#play punishing gray raven

[cielhunternorwood]

Artery GERDERMIT PUT SOME PANTS ON GIRL

I guess in order to keep this tumblr existing, I decided to do another summary and review covering another gacha which I've picked up, dropped, and picked up again. I blame Vanguard.

This time, it's Artery Gear, a gacha which apparently has gameplay based on another gacha, Epic Seven. I've never touched Epic Seven, but if the gameplay of AG is anything to go by, then I probably never will. I'll just get right into it.

UI/Graphics: Simple and Consistent/10

The UI is actually pretty okay. It's simplistic in look and easy to navigate. More importantly, it's very responsive. I think the only real issue is the localization for the West leads to some cut-off of words on the menu. The font is simple and easy to read, with no real flourish to it. You can take that as you will, but it's something I'm okay with.

Gameplay: Grossly Imbalanced/10

Here's the biggest problem with Artery Gear: balance. It doesn't exist, and it's more apparent when you do the Exercise mode, which pits your AG team against other players' teams.

It plays as a turn-based RPG where each AG has three abilities (or two if one is passive) to use during their turn for either fighting or supporting the others. The turn order is based on an AG's Speed, and the stats are simplistic in being Attack, Defense, Crit stuff, and Status effect stuff. There is also percentage chance for doing Follow-Up Attacks, basically to back-up an ally strike with a basic bash, and Riposte, which is a counterattack/effect.

The game follows a rock-paper-scissors balance of classes, between grass, fire, and water-- SORRY, IT'S CRYSTAL, MOLTEN, AND THUNDER. And of course there are something like sub-classes, with certain characters being for tanking, some for bashing, some for status effects, and some are healers. So, balancing a four-person team revolves around all of that, and there are a lot of slots for setting teams for any situation.

Okay, that's all the basics of how it works. Now for how imbalanced it is: Speed. Speed and Bonus Turns. If you do any Exercises, you'll come across what are known as "cleave teams", which are basically steroid-induced hyperspeed teams designed to smash in PvP in one turn before there's a chance for counterattack. Even if you manage to survive the first strike, you're more than likely to get turn-delayed by status effects and hit by a second strikes (or the enemy triggers Bonus Turn and gets to attack twice).

This isn't even including just how much even the rarest AGs waffle between barely useful to so insanely broken that they're a must-have for PVP or Raid bosses. And that usefulness is largely based around status effects such as Invincible, Speed Reduction, and Accuracy Down, but also passive skills that do some really broken shit just by someone SNEEZING near the AG.

Even with these imbalances, though, story missions are an absolute slog and require significant grind and leveling to continue, especially when equipment stuff can make or break you. To avoid rambling on anymore, let's just say it's an exhausting experience filled with frustration if you don't min/max, and even then you're going to have troubles abound.

Music: Vanguard Sound/10

GhostFinal. Enough said.

But seriously, the music for Artery Gear comes from Vanguard Sound Studio, who started off doing music for Mica Team in Codename Bakery Girl and moved to Girls' Frontline from there, expanding into Punishing Gray Raven, Aether Gazer, and going so far as to make music for the cyberpunk game Anno: Mutationem.

Suffice to say, their music is amazingly good, and GhostFinal is one of those who works on PGR regularly. So, all the music is good quality-wise, and it all fits with the general tone of AG, which is depressing often but has a tinge of hope here and there. It's part of the reason why I returned to AG after so long: listening to the combat music, which is pretty good. Not the best, but definitely solid.

Character Designs: PUT ON PANTS/10

So here's the worst part of Artery Gear: character designs. If you thought Fate Grand Order had horny as hell designs, well, you definitely won't like the huge number of girls whose only real covering is an armor plate over the vag and the equivalent of metal pasties for the nipples. The designs are insanely nonsense.

All the form-fitting dresses, bodysuits, underboobs, side boobs, cleavage windows, midriff windows, FBI-signaling lolis, and a sparse few decently-dressed girls. This game is super horny, and it's a damn shame because there are some good designs otherwise ruined by flat-out horny detail.

On that note, there are some alterations and censorships for the global version, but it is often inconsistent as there are times when the uncensored is visible on in-battle sprites at random times, or times where the censorship is ONLY on the battle sprite. It's ridiculous how they didn't fix any of that in all this time, and whether one's horny or not, it's obnoxious when the game itself can't keep it together.

Economy: Stingy as fu/10

Okay, let's keep this as brief as possible. You have facilities for generating money and "Cat Orbs" for leveling girls up over time, though the rate is so low. On the plus side, there are grind stages for both, though you only get one run a day that gives huge amounts and further runs just aren't worth the cost.

Speaking of cost, most of that money will go into Gear, the equipment for the girls of which there are six types. They all need lots of money to upgrade to a feasible level, but the upgrade materials themselves are exceedingly rare. You're more likely to use low-level Gear to upgrade than the actual chip things.

And getting Gear means grinding specific boss fight-style stages, though you have to make sure to get not only a gear of a certain set you want but with the main stat you need and good sub-stats to boot. As much as you can transfer sub-stats from one Gear to another, it's also expensive as shit. Overall, you will be hemorraghing money without an excessive amount of grind.

Story: Trying to be Gray Raven/10

So the basic story is there's some kind of virus thing that has hit the world, turning people and robots into Puppets. The only thing capable of fighting Puppets are Artery Gears, girls who are enhanced cybernetically and stuff to fight them. They aren't completely immune to being Puppetized, but they can resist it. And, naturally, the main character that is the player is their Commander (Shikikan for you GFL/PGR players).

You're in charge of a ship tasked with eliminating Puppetmasters for the surviving humanity, and you go around helping other surviving cities or some such. Honestly, I lost track of the story at some point more because it kept dropping characters or plot points in with little context when it wasn't focusing on the "woe is me" stuff with AG girls and all that.

It's that very basic "post-apocalyptic viral infection, only these things can fight it" story that people liken to Nier but has been a thing for some time now (even before God Eater). This story, though, seems to especially take from PGR in a lot of ways, though their flagship characters are pretty forgettable (and also largely useless gameplay-wise). There's a bit of mystery going on with the Commander player, but it's not explored much, and it's nothing like the PGR Commandant thing of "seemingly normal Commander who manages to survive a lot of deadly situations".

Overall: Wasted Potential/10

This is one of those gachas that feels like it had something good at the start and then went too hard into the pandering to the horny player without much thought into making the game fun overall. There are some parts of it that feel like legit effort was involved, but the rest devolves into either shoe-horning or a system falling apart that hasn't been fixed to become more streamlined.

With how people say it's hugely borrowing from Epic Seven, it makes me wonder if it's AG's developers themselves or something carried over from that which is awful. Either way, its current state is disappointing rather than downright bad, and the only saving grace is its hands-off auto-battling makes grinding easier if you have the stamina for it. But if you can get past the grind-heavy gameplay and horny-even-by-gacha-standards designs, it's at least aesthetically pleasing and consistent. Also has some good music.

At least it's better than NIKKE.

[goshushin]

Chrome(💙💙💙➡️)(⬅️?)SKK(Eric / oc)

[mintnoodles]

[ID: Coloured cartoon/anime illustration of 3 women (Lucia: Plume, Lucia: Crimson Weave, Luna: Laurel) in regular attire, with yellow lighting. They look like a schoolgirl, biker chick and a comfy gamer respectively. They're described further in detail ahead. In the background are doodles of several characters. Lucia Plume stands, looking down wide eyed at a kermit plush in her hands. She wears an oversized green coat with red lining over a uniform (blouse, red tie, black skirt with red lining, stockings, leather shoes). Her skin is tan, her pigtails are done with rectangular red bobbles. Tiny horns poke out of her hair. Lucia Crimson Weave stands next to Plume with a wide legged, confident stance, hand in jacket pocket. She gazes to Plume from aside. She's tan, her white high ponytail done with a large bunnyear red ribbon. She wears a white jacket with red lining/accents and decorative zippers, red goggles around her neck, black turtleneck crop top exposing some underboob, navel piercing, denim shorts with belt chain, black fingerless gloves and ankle boots. Her legs feature several scratch scars. From her left hand dangles keys and a frog keychain. Luna sits with fingers clasped across knees, looking up at both Lucias with a slight smile. She's pale. Black bobbles tie up her shorter white twin tails. She wears black headphones with red accents. Draped over her is a thin white cardigan edged with a grey diamond pattern. Under is a blouse with a red ribbon and grey moon charm, anklelength white skirt, and grey socks. In the background are several doodles of other characters. Liv and Lee in school uniform. Liv has a braided bun and cochlear implant. Lee has a blazer and pimples and a neutral look. Liv smiles wide as she says 'Lucia! You can sit with us!' Commandant (in biker helmet and jacket with gray raven emblem) rubs their head awkwardly while presenting a wrapped gift with tag reading 'to: Lucia' Rosetta (in neck brace and arm cast) glares determinedly with yugioh card between 2 fingers, saying ''Alpha'. It's time to duel.' Behind her Diana in a deer sweater worriedly says 'rosetta please rest.' Phone with group chat named 'ASS NET'. 3 speech bubbles surround it: Exaggerated smiling chibi Roland emanating hearts. 1 heart bounces off a tearful chibi goth Lamia. 1 screenshot of of a youtube page featuring Lamia: Lost Lullaby's mermaid design. End ID.]

punishing gray raven but it's just the postapocalyptic rpg run by a very determined Luna for her younger sister and her friends. Chapter 1 to 8 is their shaky start to getting used to the system before they hit their stride, Luna gets better at narration, and a couple very weird dice rolls lead to wild story adaptation.

Read more for closeup of the phone

[ID: Luna's phone. The ASS NET group chat features some reaction emojies: Heart, skull, fish. The youtube page is a torso shot of Lamia: Lost Lullaby. The cut off title is 'v] ORIGINAL SONG || 'Lost lullaby'. The 3 recommended videos are: 2 Bros try ghost pepper challenge. Thumbnail is chibi wide smiling Kamui, angry Camu and a pepper. Study with me | 9 hours. Thumbnail is Chrome at a desk with a book. ASMR. Thumbnail is blank eyed Wanshi with a syringe. End ID]

[eyreemusings]

bro are pgr fans fucking nonexistent here? where are the fics 😭

[lilteecupangels]

Cradle Parade patch reminded me why I love Kurogames XD

We have a summer event that focuses on 2 husbandos and 1 waifu instead of the usual waifu supremacy ratio. And one of them gives us a (secret? idk) night meeting with Noan:

Oh my god. Subtlety went on a break with this one.

And we get a hug????

*incoherent screaming* The only thing keeping me from pulling this man is the fact that Uniframes are rarely use TTATT

And then I finish Cradle Parade and get hit with this tragic ending for the commandant's (possible???) clone and a clone of Noan???

Kuro knows that they were doing making this patch have a sweet moment in a sidestory and a heartaching moment in the goddamn main story.

This is why PGR is my number one favorite gacha game. This is the kind of angst I am totally on board on (and Lamia is precious and everyone in Cradle Parade deserves so much better TTATT)

Also...

The parallel between the two cannot be a coincidence. I refuse to believe Kuro didn't know what they were doing writing this.

[luminique]

watanabe thoughts but it’s always doomed. you’re human but he’s a construct. he can stay forever 26 but he has to watch you age, wrinkles developing on your face, your skin being not as youthful as it used to be.

but he loves you like you’ve never changed. he tells you of his time in the military because you’ve seemed to begin to forget. he tells you of what the gray ravens are doing, what strike hawk have been up to, where nanami has been causing havoc for the forsaken. all to see you smile, laugh at the stories, cry for him, anything that could remind him that despite the years that have passed, you’re still you.

he cooks the food that you love, making it long after you pass. it’s a memory of you, the way you’d tell him that he’s the best cook as you’re eating spoonful after spoonful. he used to lie awake at night, imagining your passing. now he understands that it’s beautiful, he no longer fears death like he used to. he feared losing you but that pushed him forward. that artificial heart in his body continues to beat for you, in memory of you.

[narzissenkreuz-ordo]

since i couldn't decide between the red/purple color palettes i decided to just make alt designs since a lot of the canon characters have alt versions of themselves :D

i hope you guys like my silly little guy who kisses roland!!

[qqchurch]

[mattphobic]

i wonder how would my mother feel knowing her son is giggling and blushing over a fictional robot from a post apocalyptic scifi game

[rekindlenoodie]

imma find my fellow pgr authors here

[meaig]

Didn't know I had a screenshot like that, but I guess it does look pretty good, even it taken by accident.

[goshushin]

Happy Halloween with PGR! Lee, Chrome, Wanshi x Eric(ocskk) Unused sketches + Eric's and Wanshi's outfit concepts under cut:

[orukadoruka]

wanshi doodles that i forgot to finish because i got lazy :p

[nommedtail]

we lost his exposed arms but gained some legs and a duck

[rrbobani]

I'm sorry Noctis being showcased and now Wuthering Waves Beta Test preview

like

I want to draw EVERYONE BUT IDK WHO TO DRAW FIRST CAUSE EVERYONE'S HOT

PLEASE KURO YOU'RE KILLING ME-

[k4saneterritory]

bombinata's swan lake coating - first pgr art!

taglist: @appreciatingtokrev