I'm not sure if I've ever brought this up before, but my favorite mobile game I have ever played is "Girls x Battle". This may sound really weird at first glance. The game is a pay-2-win, microtransaction-filled scam-fest, The localization job is nothing short of Google Translate, and the game deletes your account at any chance it's given. Despite all of its problems, I played the game for well over two years every single day. This is because "Girls x Battle" was able to do two things better than any other game I've ever seen. It had a flawless progression system, and it heavily rewarded experimentation in unit compositions.

In the wings of "Girls x Battle", many other game companies saw an opportunity to copy the same formula. You can see it in games like "Naruto Online", "Food Fantasy", and "Diosa Force". The game that I want to talk about today is "Tales of Erin", another game heavily-inspired by "Girls x battle". Will this game take that central idea and expand it to new frontiers, or will it be like a newborn fawn struggling to keep up with the rest of the herd? Let's find out.

Core Gameplay

"Tales of Erin" is a mobile gacha RPG with standard fantasy elements. The player gathers a collection of units, 4 of which they can take into each battle at a time. The characters automatically move and fight, but you can command them to use special skills and move to certain positions. While this all may seem like rudimentary game design, it's getting them each right that's the sticking point. Let's see what "Tales of Erin" does right and what it does wrong.

Player Agency

One of the biggest mistakes that games like this make is that they don't know how to make you feel important as a player. Abilities feel interchangeable, so who cares what order I use them in? My one team can clear all of the content in the game, so who cares about unit compositions? Well, in terms of drafting your team correctly, "Tales of Erin" does put emphasis on it. I just think it approaches it in the wrong way.

Stop Doing This

Google translated Japanese webpage

My biggest pet peeve in every mobile game is the existence of elemental strengths and weaknesses. "Girls x Battle" didn't have an elemental system and was better for it. Create fights where unique and interesting mechanics make the difference in matchups. In GxB, Caitlyn is super strong at nuking down single targets, so you can draft Wukong against her so that the illusions and distract Caitlyn. That's an organic way to counter an enemy. A water unit arbitrarily dealing more damage to fire is not organic strategy.

This is the worst for event bosses where elemental resistances make 2-4 elements completely unusable. This Guild event coming up soon, for instance, has 80% resistance against fire damage and 100% resistance against wind damage. That's right, your wind team will do absolutely no damage in this event.

Combat

It's easy to make the assumption that just because most of the fighting happens automatically, there isn't some skill to playing it. I think the best way to analogize "Tales of Erin's" combat is to see it as a very cut down version of "World of Warcraft". Knowing how long you can afford to hold onto your most valuable insurance policies without dying will win you otherwise impossible battles in this game. If you waste your full-party heals too early and have nothing for a boss's berserk attack, then you're done for.

Now, I like how using your unit's ultimate skill makes them immune to damage for a second after the casting. It creates this toss-up between using your ultimates as soon as they come off cooldown to maximize DPS, and saving them to I-frame dodge an incoming attack. Not to mention the decision between using a skill now, or waiting for someone's buff skill first. On top of all that, you can juggle aggro from enemies by positioning units forward and backward as their health drops. There's so much nuance to the gameplay that auto-mode is almost unusable for anything but grinding trials.

Progression

Speaking of trials, that's a pretty important part of "Tales of Erin". It's where you get all of your materials to evolve and level your characters. Here's the thing though, there's no specific stage to get any specific kind of item you want. Oh, you wanted some large fruits of trial? Too bad, here's some small enhancement material instead. Oh, you want some blue spirits? Hahaa, here's a pile of blue essence instead. So while the trials themselves are hilariously easy fights, each one feels like pulling a slot machine. When you hit jackpot and get a huge pile of whatever you want most, it feels better than winning at the gacha.

The Gacha

So besides the implementation of the stupid elemental system, the biggest departure from "Girls x Battle" would be the removal of the scroll system. In that game, you actually never used the gacha except when you got some free coupons from events. Instead, you gathered scrolls of units and could obtain them once you had enough.

This is a little disappointing because it just means that I hit the gacha every time I have 1980 gems. Meanwhile, in "Girls x Battle", I had a lot more freedom to use diamonds how I liked. Maybe one day, I'd buy stamina, or refresh my clears of an elite battle, or open a voyage chest. It was up to how I felt like moving forward.

Character Upgrades

Similarly to "Girls x Battle", units gain pitiful amounts of XP from fighting. You mostly want to rely on fruits of trial for that. Discovering potential increases the level cap and gives you skill points to improve your units' fighting ability. There is equipment that you can use to improve the stats of individuals and the whole party. Also, every unit except for some five-stars has a soul spirit that can increase stats and vastly improve some of a unit's abilities. Five-star souls spirits are all unique and have story campaigns, so those will release over time.

One thing that I consider a massive improvement over "Girls x Battle" is how the skill system works. Once your characters are at max level, they have 30 skill points to spread around 40 slots. This means you have to consider what skills you find most important and which ones can be left at zero or one point. This is kind of ruined by the fact that a rare item can give units the 10 extra skill points. It's very hard to get, though. Most of your units will stay at the base 30 skill points forever

Multiplayer

"Tales of Erin's" Massive Battle lobby is a nice feature with some unfortunate consequences. Against boss enemies, you can enlist 7 allies to join you. It is nice to be able to call for some help in fights that you just barely couldn't handle by yourself. One consequence of this is that new players are incentivized to join massive battles that they can't do anything in just to get some loot. It can be frustrating to do over half of a boss's health and see all 7 of your allies doing 20k damage and dying.

The other consequence of multiple congruent players fighting a single boss means that the extended skill animations that freeze the battle don't freeze the timer as well. So while you're watching your characters doing their 2-3 second skill animations, you aren't dealing DPS anywhere else. If the game did freeze time, then it would have to freeze time for all the other players as well, which just turns into a big mess.

Shine and Polish

While the core of the game is almost exactly what I want from a game like this, there are some layers of care that seem to have been ignored. You'll find that the English translation is chock full of typos. "Tales of Erin" requests audio focus when you use your divinity and when summoning even if you turn off all sounds in the game. This cancels music on your phone while playing. The game has connection problems for some players and has a tendency to crash. Also, some quests are just completely broken and won't give you your rewards.

Conclusion

It's been a while since I've found a game that I'm willing to stick with for over a month. "Tales of Erin" managed to reach that goal post and then some. I fight to get stronger so that I can get into bigger fights. It's exactly the addictive quality that every successful mobile game needs. There are technical flaws with the game. Regardless, I can confidently state that "Tales of Erin" is worth looking into.

If you want to play "Tales of Erin" as well, here's the link to the Google Play Store listing and here is the link to the App Store listing. If you've played Tales of Erin, let me know what you think about the game as well.