So i have played tribe 9 for 5 hours and i think it's clearly aiming for the ZZZ crowd but also the danganronpa crowd / zero escape / battle royale crowd. I'll play more on my free time but idk if i'll commit since idk how much time it takes on practice.
The game puts a lot of effort in the story and if you know danganronpa, it's that kind of rollercoaster insanity. So the game starts with you the MC being in a dragon quest like game, but then people tell him he was brainwashed to think he's in a videogame and he wakes up. The MC childhood friends appear and explain he was kidnapped 2 years ago, had his memory erased and lived in a fake videogame for 2 years.
This is all because a man named Zero (of course its zero) has somehow took control of all Neo Tokyo and it's 23 cities, and created an artificial city 24. Zero has acess to giant robots, armed henchmen, gun drone and satelite lasers. Your main group are a team of rebels who went to city 24 to save you.
(I WANNA PLAY A GAAAAME)
We try to escape but zero destroys the escape pods. Then explains to Yo (protag) that he's so invincible he's incapable of enjoying games despite loving it. He needs do games to defeat his "boredom" and people only play for real when their lives are at stake. Yo refuses to play and Zero kills his childhood friends. Yo panics and challenges Zero to an XB match because he heard he was a top player of that, despite not knowing what it is.
XB is "Extreme Baseball". It's like baseball but anime and there is no gameplay because it's more like a "debate" where you pick the right reply and watch cool anime baseball.
(Look at all these danganronpa OCs)
Zero says that if we win he'll free us but if he wins we'll have to become one of nine tribes (OH) a nd play his battle royale. "Tribes" are baseball teams and in neo tokyo people solve all major conflicts with baseball. Needless to say, Zero stomps us, only scoring 1 point, letting us hit 3 bases and taunting everyone cause he knows everything. When it's Yo's turn, he says zero is a loser and the reason he can't enjoy games is cause he has no friends. This triggers zero who gets tries to kill Yo with a big dark ball and Yo anime screams and slugs back at him then faints. We see zero mask crack (you get it? it also cracked metaphorically cause he snapped!).
Then the game finaaaally starts and your people are now a tribe participating in the XG (Extreme games. yeah...) against other tribes. Your childhood friend is also fucking alive somehow. Then Zero appears as a cute white mascot (because danganronpa writer only knows 1 trick) and says he resurrected her cause he was impressed by Yo. He then drone kidnaps half our team and setups up a new death game and says the winners get to make wishes (1 trick) that scale with how big the death game was, potentially even resurrection. Yo has to accept and it's implied he wants to resurrect his other friend.
(He turns into a semi joke character so he has to remind everyone he has space lasers often)
Okay, so the premise is pretty strong and you genuinely don't know where it can go at all. The fact that characters can get RESURRECTED (maybe it was a robo? hologram?) can make this story become zany bullshit, but it's fairly scary and the game is +18 so it's not going to pull punches.
The combat is pretty okay. There is a button for attack, heavy attack, strategy skill, chain attack, ultimate, dodge and counter (more expensive but does dmg). I don't know why heavy attack is it's own button when it could be hold attack like genshin. Every attack does some level of "break" and you can see the enemy life bar flash the closer it gets to break, so when it breaks you get a switch in attack (like honkai 3 and zzz) where you go all 3 in a row and this recharges tension.
"Tension" is a pretty unique mechanic since it's somehow your universal ultimate bar but also your gear fuel. This game has "Tension cards" with unique effects that require level of tension and/or cost tension. For example, a free card you get gives a room slowdown (like HI3) if you perfect dodge at tension 2+ and costs 30 tension.
You can equip 5 tension cards and they're what you get from character gacha. Note that they affect THE WHOLE TEAM COMP so your effectively have 5 weapons that you equip on 3 characters, but they have much more specific gimmicks and are tailor made for certain characters.
For example, the rich fatguy gameplay revolves around using his skill to... dance in place buffing allies crit rate and pulling agro. When people do damage near him, he gets stacks that increase duration of his ultimate that buffs normal/heavy atk. His tension card is literally "when person gives buffs to allies and they do damage at same time, generate stacks that give crit rate", meaning only he can use his own card.
Equipment is reduced to 3 slots of "patimon" which is like a custom tamagochi with head/body/wing and using 2 pieces gives a simple bonus like +30% heal. One funny thing is that i dropped a few pieces from chests and
some can straight up give character specific talent levels which is both funny but potentially the worst shit ever.
Some stuff i like and dislike
+One other interesting thing is that the gacha system exists IN UNIVERSE and the gacha characters you get are hologram copies. The game even says "You can get characters Yo has never met or made allies"
meaning this game will totally have playable villains and potentially dead characters, which i like.
(This guy is an evil asshole preaching might makes right and killing innocent people and he'll probably be playable)
+The gameplay is simple but it feels ok. Most small mobs are thrash and chain switch does a lot of dmg early on so you want to break enemies and thankfully the MC and his female friend are good at that. It took me until the first boss who does multiple attacks which is counters taking a lot of stamina and heavy attack is slow so if you spam you will eat shit. Another thing is that enemies also have their own tension meter and at level 3 they become immune to stagger and faster (the tutorial even recommends running away until it ends).
These are corpses indicating other players lost to that level 5 mob (its a stronger generic enemy lol)
+The units feel fairly different and have unique gameloop. Yo for example wants to do heavy and for 3 seconds he unlocks his skill that does a lot of break, so he's kinda braindead but you still have to manage your timings to not get interrupted. The 5* banner waifu can move while shooting (feels like hersher of void in honkai3) and her attacks raise bar that unlocks her skill which is a big aoe that heals a bit.
+You can actually change the auto targeting on the options for direction and distance (good for ranged units). You can even remove auto targeting completely which is a surprisingly ballsy choice.
+The soundtrack goes haaaaaard. The animations dont feel that great but the OST makes me bop and carries.
~This game might actually be more husbando focused than Waifu focused because there are 15 character and the ratio is 10 males to 5 females. The starter 5* is also not much of a waifu since he's design is fairly simple... and then her battle pass skin is way more exaggerated.
(Can you guess which one is the battle pass skin?)
-The paid battle pass giving skins are fine but it also gives 5 copies of an exclusive card that makes you heal on chain switch and increase support point (chain skill dmg) which doesnt sound that OP but it's a fairly universal card and might be enough to skip a healer. I dont know if this card is limited or not but i hope it doesn't become fomo pay2win. There is also a limited card gacha for limited 5*s too.
-I can see the patimon farm for specific talent+ becoming cancer if it really is random. The game has NO STAMINA BTW, but it seems to give you "rift tokens" after daily probably to farm pokemon. This makes me feel the game was originally a singleplayer rpg adn they made gacha for money.
-I hate how everyone is "baseball themed" which leads to pretty much everyone being either a baseball swinger or throwing balls.
-The game is severely lacking in some basic quality of life stuff. If i touch a currency the game doesn't say what the fuck it does or where i can farm it. Some skills also say "give intrigue stacks" and i click that and it says "intrigue stacks build anger meter" and i dont know wtf is anger meter.
-THERE IS NO BEGINNER BANNER? WTF. I also don't get a freebie cheap standard 5*? You can't even copy hoyo right!
-There is no actual class or element system in this game which i feel is going to bite them in the back later because if someone gets powercrept they're just useless. There is a dedicated agro pull character and supports and if the endgame is time attack only dps will matter.
Anyway, i'd also like to point out that this started SO BAD game is going through a case of DEVS LISTENED! more extreme than WuWa and snowbreak.
2 days ago they increased daily premium currency from 15 (LOL) to 120 which is exactly 1 roll per day which is nice enough. But today they revealed something kinda absurd.
They're increasing the gacha drop rates. Going from 0.6% to 2% is kinda insane (FGO is 1% without pity).
They're refunding every spent roll you do before march 3 but you still keep everything you rolled and your pity.
This means if you buy 200 rolls now and spend it you get 200 rolls again next week. This not only dejects all possible frustration of spending before the change, it rewards whales who spend a fuckton because they'll basically get it all back next week.
Even if you're not a whale, this is pretty good for beginners cause you get 40ish rolls for free since it's launch week (still pathethically low mind you), and get it again next week.
This might be the biggest desperation move i ever seen a game do and maybe in all gacha games. How bad did this game release? I knew people mocked it as "Tribe 900 negative reviews" but not like this. Not even snowbreak did this. It's so gutsy i'll be sad if the game still dies.