Based on a 16 second trailer, I was pretty psyched to play Girls X Battle. I didn’t care that the translation in the description was a little vague. A game “combined with tactics and manually microing features”? Sure, I thought. I’ll figure out what that means later. “Sexy and violence combat,” here I come. All I needed to know was that it had tons of cool looking ladies with different personalities all ready to duke it out and fight. Once I heard the heavy metal cover of the Evangelion theme song, “A Cruel Angel’s Thesis,” in the preview, it was a done deal. Sign me up.
Reader, I was misled. I should have known it sounded too good to be true.
Firstly, despite the suggestion of the preview, the description, and even the title, Girls X Battle isn’t about these girls at all. The protagonist is actually a high school boy trying to unlock clues about a mysterious battle card (while making friends and avoiding bullies). From what I was able to piece together from the convoluted plot, these cards are the girls themselves. So the titular girls are just collectibles, not actual characters. They’re more like game pieces or, creepier still, Pokémon. They all have unique looks and types, but they’re not people, even under the limited definitions of what constitutes humanity in a game.
I somehow suspended my revulsion enough to play a little further. Besides the creepy “girls as things” premise, the plot, as it connects to the fighting, makes no sense. Your battle girls, in chibi form, take on waves of enemies just so your character can walk from one school building to another. But the fighting (or the results) aren’t really talked about. You never see who is controlling the opponents or how this relates to the story. After a fight you collect xp and random treasures, like socks or clothes for your battle girls, but they don’t come up much in the conversations your protagonist has with other people.
This would all be less of an issue if the combat were fun or in some way interesting. But until certain conditions are met, combat is locked on “auto” mode, meaning each battle continues without any input from the player. There’s no thrill in the inevitable victory because I did nothing to contribute to it, save feeding my battle girls a juice from the campus vending machine between fights.
The unnecessary menus, the useless item collection, and the over-sexualized, not-quite-human women, all remind me of Fantasy War Tactics, a game that, you may recall, I detested. At least Fantasy War Tactics let me actually participate in the fights that make up the bulk of the gameplay. It’s a battle game that doesn’t let you fight, and a game about girls that isn’t actually about girls. It’s only even a game if you consider it a challenge to constantly avoid micro-transactions. Browsing through the Playstore reviews to see what possible justification nearly ten thousand people could offer for giving this game a 5 star rating, I learned the truth. Several 5 star reviews state that they were promised 66 diamonds, the in-game currency, for a 5 star rating.
Maybe in hindsight the use of the Evangelion theme song was trying to prime me for suffering. But instead of being sad about a young boy coerced to pilot a giant robot, I’m sad about the fact that I wasted precious moments of my youth playing this terrible game. Get as far away from Girls X Battle as you possibly can.
Hardcore?
Nooope!
This RPG has a convoluted plot, stunted, almost nonexistent combat mechanics, and it relies on micro transactions. Plus, the titular girls aren’t even human beings. Hard pass.
3 comments
Millions of chinese ripoffs come like this every single day. I, too, fell for the nice presentation and the girls! but after watching a screenshot of the main menu screen I didn’t even have to check the rest of the article. I knew what was this game about.
I was absorbed by Poppace’s Star Era, which works very similarly … or even the same freaking way! collect cards, upgrade cards, realize top free cards > paid cards, weekly PvP tournament to get 1 upgrade, paying 20$ get 100 upgrades… this now typical chinese gaming philosophy.
I’m quite fed up being cheated like this…
Great article though, good that I stopped by before doing the terrible mistake of downloading that PoS.
Have a great day
Looks like the typical Chinese junk I try to avoid.
I am level 50 now in this game and this is what I experienced.
-Gameplay is good, above average max.
-Community is nice, they help you whenever you got questions.
-GMs are very generous whenever there’s a problem, they’ll fix it immediately and give you compensations like diamonds(the one that needs real money to buy) and responds to all of your questions immediately.
-Diamonds are VERY EASY to get.
-Raising your battle girls are easy at level 40 but after that it’s hard.
-PVP is very competitive, my rank in top floor(the pvp for levels less than 55) is juggling from 50 – 300 because the players are getting stronger day by day. You will get a notification that you either got defeated or won a battle, the feeling of “damn, I lost again. I got to make my girls stronger” and when won “Nice, my girls can handle the other party.” The rewards are decent(50 – 1000 diamonds depending on your rank promotion).
-There are always events happening. Free battle girls, gold, diamonds, etc.
-The vip status IS PERMANENT so your money won’t go to waste because the benefits of a vip is good. If you look at the facebook page of it, you will see vips 8-15, max is 15, lowest is 0.
-As you level up, the battles are getting more and more brutal that you will, most of the times, be on a hiatus when you thought your girls are strong enough then suddenly you can’t defeat the enemies and make you spend more time playing..
-Your battle girls have personalities. No, they don’t love you, some even hate you, some condescends you, some needs money, some needs attention, sadistic battle girl, war maniacs, etc.
The bad side of this game are the story – weak story, it’s so common you will see the end of it miles away – and the repetitive gameplay – but there are ridiculous boss fights at level 80 and the guild events which will really destroy you that will force you to raise many battle girls and not only stick to one.
No I’m not promoting the game, it’s just, this person’s information is very insufficient because she only focused on the early part of the game and never tried what the rest the game could offer.
If you are a hardcore gamer, you will easily know the gameplay of a certain game just by looking at its screenshots, I saw the screenshots and the trailer, I know what I’m getting myself into and told myself “what the heck I’ll try it, there’s nothing to lose.”
This what happens when a casual tries to give a review to a game. Remember that insufficient information can mislead people just like what happened to you.
How is she a casual? This statement gave it all. “All I needed to know was that it had tons of cool looking ladies with different personalities all ready to duke it out and fight.”