Punishing: Gray Raven

I'd like to preface all this by saying a couple things. For one, I've been playing for about a year now, and I've spent maybe a total of $1000USD over the course of my run. I also love all of the core components of this game. The story and characters are solid, the gameplay is great, the presentation is amazing and the music is downright outstanding! There's so much about the game that I really, genuinely love.

With all that said, playing through recent event content while keeping up with the usual dailies and weeklies is a slog. War Zone and Phantom Pain Cage is fun at first, but quickly loses their luster as they turn into weekly chores. All you really do aside from that involves checking your dorms and spending all your serum to farm whatever resources you may be lacking.

In other gachas, event content usually exists to switch things up, while also rewarding players for participating with resources (they usually serve as the secondary source of premium currency for F2Players). PGR evidently tries, but in my experience, PGR's event content falls into one of two categories:

• The first category consists of somewhat shallow minigames that are (usually) completely separate from the core gameplay, meaning that the enjoyment of these minigames hinges entirely on the novelty of the game itself and the personal interests of the individual player.

• The other category consists of combat content, that often tends to be balanced (seemingly exclusively) for whales, with enemies that sponge damage like crazy and one-tap you.

• Irregardless of what category the event content ends up falling into, there's something like a 50%+ chance that any given event game-mode takes way longer to clear than it reasonably should, which just ends up turning the content that's supposed to be fun and switch things up into time-limited chores, yay!

Compare this to how Genshin Impact handles its events (I know how everyone loves when people compare every gacha game to Genshin). In the recent Windblume event, we had three minigames; a discount Guitar Hero, Pacman, and Dead Rising (but without the zombies and you're just taking pictures of scenery).

In my own opinion, these gamemodes are all kinda boring - the music minigame is a little fun, but the rest just have you run around in an enclosed space or taking pictures. But at least they have the courtesy of only taking maybe 5 minutes at most, and they all reward you with 1/3 or 1/2 of a roll. Meanwhile, certain event game-modes in PGR will have you slap enemies around for 30 minutes to 1 hour for pocket change.

And unlike with something like Azur Lane, where event content is usually also kinda slow, you can't just put it on auto while you do something vaguely productive; you have to actually sit down, and devote your energy and attention to playing PGR. And as someone with ADD, it just doesn't feel like PGR respects your investment, or your time.

I will say, there's a chance that this is just a matter of burn-out. Maybe I just need to take a break for a couple weeks (or months), and once I get back into things, I'll eat my words, shoes, hat, etc. But right now, despite everything that PGR has going for it (seriously, the music is genuinely incredible), I just don't feel like it respects my time.

TLDR; PGR is a great game in concept, but content quickly turns into a slog. Event content usually consists of unpolished, hit-or-miss minigames, or combat modes seemingly balanced exclusively for whales/veterans to clear. Either type of event content also tends to take way longer to clear than it should, ultimately turning event content into another slog. Compared to other gacha games, it doesn't feel like PGR really respects your time or investment, despite all its genuine strengths.

EDIT: Formatting, etc.

Oh deary me, Kuro Games, adding on to their reputation of having a landslide of a launch for their game. From greedy developers, to Discord server being shut down, pitchforks raised, white knighting, review bombing, as well as the glorious $1 meme. Complaints varying from different aspects of the game, some nitpicking while others very relevant, here is my stance on the whole shitstorm that is going on right now, ranking from the most irrelevant complaint to the most relevant.

• First of all, the S Karenina skin event

Truly a disastrous first "event", if it even counts as one (with it being quite insignificant). The complaints for this include; players not being able to obtain S Karenina skin from the event if they do not spend. In my opinion, it doesn't matter at all. This skin is something that not all players will be able to use, if they spent their S rank selector for another character and/or not get her from their 40-pity newbie rolls, as well as players saving for new yet-to-release characters and thus having no cards to roll for S Karenina. The complaint which I think is more relevant however, being advertised as something a F2P player can get, but in the end, however more relevant, it still is of insignificance. In no way did Kuro Games advertised this skin as free, and people are jumping way too early to conclusions. While it is understandable that pointing out other games make events inclusive to no-spenders, in my truthful opinion, it still doesn't matter. The ultimate decision whether you want the skin or not, is still left to the players and players only. It only is a matter of spending or not. Skins across games are mostly paid for in the first place, and are mostly just a cosmetic with no advantages in stats whatsoever. Personally, I wouldn't want a skin that I won't ever use (because I'm not getting the character), and it might as well be paid. This complaint is both petty as well as nitpicky.

• Second of all, the Discord server

All hail the P:GR king of memes, at least for the Discord server: Altera. Poor shaming is something that I think is unforgivable, and being a mod, even more so. But there is more to this story than meets the eye. It all comes down to the previous server owner Violet, who has a reputation of various handling Discord servers incompetently, (example: Blue Archive and Counter: Side, among others), but that is a topic for another day. Being the incompetent person that she is, poor management is inevitable. Most of the line-up of moderators that were chosen, were moderators with close to no prior experience moderating big Discord servers, which led to poor management and, rightfully so, triggering replies to feedback in the #game-feedback channel due to lack of experience. What I want to say about this, is that Altera and moderators who managed the situation poorly, is in no way representing Kuro Games, as they were moderators chosen by Violet, and should not be subjected to cyberbullying, as team of moderators consist of a combination of innocent people being dragged in by the flaming, as well as inexperience. Now that Violet is gone, with official P:GR staff taking over the server, we can expect a revamp with competent moderators who will go through a legitimate interview. Good riddance!

• Rookie missions awarding B Nanami skin, instead of 1000 Black Cards

A very valid complaint, and rightfully so. In a gacha game, gacha currency is definitely going to be the most important resource of the game, and cutting it short for a skin is something that is very questionable. Even so, in the grand scheme of things, 1000 Black Cards totals up to 4 rolls. However much of an impact it will be, would be up to individual players themselves. But in the end, it is definitely a poor decision in trying to make Global seem "different" to the CN and other servers. Being a low spender, I can sympathize with people wanting to get as much rolls for Alpha (or future characters).

• Rainbow Card pricing

Now this is by far the most relevant complaint. Having both 4.99$ and 5.99$ packs exist simultaneously, coupled with the purchase of the Monthly Pass that puts players in an awkward situation where they had to pay for more while having leftovers, is definitely and blatantly something done with predatory intentions.

• Kuro Games as a whole, their reply, and what I like to call the "goalkeeper effect" (Conclusion)

However scummy they may be in managing servers other than the Chinese and Taiwan/Hong Kong ones, they still have their merits which I would like to point out. An example is not adhering to cancel culture. Liv, who is voiced by Kayano Ai, came under fire through a controversial incident (which, in my opinion, is an ultra dumb incident which only surfaced months after the actual incident). Many games such as Arknights and Azur Lane, removed her voice from the game (Platinum and Atago respectively), but Liv was able to keep her voice. This is something I would really like to praise, given my bias of liking Kayano Ai's voice, but also not being suck up to the cancel culture in which the fault was outright bullshit. Secondly, the game was designed with the inclusivity of F2P players in mind. Having a low pity rate as well as a decent gain of Black Cards throughout the game, which ultimately leads to F2P players being able to get every new S character without spending a single cent in the game is outright amazing. And by buying the Monthly Pass, players will end up with enough Black Cards to get their signature weapon as well, giving them a great boost in strength for just 4.99/5.99$. Honkai Impact in comparison, can only dream of being this generous, what with stigmatas (P:GR equivalent of memories) have to be gacha'd, as well as a high pity number (please correct me if I'm wrong, this comparison is made by assumptions from conversations of friends playing the game as well as my grand total of 1 day playing this game). Thirdly, I would like to give some praise that they at least made the effort to give a rather swift response, at 3 am China local time to address the issue. Were they addressed well? Clearly not, as the community started to meme about Kuro Games not giving a shit. But it is a fact that it was a quick response, and at the very least, hope they will take a path down the right direction in the unforeseeable future (TOTALLY not copium). As for a comparison, MiHoYo's response to implementing 2FA in Genshin Impact, which was a widely reported issue in an extremely big player base. This took months to implement despite how big of a fuss it created in the community. Other than that, their fix to the arguably unfair weapon gacha system. Not having a guarantee is something that is very much a punch to the stomach, especially for YouTuber Tectone (a side note: I don't like the guy, but spending $2000 for 1 copy of a weapon is something that, even when he's a shitty person, I can feel bad for). And it was also something that was complained about since the beginning of the game. Their fix? Coming 10 months after it's initial release, with its pity being a high 240 rolls. While whether fixes to the current situation in P:GR will come or not is a matter of debate, ultimately I would like to say that giving a swift response is something that is plausible, instead of keeping players in the dark.

• My stance, and how I feel about the current situation

Were the complaints warranted? Yes, as I pointed above, for some. Did the game warrant review bombing? Definitely not. The game is not even 1 week old and people were not giving a chance for the team to give a proper reply first. My stance on this? I will continue playing the Global version of the game, spending for the Monthly Pass as well as a few skins that I like. However scummy the game might be now, I joined because of their inclusivity of F2P players as well as low spenders being able to get a good number of characters and their respective weapons. While I am able to read simplified Chinese, and to an extent, traditional Chinese, the fact that joining in late means losing the getting every new S rank character treatment is a little frustrating (also coupled with CN being locked behind a Chinese ID and restricted play time for the unregistered), I wouldn't mind paying extra to be able to play the game with these characters as well as in my first language.

If you have read all the way to the end of this thread, a big kudos to you. And on a side note, a big respect to people who complain in a civil manner instead of being monkeys and go "I QUIT SHIT GAME" and mald.

Thought I’d ask you what some of the mistakes you made were when you started.

Here’s some of mine:

• I didn’t know co-op awarded tokens for 5-star weapons. The only five star weapon I got was Liv’s, so I did most of my content with 4 star.

• I thought (still think) Selena Tempest was awesome, so I burned all of my serum to get to Level 40 or 50 or whatever you needed to roll for transcendental (now uniframes) and then I realized that I couldn’t use her in my teams since you couldn’t combine constructs with transcendents

• I didn’t know you had to hammer alternating XXI s ult between two orbs and basic attack, I was just hammering Blue Orbs straight-up. (edit: you gain ranks during her ult by doing Blue-Basic-Basic, repeat until S rank)

• I got Chrome Glory super early, my first S-rank construct in like 20 pulls and didn’t really use him right away because I didn’t know that he was actually super good at the time (still is super good)

• My dark team is Selena XXI Vera because I don’t have a DPS. Vera is level 60 and has no memories equipped. Yeah I do ultimate Pain Cage with this team. I can’t wait for the S rank selector so I can get Luma.

• I still have never tried Babel yet, so I’m probably missing out on tons of Black Cards.

We’re going to get a lot of new players coming in. I remember when I was new, it was less than a year ago and I’m still learning.

Anyone else have mistakes to share?

It's the 2nd day of CBT! Sorry for posting late, was a little busy with school and stuff D:

Story/Lore

Only played through ch1 for now, so as far as i know from the game (and some general PGR stuff ive seen on reddit), setting takes place in the future where a virus named "punishing" is corrupting and infecting the world. Y/N plays as the leader/commander of Gray Raven Squad, to well, yeah. Fight the Punishing Virus. xD

***

Gameplay

• Very HI3-ish, hack n' slash, reminds me of games like neir:automia.

• Very fast, smooth and excellent animations. Even has a mechanic where if you dodge an attack, time "slows down" for enemies and you get to whack the shit out of anyone on the battlefield for a short amount of time.

[In-Game]

• Each nth time you AA (It seems quite random on how fast the orbs generate as you attack, so i'll just use nth for now), a random colored orb(attack) is generated. There are chain skills(?) where you link 3 same colored orb skill for a special move; its called a 3-ping. (Not 100% sure about this, but seems like it from what i played. So sorry if im mistaken)

• You also get an "ultimate" skill that you can use as you charge up the blue bar below your HP.

• You can also level up your orbs with mats for higher stats. Like using molas for skills in E7, and using books for skills in C:S, etc.

One small thing to note, there's not a "claim all" option for like dailies & etc. So it can get quite annoying sometimes to manually press "claim" every time.

***

Graphics

I'm using iPhone 12. Excellent graphics, high quality and well animated characters/movements. No delay in battle or whatsoever. Very smooth. UI is pretty nice, not too cluttered - very similar to AK. Battle stages UI also super similar to AK.

***

Gacha (Called Construct)

• Beginner Exclusive banner, guaranteed S-rank in the first 40 pulls. [S-rank 0.50% drop rate]

• Event banner, guaranteed S-rank or above every 60 pulls. [S-rank 0.50% drop rate]

• Special Event banner, guaranteed S-rank or above every 80-100 pulls. [S-rank 1.50% drop rate]

• Weapon banner (Focus Research), guaranteed 5⭐️ every 10 pulls. Guaranteed 6⭐️ every 30 pulls.

• Weapon banner (Weapon Research); rates are same as the other weapon banner as stated on top.

***

Overall:

I think it's a pretty solid game to pick up with amazing graphics and nice gameplay. Gacha rates are pretty nice(?) Seems easy to hit "pity" for every banner. Game is quite F2P, gives decent pull currency.

I think this concludes my CBT first look into PGR, let me know if im mistaken anywhere and your thoughts!