Azur Lane (2019)

[碧蓝航线]

Publisher: Bilibili, Shanghai Yostar
Developer: Shanghai Manjuu, Xiamen Yongshi
Producer: Yuwan
Platform: Android/iOS

Overview:
Anthropomorphisations of WWII warships form rival alliances in humanity's fight against alien invaders known as the Sirens.

Gameplay:
The game is basically a sidescrolling shmup with RPG elements. You have a formation of six ships, three in the front and three in the rear. Frontline ship classes include destroyers and cruisers while you have things like carriers and battleships in the back. The center ship in the rear line is your formation is your flagship. If she gets knocked out, you're out. If you lose your frontline escorts, you're out. Later on, submarines get added into the mix. They come in formations of three. Early on, you just deploy a single formation, but later on you can have three surface formations and a submarine formation as well.

The battle map for regular missions is in a grid configuration. Enemy formations show up with an indicator for their difficulty level from one to three triangles. As you defeat enemy formations, more appear until the boss shows up. You can defeat the boss straight away to end the mission, but one of the requirements to 3-star a mission is to defeat all the enemy formations on the map. You may also face random air raids and ambushes as well as bonus tiles and replenishment points in port. Submarine formations are not directly controlled by the player. They have limited range and a limited number of uses. Either they will automatically attack enemy formations to weaken them or you can deploy them with your surface formation while engaging the enemy. Only the latter allows your subs to gain experience. Event missions add roving Siren formations, which actually move around the map unlike other enemy formations.

Standard engagements are, as mentioned before, a sidescrolling shmup with you directly controlling your frontline ships. I guess the idea is to simulate the ocean currents and the maneuverability of the different ships, but it feels like there's someone with another controller messing with you. You get used to it, but it can feel a little frustrating at times and is definitely awkward at first. You have buttons down on the right to deploy your submarines, launch torpedoes, launch your aviation assets, and fire the main guns of your battleships, if any of these options are available. Except for the subs, these attack options have a cooldown timer dependent on the equipment you have equipped. (One of the benefits of upgrading your equipment is reducing the cooldown time, but depending on your playstyle, you may want weaker equipment that deploys faster rather than being a slow heavy-hitter.) Besides going up against named characters, you also have mass-produced versions of various ships as the general cannon fodder. There is also an auto-battle function that's fairly decent. Not a bad choice when grinding.

From the main menu, you've got your shop, where you can buy items, equipment and more with the various in-game currencies (as detailed below) or using real money. Next is the Dock, which is basically your character menu. Then there's Storage, which is divided into Design for special equipment that requires you to collect blueprints to produce, Equipment and Material. Next is the Living Area, consisting of the Academy, the Barracks and the Cattery. The Academy is a hub that allows you to access the various base facilities, the Barracks is a space for you to decorate and, most importantly, speed the leveling of selected characters. The Cattery is where you recruit and manage feline mascots you can attach to your formations for various stat boosts and other buffs. At every five levels, you can either upgrade existing skills or add new ones. The Academy consists of Fleet Tech, the Tech Academy, and Shipworks. Fleet Tech awards you stat boosts based on the number of ships you have collected and their level of refinement. The Tech Academy is where you gain plans and other items by meeting certain conditions. The Shipworks is where you can research and develop certain high level units. The Missions menu lists main, sub, daily, weekly and event missions. Build is where you can build units using Mental Cubes (and you can choose among small, large, special, and limited ships). The time to build can be a matter of minutes or more than four hours, but there is an item that speeds the process up which is rather plentiful. Excess units of R-rarity and higher can be retired for medals that can then be traded in for units or materials in the Support sub-menu. In particular, there are SSR units that appear on a two-week rotation that are worth saving up for. Lastly is the Fleet menu, which I honestly haven't done anything with, but it appears to be a sort of guild system.

When you weigh anchor, you have your regular missions on normal difficulty and hard (limited to three times per day), revivals of previous event missions (which you can access for a limited time using keys that are reissued at a rate of two per day), daily challenges, special challenges for players Level 80 and up, and multiplayer matches where you pit your formations against those of other players (the tokens you win from this can be traded in at the shop). With the multiplayer battles, you can do five matches every six hours (with a cap of ten matches at a time). You also have a nine-level rank system You rise in rank as you win battles, earning more tokens for subsequent victories, up till you hit the rank cap. Multiplayer rank resets every two weeks.

You have four main currencies: fuel, coins, diamonds and Mental Cubes. Diamonds are the premium currency that you typically have to pay for and Mental Cubes are what you use for shipbuilding. There are also a number of tradeables, both regular (like the tokens for winning Hard Mode missions and PVP matches) and event-specific. Perhaps because you have to draw a character five or six times to max them out (barring the use of fodder units), the gacha is fairly generous and you've got a decent chance of encountering an SSR within ten to twenty draws. Whether you get a particular character you're after is another story.

The RPG elements come into play when equipping and upgrading your fleet. Each character has five equipment slots: three for weapons and two for accessories. The compatible equipment will be determined by ship class. You also have up to three skills that are divided into attack, defense and support. Merging the same unit allows you to up their star level, which increases overall stats and level caps. You can also strengthen units by feeding them other units (a good use for all the N-rarity ships clogging your dock) and certain units are capable of being refitted to up them to the next rarity, after a process of expending quite a bit of resources. Another element is intimacy level, which if you get to 100, you can marry the unit for a stat boost. So long as you have a wedding ring, you can marry as many ships as you like. (The first two rings are free, but after that it'll set you back 600 diamonds.) Though it has no effect on gameplay, there are also numerous skins for quite a few of the units. Some are only available for a limited time and most will cost you diamonds.

Story/Characters:
The writing is nothing amazing, but it tells a competent story. Most of the characters are bare ciphers, but more popular characters actually get fleshed out. Events provide an opportunity to focus on particular characters and certain characters get their own mini arcs when you assign them as your secretary. You get a decent range of character types, even if a lot of them are fairly stock. Because of the sheer number of characters, there are sure to be a number that appeal to you.

Graphics:
The graphics are fairly standard for a mobile game. You get little SD versions of the characters in missions and in port and full-scale illustrations for the main character art. There are multiple illustrators employed and you're bound to find the work of some artists more appealing than others. Certain characters and skins feature Live2D that you can enjoy on the main menu if you set them as your secretary. As you can imagine in a game like this, fanservice abounds and its appeal to you is going to boil down to your tastes, but they do seem to be casting their nets fairly widely. There's sure to be someone who does it for you, I'm sure.

Music/Sound:
The music is pretty good. It does what it needs to do as do the sound effects. Voice acting is limited, but they do get a number of high-profile seiyuu in the cast. It would be more immersive if cutscenes were fully voiced, but I've been spoiled by Cygames. Be sure to check for updates to the voice pack.

Conclusion:
Based on the core gameplay alone, this might entertain you for an hour or two, but the character-building aspect is what gives it legs. With a large cast and a number of customization options, along with a decent story, it is transformed into something more compelling and addictive. I've enjoyed it quite a bit and would certainly say it's worth a download.

Rating:
Own It