been thinking about doing this for a while, but reader and new patron Hallowaytape said that it’d be interesting, so I’ve finally decided to take the plunge.

For some background, I’ve played three years of Final Fantasy Record Keeper before I fell off that train and I play a bunch of Fate Grand Order and Dragalia Lost. However, for the sake of this blog, I feel that the best way to do a liveblog was to start from scratch with a whole new gacha game.

So, we’re looking at Final Fantasy Dissidia: Opera Omnia, a turn-based RPG spin-off of the Dissidia games!

I’m a bit hazy on the opening of the game – mainly because the game immediately transitioned into the opening after downloading all the data without giving any notification. What I get is this: there are things called Torsions that are ripping the multiverse apart and Mog (I’m guessing the one from FF XIII-2, or maybe it’s one of those “Cid” things and it’s an OC) manages to escape destruction. He finds refuge in the goddess Materia, who opposes a figure called Master Spiritus, though I have no idea what he’s all about and I’m guessing I missed it. Materia relies on Mog to find other characters blessed by the light to fight off the threat of the Torsions.

Anyway, the initial party! You have Warrior of Light (aka the FFI stand-in) leading the pack with Vivi of FF IX and Rem from Type-0 following him. It is honestly a weird assortment, I kinda expected the game to play it safe and throw Cloud in as a first party member, because this is a dang crossover game and he is the Jotaro of the franchise.

You can unlock Cloud in the first chapter of the game, but the first chapter generally had a strange choice of characters. In the first chapter, you can also unlock Tifa and Y’shtola, which seems like alright choices, being major lady characters from their respective games. But you can also get Sazh and Hope, which are kinda odd choices because from what I remember, Sazh is pretty much a minor character after the first FF XIII and Hope is pretty divisive (at least in America?). I do like this assortment of characters though, because I totally expected them to play it safe and throw in as many of the most popular main heroes as possible.

In between the battle missions there are story missions where you can just kinda see the characters interact. As far as I know the character personalities are canon compliant (because I don’t know what the deal is with Type-0). I do want them to have more fun with the concept, though. Let the characters screw around. Let them hang out in situations beyond advancing the story. Be wacky. I have issues with Fate Grand Order, but its events sure has fun with the characters involved. I hope that they get weird with things, dangit.

But yeah, how about the battle system?

As I said before, Opera Omnia is a turn-based RPG. However instead of being a plain battle system, Opera Omnia adds an extra layer to it with bravery. You get a choice between performing a “BRV” attack or HP attack. Doing BRV attacks on enemies will reduce their own BRV score and add to your current character’s score. Completely reducing an enemy’s BRV causes a Brave Break where the enemy’s defense is lowered and everyone in the party gets extra BRV. When you do an HP attack, you convert all of a character’s BRV into damage – which can make them susceptible to getting a Brave Break themselves.

I’m currently not sure how I feel about this system. I do like that you’d have to put more thought into attacking through BRV management, but also, it’s just kind of an extra layer of things to do, ya know?

Characters also learn unique skills to encourage you to switch them around. Sazh has a skill that gives guaranteed BRV hits, which is helpful for high evasion enemies like the bats early on. Tifa also has a skill that… skeleton enemies are weak to? Alright, sure, don’t know enough about martial arts to dispute it.

The first chapter of Opera Omnia has Warrior of Light leading the party to investigate a nearby Torsion, recruiting the other characters that found themselves lost in this situation. Kuja is also slinking around in the background, but I don’t know what his deal is yet besides his appearance in the game’s loading screen art.

And the game’s art is pretty good, I like the models. I actually prefer the 2D art more, the designs are cutesy while still carrying the spirit of the character. Probably my favorite piece of art is this one with Vincent and Kefka, I sincerely can’t wait to see what this is all about and I hope that it’s weird as hell.

Eventually, I made enough gems through doing the game’s missions (which is stuff like “beat this level in X” turns or “bring this character” or “do this move”) to do a big multi-pull. So I went to the main menu… where I was assaulted by more than a dozen notification screens and extra tutorials. Gotta say, this game sure dumps a lot on you and sure does love to push its products.

There’s an event pull going on but they’re all focused on characters I don’t have yet and I have no idea when I’d get them. So, I pulled on the tutorial banner, which is focused on Cloud and Hope.

Like a fool, I did the pull but neglected to take a screenshot of it. I got two 5-star items, which were swords for Cloud. I’ll probably lend the other one to Warrior of Light for a later boss battle when I’ll need his shield ability. Equipping a character’s unique weapon to them grants an affinity bonus for them like extra stats.

…And that’s when I decided to stop for now. There’s still a bunch of stuff that I haven’t gotten to yet like summons, but as I said, Opera Omnia kinda dumps a lot. For now, I think it’s okay! I don’t feel a serious need to dump or grind for the gacha, though it helps that your need is limited by the characters you currently unlocked.

I’m not sure what a good stopping point for these would be: after completing chapters of the game or when I make enough in free currency to do a big roll? Let me know in the comments below so that we can continue through this gacha hell together.