Blue Archive - The south Korean Gacha game that almost died, is now being released on Steam this summer.

  • Want to keep track of this thread?
    Accounts can bookmark posts, watch threads for updates, and jump back to where you stopped reading.
    Create account
Everyone's focus is on the Battle of Cunny Lake to not notice the real-life Kivotos in Greece.
Screenshot_20250814_063914_Chrome.webp
 
Just wait until you get to the Fast and Fuuka-rious part.

That Volume also has the potential to have the story blocked off by a gameplay section with a too high of a level requirement. In that case, remember to check if you can use "Assistants" - basically there are high-level Students available you can use for limited times a day, in certain kind of battles. I think I wielded my best tank, two healers, and three highest-level assistants which mostly brute-forced the whole thing.
 
Overpriced Gaming Chair said:
Just wait until you get to the Fast and Fuuka-rious part.

That Volume also has the potential to have the story blocked off by a gameplay section with a too high of a level requirement. In that case, remember to check if you can use "Assistants" - basically there are high-level Students available you can use for limited times a day, in certain kind of battles. I think I wielded my best tank, two healers, and three highest-level assistants which mostly brute-forced the whole thing.
Click to expand...
I think if you can beat story mode Hiero you can do the Ark conquest too, you can just snake your way through 1* difficulty enemies and you should still be able to beat it, then when you level yourself enough you can go back and 100% the conquest. It's worth going back to it too, as each battle gives 10-30 pyros depending on difficulty level and each battle costs just 5 energy to do. There's also challenge stages that unlock that are similar to challenge stages in events, since all of them have a gimmick attached to them.
 
Finished the final chapter. Absolute cinema 10/10. God damn Terror Shiroko story is sad. In particular this scene hits hard:
I kinda wish I was there while the plot was unfolding but it's still pretty fun. I didn't go into the history but it is easy to believe the final chapter was there after the game was supposed to be cancelled, as stuff like the Rabbits story pretty much ended midway.

Want to do the past events but for now will finish the Abyddos volume to get that web event achievement.
Overpriced Gaming Chair said:
Just wait until you get to the Fast and Fuuka-rious part.

That Volume also has the potential to have the story blocked off by a gameplay section with a too high of a level requirement. In that case, remember to check if you can use "Assistants" - basically there are high-level Students available you can use for limited times a day, in certain kind of battles. I think I wielded my best tank, two healers, and three highest-level assistants which mostly brute-forced the whole thing.
Click to expand...
I love how the Culinary club just Team Rocket style keep popping up, derails the plot, and leaves. Challenge wise the game does let you chip the enemy, but used the assistants to finish the combat fast and see the ending.
 
wtfNeedSignUp said:
Finished the final chapter. Absolute cinema 10/10. God damn Terror Shiroko story is sad.
Click to expand...
This game has conditioned me to get teary-eyed whenever I hear the opening of Re: Aoharu.

By the way, the song that plays during T. Shiroko's backstory is called "Responsibility"
 
Letting the ending sink in a bit more. Besides getting a staggering amount of emotional scenes right after the other (everything with TShiroko is just heart breaking, especially when she breaks down). It's weird how the game, despite the popular depiction of the fans, has a really mature story:

JRPGs and gacha tend to be very juvenile and/or misery porn. They want the reader to be a perpetual teenager collecting waifus, and have edgy topics because adult readers are numb to conventional plots.

Blue Archive main theme is about the responsibility of adulthood, there is a clear line between sensei and the students, and your responsibility to help them is a constant theme. Using money to bruteforce plot progression is not only a literal plot device, but with the twist that doing so might alter your enjoyment and emotional investment of the settings into a number game.

The villains themselves are people who've done it and now want to manipulate/ruin everything because it fits in their head canon/want to power game (fun fact, Gemetria is the practice of taking letters and converting them to numbers, usually to make numerical anagrams (find two words with the same sum), which fits perfectly with a villain group that treat characters more like numbers than a person with a name).

The story itself is optimistic because you do your job, and help the characters through their issues like an actual proper teacher would, and the game trusts you to use that for emotional investment rather than relying on melodramatic tools for every character having a tragic past.

It just works well and manages to make the gacha work for the story rather than the other way around.

Anyways getting into chapter 3 of volume 1, that's a lot of economical talks that the media doesn't want you to think about. The current villain is a literal basement dweller.
 
Average gacha game story suffers from "need to keep it going as long as the game keeps making money." I haven't played FGO but I think they've managed this reasonably well by having an organization that functions a bit like "Stargate Command" or "SCP Foundation" whose job is dealing with [insert current crisis here] to keep humanity safe while staying secret.

I don't know the exact history of Blue Archive's development, but I can imagine that the writers were aware that the End-Of-Service was on the table. It would make sense that "Final Chapter" (Volume 4.5 chronologically) was written to be a satisfying ending for the whole story, if the game did end up shutting down, but also something they could continue from if it didn't. To mention 'Stargate' for the second time: I've heard they finished at least two different seasons with an episode that could have become the Series Finale, if the show wasn't renewed for more seasons.

Blue Archive also has a "secondary" theme about the importance of choices. Start of the Prologue rather bluntly states "what matters are the choices we make, not our past experiences." This could be easily strawmanned to justify the modern "redemption arc where you just skip the arc" but to unravel it, simply look at what this forum is primarily about. Lolcows aren't designated as such because they made a single mistake in the past and some internet autists refuse to live it down. Lolcows are people who perpetually make bad decisions and ultimately have no one else to blame but themselves.
 
GigantorUnitron said:
So did they ever explain what the deal was with the student council president and Arona?
Click to expand...
Not explicitly, but from what I can gather:

There's some kind of time loop or alternate timeline going on. The default OS in the Shittim Chest uses a virtual persona called A.R.O.N.A. who is a white-haired no-nonsense girl. (The one rescued by Sensei is named "Plana" to avoid confusion.) As some kind of solution, the General Student Council President seems to have modified the OS in the SC that the player Sensei receives.

This seems to have go beyond just downloading information, that could help escape the loop or prevent a "Bad End" to the tablet. Why bother changing the assistant aesthetics? I assume it's implied that she transferred her entire soul/personality to it.

Similarities between the two are noticeable even in the Prologue, where GSC President is shown face out of frame. Her hair is longer, but has the same colour and style as Arona. They have different voice actors based on credits, but if you replay the Prologue after getting used to what Arona sounds like, it's kind of obvious President is supposed to sound like an older version of Arona.

The Volume 4.5 ("The Final Chapter") leaves much of the details open, but basically hard-confirms the Arona-President connection:
Discord_HkU3b8033q.webp
Turns out her halo was used in the "Title Logo" all along
BlueArchive_RDe5qxlVQC.webp
 
Not really a spoiler as anyone who pay attention to the opening train scene and the PVs would've already known Arona and A.R.O.N.A. are modeled from the Student Council President's younger child self. Also it been confirmed in game there multiple realities, as Shiroko is not from this reality, as with Shiroko Terror.
 
God damn Volume 1 chapter is over, what a ride. Holy shit they added an animated cut scene, the entire fight was epic as hell. Really nice the devs get comfortable enough to do more dynamic sequences and actual camera work. Hope they do some tournament arc where they throw Mika and Neru as well to find Kivotos strongest student.

Also lol
1755342188635.webp

Finally finished with this stupid web event challenges, glad to take my time with it rather than rush it. Now for the events and some new units.
Overpriced Gaming Chair said:
Average gacha game story suffers from "need to keep it going as long as the game keeps making money." I haven't played FGO but I think they've managed this reasonably well by having an organization that functions a bit like "Stargate Command" or "SCP Foundation" whose job is dealing with [insert current crisis here] to keep humanity safe while staying secret.
Click to expand...
FGO issue is that it doesn't stop with the scale creep. They started with end of the world and now there are alternate universes competing for existence or some shit.
 
Finished Final Chapter myself. I personally dont mind sad or depressing stories as long as there is a point to it and dont overdo with the depression (a story being sad for the sake of sad is bad writing). I do like the hopefulness of Blue Archives story. So long as you rely on others and work together, you can figure most things out.

Also, Shinon will not be silenced!

BA6.webp
 
Last edited:
Yeah, the F chapter really reinforces the importance of choices, for Phrenapates it's not just his choice to sacrifice himself, but also his reason for attacking YOUR dimension in particular.
He chose your world on purpose because he saw what you'd been doing up to this point and he knows without a shadow of a doubt that he'll lose against you. He is you and you are him, so he knows what choices you'd make in your situation because he'd make those same exact choices. His world is doomed and he has no qualms about keeping it completely doomed as there are only two things left that he wants to safeguard, which are his own version of Arona and Shiroko. Because of that he asks you to take care of the 2 students he has left alive from his world, and he knows you'll do it because he is you, so he'd do the same for you if the roles were reversed. Obviously, you end up doing what he wanted in the same manner he'd do it.

Also I may as well do another lil' writeup on an important game mechanic - BUFF AND DEBUFF STACKING!
Buffs and debuffs can override each other if they're the same type (ATK, CRIT dmg, CRIT %, DEF, etc.), with the most recent one overriding the earlier one, even if the most recent one is weaker. Here's how to avoid that!

A buff will override another buff if it's considered from the same source. The SOURCE is defined by two things:
a) The skill the buff comes from, so EX, Basic or Sub skill. Also, Enhanced skills usually just buff the student itself, HOWEVER, if you use a special student who arrives in a vehicle and that vehicle has its own buff, like New Years' Akari's mystic damage buff around the jeep, the buff itself is considered as if it came from the ENHANCED skill slot despite the fact that she arrives in the jeep when you use her EX SKILL. Keep that in mind, still since every other Enhanced skill in the game is Enhanced+self-buff you don't have to think about Enhanced skills as there are no interactions in the game where one would override the other.

b) Targeting type - self-buffs, targeted buffs and aura buffs. Keep in mind here, both ST and AoE buffs are considered TARGETED buffs, aura buffs are things like the Sub skill on every Special position student, they buff every teammate's ATK, CRIT etc., and specific AoE buffs that manifest as an area around the student, examples being the circle that appears around Swimsuit Hoshino when you use her EX or the circle that appears around Kikyou after she uses her basic skill.

So, here's an example of how many buffs can get stacked on one student without overriding each other:
Serika's Enhanced skill increases her ATK (self-buff+Enhanced, 1 buff)
Serika uses her EX skill, which buffs ATK (self-buff+EX, 2 buffs)
Rio uses her EX skill on Serika which buffs ATK (targeted+EX, 3 buffs)
Rio also has a Sub skill that increases every teammate's ATK (aura+Sub, 4 buffs)
Natsu throws a pie with her Basic skill that buffs the ATK of every teammate that the pie hits (targeted+Basic, 5 buffs)
Swimsuit Hoshino uses her EX skill and Serika is within S.Hoshino's ATK buff circle (aura+EX, 6 buffs)

Get it now? Also, this goes for Special students only, if you put two Special students that have the same Sub skill, for example Rio and Kotama's Sub skill both buff every teammate's attack, the one on the second (right) slot will always OVERRIDE the buff on the one from the first (left) slot, no matter whether it's a larger or smaller buff. Keep that in mind and try to not put 2 Special students with the same Sub skill effect in a team!
 
Last edited:
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom