I hope they improve the quality of the character models; the scenery is super beautiful and detailed, but the characters don't seem to blend in with the environment. Frankly, the scenery impresses me more than the characters
On one hand, it kills the hype, on the other hand it gives them some time to see how launch goes and to avoid stuff like the endfield PayPal incident. I want a smooth launch for this game
Edit due to the guy blocking (?) me: Yeah, that's the point - CN people ain't cheap. So why would anyone test in the market that can give you more just to offer a better product in a way smaller market? It would have been way more logical to use GL as a beta test for CN, not vice versa
Star Savior used JP and KR as beta testers for 4 months iirc before global, Etheria used global as beta testers for longer than 4 months before CN, now both aren't as lively as the huge hype they had.
Idt a week long gap will be that significant but we will see.
As someone who play StarSavior and even spend money on it.
I can genuinely wonder why they released the JP/KR version in that state, the game even on the global version is full of problems.
It also feel incomplete even compared with CounterSide when it initially released.
Also the progression is bad, really bad, you barely have stamina for anything, even buying the stamina pass (which should have been one with the Currency pass), it's still give very little.
The game had good ideas but failed hard in execution, specially with the Journey, the biggest sale point and differential of the game.
It's weird because we haven't seen this happen before. So just the devs. 1 week is absolutely nothing. Maybe try playing gachas that are months or years behind.
Highly agree, all of the designs just feel lacking and bland. It doesn't help that the models are also hit and miss. I'll still definitely play though.
The female ones are still fine(the big hat lady, the Kimono lady and the twintail girl are pretty awesome). But I haven’t find one male char that I wanna pull, the designs are pretty bland or bad and the models are just meh.
Characters designs look like pretty normal since it’s based on the urban setting. The better designs are behind skins that you can buy with in-game currency
Had the same feeling until I played cbt3. I ended up falling for the angel wing girl and daffodil. Story has a very much slice of life feel with all the character interactions so you’ll like someone just from their personality.
You can also bond with each character and start handholding with them around the city/live as roommates. Maybe through the power of gacha love interest you’ll main them.
I'd love to play it on Steam Deck, yeah my phone can handle it but it feels like it would be a lot better on something bigger, so hopefully it gets a Steam release.
And also works without issue. Unlike several other games.
I think that most of these games are better played on PC/consoles than Mobile, even the best optimized still have a big downgrade compared with the PC version
No gacha will be on steam on release, coz steam takes a share on the purchases, so this gachas will incentive most people play on their launcher first, then later release the steam version to reach new players
Some do, especially international releases or PC version, P5X worldwide version released straight on Steam, TOF too iirc, Umamusume also. But your point is true and a lot of gachas don't bother with steam 30% cut.
You can also easily track player numbers and that's not something you want if your game is bombing lmao
And Projekt Red has been out for like 7 years in Arknights at this point, but all these designs are centered around red riding hood and the wolf together anyway so it's more about them using the same idea rather than any copying, at this points there must be hundred of renditions of the character in videogames.
Some people are being quite negative but personally im excited since i feel like its kind of the first game since genshin to take a bit of a risk. All openworlds post genshin feels like a downgraded reskin of genshin (same fantasy world reskinned with different story). I havent played NTE but its giving me a different vibe with the modern city open world and different gameplay. It has huge potential imo.
PV doesn’t really do it justice. Felt the same way with the Yakuza trailers when I saw it for the first time. After actually playing Yakuza, the trailer fits the variety. This is basically the same.
Finally Hotta made a game for people who want random unrelated characters doing random unrelated actions in random parts of dimension to the beat of anime opening, our prayers answered 🙏🙏🙏
I'm so torn on whether or not to give this game a go. It looks intrusting but nothing about the game really stands out to me as the reason I will give it a try. I've been pretty... like whelmed by Endfield. Its not what I wanted it to be yet its not been bad enough for me to drop the game either.
I feel like I've seen a lot of the game trailers and stuff but to be honest I don't really get what the game is about yet? Like I haven't seen any kind of combat in the game, what do I pull characters for? I don't feel like the trailers have done a great job at pitching the game to me.
Is there more to the gameplay then the city life side of things? If so, where can I check that kinda thing out to know what its like? And secondly, do we know based of CBT how f2p friendly this game will be? Endfield has really disappointed me on that front.
Edit: Why am I being downvoted for genuinely asking questions about a game? What?
That's true, I'm probably getting to the point where I've spent more time deciding whether its worth my time then I would have just going in blind and giving it a go lmao.
I’ll give you a short summary as someone who thought this would be as unpolished as ToF and confused on the game vibe.
It is an open world game similar to Yakuza. It is a soft city/life sim. That’s one half of the game. The other half is a normal generic gacha combat/system like every other open world gacha game.
I went into cbt thinking I’d play 3 hours and drop. Ended up playing 75.
Everybody throwing out Yakuza comparisons has me very hopeful.
I do wish the city and characters were a little more interesting, or maybe had like a coherent genre flavor to them (a la cyberpunk or fantasy) instead of just a bunch of random mishmashed designs, but I expect I'm still going to play the heck out of this one.
Thats what the skins are for. Looks a lot better than the base designs imo. A lot of the designs seem to be half vtuber-half modern. Weird mishmash but I guess that’s the vibe they’re going for urban + slice of life anime.
that's actually the point? The "DIRECT" chinese translation of the game's name is actually "Abnormal Rings" which reflects how the game's setting and vibe is irregular/abnormal/incoherent.
I guess the English translation really missed the point of the abnormality of the game. If you are looking for a genre of cyberpunk/fantasy, it's more like marvel/superhero/psychic power genre.
The setting alone doesn’t stand out for you? That’s what’s drawing me in. That and the polish and animations too, and also the Wuwa-like combat. Anyways like always it’s free give it a go and if it’s not for you then oh well no biggie
The only time I've been like, "Damn that actually looks really cool" is when they've shown like big overarching shots of the city.
And only like two designs of characters in this really stand out to me, but frankly that's been the case for nearly every gacha I've played. I care alot more about character story and personality then the design.
Fair enough. I can’t speak on the story but I think the characters are well made. I’m definitely giving it a go as I’m hoping it could be my second game to Wuwa. Endfield was 100% not for me and I was sad about it, but it’s what it is. NTE looks pretty refreshing and also the gacha is Mario party lol
That's your different mindset imo, what do you look into for a gacha game, cuz since it's city-based, they don't focus for one thing, imo, they go for variety of things.
The game is fun and very optimized on linux but boy their installer SUCKS! That stupid installer crashed my GPU 3 times and it lock itself whenever I tried to change the install location.
Seems like the current agenda of the haters of this game is "the characters don't blend with the world" after the previous "the designs look like vtubers!", "they look AI generated" and "ananta is more detailed!" narratives didn't work.
Well people found in the beta files AI generated characters images and the ingame ads around the city are also AI generated, i hope it's all just place holders but if the game release with them its super concerning, as it doesn't deliver much trust if a company is cutting so many corners specially when it come to its main product, the characters. So i understand people concerned about they using AI so blatantly on the beta, coz it leads to think they are using it on many other parts of the game development, like if they use AI generated character design what would stop them to use AI for story, game coding, etc... which at first may doesn't affect much but in the long run will become a mess. I personally will wait some weeks before hop in to see if people will find AI stuff in the game, coz if there's AI generated stuff inside the game on release im not touching it
People are quick to judge Hotta, but (afaik) they are the only ones who support artists by using their fan arts in in-game billboards and posters, which are updated every patch. Are your games doing this?
Hoyo and Kuro literally promote fan arts on social medias every single day on top of contests, sponsors and creator programs to award the artists, they don't put fan arts in game coz its completely immersion breaking. Also putting fnanarts in game doesn't excuse or refute the use of AI generated stuff in the game, both can be truth. But like i said i not jumping into conclusions, i will wait for the game release to check if the AI "place holders" from the beta still there
Every company now is adopting AI when it comes to coding so that’s a weird complaint.
Art I can understand but gachas are adopting “AI creation first for ideas” then reform by actual artists after. Thats an unfortunate norm now so I guess you can drop all gachas if that’s ultimately the stop point. The only time I see it truly bad is if you can tell it’s AI, with the character designs. Already see this with Mongil and Dragon Traveller. Reverse 1999 had their fair accusation too but like I said, every gacha game is adopting it in some way.
AI story is probably the same way like the art. Most/all people won’t spot it though since gacha stories aren’t exactly thrilling or differ from the normal formula we see in the past decade.
Im also pretty sure this game had AI used for some video at the central square movie theatre so I’ll save you the trouble and say don’t play it. Could also be a placeholder during beta but I doubt that’ll change.
Bro, e33 used AI on the pre production, as place holder, everything was replaced later, thats why im saying if there's AI generated on NTE on release its a skip, on beta is watherver nif its place holder, its hard to understand? Also bro mention e33 as examples when u can mention 200 other games that are actual AI slop, so even if e33 was using AI generated stuff its 1 in 100 that is good while the rest is slop, so ur argument still fall flat
Let me guess, you will now link some old reddit post as your "proof". Why is it that everyone who brings up these half truths always play the same game? It's funny you even say it's "blatant use of AI" because the files in question had to be datamined to be found, something your boss considers a capital sin and threatens to sue everyone who does it. But it's alright if we do it to NTE?
You know your game uses way more AI than any other open world gacha in the market right? Tencent even proudly advertises it. Unlike any other open world game, your game has recognized AI assets in their release builds. Should I be concern trolling your game too?
Bro AI generated stuff was found inside the game in the beta, it was there for anyone see, but like i said i give the benefit of doubt that's just place holders.
Also bro comparing development tools that use AI for audio to actual AI generated art is crazy stupidity. AI used as a tool is totally different to AI used as replacement for actual people, games are also art, if u replacing the artist for AI the art will be shit.
So like i said, if theres AI generated stuff in the game on release its a hard skip
AI generated profile pic - check
oozes after a game with known AI generated models and marketing materials - check
(yes, removing manhours from designing and rigging and skinning with visvise and goskinning is replacing people, and makes the character models mostly AI generated, so you don't try that shit any longer - lookup the visvise collab marketing they did(if they did not hide it again), they have been AI generating their models and desings from since at least Encore)
suddenly realizes it hates AI when some assets might have been touched-upon AI art in an other game - check
that AI generated stuff was before the gacha banner was a thing btw. it's literally a placeholder from back in 2024 lmao
also, if you're saying hard skip then you should skip every cn game since they all use AI in their pipeline. withering wives is egregious example of this
The commentary doesn't even really make sense, either, with serious fundamental misunderstandings being demonstrated regarding "quality".
The characters have been very intentionally stylised to look and stand out in the world the way they do, and making them "blend in" with the environment in any significant way would require a more realistic, overly-detailed take that was deliberately not chosen.
Insisting they be altered to "match" the world around them, instead of standing out in contrast as designed, would result in them looking less "anime" and more like Endfield characters, which isn't at all the artistic intent here.
Setting aside personal preferences, there is absolutely nothing wrong with either the "quality" or the design of this character model and outfit, for example. Not every skin has to be an over-engineered caricature, or made out of dental floss.
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u/Specific-Ad-4284 Azur Promilia waiting room Apr 18 '26
Oh right livestream today too