Worst Gacha Ever | Epic Seven

Have you ever looked at a piece of food and thought to yourself, “well.. that looks kinda.. good?” So you – against your better judgement, take a bite, and after taking a few moments to contemplate whether or not you enjoy it.. are forced to just take another bite? You know exactly what I’m talking about.
By the end of the meal, you’re still not quite certain how you feel about it or whether or not you’d get it again. That’s how I feel with Epic Seven after 3 weeks in it.

Hey, my name is Stix and welcome to another episode of “Worst Gacha Ever.” A video series where we play through every single Gacha game and analyze what the game does right.. and what it does wrong, based off of my experiences within it over a period of time.

Epic Seven is an absolutely stunning Anime RPG developed by SUPER CREATIVE and published by Smilegate.
Within 5 minutes of beginning the game, you’re gonna be sold on playing it. Not only are there some “epic”.. hah, see what I did there? Oh, too soon? Okay.

We take on the role of generic Anime protagonist 1137, Ras, a Beta male with absolutely no discernible personality outside of “nice guy” that every girl seems to like. ’cause that’s what these developers all want us to believe, even though real life proves that contrary to what we’re shown, a lot of girls do not in fact prefer the nice guys.
Ras is a special being – essentially, a reincarnated Goddess called Diche, who created Ras as a representation of herself to defeat the bad guy. And every time we fail, she resets the world, wipes our memories, and we’re forced to try again.
Thus, we’re caught in this vicious, repetitious cycle of death and rebirth – kinda like Groundhog Day if Bill Murray had to fight Sargeras.
And if it wasn’t already evident, yes, the narrative is actually quite good. There are points in the story where you fall asleep, sure, and the plot is pretty cliche and Shounen, but for the most part, its story telling is reminiscent of a JRPG.

The game world is about what you’d expect.
It features an over-world map, with each zone taking the form of “Chapters.” Each Chapter has a story connected to it, and one, if not several hidden side-stories you can unlock via branches in the levels you deploy your units to.
Typically, you create a group of up to 4 Waifu’s. I mean sure, you can add a guy in there too if it makes you happy – and I’m sure there are some of you out there that love adding Husbando’s to your group, but I’m a.. cultured Waifu connoisseur.
After filling your team with heroes, a support unit, and a pet, you deploy your units into one of the many levels scattered throughout each Chapter.
Your team automatically moves horizontally – left to right, navigating through several screens and waves of enemies until you’re greeted by the Chapter’s boss.
Alternatively, there are special maps that act as branches: They’re much larger in scale, and provide you alternate routes to take. Each route leads to potential treasure chests, additional encounters, bosses, and a hidden story.
Hidden stories are disconnected from the main story, but generally feature several levels and characters that are unique to them. Completing the main story – and each subsequent hidden story allows for maximum completion rewards.

The combat functions more or less the same as map exploration. After selecting a level, you deploy your team and begin exploring. You get jumped by a group of monsters, and proceed to engage them in battle.
You have various unique abilities, but for the most part, the game utilizes an auto-combat mechanic that – honestly, isn’t half-bad. Typically I’m against auto-combat in my games, but there are some out there, like this, like Azur Lane, that benefit from it as an addition.
Sure, you could always choose to do it on your own, and the further you get through the game the more likely this will no doubt become, but at least in the first 10 Chapters I played through, the auto-combat worked perfectly fine.
And given the length of the zones, the sheer number of maps.. a lot of times, it made sense.
I mean, look. They could’ve reduced the amount of battles necessary, which as a direct result would’ve lessened the repetitious nature of the game to a degree where combat would be preferable when done manually, but since that isn’t the case, auto-combat feels like a requirement to get through the first several Chapters.
Abilities look absolutely fantastic. You have unique animations that play for each character, and these are arguably some of the best I’ve ever seen in a game developed for the Mobile platform.
And given each hero has their own unique designation: Support, Tank, single-target DPS, cleave DPS, it allows for some extensive team compositions.

Speaking of your characters, there are a lot of them. Unfortunately, even despite Epic Seven having some of the most incredible looking Waifu’s I’ve ever seen, the Gacha rates within the game are absolutely horrendous.
From what I could find online, the chance of successfully obtaining an SSR character is 1.25% – however, unlike games like Fate/Grand Order, which has, arguably, a much worse rate, Epic Seven provides you a free summon every single day – which is the equivalent of 100 skystones – the game’s premium currency.
50 skystones from dailies. 80 skystones from logging in weekly. Skystones from PvP, and they’re just off the top of my head.
Sure, low rates are low rates. Seeing repeated duplicates is never fun. And while there are a variety of ways with which you can work towards obtaining your ultimate harem, it’s going to be increasingly difficult, if not impossible as a free player.
Which has led quite a few players to quit the game forever. There are many games out there with significantly better rates these days.

Concerning PvP, as I noted just a moment ago, this game has a functional Arena, amongst other features.
The Arena is compatible with both manual and auto-play. Meaning you can choose how you want to fight or who you want to attack, as opposed to allowing the AI to select everything for you.
I noted that the AI in Epic Seven is actually pretty dumb. My Waifu’s would attack a target, get them to 10%, then begin attacking another target. So instead of hard-focusing a single enemy, they spread their damage out, allowing the enemies to deal more damage as a result of remaining alive longer.
Thankfully, even though I was outleveled by the players I did battle with, my AI was more intelligent. Yes, I noted “AI,” because the enemy players were also AI. Which doesn’t really make a whole lotta sense, I’m aware. The other “players” were essentially just teams comprised of heroes the players themselves formed and leveled.

While the PvP is fairly limited, and there’s an exorbitant amount of content to consume purely via the story and the world itself, there’s so much more to this game.
Like Events. Every Gacha game has events that take place regularly. It’s how they keep players playing, and how they keep whales spending. These take the form of “side-stories,” and at the time of recording this, featured characters like Rem and Ram from Re:Zero.
Or the Spirit Altar, that has you go through several waves of enemies of varied difficulties.
The Abyss, which has progressively more difficult floors as you continue to progress deeper into it. It also has you face waves of enemies in succession.
Hunts, that send you out to engage.. several waves of enemies one after another, culminating in a larger more difficult boss fight with the monster you’re there to hunt.
The Labyrinth, which is.. well, true to its name. It’s a maze, with a surplus of different directions to explore. Your goal is to explore 100% of it and eliminate the hordes of enemies located within it. I only ever attempted each labyrinth twice so never made it beyond 50%, but it’s an interesting, albeit time consuming feature.
There was also the Automaton Tower and Hall of Trials, neither of which I had unlocked at the time of covering this.
Both AI and Player-PvP. Both of which were, more or less, automatic, despite one featuring teams built from other real players.

All of these reward you with items, materials, currency, gear. Things you cannot do without.

Speaking of gear, there’s quite a bit of customization concerning your heroes.
On the one hand, your goal is to obtain the most powerful gear you possibly can, in an effort to make your Waifu-army the most powerful it can possibly be.
You can level your heroes, you can Enhance their individual abilities, Memory Imprint on them to enhance them further, Awaken them via materials you farm in-game to improve their rank. You can see the altered star style next to their picture that denotes each Awakened level.
And then you can equip and upgrade gear. For those of you that’ve played Genshin Impact, this system will seem familiar to you. Each piece of gear comes as part of a set. Things like the “Speed Set” that increased a base statistic by a certain amount.
Each piece of gear also comes with its own rarity – like Epic quality gear, that are naturally more powerful in every aspect than the tier of gear below it.
They have their own selection of individual statistics as well, such as Health, Speed, Attack, Crit Chance. You can Enhance your gear to increase those statistics by making use of other gear of the same type – or via Charms. Weapon Charms for Weapons, Helm Charms for Helmets.
Or Equipment Charms – a more general Charm usable by every type of equipment. As its name would denote.

You have a Pet House, which allows you to “Adopt” pets from… uhh, honestly I’m not even sure where these guys come from. Do we magically summon them after forming a type of pact with them? Do we find them out in the wild? And if so, are they similar to the monsters we kill? Because.. I dunno. I wouldn’t trust–awww, but look at the little guy.
He’s so adorable, and sad, and.. how could you not trust him? I bet he’s a paragon of trust and wholesomeness.
Pets have their own individual levels, and unique purposes along with individual tiers. Everything in this game has tiers. Pets. Gear. Waifu’s. There’s a LOT of RNG present within Epic Seven, for better or for worse.

There’s a functional Guild system present within the game. I spent a week applying to what felt like a hundred different Guilds, but never got accepted by any of them. Thus, I made my own.
I didn’t do anything with it, but apparently you can engage in Guild Wars, World Bosses and more. Which could be fun, if you had friends. Or really anyone else to play with.

Then there’s the Sanctuary, where you can grow XP creatures, farm skystones, Phantasma. You can craft items, gear. And you can send your heroes out on missions.

There is just so much to do in this game, and honestly not enough time to do it in given my limited time throughout the week. I have to log into Azur Lane, Punishing Gray Raven, Arknights.
I have to write up videos, record, and edit them. I have to stream. And Epic Seven, while it definitely does a lot right, is a massive time sink. Sometimes more isn’t always better. Sometimes more just leaves you new opportunities to miss events. Miss content. And that’s never fun.
Sure, I could dedicate time exclusively to Epic Seven, and for those of you that want to do just that – then by all means, that will no doubt work for you. But for me? I can’t deal with playing a single game exclusively. I get bored, given the repetitious nature of Mobile games, and Gacha games more specifically.

Is Epic Seven the worst Gacha game of 2022? Far from it. On the contrary, Epic Seven is one of the better quality Gacha games I’ve played. It has high quality graphics, incredible looking Waifu’s and Husbando’s. Fantastic special effects in combat, and the auto-combat itself serves a purpose.
It’s packed with content, a rich narrative – albeit it falls victim to overcrowding in terms of how much story is present, including the side-story. Things could be condensed into a much more digestible format and still make just as much sense, yet they choose to stretch the game out.
There are so many positives to this game, but it’s severely inhibited by its horrendous Gacha rates. They provide a little in the way of circumventing it to a degree – but never enough to make it enjoyable and fair, like Punishing Gray Raven or Azur Lane.
Is this a bad game? No. Is this a great game? No. This is a good game, which is saying a lot given everything else released in the genre.