In more depressing news, Dragalia is shutting down soon, and now that free summons have ended I guess I’ll finally talk about it, lol.
Firstly, I’ll just go over how my summons on these last couple of gala banners went. It feels kinda weird because of the impending end-of-service, but still.
Thankfully I managed to get both Nedrick and Primal Brunhilda from my free summons, so I didn’t have to spend anything there. I was missing some of the gala dragons on the spark list for that banner, but I cared more about saving for Euden and Zethia. Even if I’d just gotten Nedrick, I wouldn’t have chased after P-Brunhilda, but she’s nice to have.
I actually got Nedrick from the second slot of my first free tenfold, which was kinda funny, and immediately made me more relieved about how things were gonna go.
Then I got a dupe Xander from the second day, a dupe G-Ranzal from the third day, and ANOTHER dupe G-Ranzal from the fourth day, so that was kinda bizarre, lol. It would have been genuinely agonizing if I got all those 5-star sword dupes before I got Nedrick, but at least I got him first.
Since the new Euden and Zethia alts aren’t technically gala characters, I guess this is where I managed to complete my collection of gala adventurers. I’m still missing some gala dragons, but I don’t care as much about them. It feels much cooler that I have every gala adventurer in the game now, even if it’s kinda depressing to think that this is the end.
Anyway, I was ready to drain all my emergency resources if I needed to double spark for Euden and Zethia, what with them being the final new characters and all, but thankfully I got Zethia at around 100 summons, and then Euden at 190 summons. It always feels awkward to stop more than halfway into a spark, but I have all the gala adventurers, and all the gala dragons that are available to spark on this banner, so there’s no reason for me to keep going.
[EDIT: I also got a Civilian Leif dupe from the scratcher summon. Which reminds me that I still should have one or two of the new 5-star summon vouchers from the shop, but I don’t think they’re worth getting]
Also they just announced that we’ll get a banner after this where we can spark any non-limited unit we want [presumably], so I’m gonna just save my resources for that, lol. I think I have like 260 summons worth of wyrmite and tickets left, along with my entire stash of unread stories, and a fair bit of diamantium, so I should be able to spark on it.
There’s a fair amount of permanent units I want, but I’ll probably go for Sandalphon. My water team really feels like it needs as many buffs as it can get, whereas all the other options just feel like luxury picks to fill out my roster, like Sheila, the apostles, or Summer Leonidas. Also, now that I have both Origa and Regina it makes me want to get Sandalphon even more. Hopefully I can also get Pinon in the future to complete the team.
Since they also announced some platinum showcases, I guess there’s still a chance we might get stuff like dream summons and platinum deluxe showcases, so I’ll try and hold onto my diamantium instead of using it to spark on a regular banner. It feels kinda weird that we’re still getting paid banners like this, but mostly it’s just weird that they haven’t even announced when they’ll shut off in-game payments, lol. I feel like they announced end of service way in advance, and the game won’t actually shut down until at least the 4th anniversary, but it feels customary to turn off in-game payments soon after formally announcing end of service, one way or another.
Also, while I remembered, I decided to import the artbook, both as a way to show my support for the game, and because it might go out of print soon. That should get here in the next few days, so that’s exciting.
But yeah, end of service is kinda the elephant in the room, lol. Even after like two weeks I still don’t know if I can articulate all of my thoughts about it properly.
I guess the main thing I wanna say is that I really appreciate how much effort they’ve put over the last year or so into wrapping up the main story as conclusively as possible, and releasing as many fan-favourite characters as they could. There’s a lot of stuff left hanging, but realistically things could have been left way more incomplete and unsatisfying. I wasn’t sure about it at first because certain things weren’t announced by that point, but the Origa event, the Euden and Zethia alts, and the confirmation that they’ll complete the PDT fights and release Legend Surtr makes me feel a lot more satisfied about where the game’s going to end up.
The main issue is just that it might all go to waste if the game gets shut down with no official sort of archival put in place, but that’s more of a wide-spread problem with live service games in general.
I really hope they can make the game run entirely offline even if it means removing co-op, but I can see why that might be too much of a hassle to set up. At least the fandom will archive as much stuff as they can, but it’d be nice to actually be able to play the game even if they stop supporting it. There’s still a lot left for me to accomplish in the game, so it’d be sad to get blocked off from it forever.
Compared to all that stuff, my issues with the incomplete parts of the story are a lot more minor, even though some of it still bugs me. Like how we only got glimpses of the last five wyrmclan leaders, or how they never went anywhere with Heinwald’s whole story. At the very least I think some of this stuff can be addressed through stuff like the new lore segments in Kaleidoscape they announced, and if they ever do a second artbook that includes unreleased material and concept work in it.
In terms of stuff that I actually care about, it’s basically just those two hanging threads, plus maybe the whole deal with the androids, although that was so vague that I wasn’t really invested in the bigger mystery being set up. Other than that, it’s just a handful of plot arcs I don’t care about much like the Syndicate. So I think they did a good job of resolving as much as possible.
It does kinda feel like they just needed a couple more events to truly wrap all this stuff up, though, which is kinda frustrating. Like, each of those things could have been resolved in a single event each, even a short mid-month one. But there’s not much we can do about that now.
Also, considering that it’s been like two years since they last did anything with Heinwald, I feel like they didn’t even have anything concretely planned out for him, lol. I think that was one of those things that was just floating in the air as a vague idea they could work with if they had room in the event schedule for it.
I’d be genuinely unsatisfied if we don’t get the names and full designs for the rest of the zodiacs, though, but that’s not a super big deal in the long run. At least the actual Hinomoto story arc got wrapped up in a satisfying way. It just feels weird to only get glimpses of those remaining characters.
It’d be great if we get some kind of reboot or sequel, like what happened with PriConne, but it’s probably more likely that at most we’d get a spiritual successor like the progression from Knights of Glory to Dragalia itself. An actual sequel/reboot would probably only happen at this point if Cygames takes full control of it, since Nintendo seems completely uninterested in original mobile IPs, and I doubt they’d bother with making an actual console game out of it. But it’s more likely that the IP will linger in a weird limbo due to being owned by both companies, which would really suck.
On the other hand, part of me still feels like the main story’s abrupt shift into a climax built around the characters literally planning to create a new world using magical McGuffin powers that just showed up feels like it could easily set up for a sequel or reboot. I know it’s typical for JRPGs to end with fighting God and whatnot, but this specific angle feels kinda suspicious, especially since this stuff was only just introduced.
I also kinda got this vibe from the new event focusing so much on the cosmic horror of Bahamut trying to wipe everything out of existence and make everyone forget that the cast ever existed. Like, I get what they’re going for, but it feels a little too on the nose after they just announced that the game’s gonna shut down, and might effectively get erased from the face of the earth like it never existed. So it feels a little cruel to focus so much on that type of subject matter if that’s how things are gonna end up, lol.
I did still really like this event, though. It’s probably kinda polarizing, but I really like how aggressively sentimental it is, and I think it’s a really satisfying resolution to Euden and Zethia’s story together. The part where Euden turns around and finds Zethia in spite of the risks genuinely made me emotional.
I’m actually kinda curious now to see how they fill up the last two chapters of the story, since this event already covered a lot of material that I would have expected to be in the main story instead. I mean, it’s basically a main story chapter in all but name, since it directly bridges the newest chapter with the upcoming one.
Anyway, aside from all that, I haven’t had time to use Euden and Zethia yet, but they look really neat, and I think they were the most fitting units to release for the game’s final new banner. It’s a shame that certain characters like the rest of the Agito and the zodiacs won’t ever be playable, and that certain characters didn’t get alts, but it’s nice to end things off with this sort of book-end.
It’s also really nice to finally get Origa. I was afraid that they wouldn’t have time to release her before the game ended. It kinda bugs me that she overlaps in weapon type with Gala Emile, but oh well. At least she’s a really good unit.
It was also a huge relief that they released Gala Nedrick at the last minute, since I really wanted to get him. It feels kinda weird to release such a unique and interesting character right at the end of the game, but I like how he plays. He’s extremely strong in Kaleidoscape, at the very least, but I also like how he synergizes with Gala Zethia.
For some reason we’re also getting a Valerio spiral, which is kinda bizarre, since they didn’t even announce it until after the end of service reveal. I know they were probably already working on it, but still. At the very least, it looks like a really good spiral, and we really needed something like this to flesh out the options for water units. It’s at least nice that he can get some sort of place in the meta, since he was basically dead on arrival and never had any sort of niche.
I guess there’s not really that much more to say, other than that I still really love this game, and I don’t regret the time or money I spent on it. I do kinda regret the fact that I stalled for so long on getting into stuff like the Sindom fights, but I think that also says a lot about why the game’s ended up in this position, lol.