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You’ve probably heard people talking about Genshin Impact, Honkai: Stair Rail, Wuthering Waves, and Zenless Zone Zero. These video games, known as gacha games, allow players to rack up in-game currency to then spend on randomized characters, weapons, and other materials.
If you’re considering diving into the world of gachas, here are some pros and cons you should know beforehand.
Pros of Gacha Games
There’s a reason thatgacha games are so popular, ranging from their free-to-play nature and cross-platform functionality.
1. Free to Play
Perhaps the best feature of gacha games is that they are free to play initially. If you’re looking to download a gacha, there is no upfront cost to download and begin playing. All the quests, areas, and different gameplay challenges are free to play indefinitely in gachas.
2. Open World Exploration
Gachas also notoriously have large open-world maps for players to find collectibles and unlock fast travel points. Finding all of these items also gives players essential materials like in-game currency and experience points.
Because the maps of these games tend to be quite large, and new areas are continuously added with new updates, you could spend a ton of hours just exploring the scenery and finding loot.
3. Engaging Storylines
On top of having a large map to explore, gachas also have a story with quests for players to progress through. The worlds of gacha games like Honkai: Star Rail and Genshin Impact are full of lore, with new storylines coming out with updates.
Currently, Genshin Impact has about 40 hours of main story for players to play. At a price of nothing, there is plenty of content to keep you engaged for a while if you’re a new player.
If reading through lore and dialogue isn’t your cup of tea, however, you can always quickly skip through this content.
4. Different Gameplay Options
Another great aspect of gacha games is the variety of different gameplay styles offered. For example, in Wuthering Waves, there are Souls-like hologram boss fights and Tower of Adversity levels for players who are looking for a challenge.
The game also has an area called Depths of the Illusive Realm, where players can pick a character and run through a roguelike dungeon. Wuthering Waves offers regular boss challenges, a co-op mode to play with your friends, and lots of puzzles hidden around the map, too.
5. Mobile, Console, and PC Access
Finally, gacha games are typically available across PlayStation consoles, PC, and even your phone. Most gachas are available on the Epic Games Store, PlayStation consoles, and iOS and Android systems. Wuthering Waves will soon be available to download on the Mac App Store, as well.
If you’re looking to get into mobile gaming, we’ve laid outfive reasons to pay for mobile games rather than play for free.
Cons of Gacha Games
While these games have a lot of appeal, they also have considerable drawbacks.
1. Gambling to Unlock Some Characters and Weapons
Screenshot by Marissa Zupancic — no attribution
While gacha games are free to play, there are ways to spend money to get more in-game currency, which is used to pull from banners. With each update, gacha games release new banners, or characters/weapons that you can “pull” to get. Essentially, this operates as a gambling system where you have a (very low) chance of receiving the five-star banner character or weapon initially.
Some gacha games use a pity system, which means that within 80 or 90 pulls from a banner, you are guaranteed to get a five-star character or weapon. However, there is a 50/50 chance that the five-star character will be the banner character. If you do not get the banner character, you instead get an older five-star character.
This means that within the next set of 80 or 90 pulls, you are guaranteed to get the banner character. Thus, putting this all together, you are guaranteed to get the five-star banner character or weapon within 160 or 180 pulls. While you’re able to earn currency to pull from the game, you don’t earn enough to guarantee a banner character. And these prices are steep, too. For example, in Wuthering Waves, 10 pulls are $30.
2. Long Waits for Version Updates
Gachas typically get a significant update every one to two months. These updates bring new storylines, game modes, characters, weapons, and overall gameplay improvements like bug fixes.
Genshin Impact, Honkai: Star Rail, Zenless Zone Zero, and Wuthering Waves all have major updates every six weeks.
3. You Can Quickly Run Out of Content
Because updates only add a little bit of new stuff, you’ll run out of new content before the next update. Updates typically add a few storylines, meaning you can breeze through those in as little as a day or week.
Once you finish the storylines and event content, you’re stuck with daily challenges that don’t take much time.
4. Repetitive Daily Tasks
If you’ve run through all the content on any particular gacha, there are still daily activities. With daily activities, you’re able to fight bosses by spending special currency to earn materials to level up and upgrade your characters and weapons.
There are also daily quests the game assigns to you, often for a very small reward. You can typically complete these daily activites in less than an hour, and the process does feel repetitive if you’re trying to find one specific material by fighting the same boss over and over again.
5. Long Process to Level Up
Each day, you get a certain number of waveplates (in Wuthering Waves) or resins (in Genshin Impact) that you can put towards boss fights and other combat challenges to earn level up materials and experience points. You get between 180 and 240 per day depending on the game, and most challenges require 20 to 60 of this currency per fight, which leaves you with little to do each day.
This means you have to spend your waveplates or resin wisely. If you want to focus on leveling up a specific character, it may take you days or even weeks until you fight the boss enough times to get the proper level-up material. The process of leveling up is slow and tedious at times, but it is manageable if you plot out some type of schedule and have patience.
Overall, gachas offer a lot of content for free, but the gambling element, long waits for updates, and slow leveling processes are significant drawbacks. If you’re on the fence about whether gacha games are right for you, you can always try out one of the popular ones for free and decide if they’re worth your time.
