Gacha, short for gachapon, is often viewed as an exploitative skinner box made specifically to spear whales and keep them in tow until they can no longer afford to play or break the line. That’s because it is. However lucrative it can be, general gaming news ignores it until a whale drops 5 figures and fails to get a waifu JPEG. Gacha Hell seeks to review gacha games based off gacha-specific criteria. If a game’s here, there’s something worth talking about.
DISCLAIMER: Hatman works for a mobile game developer. For obvious reasons, none of the games reviewed will be from that developer.
Integrating Gameplay and Story
The reason why I want to talk about interdimensional creature-slaying Private Military Contractor simulator Counterside lies mainly in its integration of gameplay and story. It’s one thing to have a lot of features that make no sense for the setting and theme of a video game, it’s a whole other can of worms to make them accurately thematic, and nothing shows the discrepancy between the two than another Korean gacha title currently under softlaunch in Canada and Malaysia, Argent Twilight.
If you take a look at both games, thematically speaking they couldn’t be any more different. Counterside is a near-future serious game where your PMC defends the world against interdimensional aggressors as you try and learn everyone’s secrets, including your own in order to finally put an end to the corruption of reality. Argent Twilight instead is deep into high-fantasy with guns where you play as Manhwa Jeff Bezos as a personal pottery purchase puts you on the tail of a potential world-ending catastrophe.
Yet both have the exact same set of features. It doesn’t help that both titles are published by Nexon in Korea (Counterside’s publishing history is interesting in that Studiobside published the Global version by themselves instead of relying on Nexon or another publisher) so there could definitely be some influence there. You have a cash shop, you have guilds, you have pulls for characters, raids, etc. The games don’t play the same, but all the features are there. Yet Counterside integrates them to the world in a way that is narratively consistent, where Argent Twilight simply brushes that away as they divorce the player from the main character in the UI, but not in the game itself.
An example: In Counterside, the guild system is simple: Your company joins a bunch of other companies in (or starts) a consortium, and together you seek to assemble cash money, assist each other in raids, clean-up periodic Corrupted Object invasions, etc. In Argent Twilight, you, as the richest person in the world, joins a guild filled with… other richest people in the world? What? Maybe it ties to the parallel worlds aspect they tease early on in the story (which explains the different elemental aspects of each character, but I digress), but I was too distanced from the story by that point to care.
Sometimes, that’s really all a game needs for me to care – a well-written, mechanics-integrated world with few instances of handwaving (namely, using dupes to limit break is the one thing I can think of since there’s no real clone shenanigans going on but they tie it to an experiment in-story). Now, let’s dig in and see if it can stand on its own.
Actual Gameplay
The game has two levels of gameplay. A 2D plane RTS where the player drops units and only interacts with them when they want to use Ultimate Skills or redeploy them in another area of the map, and a SRPG-like mode where each ship has its own squad. Each unit has a deployment cost, you gain deployment resources over time, and some units even grant you faster regen or deployment resources outright. Outside of a very specific exception, if a unit dies, you can immediately redeploy them so long as the unit is in your deployment deck. If not, you need to deploy more units until they show up there. Since a squad has a maximum of 8 units, you’ll easily cycle through them as necessary. The idea being that while the player chooses where the unit deploys, they do not individually control them outside of instructing the units to do their big kaboom. Also, some units do not have a big kaboom so the only interactions with them is redeployment.
I have to talk about unit composition because I believe this will accurately showcase the complexity of the game despite the simplicity of its gameplay. Units fall under 3 possible categories – Counters (typically named units with Ultimate Skills), Soldiers (not necessarily named units with typically several passives instead of a large unit) and Mechs (Drones). This is mainly for flavor, but sometimes a mission will have specific slots reserved to a category. From there, each unit has a specific class they can belong to which will determine their role in battle (also, where they fall on the traditional Gacha RPS mechanic). Strikers are melee fighters, Rangers are mid-range units, Defenders are frontline units that protect whoever is behind them and Snipers are long-range units. That’s the RPS wheel, but wait! Units exist outside of that, too! Support are units that buff units or debuff allies as a priority. Tower units are stationary units that will defend an area very specifically and Siege units will gun towards the enemy’s boss (a ship, a flesh monstrosity, an actual boss, etc.) and ignore everyone else.
All right, is that it? Hell no I’m nowhere close to done. Each unit also has a classification as either a ground or an air unit, which is essentially just “where they’re at” in general. They also have a range – just because you have a gun doesn’t mean you can shoot upwards. Just ask Mega Man. Units can attack either the ground, the air, or both.
Once all of that is determined, you have the basis of a unit. Hopefully that shows where all the strategy in the game comes from. This gives Studiobside a lot of levers to pull when making units, and it has allowed them to have some really creative ones. As an example I’ll cite one of the three main characters, Joo Shiyoon. He’s a Counter who, in story, uses a sword. You would think he’d either be a Defender or a Striker, right? Nope, he’s a Ranger. Why? Because he flashsteps whenever he attacks and returns to where he was standing. So he’s a Ranger, Ground unit, that can only attack the ground.
There are other characteristics but for the sake of keeping this short, I’ll stop there. Needless to say, there is a lot of complexity behind the moving parts of the game which is what makes it enjoyable to actually play on an intellectual level. It feels strange to say because they market this as a line battle game, but it’s more of a puzzler than it is a strategy game, and it absolutely has an appeal for people who’d be into tabletop wargaming as it scratches a lot of the same itches.
More importantly, this game is part of the few gacha games where the unit’s rarity does not mean the unit is bad – just that the rarer it is, the more powerful it can be and the harder it is to max out. It’s necessary, as raids require a whole cadre of 24 units that are tricked out enough to survive, and other end game stuff often has restrictions that make the lesser rare units much more desirable.
Story and Presentation
The ads for Counterside mentioned its story first and foremost, so it’s one of the aspects I feel has to be discussed. When I said the game was a Private Military Contractor simulator, I meant exactly that. You take the role of the CEO of the Coffin Company, a low-tier PMC hired by the Administration to take care of Corrupted Object invasions (there is a lot of Capital Letter Terminology in this game) in a given area. From there, an old face returns to the company (Hilde, the first character you get), a new one joins (Yoo Mina, the protagonist) while the aforementioned Joo Shiyoon is really just there to slack off. Immediately, the game shows you that not everything is what it seems and that there’s double-cross under double-cross currently going on. Even the most innocuous character can end up being a traitor (or… not?) enough that it’s an extremely bleak world with, well, not a lot of light moments, making the few that are there shine all the more.
Fortunately, the narrative is compelling enough to warrant wading through the darkness, and while at first the characters are extremely hard to like (Yoo Mina, Hilde and the ALT Squad specifically), you get to see them grow from annoying teenage military brats into slightly more interesting characters. Plus, you likely will encounter, through the gacha if nothing else, at least one or two characters you actually like.
For me, that is Chris Redfield John Mason. An absolute gem action movie parody character that is treated somewhat like a joke, as a lone mercenary fighting creatures that, well, it shouldn’t be up to him to fight as he has zero protection against the corruptive effects of the Counterside. Yet not only does he pull through, he’s never treated as dumb (especially as in the lore, he has a Phd. in some sort of Engineering, most likely robotics considering he made his own drone), just someone that might be out of his depth.
Chapter 6 is a school arc, and while it’s not exactly great, it’s interesting in that it follows immediately following the main story arc of the game, which at first feels like tonal whiplash, but not only is it explained in context, it also does not diminish the accomplishments of the main character. Story wise and presentation wise, that’s where the game absolutely shines despite its bleak world and actually playing as a PMC that employs teens.
Gacha and Grinding
Now, the meat and potatoes of Counterside. The gacha itself is relatively fair on the surface, offering odds of around 3.5% of a SSR on a given banner (1% for the rate up, 2.5% of any other roll) with no having to roll gacha for equipment or a subsequent item (while you can roll for Operators, players do not recommend you do so unless you really like the SR Operators as another type of pity allows you to freely pick out a SSR Operator at 300 pulls. It is much more valuable to do that). Plus, the item that allows for free gacha pulls can be bundled up into a 10 pull guaranteeing a SR. Plus, the pity system is at 150 rolls when most will have it at 200 or even 300! Where’s the catch?
The catch is that this is only true for one type of banner: The normal ones. There is a specific type of unit called an Awakening unit, and they are on entirely separate banners that are never rolled into the regular gacha. In order to have an awakening unit, you MUST roll on those. There is a pity system in place – the very same one as the other banners, in fact – Roll 150 times, you are guaranteed the awakened unit on the banner. Plus, unlike those banners, all of the “Classified” banners are considered the one and the same, so your pity count will not reset if the banner expires before you can pull the unit. It exists for the banner as a whole.
Where they get you is that you can only pull on them with the paid currency or 20 Classified Employment Contracts per pull. It’s recommended to use the free quartz given out to outright buy the weekly pull because farming those is time gated. They’re typically only available during events, or in daily/weekly missions that refresh, of course, daily/weekly. And even then, you get around 1 pull per 5 days. That’s not a lot.
Fortunately, these units, while game-changing in various areas of the game, are not necessary to progress. However, what is is immense grinding and RNG. In order to properly trick out a character, you’ll most likely need a given set bonus (usually a not-so-insignificant boost to a stat, attack speed or cooldown reduction) which will absolutely be an issue. Not only that, but some sets require all 4 equipment slots to be used, which means you need the character to have unlocked its maximum possible limit break to even be able to use those sets. Gear set bonuses are completly RNG and there is no way to guarantee it. You can re-roll them if you have a good piece of gear, but that is on a very costly resource that is much better saved for max tier gear.
Long story short expect to grind. A lot. Without a lot of resources to actually allow you to. At first, the game showers you in Eternium and Info, allowing for quick progression but around Player Level 30 I started to hit a wall hard. I had all the resources to boost my characters to start getting into mid-late game stuff like Raids, Danger Close, Shadow Palace, etc. but I ran out of things to grind with. No info meant I can’t take on Dives (Tower Battle, essentially) or Raids (…raids). No Eternium meant I couldn’t grind out experience, gear, or even info for a while.
Another thing that you can grind for is characters: There are a few characters that you can “scout”. If you grind enough of that resource, you get a copy of them on the team, no questions asked. Very useful for characters like Lin Xien, who is a staple due to her ability to refund and grant deployment costs as a fight goes on, but grinding her out to a level where she can join the main team? If you never pulled her, that’ll take some time. A long time.
The fact that the game is a grind fest is undeniable, but most gacha players are either grind enjoyers or are endured from years of playing these games. Where it turns tedious is that to do it efficiently, you have to not play the game. Sure, you can refuse to use skips and just use automation instead, but while you do that, you could be doing something else with your phone/CPU power.
Speaking of that, while I never go out of my way to make a mention of technical issues, this game made my TCL20 Pro+ run extremely hot and can drain battery really fast despite its reliance on Live2D and backgrounds as opposed to 3D animation. Those on lesser performing devices might have issues.
Conclusion
All in all, I can’t say I hated my time with Counterside despite all it has going against it: Its inscrutable resource priority system (using quartz for pulls is not a good idea as you get a lot of the free pull currency, instead you should buy the other free pull currency), the sheer amount of not playing the game you have to do, the whole employing teens in mercenary companies thing, etc. The storyline is gripping in the way only a storyline with Many Capitalized Words And Secrets can have – You get to feel for the tense triangle between Yoo Mina, Joo Shiyoon and Hilde when the latter’s secrets begin to get exposed. As you come to understand the game’s story and setting, the amnesia the player character suffers from is turned right on its head as a clever little plot device. Some of the characters are charming or outright funny (Kang Soyoung is a cop yet still managed to win me over) and even if there’s currently only two colored guys in the game, neither are represented badly.
Would I recommend this to someone looking for a phone game and hasn’t played a gacha game before? Absolutely not. This is for the hardened gacha degenerates who won’t mind the blemishes of the game to enjoy it for what it is.
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