Review: Gacha Fever will have you playing game after game for a chance to pull something good

Gacha Fever is a game that falls within the “bullet heaven” genre. It’s chaotic, but not overwhelming. You have ways that you can upgrade your character and items as well as gain items to help aid you in defeating enemies. As you play, you’ll be able to open up more weapons, items, and characters through gacha pulls. While upgrades to weapons don’t stay from game to game, there is an overall upgrade system you can earn currency for that will affect your games. So, the more you play, the easier it’ll get!

Bullet Heaven is a genre that I was introduced to this year and I was certainly nervous the first time playing it. It swarms you with enemies and seems chaotic. Unlike with “bullet hells”, you tend to be able to upgrade yourself quickly and hold your ground.

While you’re not guaranteed to win every game you play, you’ll still work toward making your game better over all with each playthrough.

Gacha Fever: Gacha catch’em all

I’ll be honest, I’ve played several games in Gacha Fever and I’m still not entirely sure what everything does. It’s an explosion of color, sound, enemies, and so many weapons and items. It’s a lot to juggle, but not in a way that feels like you can’t grasp it or that you’re drowning.

When you start a game of Gacha Fever, you choose your character. Initially, you’ll only have one option until you earn more gacha pulls. However, even when you do get pulls, you’re not guaranteed to get a new fighter. You may end up with a new weapon option or item.

So before I get into anything else, let’s just break down the main parts. Your characters open slowly, but each of them has different stats. You’re going to get characters that do more damage, have more invocation, etc. But, on the flip side, they may have significantly less movement speed or magic damage. It’s all a delicate balance and you’ll have to figure out which playstyle you like best.

For me, I found myself drawn to ranged attacks, but ironically, it was a melee fighter that I got my first win with. Even if you don’t think it’s for you, it’s definitely worth trying out the various characters.

Every character will come with their base weapon, but will have four slots available to buy up extras. They range from projectiles, area of effect, animal companions, and more. And, you’ll have the ability to unlock even more weapons by opening up gachas.

For items, it works much the same way, but you’re not limited to just four. Items will have buffs of sorts, but not all of them are good. While most will give you life, more damage, or attack speed, some of them may have a heavy price. If you’re a ranged fighter, you may want more projectiles, but you’ll have to do that at the expense of losing 25% of your damage which is steep. 

I don’t need damage, I need projectiles!

This game changes from one game to the next and depending on what weapons you choose, what fighter you use, and what items you get will change the outcome each and every time.

As far as I can tell, there are only four maps at this time that have different enemies. They’re adorable, but deadly and come with all kinds of mechanics. Some are fast, some make poison zones, others move in lines indicated by a laser and some are indestructible. If anyone knows how to kill the frog wearing a traffic cone, you let me know because those things are beefy and I haven’t seen one die yet.

As you play, you’ll notice that you’re leveling up. There’s a little bar that moves each time you win an area that pushes you closer to events like bosses or crafting. Sometimes, these bosses are hard and you’ll die to them. It’s just a matter of changing up your playstyle to win.

For crafting, it’s very simplistic. You have three options that you can make and you craft them by having the right combination of items, generally three different ones with two each. By using those items to create a new one, you’ll have increased certain stats exponentially, but at the cost of others. You just have to weigh your options to decide if that’s what you want to do.

Locations on the map will give different rewards. Some maps may give more coins, others more experience, and sometimes you can buy items instead of weapons for coins which is the only time you can do that.

If you’re competitive, there are leaderboards that you can shoot for, but if you just want to relax and play at your own pace, you’re not beholden to that. 

Yeah, I’m on the boards. Top 1,000, so I’m kind of a big deal. /s

Each game is isolated. So, if you die, you won’t have your weapons or your items in the next run, but you will earn coins for playing which can then be used in the main menu area to permanently increase your stats.

While I still don’t really know the finer details of the game, I still find Gacha Fever easy to pick up. Matches generally only last for about 25 minutes or less, so it’s a nice little pick-me-up when you need a distraction, but not to be derailed completely.

I certainly enjoy getting to pull things from the gacha machine and if you like bullet heaven games, you should absolutely give Gacha Fever a try especially since it’s only $4.99 on Steam. If this isn’t your cup of tea, you can see the review we did recently on Laundry Store Simulator.