Introduction
Hello.
I’ve been playing [Alchemy Stars] since the release, which is just a bit more than 2 days by now. I haven’t played in CBT, unfortunately. And I don’t have much of general gacha experience. Gachas I’ve played are Genshin Impact (a few months), Arknights (over half of year and I still play it), Azur Lane(1 day), Counter Side (1 day) and Blue Archive (BA)(2 weeks). So there will a lot of comparsion with Arknights (AK). Which is reasonable – I believe that developers of this game used AK as a model. There is also some features from BA.
Here I am going to review as much elements of this game as I can. I play in Global Server with emulator BlueStacks 4.
Let’s start!
Launch
As I’ve heard there were a lot of gacha games with different problems on launch. But this one’s launch went smoothly. You could pre-download the game a day before the launch and it was available in appointed time – there were not any server issues.
You can use Facebook, Twitter, Google and some other accounts to log in. The noticeble problem is – you can’t link a few different social networks accounts to your game account, nor you can unlink it. First time you log in you choose a server, a region and your birth date. You will not be able to change any of those later – I accidentaly missclicked on “enter birthday date” screen and it set the default date. Well, whatever.
I can’t say much about generosity of launch rewards – its not over yet. But it feels ok for now. There was a pre-launch event where you could get a single 3- to 5-star character, one of them is limited –Robin. You can get it if you use the same account to log in as you used in that event, but after you clear a few early stages.
Design
Okay, we are in. First thing to judge is the game’s visuals. And it’s good.
UI
UI reminds AK much. It’s not too complicated, its easy to navigate and it looks nice. All Aurorians (Thats how playable characters are called in this game) have animation and you can switch it if you want. There is a section – “Illustra” (they probably messed with the word Illustrations, or idk) – where you can browse some of game’s media.
Illustra
Personnel intel is similar to AK’s network, but it more organised – all current Aurorians are distributed in factions and groups. You can read a faction’s description or follow the link to Aurorian’s profile
Recap is where you can rewatch all the cutscenes from the main story. They should add extra stories there.
Soundtrack is a player where you can listen game’s OST.
Pay attention to two buttons in the right bottom corner – they set the currently playingsoundtrack as a BGM for Main Menu and Colossus**.** It’s a really great feature for I don’t really like default themes. By the way the Colossus is your base. Let’s take a look.
Colossus
So the greatest thing about your base – your Aurorians just walk here and there casually. You can set some of them for work so they will stay in appointed facilities, but others will roam around. They even use corridors and elevators (or stairways, not sure). The whole place feels lively!
Ofc, you can tap an Aurorian and they say something. But they also interact with surroundings and even have some unique animations.
About decoration mode – you can decorate not only recreation areas but also facilities and even corridors!
Lounge, Cafe, Bar and Rec Room have a default presets with unique furnitures, which you can’t remove. But they look nice and you can place more furnitures, so I don’t mind. I wonder if they will add more sets in future, would be nice.
We’ll get back to Colossus later to review it’s functionality.
Character Design
Probably the most important part for many of us. But you can drive you doubts away – it’s great. Generally it feels different from AK’s, but AS’s char design is as proper. Characters don’t wear defiant, too open outfits – game doesn’t tries to bribe you with big anime tiddies.
There are many characters of different gender, age, body type, race and etc. Diversity – checked. (Not that diversity Netflix and others try to push on you). Most noticeble feature – this game has a number of duos and even a whole chorus which act as a single unit. Good idea if you ask me.
Here are some I have – look for yourself.
Some aurorians get new images after you ascend them, but I haven’t seen any beside those on current banners. For example:
