I just finished watching so things are still a bit fresh and I might change my mind later on. Still, first impressions are good in their own way.

I liked it, even though it didn’t feel as impactful as season 1. I don’t mean it in terms of “less drama” or anything like that, it just never really meshed into as coherent and effective whole as the original. Still good though.

Some general thoughts:

• Use of multiple art styles was pretty nice.
• I (mostly) like the soundtrack but I don’t think the music was used as well as in S1.
• Not totally on board with the retread of previous media (start with cyberpsychosis, the whole construct business, a big stand-off against corp forces in badlands etc).
• Story presentation felt a little disconnected and all over the place at times. Not terrible but it did negate some of the impact for me.
• I’m glad it wasn’t a repeat of near complete tragedy from S1 and gave us a somewhat positive ending. Dystopic media with zero hope just doesn’t hit as good in my opinion.

Server is still in maintenance so I can’t really test anything but the game launches and updates properly on linux with Proton-CachyOS-latest. I’ll post an update once I get to play for a bit.

Edit: Did a short session to check things out, game runs great. Performance is perfect, no issues with visuals, audio or crashes. It’s good.

Man, I’ve been waiting for years. With GFL1 done and GFL2 in the state it’s at, I might finally get back to something that requires thinking when playing.

Does it? Disregarding some minor smoothing/simplification usual for an anime adaptation, it looks pretty close to the original manga from what I’ve seen.

Looks great. Can’t wait to see the original versions of these characters, should be fun.

Here is the direct link to the official upload, no English subtitles unfortunately. It’s funny and kinda sweet.

Ahh, fair enough. I’m not really into wuxia so I didn’t dig into it that far. My bad.

I thought this was a normal action RPG, not a gacha game?

It’s a completely understandable question, especially since its been 6 years since the movie released and 4 since season 2 was announced. But yeah, this should be after the movie.

It should be set after since movie was a direct continuation of the first season. It’s difficult to say based on the teaser alone as it doesn’t seem to have any new scenes (most look like they’re from the first season but I don’t remember the movie enough to say whether parts of it were present as well).

It also wouldn’t make sense to reanimate parts of the story already released in the movie.

One of the users in the Steam discussion thread found a workaround to make the game work on Linux. You can find it here and below.

Resource download is super slow at the moment so I can’t say how well the game itself runs but it’s possible to launch at least. I’ll update this post once I’m in game proper.

Edit: Game works great with the workaround - smooth, snappy and without any additional technical issues so far.

I haven’t seen any info on that nor had the time to watch the upload so no idea. Hopefully someone more familiar with the show will have some answers.

That may be the case but personally I find the smaller, personal scale way more impactful than “oh no, someone blew up a planet”. I don’t care about millions of blobs acting as background, I do however care about what happens to characters I got to know and love throughout the story.

I’m sure people have different views on that but for me personal is where it’s at and IBO delivers nicely in that regard.

True, should’ve used engaging rather than fun. I blame ping - that’s always a good justification, right?

I just started my own rewatch last week (completely unrelated to the anniversary though) so seeing it up on official channel was a fun surprise. Watch IBO people! It’s a flawed show but pretty fun nonetheless.

Not necessarily too old, it’s just that industry (in general, not just gacha) changes in the way that many of us don’t really like. That’s the price of pushing their way into mainstream. All we can do is look in less obvious places and try more, sometimes not obvious, titles - there might be a diamond or two hidden somewhere if one’s lucky enough.

I don’t hence why I currently play 3 games: first GFL (mainstay, doing dailies and events), GFL2 (giving it a year to see if it’ll turn out into a sequel I’m interested in, it’s a bit more convoluted compared to the first game) and P5X (want to see if it’ll be fun in the long run, most likely won’t be a good fit for you). I’m afraid we’ll have to wait until someone comes up with a surprise hit again so companies have a new template to copy from.

The only things that come to mind right now are ones I’m not too familiar with so I might be completely off base. These would be:

• Limbus Company - what I did hear about it make it sound like a simpler game in terms of resource management.
• Snowbreak: Containment Zone - haven’t played this one since their pivot into 120% horny town but I remember it being pretty basic in regards to upgrades and items. Things may have changed since then so I can’t promise anything.

Is there any reason you’re focused on gacha with your search? Is this about a specific mechanic or just feeling of having a constantly updated game to enjoy?

That’s a pretty difficult question honestly. The easy answer would be to look for “normal” games instead but we’re in a gacha community so that’s obviously what you’re interested in. Based on your post it feels like you’re looking for a simple game with limited side content which kinda goes against the current trend of new releases.

I don’t play too many titles these days but here are short descriptions of what I’m sticking with at the moment. Hopefully this will help narrow down what exactly is or isn’t important for you.

Girls Frontline 2 doesn’t have tons of popups and dailies there can be done in 15 minutes or less for the most part. At the same time there’s A LOT of side content that, while not necessary, might count towards those things you don’t want in the game. There’s a few resources that could possibly count as currencies though I’m not sure what’s your definition on that.

Persona5: The Phantom X has pretty fun gameplay and lightning fast dailies but global servers are treated like crap (it’s SEGA after all). It also has a bunch of currencies/resources and the amount of popups can be annoying depending on where you are (I’ve read it differs by country, personally I’ve seen like 5 or so since launch).

If we’re talking about games with gacha mechanics in general there’s also Idol Manager - this is a “normal” buy to play title rather than a live service one. Gacha here comes in the form of idol scouting though it works more like randomised units in XCom than rolling for properly defined characters. Perhaps this could scratch that itch?

Last question: what do you mean by modern? How old are we talking about?

This definitely sucks but at least it seems like they had a good enough schedule to finish the season before airing. So… not a completely bad news?

I might be reading too much into this but I think they’re going for an anthology feel with the show and if there’s ever Cyberpunk Edgerunners 3 it would once again focus on yet another group of characters. That’s just how I interpreted Sztybor’s words though.