2026OCT02

I have finally reached platinum in compettiive Overwatch again! Sinking back down to gold felt terrible but we are slowly making our way up. I would even be satisfied with just making it up to emerald lowkey haha. Competitive drives are happening now in Overwatch, meaning that you can get a special banner for your nametag if you participate and win matches. So far I have won three games back to back and it's been really rewarding. I think with playing a lot of Borderlands 4 recently my aim and overall sense of movement has gotten a lot better, and it's cool to see that translated over to another game. The only gripe that I have is that I still miss unscoped shots every now and then, even ones that are right in front of me! It sucks, and I'm hoping to put in some time into AimLabs to improve.

My man and I finished another vault in Borderlands 4 the other day. This one was a little bit more challenging than the last, with the primordial being having attacks that do damage over time and things that we need to remove in order to hit their critical spots. It took a little longer than the last vault to clear as well, but eventually we got thru it. Both my man and I were a bit disappointed by the drop, as we got no legendary weapons from it. Another disappointment was that we played through one of the DLC stories and the prizes at the end were not legendary drops either! I know it's random, but it still sucks haha. My man said that the last time he played that particular DLC, he got a bunch of legendary weapons at the end so he figured that this time we were just unlucky.

There is one more vault for us to hunt down in Borderlands, and we decided to wait on it while we clear out more of the DLC. I'm so happy that Borderlands 4 has more content for us to go through because I think we ran through the main story line quest quite fast in my opinion. I think in total it took us only 5 days! And that's with my directionally challenged self getting us lost here and there.

Also, I really want to get better at Deadlock. Myself and a friend, Velo, played several matches against the hardest difficulty bots and it felt like a peace of cake. Playing against actual players though is a whole other story. I know where I struggle most is when to buy what items when. I can follow a build, but being able to counter and work around what the enemy team is building up for is a whole other skill entirely. Not to mention, the movement in this game is incredibly important. I need to get to Eskay's tutorial video on Deadlock movement at some point because I admit I don't know where to even start. There's also new aspects of the game, such as the Rift, that I have no idea how to engage with either. I should probably just watch a tutorial and general video on the current state of Deadlock anyways.

Voting for which characters to be released first is still ongoing, and I desperately want either Violet or the Rat King to win. Both of them just look so cool design wise, I can't wait to mess around with their kits when they're finally out.

2026SEPT29

Gamed a lot today with my friends and partner! I sat in a voice channel with my loved ones and we discussed the issues that most hero shooters have, a few of them being lackluster rewards in either lootboxes or battlepasses and internal issues such as the culture and social aspect around such games. A friend, Ash, talked about their personal experience with NetEase as a black caster, and the conversation turned towards how a lot of the environment surrounding esports is quite racist. A lot of the issues with gaming culture and the unfortunate reality of racism and marginalism existing in these spaces are related to how people who play games were treated beforehand. It's something learned, and I think that a lot of spaces allow vulgarity to reach a point that it shouldn't get to.

I played some Deadlock today because it's been updated with a new map and voting for the release of new characters. It's exciting as I think Deadlock has really interesting design and the game itself can be quite fun, but boy is it miserable to lose and lose bad at times. Myself and my partner were overwhelmed by the skill of movement by people in this game, which is definitely one of its core mechanics. Being able to nimbly get across from one side of the map to the other is a necessary skill to be good at this game, and let's just say me and my man are not quite there yet. I like to play Vindicta and Paige, but the latter right now is in a sorry state and Vindicta requires quite a few items to get her to where she needs to be, which is a sniping goddess. I was able to hit a few great shots throughout the two games that my mand and I played, but I kept missing by a hair for most of the shots that I took. Again, movement by the players we went up against was pretty crazy. I'm used to the movement in Overwatch which is pretty straightforward, so this is definitely a hill that I got to climb over with time.

Speaking of Overwatch, a bunch of people I know are getting back into the game! It's both a great and terrible thing to me, because I thoroughly believe that Overwatch is not fun to learn as a new player. The general community surrounding Overwatch is also.... not the best, let's say. This, of course, is my opinion, but I've played since the alpha and have seen how cruel people can get in both voice and text chats. Playing just with friends in a big custom match though is very very very fun, and I really want to organize an event for that someday where people get into teams and such, but that's for another day haha. I'm a staunch Ana main, and lately I've been feeling really good with where I'm at. I feel like I'm hitting my sleeps and nades and being generally more aggressive than I used to be. Games are paced much faster than they were before, during the days of double shield and two tanks. I'm all for it, but it still sometimes feels like I'm just behind the curve of where most other players are at. Drives will be starting in a day or so and I want to dip my toes back into competitive and rank up slowly but surely.

On another note, myself and my man finished the main story of Borderlands 4 today. It surprised me how fast he and I were able to get through the game, but he told me there's plenty of DLC to play through along with hunting down all the vaults that exist on Kairos. I will say, the overarching theme of control and the morality of it in Borderlands is very interesting to me. Borderlands 4 is the first Borderlands game I have ever personally played, so I don't know the full story, but the Timekeeper as the main villain seemed to be small shrimp compared to whoever or whatever told him to keep order on Kairos. The boss fight also was incredibly challenging but somehow we made it through! I'm glad I upgraded to a much better assault rifle for this fight, and that I upped my amount of ammo for it, so I was able to be a bit deadbrained and shoot the shit out of him without being too strategic.

I'm thinking that me and my man will play through the older games starting with the very first one. I'm so attached to the story already and I found my eyes glued to the screen for each cutscene. I'm not usually this invested in games but this one surprised me. I think it's also because the story of fighting for freedom and the right to be is something that cuts a little bit too close to home for me. The characters are all also so colorful and well-designed. I picked C4SH without knowing how much he would grow on me, but damn he really has! The way that he laughs about rolling his chances in battle, his belief in Kanansi, the fact that he's basically a fucking gambler, his passion for seeing joy in people... it's pretty touching. He's a character that I would say, "I wanna grow up and be just like him!" unironically haha.

I did get some Onmyoji in today, trying to grind out the remainder of the current event. Still lamenting over my poor state of finances, but that's how it is with these games as I've mentioned in several entries already. I got myself to nearly 2 million gold and then burned through it all upgrading souls for my DPS shikigami. Very frustrating! But that's how gacha games be.

Speaking of other gacha games, another friend Pyro spoke to me about Zenless Zone Zero. I initially wrote it off because it kind of just seemed too much for me, but today Pyro really had me rethinking my decision. They spoke earnestly about the quality of the story and admit that beat-em-up style games are something that they really enjoy. They even explained a cutscene that was really dramatic in the game and I find myself questioning my previous stance on ZZZ. Just from hearing Pyro talk about it, I wanted to give it another chance. I mean, I have been enjoying Wuthering Waves' story as well and they are also a Hoyoverse game. I just really hate how gacha games and the communities around them kinda feel like everyone just talks about how hot this or that character is. A lot of people skip the story. It makes me personally feel left out of conversations because I don't want to talk about just the hotness lol. I digress.

2026SEPT20

My partner and I have been playing quite a lot of Borderlands 4 and it's safe to say that I am thoroughly enjoying myself. I never thought I would enjoy this game because looter shooters aren't something that I think I'm good at (or most shooters, for that matter - my aim fucking sucks). But the story is just so captivating! My man and I just defeated Idolator Sol and Vile Lictor, two of the three villains we need to defeat to get to the main big bad - The Timekeeper. Right now we're on our way to finding the "Ripper Queen" Callis so that we'll have all three bolts we need to gain access to The Timekeeper.

The story introduces ideals about control and freedom. The Timekeeper is interested in keeping everyone on the planet of Kairos within his control, his Order, while the Crimson Resistance (the organization that we as the main character align ourselves with at the start of the story) aims to free everyone from The Timekeeper's hold and allow for people to travel off of the planet. It is mentioned that some of the characters in the story have been alive for hundreds, if not a thousand, years due to the influence of The Timekeeper's control. We as the main character are supposed to symbolize the right to be an individual, to make our own choices and to find our own purpose. The Timekeeper seeks to find a purpose for everyone himself and to further his reach of control. One character, Zadra, says that at one point she believed that The Timekeeper's sense of order and control was because of compassion, but in reality he is actually just heartless.

Playing through this game is incredibly entertaining because I get to try out so many different guns and grenade combinations. Right now I am using a legendery ripper pistol that becomes a throwable explosive when I need to reload. It's pretty sick. There's several other guns that work with the same mechanism and it's quite fun to empty your magazine into an enemy and then blow off their face once you're done. I've confirmed several kills by doing this, and each time I absolutely love it.

However, I do have a couple gripes with this game. Part of me wishes the enemies had a bit more of a clearer outline to them because I can't distinguish them from the environment and terrain and such. Maybe it's just me having poor eyesight, but in the desert area that we are in right now to get the Ripper Queen Callis, some of the ripper enemies are just hard to make out from the desaturated browns and oranges of the environment. It doesn't help that the enemies are also similarly colored. The Order enemies are at least a lot more distinct in their shape and color, being white and gold. The creeps and messed up looking creatures in the icy tundras like the Low Leys are stark against the white of the snowy mountains and ground. I'm complaining about all of this but there probably are accessibility settings that I could mess with that I just don't know about yet. I also wish there were more in-depth breakdowns on the different types of enemies in the game. You kinda just have to go in blind and assume that most stuff is out to fucking kill you, including all of the wildlife that you see.

This afternoon, I spent a little bit of time with some friends in a VC and was encouraged to try out Marvel Rivals again due to the banning system being reworked in season 10. I'm a little bit hesitant because if the current meta is still triple support I'm going to struggle like there is no tomorrow. I've been loving trying out games again though, as seen with Absolum, but for Rivals in specific I fear that the balancing in that game is just non-existent. Or maybe I'm just mean and I don't know anything! I'll have to see for myself.

2026SEPT14

Overwatched released a new hero trailer for the character Doctrine, and it's fair to say that I can feel the spark of excitement I have for this game slowly but surely return as this year has progressed. Blizzard at Blizzcon had released this hero trailer and announcements for character reworks, notably Roadhog and Sombra, which will alter the current state of the game rather severely in my opinion. The biggest change to Sombra in general is that she will not be listed as a support character rather than DPS! I haven't had a chance to look at her full kit, but I did notice that she is able to heal allies with an AOE ability and she's still able to hack interactables like the medkits.

The hero trailer for Doctrine in my opinion shows off more about the ex-Talon members Doomfist, Sombra, Reaper, and Widowmaker more than it does Doctrine. In reality, we get a few lines from him and a grand transformation once he is out of his prison holding. Most of the trailer shows how well the ex-Talon members fight together. Widowmaker provides ample cover, Reaper is their close-range DPS, Sombra is there to support from position to position, and Doomfist leads them all forward. Doomfist in the trailer even defends Sombra against an enemy shot, which really surprised me. It shows that the Doomfist that we know after his loss to Vendetta is a completely different person than who he was when he was the leader of Talon. Generally, I think this is a good thing because it forces him to overcome obstacles and adapt instead of just being complacent in his and his organization's abilities. Now, he has to depend on his small squad and he must consider them instead of just seeing them as pieces on a chess board.

I got to play as Doctrine for a little bit in my quickplay games but so far haven't been able to get a good handle of him. He has a scepter that he can shoot lasers at enemies and allies alike to damage and heal, respectively. He also has little robots / drones that can follow an ally and heal them over time. I guess I was confused about his abilities and how best to apply them, as I am an Ana main normally, so I wasn't completely sure how to heal with the drones. His ultimate makes people lose their maximum amount of health points, meaning they can only be healed and be alive for amounts less than their original HP. It's like a vortex that goes forward, so it's best to avoid it at all costs. I really hated facing against Doctrine because his ult can be really damaging to an already low team. I need to figure out if Kiriko or Baptiste can counter this ability at all.

Speaking of Baptiste, I believe he got a rework as well for his immortality field. To be honest, I think immortality is pretty mid in comparision to Kiriko's "e" ability that cleanses ability effects on allies. That ability is universally hated by a lot of people as it can cancel pretty much every ultimate and ability that exists in Overwatch at the moment. She can cleanse Reinhardt shatter, Ana's grenade, Orisa's ultimate, and many more things. There was a point where every game I had there was a Kiriko on it. Personally I find her extremely unexciting to play. I just don't think her kit is really for me.

Ana is my main character of choice in Overwatch and it has its pros and cons. One of the biggest cons as of late is that games feel a lot faster than they used to, with teams that have characters with a lot of movement capability being the most preferred. Ana, compared to other support characters, does not have any special movement abilities, so she's a bit easier to target when she's all by herself. Sleep dart, her left shift ability, is really useful but that can only hit one enemy. If the whole enemy team is on the Ana, it is pretty much needed for the team to peel for her so that she doesn't get left behind. Very often do I feel like I weigh my team down as Ana when there are characters like Anran, Sierra, and Venture who can bully me with the help of other characters like Hazard, D.Mon, and Juno. I find myself switching characters when I feel like I am being ineffective as Ana, and I wish I didn't have to do that. It's either I'm more skilled than they are or I switch, and the latter is much more realistic at the moment lol.

My days at being intensely competitive in Overwatch are over. I think I will be fine being forever at gold or platinum ranking for the rest of my life.

Recently, my man asked me if I would be interested in trying our Borderlands with him. He said that a bunch of the games are on sale on Steam right now for half off, and I'll admit I never thought about playing the games even with as much as I have watched streams about the games or where other people are playing them. It's one of my boyfriend's favorite game franchises so I think I'll give it a shot, but every time I try out a new game I always have this sinking worry that I am just sucking a lot hahaha. I am an extremely slow learner, and I need people to be patient with me when I learn, so it's a bit overwhelming for me in the beginning. With my man, I think I'll be able to handle it because he is very patient with me, but it's still something I worry about. A lot of the communities I am involved in have really talented and skilled gamers, so I typically feel out of place. It shouldn't be a huge deal with just my man though.

2026SEPT13

My man and I played some Absolum the other day and it was nice to play a different sort of game than just gachas and Overwatch lately! Absolum is a roguelike beat-em-up game where you pick between four characters to defeat the god Absolum, as the title of the game suggests. First, you need to run through the game several times to be able to reach Absolum. You also need to pick up the two other characters that you can play as, which are Cider and Brome, as you start off with Galandra and Karl. Galandra is an elf swordswoman, Karl is a dwarf with a flamethrower, Cider is a nimble dagger-throwing creature, and Brome is a mage who is the last of the Mowlai, a tribe from Jaroba.

I am not great at roguelites! I've played Hades several times with friends, usually on the Switch, and I am notoriously bad at movement. This game is no exception as I found myself bouncing off of walls because of enemy attacks or dying earlier on in the runs because of my lack of game sense in these sorts of games. My boyfriend, who has much more experience in these games and also fighting games, took to it quite fast and had to carry me in several runs haha. I don't mind because I learn quite a lot from watching him as I die.

The story of Absolum is really captivating. It is set in the fantasy world of Talamh, where the Crimson Order rule over the land with Azra as their king. The resistance to this order is us under the guidance of the Root Sisters, led by Mother Uchawi. As we do our runs, we find out that Azra is hoping to harness the power of the god Absolum, a being who has the capacity to destory the entirety of the world. Azra is deluded to think that he can tame the god, and as we defeat him, we have to find a way to defeat the god Absolum as well. Later we also find out that Mother Uchawi and Azra were together, and she is pregnant with his child. Honestly this didn't surprise me because Azra has all this propaganda against the Root Sisters that reads more hateful than it is criticizing their purpose and organization.

For the themes surrounding this game, I can understand a running commentary on "what is the meaning of life" and "how do we value life?" We find out in the story that in order for players to be reborn, there is a sacrifice that has to be made each time. Essentially, this means someone else dies in our place. It brings in the questions of "is that even fair?" or "do people who die for us even get a say?" It makes the player question the morality of the Root Sisters and if what we're fighting for is really what we want.

Of course, I'm still playing through the story and I plan to play through it again without my man so that I can gain a better understanding of the story in full, but with what we know so far part of me cannot help but wonder if a lot of the story could have been prevented if Azra and Mother Uchawi were able to align their ideals. Azra saw the damage that magic had done to their world, but he still thirsted for its power. Mother Uchawi saw the usefulness in regeneration and rebirth, but was never honest about the price we must pay for it. If only the two of them could accept that magic is inherent to their world someway, than maybe so many wouldn't suffer.

Either way, I'm not sure who I trust so far in the story! Mother Uchawi is staged as the "good" with Azra and Absolum as the "bad", but I think there's a lot more nuance to each side than what we are originally told.

2026SEPT10

There's a new event in Onmyoji called the "Martial Tournament", where players have to team up in squads to defeat fairly difficult bosses. I only manage to defeat two before work today before realizing that I probably need help taking down these bosses with hundreds of millions of health in their health bar lol. It's a little bit embarassing how I'm already level 51 in the game but I don't exactly have super strong shikigami yet. I only am able to play during my free time so the amount of time I can farm is quite little, and I also am a free-to-play player! I am held back by the currency that I can get from the game along with the AP (action points) I have to do literally anything.

I opted to just make my own squad and see if other people join, haha. I kept getting the message that too many people were requesting to join other squads and I should try others and I was getting tired of it. Sometimes you just gotta do it yourself. I almost even made my own guild because I couldn't find a guild that was casual! It still surprises me how many guilds in Onmyoji are competitively inclined, like they have rank requirements and a Discord server and all that. Maybe on swome level I crave something like that, but I'd say I'm currently not ready. I'd rather just grow with my current guild, who are very much into Bara dudes. The name of our guild has BARA in it.

Anyways, I'm going to seriously try to get through as much of the story as I can this weekend and worry about currency at some other time. I think there are other aspecs to the game that I haven't unlocked yet, so I should try seeing how far I can go.

Part of me really wants to try my hand at Epic7 again, but it is SUCH a time crunch. There is so much farming you have to do for weapons and equipment and it is ridiculously expensive to level up a single set of six equipment. I really enjoyed the story though, and found the crisis of the world being rebuilt over and over again to be an interesting conflict, but it's still a lot to stomach every time I come back. It's like more and more story gets added and I can't feasibly catch up! Unfortunately I feel this way about Genshin as well where I think I'll be perpetually stuck in Sumeru... lol. Both Epic7 and Genshin have compelling characters as well, but I can only do so many gachas at one time.... I shall place my time in Onmyoji for now.

2026SEPT06

Ah yes surprise surprise here I am to talk about Onmyoji.

As of now I have made it past the "Moan" stage of Orochi - the boss which you can gather souls and scales to buy more souls - and now I am trying to work my way to getting through "Judgement". This is how I know that my shikigami are not quite there yet because the difference between the two stages is so stark and wide, I barely struggle in the former but severely lack enough power in the latter that I fail it each time. It doesn't help that the event has ended and I am all out of currency to level up souls that I have got so it's put a harsh halt to my progress of levelling up in the game.

This is probably a good sign for me to get through more of the story, as I am bound to get some currency and other rewards if I do so. But I... am lazy LOL. I just don't want to click thru the story I want to be able to read everything and enjoy it but I need to be in the headspace for it. It's weird to explain.

2026AUG31

I am plagued by this event called "Fortune Fox" in Onmyoji. Basically we can fight a boss with tiers of difficulty, with the tiers determining how many and what sort of rewards we can receive. I opted to say at the normal difficulty tier because my shikigami are currently strong, but they're not strong where they can one shot entire waves of enemies. I'm not quite there yet lol... I say as I am nearly 200 hours back into the game after years of not playing. It's easy to get sucked into it because of "ooooo big number go big", at least for me.

The drops for this event range from grade 5 to 6 souls to mystic drops of scales or scraps of forgotten books. The scales and the forgotten books can be exchanged to get even more souls, specifically grade 6 souls. These are the souls that you'll want to equip your shikigami with for late game, and I have a LOT of souls but not all of them are quality. The thing with gacha games like Onmyoji is that they're highly dependent on the amount that you farm, which for me isn't as much as other people. Currently my shikigami can do critical hits in the 20k range, but nothing really higher than that because none of my DPs' crit damage is over 200%. I also don't have enough crit souls or materials to level up the souls, so getting the right souls for the job can be a pretty long process. I'll have to get a soul with some pretty good stats right out the gate, level it up in hopes that the sub stats that I want will be upgraded, and then spends half a million gold coins getting the soul to level 15, which is the max. All it takes is for one roll of a sub stat to go wrong for the soul to be not useful, which sucks.

One thing I am pretty happy about is that I've been lucky with my summons! I managed to get Draconic Sukuka Gozen, who is a pretty solid DPS in the game especially for Duels. Right now, I'm not doing so great in Duels lol. I largely think it's because I don't have enough speed on my Demoniac Shuten Doji, so he doesn't go first which fucks my team over. This is one thing I didn't miss about these sorts of games - the speed wars. Epic 7 worked like this too, as whoever had more speed would usually win in a PVP situation. What I probably need to study more is team compositions, because right now I'm kind of playing it by ear. I have D. Shuten Doji as my pusher - a shikigami that slows the move bar of the enemies - and Inaba Kaguya as my orb provider. Amaterasu is my main DPS, with Ubume as my support DPS. Currently I'm thinking I need to have another support shikigami, but I'm not sure who and what exactly I want them to do.

So far I've been pretty stubborn about reading guides or looking into Discord servers for help. I really like being able to figure out something on my own and trying things until they stick. If someone straight up gives me the answer for something I kind of (or really) lose the passion or motivation for it which I guess can suck. I do want to do better in the PVP modes of this game, but I also don't want to take away from the fun that I have just trying things out and seeing where it takes me. Luckily for me, the people that I've come across in-game through the chats and co-op modes have been really kind, which makes me think I should just be able to ask questions in the world chat and not fear any answers. Still - gamers can be unpredictable and I also don't want to be made fun of for my ignorance to the meta-defining aspects of this game. Of course, it doesn't help that the meta changes as soon as a new, much more powerful character is introduced. Power creep will always be a problem in gacha games, in my opinion. It's an unfortunate but true thing.

My favorite shikigami so far has to be Amaterasu. She is so pretty and her voice is so ethereal. I also really love all of her skins in game, none of them look bad on her. Some of the other shikigami, like Kuro Mujou, only have one good looking skin (TO ME! MY OPINION!!) but I guess that's either because they're lower rarity or not as popular.

I already cannot wait to see what event comes next because I need me some currency! And also some skill durumas. I've found that most gacha games make leveling up skills to be incredibly tedious, and Onmyoji is no exception. Most of the time, you get the skill daruma shards as a reward and not the whole skill duruma, but for this Fortune Fox event, you can purchase a skill duruma with the event currency. Just one though, of course. You can't be too greedy bwahaha.

2026AUG25

It was announced recently that Hoyolab - the same people who made Wuthering Waves, Zenless Zone Zero, and Genshin Impact - are coming out with a souls-like game. I cannot even think of the name right now, but when I looked at the trailer and screenshots all I could think about was how similar it seemed to Elden Ring. Part of me hopes that this isn't on purpose, that it's a mere coincidence, but the larger part of me disagrees. An unfortunate thing about the gaming industry in its current state, whether it be in the US or overseas, is the heavy use of "inspiration" and it being a bit too heavy handed. Either way, I want to be proven wrong and I think I may give the game a try when it comes out.

2026AUG22

One thing I really like about Onmyoji is that the game doesn't really punish you for building units "incorrectly", or rather, differently. I like being able to test different things, and when things work, they work! For example, Kusa is a shikigami in Onmyoji that is a Rare support / healer. The "best" way to build her is with Nightwing souls, where the 4 piece set allows the shikigami to deal 20% HP steal when doing damage. Kusa benefits from this because she has a relatively above average attack stat (rated A), meaning that she can yoink enemy HP pretty intensely if you build her to crit. I, however, just really want a buff healer, so I stacked a bunch of Attack on her and opted for the Tree Spirit souls, where the 4 piece allows the shikigami to have a 20% increase in healing effects. I have not noticed me struggling to clear stages such as Orochi or Nen with Kusa on my lineup built like this.

With Wuthering Waves, I feel like this is less true. Similar to Genshin Impact, Wuthering Waves is a hack-and-slash gacha game where players benefit from chaining attacks in a certain combination with a certain group of characters. An example of this is Calcharo, who is a Broadblade user that benefits from being able to chain Heavy Attacks, usually during his "ultimate" which is called the Resonance Liberation. He relies heavily on sub-DPS that boost his damage, such as Lynae and Mornye, but both of these characters are 5 star rarity and hard to get. His best in slot weapon is also 5 star rarity, meaning free-to-play players such as myself have to count on luck when summoning on the weapon banners. I hate luck! And despite playing gacha games for more than a decade, the element of luck and surprise is something I'll never enjoy about this genre of games.

The rigidness that games like Wuthering Waves and Genshin have for building characters is only felt by me because I like to mess around waaaaay too much. But resources are precious, and it costs quite a lot to upgrade weapons, characters, their abilities, and so on. All three games that I mentioned in this entry all suffer from the issue of lack of currency. What I mean by this is that the currency used to upgrade anything is pretty integral, and cannot just be wasted willy nilly trying out new builds. In Onmyoji, it can cost 2 million gold coins or more to fully upgrade 6 souls for one shikigami.

I can understand that this would be where someone would say something like, "participate in the events JAAM, just simply spend as much time as you can in the game-" SHUT UPPPP AHHHHHHHH. I want to be able to enjoy the game as well, and forcing myself to play more than I want seems like a terrible idea! I think it's possible to be able to casually enjoy gacha games without having to no-life the game throughout the week. This is precisely why I prefer Onmyoji over Wuthering Waves most days because most of the time I want to run my dailies, do some of the story, and see if I can upgrade any of my shikigamis' builds even if it's marginal. What I also like about Onmyoji is that when you start a new account, you are able to get a "rookie boost" where you can gain resources by doing simple quests and tasks. I've pretty much finished that and it helped me create a process for what I want to do in the game when I log in. Games like Wuthering Waves and Genshin Impact sometimes feel really overwhelming because there is so much content, there is so much to do, there is so much that you need to do- you get the point.

Don't get me wrong! I still really like Wuthering Waves and Genshin Impact. I actually think I like Wuthering Waves more than Genshin Impact because the story is so compelling and the characters have a surprising amount of depth to them when you go through the story. So far, I really connected with Jinhsi, Shorekeeper, and Zani's storylines. I won't lie - there's times where I feel like I'm intruding on a really personal and private conversation between two people even if they're fictional characters, but that is why I have been keeping on with the ride of Wuthering Waves. My favorite out of the three that I mentioned is Zani, and overworked but passionate head of security for the Montelli family of Ragunna. I love that you find out that as overworked as she is, she values what she does. She complains and dreams of a vacation, but she can't imagine abandoning her post or her work. I like that the main character, Rover, connects with her resolve and drive instead of telling her that she needs more rest.

Wil say though.... Wuthering Waves feels like a harem anime at times ^^;; there's these beautiful women practically throwing themselves at the main character and my aroace ass is over here like.... um. Hi. Thank you. LOL.

2026AUG21

Lately I've been playing a lot of Onmyoji and Wuthering Waves with both of them being pretty well-known gacha games. Onmyoji is a bit older than Wuthering Waves, but I found myself coming back to it after feeling a little bit lost on what to play after a long day at work. Of course, only an insane person would say that playing gacha games after work is relaxing. But for me it honestly is.

What makes Onmyoji frustrating as compared to Wuthering Waves is how the units (called shikigami) need to be built. Certain characters need more or less speed than others, or crit damage, or hp, etc. Just at a glance, you cannot tell what character needs what unless you look at the comments of the character. Not every shikigami has a comment that tells you the ideal build, and it's more likely that the comment could be several years old. I am aware that most gacha game communities benefit from the kindness of the community, and Onmyoji is no exception. There is a Google spreedsheet of that shows the viability of each shikigami in every gamemode, and there are builds that are shared by others in Reddit and community run forums and websites. I am the sort of person who likes to figure things out on his own, but I am of course not immune to being overwhelmed by the sheer amount of possibilities gacha games tend to have for building characters.

To build up a shikigami, souls need to be equipped to further boost their stats. In Wuthering Waves, these are instead called echoes. Both games have these assignable "weapon" like items that have a main stat and several substats that can make characters more powerful. What is grating (and this is of course common in gacha games lol) is that these substats are rolled randomly and are a gacha separate from the gacha of summoning the characters. So let's say I am shooting for a typical damage type build where I'll need a lot of attack, crit (critical hit percent) and crit damage. Ideally, all of the assignable souls / echoes that I give my characters will have these substats. My luck is.... horrid, for lack of a better word. So hence, my souls and echoes are not the best at the moment.

The only way to get better souls or echoes is to simply keep playing more of the game. But of course, these are gacha games! There must be limiting metrics, such as AP (action power) that allow you to do certain tasks in these games. It's frustrating because if you want to build up a character, you'll need to spend AP, but once you run out, you have no choice but to wait (or pay.... lol) for it to regenerate back. This is annoying, because that means I only really get to work on one character at a time per session that I'm playing. When I'm in the zone, I don't wanna focus on just one character! I want to be able to level up and power up all the units I want!

Now, dear reader, you could be thinking, "Why the hell is this guy playing these games anyways?" I LIKE SEEING BIG NUMBER GO UP OKAY. I KNOW THESE GAMES ARE PREDATORY AND WANT YOUR MONEY!!! And I will protest that notion by being the most annoying free to play gacha player in the universe.