This post is a June 2026 transcription of this video. The text has been edited for readability while preserving my original sentiment.

My Issue With Gacha Games

In case you didn’t know, which you don’t know because I didn’t tell anybody, I’m making a reaction video to all the trailers in Love and Deep Space (no longer). I really enjoyed watching these trailers of seeing a bunch of hot men. And I wanted to take about the first five to ten hours of the game and give it a shot and try it out.

And after playing it, it’s just like every other gacha game. I have spent probably close to, if not a thousand hours in total, playing gacha games. Most of that is because of Genshin and Honkai Impact 3rd with Star Rail sprinkled in between. And one of the things that all these games have in common, every single gacha game does this exactly the same.

It’s progression. Character progression, weapon progression, player progression are identical across every single gacha game. It doesn’t matter whether you’re playing Nikke or Wuthering Waves or Genshin or Star Rail or Impact 3rd or Zenless Zone Zero or Love and Deep Space. All of them have the identical mechanics of, hey, you need to level up this character. This character has a maximum level of, let’s say, 20. You get them to 20, hey, there are some upgrade materials that you need to grind to get it. Cool! You unlock the next set of levels to then level them up. Hey, if you want to make them stronger, you got to roll for the same character again. Same for the weapons that they use. And to unlock player stuff, it’s identical.

At this point, I’m like, I am just done doing that. I’m done wasting my time trying to progress. And the most upsetting thing is that all of these games also lock you. So as I’m playing Love and Deep Space, wanting to get to their story, wanting to learn more about the characters, the game is like, no. You’re not at player level 20. And I’m like, I don’t want to grind your game to unlock player level 20. It’s not fun.

I also thought it was going to be a little bit more of a unique gameplay style than just a generic action game. And keep in mind, I have no issue with Love and Deep Space as a game. I think this game is super cool. It’s just unfortunate that before playing this game I’ve spent a thousand hours playing other gacha games and realizing that they all are just identical.

And like, it’s really unfortunate. And so I am debating on whether I should release this Love and Deep Space video, because when I want to do my reactions, I want to actually commit to playing these games. I want to commit to sharing my excitement for these games. As much as I loved all the trailers, it’s just unfortunate that I have burned out on like gacha games, specifically the way character progression and player progression works in those games that I don’t want to be a sourpuss the entire time I’m talking about playing the game.

Maybe I add an addendum to the end of this video, kind of talking about me playing the game for a little while and maybe I just even cut out the parts where I talk about I’m going to play the game for five to ten hours. I’m not quite sure, but just playing the game for the first two hours, I was absolutely bored. I’m like I’m like stuck having to grind the game because I’m not at the correct player level to start unlocking other missions. Luckily, in Love and Deep Space, there are other story stuff I can get to.

RETURN TO STAR RAIL??

So why am I talking about going back to Star Rail? Well, it’s because in Star Rail, I got to the point where I don’t have to level up my characters. My Star Rail characters feature characters who are extremely powerful. I spent the hundreds of hours upgrading these characters, spending money on these characters to get them to a point where I don’t have to worry about combat scenarios. I don’t have to worry about being gated by my level, not being strong enough. So I can play Star Rail without having to pull for any more characters. I think the only characters I’ll pull for are characters I already have, so I don’t need to level them up or progress them. And I think that ideally is the best benefit because so far in the Star Rail story, it’s wonderful. I’m so happy to be back. I am so excited to be back.

If you’re curious how I’m going to do these videos, if you’ve seen any of my Hunter x Hunter discussion videos, it’s essentially going to be the same thing where I will have clips of moments that I’m talking about in the actual story of the game, talking about my experience playing it, how exciting it is. And so I’m very excited to actually complete.

What I probably will do is I need to look up… I’m probably going to make a video about… maybe I’ll just make a video about catching up to 3.0 because I don’t know if people care too much about pre 3.0 now that we’re like months after it. So maybe I just might make a video about like, oh, we’re here. I’m so excited to get back to whatever the new place is called and then have like a little section about pre 3.0 and then post 3.0. Either way, I’m just very, very excited. I was so happy to jump back in to Star Rail and then like, perfect. I don’t need to level up characters. Sure, there are a lot of really cool characters, but I don’t need pulls for them.

Also, the reason why I’m doing it this style is because I also just want to kind of stop promoting the idea of pulling for characters. Because at the end of the day, to me, I consider it gambling. That being said, it’s tough because if I were to react to a trailer, I’m essentially promoting that this character is very cool and that you should pull for that character. So like that’s like a little a bit of a weird area where it’s like it’s still technically promoting, but I just want to celebrate how cool a character is. But so I’m still trying to figure that out. But for sure, I will I’ll do my best to just not go like not pull for characters in a video, not talk about how cool this new character is. I’ll talk about how cool they are, maybe in the story, but how they play and stuff like I’m just not going to talk about that. Because I like I’m not here to promote and convince people to spend their money. It that’s basically kind of how I’m viewing it, but I’m very excited to jump back in the star rail.

Genshin Return?

Eventually, I’ll jump back into Genshin. There’s still a lot of the voice acting strike that’s occurring, and I kind of don’t know how I want to discuss that in the video. I’m not obligated in any way to not play that game, but a lot of my friends are taking part in the strike. I’m also a voice actor. I’m non-union, and I’m also just not trying to step on their toes by taking their jobs as well. However, there’s not really a policy or rule that says you can’t play Genshin? So I might be playing it in Japanese and then give like dedicate a section of my video to the video game strike. I’m still trying to figure it out. We’ll see how it goes from there.

Also my interest in Natlan died when the whole controversy stuff happened, because like no one’s talking to each other like basic humans. Everyone’s like treating each other like garbage. And it’s like, man, I don’t want to participate in a community that like just treats people like garbage. And I’m talking about like both communities, like both people just are absolute trash. So I’m just like there are a lot of games out there where the communities have ruined a game for me. The Genshin community is definitely one of those communities where I’m like, I don’t like I want to get more of the story, but I don’t know if I want to make videos for this community, but we’ll see.

Wanderstop

So lastly, I want to talk to you about a game called Wandersop. This is a game made by the creator of the Stanley Parable. And this game has captured my whole struggle in a lot of my life. It is a game about a fighter who she has dedicated, like I believe in the game it’s eight years of her life, has becoming a swordsman. She is becoming a fighter. She was the number one fighter in the world. And all of a sudden she loses a match, but she gets up the next day. She spends the next whole year training and training and training, and she fails again. And she keeps on failing. And she doesn’t know why. She’s struggling to understand why she keeps on losing. She gets to a point where she struggles to even lift her sword to do anything.

And this is just the first cutscene of the game. And that hit me hard because this story reflected my own. I spent an entire decade of my life animating, training to be an animator. I put my identity around becoming an animator. I was hoping to work at Pixar at one point. I was hoping to make my own indie animations and be super famous to make animations. I wanted to work for so many different studios. But after my 10 years of working to be an animator, it became harder and harder to open up my animation programs. It was harder and harder to pick up my stylus and want to draw. And it’s because I was burnt out. I was overworked. I lost my passion and interest in animating. And I beat myself up so many times after those 10 years about like being useless, about being like wasting 10 years of my life to do something I don’t do anymore. And it took a really long time for me to come to terms with who I am and to be comfortable with accepting that I had an amazing 10 years animating and that I just don’t need to pursue animation anymore.

And this story in Wanderstock is about this character, this fighter, where she just needs to take a break, where she just needs to tell herself it’s okay to And the whole concept of the game is that you’re running a tea shop. And it’s wonderful. This isn’t like a standard farming simulator or life simulator game. You’re not doing a bunch of complicated stuff. It’s more about this character’s story mixed in with you making tea for customers. And it’s just an absolutely wonderful game. I just finished it yesterday. It took me about 10.6 hours. So it’s not a long game at all. Absolutely wonderful game. I would highly recommend it if you’re someone who has ever felt overworked, or if you’re someone who has tied their identity to their work, and you stopped enjoying your work. I think this game is absolutely perfect for you. I’m someone who’s not even interested in these kind of games.

I’m sure I love my Animal Crossings, but like, and I love my Animal Crossing. I like Stardew Valley, but I’m don’t like going out and going like, oh, another farming simulator. Let’s play that. Oh, another cozy simulator. I’m going to do that. Like, I don’t like, I’m like, I’m good. I’m good. I played, I just play them once. That’s it. Right. So this game, if you don’t, if that concept of the game, and also Steam has, you got two hours to do it, play the game before you could refund it. So that’s two hours, a large portion of the game. And if you don’t like it by those two hours, you’re probably not going to like it till the end. Cause like for me, I got captured in the first two minutes because the main character story was immediately reflective of my own. I was like, oh my god, I’ve never played a game like this that just captured my struggle of my life for so long. Absolutely incredible. But hey, thank you all for reading another week of Post Week.