As a gacha player, one thing that we always love to do is to collect all the rares, treasure them and sometimes flaunt them to others, but using them to the best of their abilities and knowing that you got a rare character by hoping to luck out in a certain banner is a great feeling. But in Azur Lane, you are always in luck with good gacha rates and acquisition of rolling materials, it's so easy that it is so exciting to get it all when a new banner arrives. So let me talk about and review the game overall.
If you are playing mobile games and not have heard of Azur Lane or even saw one of its ads, then you're probably living under the rock. Seriously, it has notorious ads. One of the most popular is the "freaking hood!" ad which features a player jumping for joy when he got HMS Hood, one of the most iconic ships in the game. But if you put that behind, the game actually offers a lot for a gacha game. With its growing popularity in the mobile gamers and its eventual anime that aired last year, they have been acquiring new players everyday, which in turns, encumbers the servers they have for the EN server. So today, in the current maintenance, they will be having another server to compensate for that, the Amagi server.
Wait, what is Azur Lane?
I've been talking about Azur Lane this Azur Lane that, but what is Azur Lane, you ask? Azur Lane is a side-scroller shipgirl gacha game where the gameplay is like Touhou since you will be evading enemies with their bullet patterns and fire back with your guns and torpedoes and aircraft. In Azur Lane, you can select 6 ships, 3 for the Main Fleet which consists of Aircraft Carriers, Battleships and Repair Ships with variations that include Light Aircraft Carriers and Battlecruisers while the other 3 will be the Vanguard which Heavy and Light Cruisers together with Destroyers are placed. The Main Fleet will be in the back line conducing bombing runs or salvo barrages while the Vanguard is in the front directly damaging the ships and they would be the one to dodge the bullets.
What makes it popular?
Characters
What makes Azur Lane popular is that it has cute and beautiful waifus, some of them are iconic because of this, while others add in their factor because these ships come from World War 2 ships. The countries that participated in the war are converted into factions in this game.
Eagle Union = USA
Royal Navy = United Kingdom
Sakura Empire = Japan
Iron Blood = Germany
Northern Parliament = Russia
While there are still other countries not represented in the game, they will be there in the future updates. But sure enough, the legends of World War 2 such as USS Enterprise or the Grey Ghost that almost single-handedly beaten the Japanese Navy in the Pacific Theater of the War. HMS Hood which was the Royal Navy's pride and glory is also in the game and so is the one that historically sunk her, KMS Bismarck. There are more popular ships that are in the game that are historically known back in the war. Seeing them represented in the game brings back their accomplishments and their historical footnote for those who have not lived or read about the past war. They create events that commemorates historical moments where these ships shone the brightest back then.
Generous Gacha Rates
Did I say gacha? Yes, you heard me right, gacha! Azur Lane is touted as one of the most generous gacha games in the mobile industry and there is no arguments from me there. Why? Simple, everyday you get a login bonus every time you login, these might include coins for upgrading your ship's equipment or other purposes, oil, the stamina in the game where you use it to do quests and sorties and others but the most important one is Wisdom Cubes, these are the rolling material you need to get the characters that you want in the game. If you complete the daily login or atleast login enough to get the wisdom cube bonus, you will obtain a whooping 30 cubes just by logging in! That's already 15 rolls for limited, heavy or special banners and 30 rolls for the light construction banner. But that's not all, you can also obtain 4 cubes everyday for finishing daily quests, 10+ cubes for doing weekly quests, you can buy cubes for 2000 coins or less in the Coin Shop and 10000 merit points in the merit shop. Finally, you can get more cubes by doing daily commission runs! If you are grinding the game, you can easily get 70+ cubes just for simply playing the game. After all, it will really matter on event banners and speaking of banners...
The rate-ups on each banner is super generous, imagine getting a 7% chance for an SSR, the highest rarity you can get in the game. These are also one of the most powerful. With that high of a chance, you can get every ship in event banner as long as you grind well or just save up cubes when there's no event happening in the game. The game is a collector's dream so if you wish to catch them all but always fail on the other gacha games for their stingy rate, why not try playing Azur Lane?
Outstanding Developer and Publisher
The developer of the game, Manjuu Yongshi has been receptive of the fans of the game, they work together with Yostar which has an active community building with all the players of the game, diehards and casuals alike. If you are eager to talk with the community, they have an official discord channel for you to mingle with them and have fun! They also have separate channels for the different versions such as JP and EN, and if you wish to have an exclusive country discord, just communicate with them and they will likely recognize your country's AL discord as long as they see it is functioning properly and everyone there is a good individual.
Since they respond to the grievances of the community well, they can easily resolve problems and issues which they have proven to do so with flair and grace. If players are disgruntled and demand compensation for their blunders, they are easily willing to give gems and other compensation materials to keep everyone happy. Gems are the premium currency of the game and if you keep on playing, they'd sometimes give free premium items so it is easily free-to-play for everyone!
Very Free-to-Play and Great Deals in Shop
Since they usually give gems when there's something wrong or there is something to celebrate, you can easily get your hands on premium currency to buy things that you like, if you are a collector, buying dock expansions would be key to collect more ships easily, but if you are not, you can just pick and choose who you like, but I, as a player don't recommend it, but you can do whatever you like. Then, maybe you want to buy some skins for your favorite characters. They offer great skins for various characters and some of them are even L2D or Live 2D, so you can see them move, making your purchase truly worth it! But, if you want something memorable for that certain favorite ship of yours, why not oath them? Oath rings and packages are also available which lets you "oath" or basically marry a ship you like! They will have certain statistical increase in efficiency in battles but the most important aspect of that is you get to cherish your favorite shipfu (ship waifu)! They give out free rings in their anniversary so that's something to look forward to!
If you wish to purchase gems, they also have double gem packs for your first purchase in the shop! So for example you bought the 200 gem pack, you will get 400 in your first purchase! That is a great deal if you wish to buy something you want, you can strategize your purchases. They also reset this every anniversary so you can utilize this to great save up on skin packs you like with double the gems you can buy!
So what's new?
With Microlayer Medley event just finished and they are patching up the server in the maintenance, they will create a new server to fundamentally fix the issue of having too much players in the servers causing the server to crash and overload. The Amagi server will be joining in with the Avrora, Lexington, Sandy and Washington servers in the game.
It is also worth mentioning that they have archived the "Fallen Wings" event which has confusion in the past as they have already conducted its rerun on the JP and CN server while the EN had just made its first run when it was up last year. So they just resolved the issue by archiving it in the War Archives, replayable by using the archive tickets which you can collect 2 pieces everyday. They also included the limited event ships in the construction pool in the banners after this maintenance.
Conclusion
A collector's haven. Azur Lane has made a lot of its fanbase happy by being consistent in what they are doing, being generous to them and conducting the proper way a developer and publisher do. In the modern age where games are sometimes abused and abusing their players by offering scummy monetization schemes, pay-to-win tactics and tricking their players with greedy microtransactions, Azur Lane does not make those moves but focuses on pleasing their players by having more waifus and more content. Everyone is happy, I am happy, therefore I, as a veteran of the game, recommend you to try the game if you are already suffering in gacha hell and wants a little piece of heaven themselves! Are you a fellow commander such as me? If so, tell us your experience in the comments section below!
If you are playing mobile games and not have heard of Azur Lane or even saw one of its ads, then you're probably living under the rock. Seriously, it has notorious ads. One of the most popular is the "freaking hood!" ad which features a player jumping for joy when he got HMS Hood, one of the most iconic ships in the game. But if you put that behind, the game actually offers a lot for a gacha game. With its growing popularity in the mobile gamers and its eventual anime that aired last year, they have been acquiring new players everyday, which in turns, encumbers the servers they have for the EN server. So today, in the current maintenance, they will be having another server to compensate for that, the Amagi server.
Wait, what is Azur Lane?
I've been talking about Azur Lane this Azur Lane that, but what is Azur Lane, you ask? Azur Lane is a side-scroller shipgirl gacha game where the gameplay is like Touhou since you will be evading enemies with their bullet patterns and fire back with your guns and torpedoes and aircraft. In Azur Lane, you can select 6 ships, 3 for the Main Fleet which consists of Aircraft Carriers, Battleships and Repair Ships with variations that include Light Aircraft Carriers and Battlecruisers while the other 3 will be the Vanguard which Heavy and Light Cruisers together with Destroyers are placed. The Main Fleet will be in the back line conducing bombing runs or salvo barrages while the Vanguard is in the front directly damaging the ships and they would be the one to dodge the bullets.
What makes it popular?
Characters
What makes Azur Lane popular is that it has cute and beautiful waifus, some of them are iconic because of this, while others add in their factor because these ships come from World War 2 ships. The countries that participated in the war are converted into factions in this game.
Eagle Union = USA
Royal Navy = United Kingdom
Sakura Empire = Japan
Iron Blood = Germany
Northern Parliament = Russia
While there are still other countries not represented in the game, they will be there in the future updates. But sure enough, the legends of World War 2 such as USS Enterprise or the Grey Ghost that almost single-handedly beaten the Japanese Navy in the Pacific Theater of the War. HMS Hood which was the Royal Navy's pride and glory is also in the game and so is the one that historically sunk her, KMS Bismarck. There are more popular ships that are in the game that are historically known back in the war. Seeing them represented in the game brings back their accomplishments and their historical footnote for those who have not lived or read about the past war. They create events that commemorates historical moments where these ships shone the brightest back then.
Generous Gacha Rates
Did I say gacha? Yes, you heard me right, gacha! Azur Lane is touted as one of the most generous gacha games in the mobile industry and there is no arguments from me there. Why? Simple, everyday you get a login bonus every time you login, these might include coins for upgrading your ship's equipment or other purposes, oil, the stamina in the game where you use it to do quests and sorties and others but the most important one is Wisdom Cubes, these are the rolling material you need to get the characters that you want in the game. If you complete the daily login or atleast login enough to get the wisdom cube bonus, you will obtain a whooping 30 cubes just by logging in! That's already 15 rolls for limited, heavy or special banners and 30 rolls for the light construction banner. But that's not all, you can also obtain 4 cubes everyday for finishing daily quests, 10+ cubes for doing weekly quests, you can buy cubes for 2000 coins or less in the Coin Shop and 10000 merit points in the merit shop. Finally, you can get more cubes by doing daily commission runs! If you are grinding the game, you can easily get 70+ cubes just for simply playing the game. After all, it will really matter on event banners and speaking of banners...
The rate-ups on each banner is super generous, imagine getting a 7% chance for an SSR, the highest rarity you can get in the game. These are also one of the most powerful. With that high of a chance, you can get every ship in event banner as long as you grind well or just save up cubes when there's no event happening in the game. The game is a collector's dream so if you wish to catch them all but always fail on the other gacha games for their stingy rate, why not try playing Azur Lane?
Outstanding Developer and Publisher
The developer of the game, Manjuu Yongshi has been receptive of the fans of the game, they work together with Yostar which has an active community building with all the players of the game, diehards and casuals alike. If you are eager to talk with the community, they have an official discord channel for you to mingle with them and have fun! They also have separate channels for the different versions such as JP and EN, and if you wish to have an exclusive country discord, just communicate with them and they will likely recognize your country's AL discord as long as they see it is functioning properly and everyone there is a good individual.
Since they respond to the grievances of the community well, they can easily resolve problems and issues which they have proven to do so with flair and grace. If players are disgruntled and demand compensation for their blunders, they are easily willing to give gems and other compensation materials to keep everyone happy. Gems are the premium currency of the game and if you keep on playing, they'd sometimes give free premium items so it is easily free-to-play for everyone!
Very Free-to-Play and Great Deals in Shop
Since they usually give gems when there's something wrong or there is something to celebrate, you can easily get your hands on premium currency to buy things that you like, if you are a collector, buying dock expansions would be key to collect more ships easily, but if you are not, you can just pick and choose who you like, but I, as a player don't recommend it, but you can do whatever you like. Then, maybe you want to buy some skins for your favorite characters. They offer great skins for various characters and some of them are even L2D or Live 2D, so you can see them move, making your purchase truly worth it! But, if you want something memorable for that certain favorite ship of yours, why not oath them? Oath rings and packages are also available which lets you "oath" or basically marry a ship you like! They will have certain statistical increase in efficiency in battles but the most important aspect of that is you get to cherish your favorite shipfu (ship waifu)! They give out free rings in their anniversary so that's something to look forward to!
If you wish to purchase gems, they also have double gem packs for your first purchase in the shop! So for example you bought the 200 gem pack, you will get 400 in your first purchase! That is a great deal if you wish to buy something you want, you can strategize your purchases. They also reset this every anniversary so you can utilize this to great save up on skin packs you like with double the gems you can buy!
So what's new?
With Microlayer Medley event just finished and they are patching up the server in the maintenance, they will create a new server to fundamentally fix the issue of having too much players in the servers causing the server to crash and overload. The Amagi server will be joining in with the Avrora, Lexington, Sandy and Washington servers in the game.
It is also worth mentioning that they have archived the "Fallen Wings" event which has confusion in the past as they have already conducted its rerun on the JP and CN server while the EN had just made its first run when it was up last year. So they just resolved the issue by archiving it in the War Archives, replayable by using the archive tickets which you can collect 2 pieces everyday. They also included the limited event ships in the construction pool in the banners after this maintenance.
Conclusion
A collector's haven. Azur Lane has made a lot of its fanbase happy by being consistent in what they are doing, being generous to them and conducting the proper way a developer and publisher do. In the modern age where games are sometimes abused and abusing their players by offering scummy monetization schemes, pay-to-win tactics and tricking their players with greedy microtransactions, Azur Lane does not make those moves but focuses on pleasing their players by having more waifus and more content. Everyone is happy, I am happy, therefore I, as a veteran of the game, recommend you to try the game if you are already suffering in gacha hell and wants a little piece of heaven themselves! Are you a fellow commander such as me? If so, tell us your experience in the comments section below!
