Queen's Blade : The mobile card game

Hello everyone, Final Agent here and I'm coming to you live with a sorta fresh Queen's Blade news update! The Queen's Blade card game for iOS and Android has been active for almost three whole months now! Let's have a round of applause!

Wait, what's that? What Queen's Blade card game app? You've never heard anything about it? Well then, guess it's time to drop the sarcasm and get straight to the point, that's normal, because Hobby Japan hasn't said much of anything about it to be quite frank!

It's apparently been available for pre-registration since mid-May, and active ever since, explaining the few new pieces of unexpected Queen's Blade related art some might have noticed on image boards and the like.

I	Want	Every
Single	Card	Here.

The game is hosted by Gree on their website and is a browser based card game made for smartphones, though you can get it sort of working on your PC with a bit of tinkering (a bit of a hassle and doesn't gain you much however). If you've played collection based games with gacha systems from Japan before (Valkyrie Crusade, Senran Kagura New Wave, Rage of Bahamut, etc.), then you're pretty much familiar with over 50% of this game too.

What's a Gacha System? Imagine walking into a plushie shop and spotting a set of nice looking plushies behind the counter, but the store isn't selling them, the only way to get them is via lottery. Now imagine whole games built around edging consumers towards 'willingly' wanting to buy those lottery tickets just for a CHANCE at those nice plushies to either show off or so they can actually progress some more in the game... for more chances at even nicer plushies. If that sounds a lot like gambling, then you now understand what a Gacha System is.

We actually found out about the game ourselves back in early June, and ever since, I've been playing around with it, hoping to report back with my findings to all of you. Don't worry everyone, I got plenty of screens to go around.

Here we go... again	"Nowa thinks Gacha Systems are kinda neat!"	"No comment."

As I first began the game, I was welcomed by both Nowa and Alleyne to my new Gacha Hell, or so I'd assumed at the time given the fiery looking background behind them. Our story was presented in a series of short visual novel like scenes that I couldn't even begin to understand. (That's Leecher's job)

But before I could call up my favorite translator, we were suddenly laid siege upon by a gigantic ass, the likes of which I haven't seen since Season 2. A hard fought battle ensued but victory was somehow achieved and I was given a lewd picture of Tomoe from Nowa's stash as a reward.

Pictured : Mero Mero	"Nowa's got a whole lot more where that came from!"	"Great work defeating that gigantic ass, 100 points."

Following that little encounter, the elves and I went our separate ways and I was left to my own devices with my small, Level 1, 3 warrior team of Leina, Risty and Tomoe, as well as whatever cards I could scrounge up without using the pay gacha system. (Spoiler : They weren't very good cards)

The game itself is far from complex, Story Mode has you move from level to level simply clicking on random NPCs from the series until you either reach a boss for a duel or you run out of AP, which acts as your fatigue meter and recovers by waiting a certain amount of time or by leveling up when your EXP meter maxes out. Defeat the boss, and you get a chance at getting her card before progressing to the next set of levels.

Random Amaran Servants and Random Angel, we meet again	Awkward	Leina appears a lot in this mode

Each set of levels is sugar coated with very simple cut scene representations of moments from the anime, given you a sense of, very slow, progression. Beyond that, you'll sometimes see Raid Bosses replacing the NPCs you'd normally just click on. The Raid Bosses are where you'll see a good part of new fan service for any of the girls by the way.

The best episode of the first season	It's already been a month!? Dammit!!	"Nowa's collection could use some variety."

Battling a raid boss requires BP, a different meter that recovers over time or on level up and is pretty much automatic, your party fights the boss without any input on your end. That Skip button you see down in the bottom right will likely get a lot of use after fighting the same raid 20 times. Battling raids will allow your actual party members to gain their own XP, allowing them to level up and become stronger as well as allowing you to unlock new party members.

Defeating a raid will net you useful resources that work with the Free-to-Play Gacha devices. Using these poor men's gachas allows you to collect more cards to either equip on your characters or to burn so that you can power up other cards... before equipping those stronger cards on your characters. They'd still be necessary even if you had the money to use nothing but the Pay Gachas, but they'll rarely, if ever, give you anything worthwhile.

Just look at all those raids	Gold, FTP Gacha Resources, Super FTP Gacha Resources	They like to advertise what you can't have.

Speaking of which, I guess I should specify, but cards are actually meant as equipment that you put on to a character, they do have separate stats. Collecting and using them to power up other cards is primarily done in order to strengthen your team so that they can hold their own during events, which are held regularly.

How cards are displayed	A party of 3, with one leader, is all you can take	You equip cards to your party to boost their stats

Worth noting, is that pretty much any card below Super Rare (the great majority of cards) will in fact be nothing more than a screen shot from the anime, meaning you'll be getting new art pieces quite rarely. Which certainly did the game no favors with me. If you want new art, you're pretty much going to have to use the Pay Gachas to draw those out.

Looking great Menace

Screenshots everywhere

But even more annoying, is how certain cards change cover art whenever you 'evolve' the card, as these sort of transformations will only ever be reserved for Super Rare or Super Super Rare cards, meaning even if you do happen to draw at least one of these fabled cards, you're going to need to draw 3 more of the very same rare card if you want the complete it.


But anyways, while I could go on and on... most of my gripes against the game could easily be attributed to nearly any other gacha game out there. Evolving, grinding, collecting, extremely simplistic gameplay... That's all that holds these kinds of games together, and I went in knowing full well what it was at heart.

So, with my expectations set at rock bottom, and after a month of playing, I have to say... the app is okay. I mean, it's more Queen's Blade stuff and frankly, I'm always down for that. So for fans of the series, it's at least worth checking out so long as they're fine with being shown cards they'll likely never get.

I'd say the only real issues I could carry against the app specifically is the screenshot for most of the cards thing, and the fact that any new art you see here will always be done in the anime's style, meaning they don't have anything done by Eiwa, F.S. or any of the original artists.

So if you'd like to give it a try, go right ahead, just remember, it's a gacha game, so keep your expectations low and your wallet far away, and you just might find yourself having at least a little enjoyment while tinkering with it. Who knows?

And now, for the fanservice corner.

See you around, take care everyone!