Anime Gaming

Yes, yes it is.

(Originally posted 2018-12-23)

As a fan of anime, and a fan of gaming, I’ve taken several opportunities to combine both fandoms into one, in video game, mobile game, and card game forms.

(A reminder: This is part of my 12 Days of AniTAY 2018. Big thanks to Zarnyx for suggesting to go ahead and do it in mainline-TAY, and RedStripe118 for putting me on to the 12 Days of Anime idea in the first place.)


Well, yeah, Satania, we can start there.

I played Magic: the Gathering in high school, and then again about 8 years ago. One of my biggest problems was that I never had the money or interest in trying to keep up with the evolving meta-game. I tried a few other CCGs (including getting in at the beginning of the My Little Pony CCG), but again, the continuing expansions and meta-game evolutions were not something I could feasibly keep up with on my budget.

A friend introduced me to Weiss Schwarz, however. The appeal of self-contained sets, which also serve in some ways as a ‘collectible’ in their own right, appeals to me. I’ve collected pretty much the whole Kill la Kill set (save a few promo cards), gotten SAO decks, KonoSubaRe:Zero, and various Fate ‘trial’ decks.

I still don’t have the money I’d really like to spend to complete more of these sets, nor sadly the time to play the game with more people, but still, I enjoy it. And while I’m the type who doesn’t do much in terms of selling/trading my cards, I’m still glad to have been lucky enough to pick up 2 ‘signed’ cards so far – Aoi Yuuki’s “Yuuki” from SAO II “Mother’s Rosario”, and Inori Minase’s “Rem” in the Japanese Re:Zero deck.

My signature cards

While the card games are a massive money sink (no matter how you cut it), I’ve also purchased a few video games. It started out with the Hyperdimension Neptunia series (which, I think actually became an anime after, but still), and more recently, has included several of the Sword Art Online games for PS4:

Some videos I took from my gameplay
Somehow I did a cool looking thing
Finally, the boss.

Notice how Asuna in a couple of those spots encourages me to ‘use a sword skill’. The sad truth is, I’d love to, but the tutorial went by so fast, I have no idea what I’m doing. I haven’t gotten very far in these, as I wind up doing a lot of button mashing on random enemies, with no real clear clue of where I’m supposed to be going, and the lack of clear save spots/checkpoints where I could leave off on the game also makes things a long, slogging pain.

Nooooo!

While I’ve purchased 3(?) SAO games plus the SAO vs Accel World game, I actually skipped the last SAO:GGO game. On top of the previous issues, I’m not much of a fan of shooters.

It’s not true!

So, while they’ve provided a lovely source of some fun screencaps in the text (another occasional problem, the non-action parts are more like Visual Novels), this lack of knowing what the heck I’m supposed to do, combined with my general lack of gaming time overall, has meant that while I’ve started these games, I’ve sadly fallen off quickly from playing each one.


You may recognize this from my post about this year’s TAY Secret Santa

My current gaming time-sink is the Fate Grand Order mobile game. It’s definitely about the waifus, and the terrible gacha luck. (Speaking of money I shouldn’t spend, the only time I’ve spent actual money for stuff is on those occasions when they have a guaranteed 4/5-star servant for paid currency thing.)

The game is interesting, the story is fun, and the translators at least (if not the original writers) certainly have fun with some of these story bits:

So true. Such a problem.
We might’ve done
I’ve got a fever…
But Eric Bloodaxe and the Vikings aren’t even IN this event!
We will call it… This Land
Whatever could this be in reference to?

Anyway, I must be off to go burn AP again, so feel free to share your anime x gaming experiences in the comments below!

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