I’ve played quite a few gacha games over the years. For those who don’t know, Gacha games are mobile games in which players use some kind of premium currency to get a chance at obtaining desirable items or characters in the game. In most games, players will spend all of their hard-earned currency to get a chance to play with their favorite characters (Usually in an established franchise like Fire Emblem or Fate). Once they run out of that, they have the “opportunity” to spend real life money for even more chances to get their favorite characters. Gacha gamers are essentially gamers gambling for the opportunity to feel good, rather than earn money.

While this type of monetization is generally predatory, I’ll admit that I can’t seem to stop playing gacha games. This is even stranger because I don’t usually spend money on these games – I just enjoy the thrill of pulling (And the waifus). My first gacha game was Fire Emblem Heroes, which drew me in due to the franchise. Since quitting the game after nearly two years of play, I’ve tried many others but none of them have really stuck with me as Fire Emblem Heroes did, so I just kept playing Shadowverse while trying other games on the side. Eventually, Nintendo and Cygames came together for Dragalia Lost, which I originally wrote off as just another gacha game, and for a while I was right.

Dragalia Lost Is Fun, But…

Dragalia Lost is an action role-playing game that uses gacha mechanics to summon characters and dragons. Like most gacha games, the characters’ strength is usually tied to rarity, which can be an issue when trying to put together a good team. For games like Dragalia, a large amount of the player’s enjoyment hinges on their ability to get desirable heroes. Fortunately, Dragalia Lost has found ways to make pulling units enjoyable and keep new players invested. Since launch, Cygames and Nintendo have been incredibly generous with both premium currency and quality of life updates, making it the special game that it is now. The game has been out for a little over half a year, and it seems that it will only improve in the future.

When the game released, Dragalia’s greatest strengths were the gameplay and high production values. The game’s action systems are entertaining, and everything looks great while playing. The game also sounds fantastic too, with a catchy OST featuring an abundance of songs by DAOKO. Still, the game’s fun action and interesting story aren’t enough to keep players invested long term, and there were many issues that plagued the game.

Let’s Make It Better

Dragalia Lost is rather generous with single player stamina, but originally there wasn’t a lot of getherwings, the stamina for cooperative play, which is vital for postgame content. This was patched in one of the early updates, which doubled the number of getherwings that players can hold. Cooperative play was further improved by making the lobby system easier to work with too. Playing cooperatively was once painful, but it is now almost as easy to play with friends as it is playing alone.

As mentioned before, summoning in gacha games can make or break an experience for players who don’t want to spend a long time re-rolling. I can’t name the number of games I stopped playing because of a bad start. Dragalia Lost doesn’t have the highest summoning rates, and this was made worse by the system it had in place early on. Dragalia Lost’s summoning pool was originally made up of units, dragons, and wyrmprints (Essentially jpegs that boost stats). What this meant was that a player’s exciting 5-star summon could just end up being a wyrmprint, which is usually deflating. I actually stopped playing the game for about a month after a long summoning session that ended in a 5-star wyrmprint. It feels awful.

In a recent update following the six month anniversary, all of this was fixed. Cygames announced that the summoning system was being overhauled and that wyrmprints would be taken out of the summoning pool and made into purchasable items. This alone is enough to “fix” Dragalia Lost, and many players saw the news as a great opportunity to return to the game. Now, usually this would be enough to make Cygames seem like the best gacha company in the world, but they also announced that in the very same update, the cost of summoning would be reduced by 20%, allowing for players’ premium currency to go even further. All of these changes were implemented just in time for a crossover with Fire Emblem Heroes, an event that featured some of the best units in the game to summon.

Even three and four-star pulls don’t feel as bad as they used to. Cygames added a patch that helps lower rarity units match up better with the premium ones. This made the game more friendly to those who don’t want to spend any money. More importantly, it helps most units have some sort of viability. An absolute win!

Cygames Is Still Cygames

Of course, the quality of life updates aren’t the only great things that have been given to the players. Cygames is well-known for their generosity in games such as Granblue Fantasy, Shadowverse, and Princess Connect (All of which I recommend). With every major update, a free ten-fold ticket is given out to players, allowing them to try to get new units without any currency. Since the game’s launch, there have also been multiple five-star units given away for free.

The dailies give out a fine amount of currency, and the multitude of events makes grinding for materials pretty painless. Due to the generous developers, it is easy to play Dragalia Lost without spending a single dollar. I personally haven’t spent anything on Dragalia Lost yet, and am pretty satisfied with the units I have. With a bit of dedication, this game can be completely free, which is pretty welcome considering how greedy other games can be.

The Future Of Dragalia

The developers recently released the future plans of Dragalia Lost, which includes even more quality of life upgrades. One of my least favorite parts of Dragalia Lost is spending an excessive amount of time grinding items and levels rather than playing the game. Soon, there will be systems in place that will make befriending dragons and crafting weapons have fewer steps.

Even without the exciting gameplay, Dragalia Lost is the example to refer to when trying to figure out how to treat players. Dragalia is now one of the most beloved gacha games on the market and rightfully so.

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