(I thought I’d posted this already, sorry that it’s so late!)

New event, woo! I feel like you all know the drill by now – farm event quests, buy items, develop new units, regret rolling in the gacha (though maybe not in that order)

Two things, before we get stuck into the reviews:

One, the new 2★ alchemist units are cute, but not spectacular; I wouldn’t go out of your way to farm their charge skills if that’s all you’re running the quests for.

Two, the two new status effects are pretty neat – I’m particularly looking forward to seeing what Lifewonders does with Weapon Change.

THE GACHA – New Standard Units

Speaking of new status effects, here’s Alp with both – in fact, it’s the only time we’ll see either effect in this gacha.

On first glance, he seems a bit underwhelming – he gets a whole suite of debuffs, but is limited to either blow (3★) or thrust (4★) ranges.

His charge skill changes that. Thanks to his LB3, he should have it up by turn 2 or 3 – at which point he becomes a bit of a nightmare (thematically appropriate!) for the enemy team to deal with.

Charm is about tied with Possession as the strongest debuff in the game. To be able to hit the whole enemy team with it is excellent, even at a 30% chance (if there are enough enemies on the field, Glint from his LB3 is pretty reliable).

Dazzle, while below Charm (and below Bind/Skill Seal), is a great defensive debuff. It’s not quite reliable enough here (40%) for Alp to serve as a primary defensive support, but it certainly makes your main support’s job a lot easier.

Exhausted is pretty garbage in terms of debuffs (unless you’re having real trouble with enemy charge skills), but at least it’s free?

Since Behemoth got released earlier this year, I’ve come to appreciate skills that shift the entire enemy team towards you – farming the 45-stamina daily exp quests is a lot nicer when your frontline (Gyumao) can mop up quickly. That said, it’s not the kind of effect you want all the time; definitely consider whether you can handle it before you slot Alp into a team.

Attention is… interesting. Since the AI in this game doesn’t really seem to make sensible decisions a lot of the time, I’m having a hard time thinking about when I want to use this. It might come in handy in a pinch – if you can outrange the enemy, you could always chip at them from safety while they are trying (and failing) to hit you?

His charge skill doesn’t need levelling at all, which is a welcome bonus.

Leib’s here! I think this closes out the units that we’ve been waiting on forever?

I was a bit surprised to see him as a 5★! I had him pinned for a 4★ unit, for some reason. Oh well ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Leib fills a very specific niche – anti-debuff support. Fortunately, he’s pretty good at it: 1) his Default skill can preempt it, 2) he’s immune to getting skill-bound, 3) he’s got a chance of removing it on movement (3★) or when attacking (5★), and 4) his charge skill straight up removes them all.

He’ll keep himself alive pretty reliably – 30% of Guts when attacking is pretty good on a snipe range, and he’ll also contribute defensively with Protection (though he doesn’t give this to himself!). If you’re sweeping combat phases in two turns, this might be all the defensive support you need.

His 5★ also gives Ardor at the start of every turn, which is also quite nice to have (but not what you’re primarily running him for).

If you’re not facing a lot of debuffs, then he’s probably not the unit to bring (Charm also hits him quite hard!) – otherwise, I’d consider him a powered-up Agyou, which is pretty great.

His charge skill is nice if you can get levels in it – Regeneration is a respectable heal – but its main draw is Remove All Debuffs, which doesn’t need levelling.

THE GACHA – New Limited-Time Units

I definitely have a soft spot for this bear, but I’m struggling a little bit with finding a use for him.

The design behind him makes sense: He’s got 4 different abilities that increase his CP (not including his charge skill, which also boosts it), and 1 that decreases it – the idea here is that you control the timing of his charge skill for when you need it (and, since it gives Guts, this is a pretty good thing to do). This helps to mitigate the extra damage that he’ll be getting from Berserk+, as well as the damage he’ll get when applying Curse to the enemy.

Unfortunately, there are two issues with this.

The first is that if he does manage to get his charge skill ready, it’s guaranteed to go off the next turn (barring one of the enemies preventing this).

The other issue is that it doesn’t really get him anywhere. Berserk+ and Barrage will allow him to put out decent damage, but not enough that he can run in a DPS role, and he only gives Rev to allies.

Applying Curse to enemies is nice (and means he’ll only take normal damage when both Curse and Berserk+ are in play), but this isn’t enough to run him as a defensive support.

Maybe I’m missing something here?

Anti-sweets would have been an amusing theme to run with in the Valentine’s event.

Durga is quite good. She’s pretty much designed for one job – fight other short-range units. How this works is pretty self-explanatory: she moves herself to the front line at the start of the turn with her Default skill, attacks for a ton of damage thanks to blow range coupled with Weakness (and possibly Ardour), then ducks back out again, also from her Default skill.

Combined with a front-line tank (and possibly with a back-line unit drawing aggro with Attention?), Durga will do really well in short-range engagements.

Her small self-heal and increased vertical movement should help in the event things go a bit pear-shaped, but she’ll struggle a bit against long-ranged enemy lineups.

Rage from her charge skill fits into her kit nicely – if the enemy isn’t hitting you (and they shouldn’t be!), then the effect on her damage is effectively squared: at level 1, this is a 1.56x damage increase, and at level 100, it’s a 6.25x increase.

More realistically, at 50% effectiveness (charge skill level 10), this is a 3.5x damage increase, which is pretty great.

Rage also lets your team follow up, which should let you clean up pretty well.

That said, if you fail to clean up (or the enemy is in range to hit you), then you’re going to feel it. For obvious reasons, I’d recommend planning your team if you’re going to include Durga when she has a couple of levels in her charge skill 🙂

I’ve always wondered whether Kuniyoshi’s character design is a deliberate dig at the Housamo playerbase. This event variant has not clarified things.

That aside, his variant here is plenty strong.

In a poetic sort of way, he seems to be a sort of mirror of Lieb; where Lieb protects your team from debuffs, Kuniyoshi protects the enemy team from their buffs.

It’s not a direct comparison, of course, but I find it interesting that they both feature in the same gacha lineup.

Kuniyoshi also has a number of other strong skills (which is fortunate, since reactively removing enemy buffs isn’t great all the time): he’ll usually be able to give himself protection, and has a decent chance of hitting the enemy with Dazzle – this should allow him to function pretty well as a tank, even without support.

I’m not usually a fan of skills that deal extra damage against other particular skills, but Blood of the Beast is so common that I think he gets a pass. It’s not enough for him to act in a serious DPS role, but it does make supporting him that little bit easier if you want to go that route.

Guaranteed Possession from his charge skill is very strong, especially when coupled with pulling the enemy team 2 squares forward. The issue that I tend to run into with Possession is that the enemy team isn’t usually in a position to hit themselves (and they’re good at keeping things that way) – disrupting that positioning is going to be pretty good for resolving that.

Added benefit in that his charge skill doesn’t need levels at all – all range does pretty awful damage without serious support, and neither of the effects scale.

Overall, I’m pretty pleased by this gacha – there are definitely some interesting new options in it. Alp and the two 5★ units in particular are worth developing, if you’re lucky enough to pull them.

Good luck to anyone rolling!