Aether Gazer-A Gacha Game worth waiting for

Introduction

As many people might know, Aether Gazer is a hack n' slash action RPG developed by Yongshi (Azur Lane) and published globally by Yostar (Azur Lane, Arknights)，also similar to games like Punishing:Gray Raven. It's set to be released on Q4 2022, so any time between now and December, which might infer that we won't have another CBT or it'll be quite rushed.tl,dr: hack n' slash game by Yostar to be launched later this year.​

The world is collapsing in destruction, and the only way for humanity to survive was to upload the consciousness of humans into a virtual network, called “Gaea”. After creating this virtual world, anomalies have been discovered in the Gaea system, called “Visbanes”. Those anomalies, or monsters, are trying to destroy what humans have created, a peaceful virtual world where to live. To combat those Visbansed anomalies, Gaea have created super human entities, called “Deities” that have formed the “Aether Gazer” military force. Your role in the Gaea world is to be one of the “Modifiers” and fight with them under the command of the Aether Gazer organization.

Storyline

Story is quite generic but it isn't terrible, quite an okay sci-fi scenario of a faction vs. the other (since I'm a HI3 player, it's like Anti-Entropy vs. Schicksal). The faction that is (apparently) on the good side are the Modifiers (some creatures created by the ultra AI Gaea that controls this universe) and the bad ones are the Children of Iron (looks like they're kinda the corrupted side of Star Children, the first humans lore-wise), and it looks like they're controlled by some villains from the big corporation of this universe, Spealght industry. That industry makes mechas that are often corrupted by Bane energy, which kinda implies they're working/manipulating that energy.

Bane (often called Visbane, idk the difference) is a Honkai-like energy like any virus in the dystopic gachas, and its infection is called Corruption, but I'm at the last chapter (still haven't finished it) and not much about it was mentioned. Some pieces of lore are scattered around and I don't quite get the bigger picture yet, I just know that the bad guys are scheming something and the Modifiers, leaded by Division Nine.

Besides the already in-game 5 chapters (there's a chapter zero for tutorial, so I think it counts as 6 chapters), there are some really interesting game modes. Of course there are grinding stages that give Ain Soph Coin (gold), EXP mats and several upgrading materials. There are also some late game stages to grind sigils (runes). Tower-like modes, weekly boss battles, a roguelike tower and a boardgame where you can explore and fight are the other game modes present in CBT. These modes give a lot of different.

Units and Battle System

You control an unit called modifier in the game and the response to the skills is pretty quick and enjoyable. You can bring other 2 modifiers to fight with you (controlled by AI). Modifiers aren't switchable in the middle of a battle, the allied modifiers can only attack automatically and the user can only control when to launch their ultimates.You can cast 3 skills and an ultimate besides the basic attack, there are combos and some characters have charged attacks and even charged skills. Some units use SP (each attack recovers some points and skills cost a certain amount of those points), some have marks system that enhances other skills, some have Divine Grace (like rage or heat in other games) that can be used to modify skill outputs.Lots of synergy and AI tweaks are offered by the game, which is quite cool. There are special ultimate combos that can be triggered when 2 or 3 specific modifiers are set as your team. Besides having some gear, there's also a M.E.O.W. support system that allows you to bring a Mimir (an assistant-like robot cat) into battle, with each MEOW having a fixed skill that alters how the AI controlling the 2 allied modifiers behave, and there are 2 slots for additional skills/buffs/controls acquirable through the game.

Consideration and opinion

I'm having a lot of fun with the game, I really love Honkai, I liked PGR quite a lot as well and Aether Gazer is sincerely already in my top 2 hack n' slash (a bit higher than PGR and below Honkai). It comes out with some interesting side features and game modes, which is a plus for casual players like myself.

I remember reading it was kinda low on revenue in China and it was a bit stingy, but I really hope Yostar has a bit of independency to tweak the currency output and make the game more attractive to low spenders (maybe with some nice packs as well).

So yeah, it has the quality to compete with the other hack n' slashes out there, let's just hope it gets enough attention in its Global launch (also a bit of an upgrade in the writing would be cool).