~Beyond the Border~ > Akyu's Arcade
Azur Lane - ship waifus and shmups and mobage: Now in English (Open Beta)
Kiro:
Kinda necro bumping the topic because of a few interesting things.
Azur Lane is quite popular in Japan despite coming into the scene after Kancolle and being developed by Yo-Star which is a Hong Kong based company. They just had a livestream to celebrate their second collaboration with World of Warships. They introduced 6 new PR ships which are endgame grind-heavy ships. But that's kinda not what I'm excited about. Instead:
They have a hint for an upcoming collab. I didn't recognize it on stream, but after seeing the Reddit topic about it, I couldn't help but get excited. One girl can't have so much power!
Also, at the end of the stream, Yo-star released 3 new PVs for upcoming games they are developing including some kind of Mahjong type game called Mahjong Soul. I'm not sure how unique this could be amongst what I would guess is a crowded market for Mahjong games, but it piqued my interest. Actually, I wonder if mahjong games are popular as mobile games because a mahjong match takes quite a while. Or maybe it's not multiplayer after all. :(
Anyways, Yo-star is flexing their muscle due to the success of Azur Lane. They've got the Azur Lane PS4 game in the works as well as the anime set to release later this year and confidently announced 3 new games in development. As for Azur Lane itself, I still play it faithfully. There are certain gameplay elements that are a bit poorly executed or dull, but still as a waifu collector, they do it very well. Character designs are top notch. Powercreep hasn't been overly bad except for perhaps Amagi and hopefully the new PRs don't overdo it either. Its gacha is fair enough in my opinion. And the global version is on an accelerated pace to try to catch up to the base CN and JP versions. We are getting major event after major event while simultaneously getting some events/skins to debut concurrently with CN/JP. It's probably never a bad time to start up because there are currently no brakes on this train.