Well, a bit more than 48h ago the new game from StoryTaco, Zerowake GATES, was released in closed beta. The game is a BL gacha happening in the guideverse, which involves a trope in manhwa where an esper is controlled by a guide in order to not overuse its power. So esper is the “protagonist” that will fight or have some kind of challenge and guide is the support.
The game is a collab with Kidari Studio, who owns some webtoon platforms, so they probably just got the IPs present in this game (BL manhwas) because the terms of service said they own anything published in their platforms.
This is the weakest beta test I’ve ever participated, which is a lot because I’ve joined some really bad ones, like some really low budget hentai gachas and the recent Velvet React (an already EoS’ed BL gacha).
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The story is pretty generic and I didn’t care about it after reading 5 story segments and being baffled with the censoring of swear words in a +18 game. Basically, you’re the typical memory-less MC who’s being kidnapped, but then another kidnapper appears and gets you, MC then thinks he’s fine because he’s shirtless, but after that the man abuses you. Struck by Stockholm Syndrome, the MC then accepts his fate and the concept of espers and guides is introduced. Turns out MC is the guide of this shirtless boy, Park Mujin.
Then we’re introduced to the concept of rival “gangs”, this Mujin guy is from the Daybreak Dragons, and we discover the world is in the same apocalyptical/dystopian state we see in any gacha out there, with monsters everywhere and you have to guide your esper to defeat them. And yeah, not worthy reading after that imho, so I stopped to see if anything else about the game was worthy playing at all (spoiler: it’s not).
As a bonus, the story isn’t voiced at all, not even some sounds or the generic greetings we see in the most low budget gachas ever. Presentation is really bad and several scenes (even the ones that aren’t exactly cutscenes, just a background with a live2D character in it) are just zoomed in, moved left and right and zoomed out several times, perhaps in a desperate attempt to make the game look at least a bit dynamic.
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It’s just a generic turn-based combat type of gacha, with a half-assed RGB elemental system that tries to mimic HSR (if the enemy shows your element on top of them, they’re weak to that element) but fails miserably. There’s attack, skill, guiding skill (small recovery on HP and battle points, used to attack but mainly depleted when suffering damage) and ultimate. The battle order is shown in a timeline type of line at the left side of the screen, and just like the story it’s not voiced at all, not even a scream to attack or moaning when damaged. NOTHING…
You have to deplete a team of up to 4 guys, and each one can have a guide attached to them for a small buff (and an effect if the guide is the right pair for the esper). Oh, and good luck trying to form a single team, as the game gives you only one character (the Mujin guy introduced above), and you’ll have to gacha for the rest. The espers have 6 chip (rune) slots, which add a bit of stats to them, and you can use material from grinding to upgrade their abilities like most gachas out there.
Buffs and debuffs are really underwhelming and confusing, and most of them just seem like an afterthought. Maybe some are even bugged since I’ve noticed most attack buffs offer no change at all in numbers, and some debuffs do nothing to your characters.
Besides the 6 chapters of story battles, which are the main farming stages, there’s a material farming part where you actually get less mats and a seemingly endgame-ish content of boss battling (the current one is so easy it’s laughable, it lasts 2 weeks). There’s no particular hard content so far, the hard part is getting units to battle (more below). Personal stories have porn illustrations and are released as you ascend/limit-break characters – which is pretty grindy.
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Game has a pity of 100 pulls, which isn’t that bad, but the odds are terrible and pity doesn’t carry over. It could be great if carry over was a thing and if there weren’t soooo many guides in the game with way higher chances to get than espers (remember: you need espers to battle, guides are just a small support).
Each stage gives 100 currency (a pull) for every 3 star completion, which is amazing, but apart from that, there isn’t a way to get pulls besides daily/weekly missions and a biweekly stage. So I honestly can’t judge the game’s stinginess/generosity right now, but the start gives you lots of pulls (even with no rewards in the mail to welcome players to the beta or anything… and the release will have a full wipe).
Currently there are only 2 banners and no limited characters at all. The “Esper Only” banner seems like a limited one, it lasts for almost 45 days and all, but don’t be fooled: it’s just a standard banner with slightly better chances of getting espers. Odds are 3% for SSR espers (1.5% for the featured unit and 1.5% divided between the other 4 SSRs), 3.64% for SR espers (3% for the 3 featured SRs, 0.64% for the other several ones), 16.36% for SR guides (equally divided between 19 guides), and the other 77% is just R rank guides (no R espers in-game so far).
So, do you see a problem here already? Slightly more than 6% chance of getting a playable character. And the game will freeze if you pull an SSR (lol). Great news!
The standard banner is even worse: 0.3% chance for SSR espers, 2.7% for SSR guides, and the rest is just like the other banner (3.64% for SR espers, 16.36% for SR guides and the rest for R guides).
The only good thing is that when you reach 100 pulls, you get the featured SSR (or a random one in the standard banner) regardless if you pulled an SSR already. But yeah, there’s no carry over, so be careful when pulling!
Another bad look is the dupes: you need 6 dupes (7 units in total) to max an esper or a guide. But the worst thing is that a single dupe more than triples the attack and HP of any esper, which is baffling and extremely P2W.
This particular SSR esper I got 4 times, so I have him +3. The first imprint (dupe) is shown above, the second went from 8596 to 13960HP and from 4440 to 7350 attack, and the third went from 14060 to 19424 HP and from 7450 to 10360 attack. Have you noticed the difference between the higher stats from imprint 1 to the lower stats from imprint 2? Like, from 7287 to 8596 HP and from 3628 to 4440 attack. That difference is because I’ve ascended (limit break) the esper once, giving him +10 levels between the imprints. Yeah, 10 levels offer a difference waaaay lower power difference than using dupes. That really shows how the game was developed, and it’s not with gameplay/material farming in mind, but with dupe purchasing.
There’s the green leptonium (pull currency) and the white leptonium (paid-only currency). The paid-only coin is used to purchase packs like any games out there. The Erolabs coin is also present in a shop section to purchase the white currency (just because we all need an extra step to spend in gachas, right?). The conversion rate is terrible, like 50 Erocoins for 36 white ones. 60 Erocoins cost $0.91 and yeah, prices for Erolabs are just that confusing.
The only paid-only feature I’ve seen so far is Memory Link, which is an AI chat where you spend 20 white leptonium per message, so roughly $0.45 per message.
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I’m just listing the terrible stuff I’ve experienced here, mainly bugs. These are things that happened to me, there are more stuff happening to other players but not every bug will happen to everyone (thankfully). So let’s begin:
– As said before, the scenes (story and even the porn ones) are extremely pixelated when zoomed in, and even when shown without zoom it’s already pretty granulated;
– Several backgrounds are clearly AI-generated and retouched by someone, but still some inconsistencies like melted elements and different width in window/door frames are noticeable;
– You can barely edit the main screen and change the boys that are there, it glitches and sometimes requires you to restart the game. Even the main screen is all bugged and your user level and currencies aren’t shown;
– As said previously, pulling an SSR maked the game freeze in a white screen and you need to restart the game;
– When trying to check daily/weekly missions, the game just lags on infinite loading and restarting the game is the only solution;
– Some battle skills bug a lot and stay invisible (you can click on them, but they don’t appear on screen, so you can misclick), and I the ultimate of an esper I’ve pulled is always replacing the esper for a blank square;
– Not a single mail giving rewards for the beta test, so the devs probably don’t want you to stress test the game, or more bugs will be discovered;
– Daily login didn’t reset after the first day, and on 7th day there’s a 10 standard pull reward, so it won’t be delivered after 7 days, but in the best scenario, in 9 days (or more, if not fixed today);
– Several times screens will just overlap because one of them wasn’t properly closed;
– The handling of the beta itself is pretty lame, and if you want to save for limited banners, you’ll suffer with harder levels because the game only handles one esper for free;
– Speaking of hard levels, the level 4-8 requires you to only use one esper and it’s pretty hard, but in the first day the level was bugged and I couldn’t play it properly;
– Now, with 4-8 fixed, the issue is with 4-3 on hard mode, which isn’t available, so you can’t complete the other hard stages past that;
– Porn scenes from personal stories were censored for two days, and you’d only see small parts of it prior to the patch released a few hours ago.
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– Game’s in a pretty bad state, even for CBT;
– Story is generic and there’s no voiceover at all;
– Gameplay is generic turn-based and pretty bugged;
– Everything else is also bugged;
– Backgrounds use AI;
– There’s a paid-only AI chat that costs 45 cents per message;
– It’s hard to get characters, so you probably will only get a team of 4 characters if you play for several hours and have a bit of luck.
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