Hoo boy, 6 new units to review. I’ll try not to ramble too much, so that the review is a bit more palatable to read!

A quick note, before we dive in: in addition to event item drop rate increases, featured units also get an attack boost when attempting the event quests:

(Image shamelessly stolen from the event announcement page)

This should mean that farming the event will be significantly easier than usual, so building teams to max out drop boosts will work a bit smoother.

Let’s see what this gacha has in store for us!

One of two new permanent units, Behemoth can be summed up as an improved 4★ Macan — they share a good chunk of their skillsets, and both are designed to sit in the front row and build up their charge skills. They’re both made for fights that take a little bit longer to clear (i.e. you’re not sweeping every phase, but you’re not stalling for time, either).

Behemoth will do exceptionally well at this. With three skills that boost his CP (all with different trigger timings), it should be easy enough to time it so that the enemy has acquired a buff or two — at this point, the adage you are what you eat comes into play, and Behemoth’s strengths are based around the buffs he managed to steal.

His heal on his charge skill, provided there are a decent number of enemies to hit, should provide him plenty of sustain to remain in the front lines.

There’s not going to be a ton of difference between how his 3 and 4★ variants play; though his 4★ is very much the better choice if you have him, his 3★ form should be able to complete much of the same content (albeit with less efficiency).

As an aside, I definitely admire Lifewonders’ commitment to giving Behemoth two different forms: doubling up on art and voice lines for a character takes a lot!

Ziz does two things: heals, and charges CP.

Fortunately, she does both of these really well. Like Behemoth, she’ll do best in medium-length fights — she’ll be able to give your team a decent amount of sustain, but she’ll suffer in longer fights from a lack of self-sustain (and is vulnerable to burst damage in shorter fights).

Her 4★ variant mitigates these weaknesses somewhat with her LB3: Guts with a [Before Receiving Damage] trigger will help avoid getting one-shot, while a CP accelerant on a magic attack range should bring her charge skill up quite fast (especially if you can trigger Barrage!).

Her charge skill is great, particularly if it’s been levelled at all. It’s also her only source of self-healing, so definitely look to trigger it as often as possible. It’s also worth noting that it applies Defense Up, which lasts for 4 turns rather than the standard 1 turn!

Definitely run her 4★ variant over her 3★, if you have it. The CP gain (and Barrage chance!) from her 4★’s LB3 is a pretty big boost.

There are several blessings that Lifewonders delivered with this event, and happy Inugami is one of them.

As far as gameplay goes, Kenta is a pretty strong offensive support, though perhaps a little unwieldy to use.

Despite a wide slash attack range, most of the time you’ll be running Kenta on the edges of the fight, adjacent to one of your primary damage dealers.

Kenta has 3 great offensive buffs in Brawn, Critical, and Attack Up, however, given they all have different trigger conditions (coupled with low activation rates) means you’ll likely never get all three of them up at once. The flip side to this, though, is that you can usually rely on one of them to be up — which, given the strength of the individual buffs, is pretty good.

He’s also got some minor defensive support capability: removing debuffs at 40% is really good if you can hit 3+ enemies to trigger it, and Blessing is a nice heal in a pinch (though unreliable, at a 70% trigger rate!)

Much like both Behemoth and Ziz before him, Kenta’s charge skill gives some welcome self-sustain (though his LB3 provides a bit, it’s not enough to keep him going in longer fights). Protection definitely suffers without levels, though — at level 1, it’s only a 10% damage decrease for 1 turn, which isn’t spectacular.

I feel that there are better offensive support options than Kenta, but he’s definitely a serviceable unit.

Update: u/Absirlute over on reddit raised a good point that I was undervaluing Kenta: given that his Attack Up buff is almost guaranteed to be up (triggering on turn start is no joke!), and his Critical buff has a good trigger chance, the combination of those two mean he’s actually a much more consistent offensive support than I’d first read him to be.

If you’d asked me before the event which characters I expected to see get a Valentine’s variant, Surtr would have probably not even been on my list at all.

Boy am I glad to be wrong on that!

Surtr is a great disruptive support. Burn, while not a great debuff on its own, lasts for 5 turns, allowing Surtr (or Zabaniyya) to get in a good chunk of extra damage.

On the other hand, Charm is a spectacular debuff; coupled with the extra damage, getting Charm onto an enemy is practically removing them from the fight. If you really need to, you can combo with Golden Treasure Typhon for some serious absurdity, but you’re not likely to need to do this often. Pulling enemies forward on a snipe range (similar to Ebisu) is good for letting your other team members get hits in, too.

Insight on Phase Start is pretty nice, considering his debuff rates are on the low side, and Nullify Debuff is very nice when you need it (though I’m not sure about the interactions it causes: if a debuff is applied on a When Attacking trigger, does Surtr’s Before Damage skill go off in the right order to remove the debuff? I’ll attempt to test!).

His LB3 is fantastic. Ardor is a great buff, and it’s practically guaranteed with no effort. His When Leaving effects of the skill are also really strong, though you’re unlikely to see them as often (though when you do see them you’ll likely be grateful for them!)

I actually think that his charge skill is the weakest part of his kit. Though it’s definitely going to come in handy in some situations (some challenge quests spring to mind), a good chunk of the time it’s just going to be a snipe attack with no extra effect. That said, if the enemy has Burn or Charm, they’ll definitely feel it!

Toji is probably one of my least favourite characters in the game: always seeming to show up, take himself too seriously, and generally get in the way.

In this case, he’s getting in the way by not being Shino 😡

That said, we can let that slide (a little), as he’s a pretty strong unit in his own right.

You’ll generally only move Toji the first turn or two in the fight: though buffing team CP is strong, you’ll usually have other After Moving skills that you’ll want to prioritise higher. That said, Toji makes for a great setup unit, giving himself Acceleration and boosting CP with increased mobility.

Barrage from his LB1 is nice, and helps to guarantee the effects from his LB3 (which we’ll get to in a moment).

Concentration at 50% on Start of Turn timing means that it will be up most of the time (likely around 3 out of 4 turns). Again, this helps lock in the effects from his LB3.

But is his LB3 strong enough to warrant all that preparation?

Yes. Not even close.

Short of stopping your enemies from attacking entirely (Charm), Double Lock is one of the strongest debuffs in the game. Couple that with Protection on a When Attacking trigger, and I would call this skill the best defensive skill that we currently have in the game.

After that, his charge skill is a bit anticlimactic. If it’s levelled, it’s really strong; if it’s level 1, it’s pretty average. 1 duplicate (charge skill level 21) is enough to make this skill quite strong (Defense Up goes from a 10% damage reduction to a 46% damage reduction), but rolling dupes of a 5★ isn’t super likely (or a good plan to try and do!).

I was going to open Shino’s review by being flippant, but I’m honestly too impressed by his design to do that:

Art mirroring Valentine’s Moritaka, while still being it’s own thing: check.

Gameplay design that takes his other forms’ skillset, keeps the theme consistent, but extends it to match the theme of the event: check.

Is a good unit without being gamebreaking: check.

Does something new or interesting: check.

Arbitrary category I’m adding to increase the list: check (there’s the flippancy!)

Credit where credit is due: Lifewonders absolutely nailed it here (as did Kinoshita Jiroh!); I don’t think I can name a card that I’ve been as impressed with as this variant of Shino.

Gameplay-wise, Shino is very strong (though perhaps lacking any skills quite as blatantly powerful as Toji’s LB3): similar to his other variants, he’s very good at carving out his own space on the battlefield and staying there.

Unlike his other variants, he plays a bit nicer with others: giving Stubborn to adjacent allies After Moving, and giving Guts (!) to adjacent allies When Attacking are both respectable defensive buffs (compared to his other forms’ Attack Up to adjacent allies on Phase Start).

These defensive buffs are tangential to where he really shines, though. Regeneration coupled with his heal After Attacking will allow him to weather a solid amount of damage, while giving himself Limit will translate any damage he can’t heal into killing the enemies quicker (which is always a good thing!). Limit also combos well with Guts from his LB3: at 1 HP, Limit translates to a 4x attack multiplier, which is decent by itself, and a bit insane when combined with Critical+ from his charge skill.

Speaking of his charge skill, he can get it pretty quickly, thanks to his Default skill and LB2.

Since charge skill damage scales with level (as well as charge skill effects), charge skill level has more of an effect than usual on Shino (begrudging respect to Lifewonders for this): If you can find a levelled Shino in your friends list, I urge you to try him out — the amount of damage he can output with no assistance is really impressive.

Even without levelling, Critical+ is still a 2.5x multiplier; combining this with Limit makes for an easy 5-10x charge skill attack. This is a higher attack multiplier than Ibaraki (9.2x), my go-to baseline for glass cannon damage.

Considering that Shino does this independently of the rest of the team (and will do this damage to any attribute; thanks, ALL attribute!), he is absolutely a prize card to pull from this gacha.

Welp, so much for a concise review. Hope you enjoyed reading, and as always, good luck if you decide to pull!