Taimanin Collection: Asagi Battle Arena is a free-to-play memory game with gacha elements.
At-a-glance
(Adult) Content?
(FxM) Sexual content.
Censorship?
Mosaic’d genitalia.
Hours of Gameplay?
What’s your bank account?
Modding Support?
No.
Patch Available?
Download from website.
Foreword
When wrote a review on July 8th, 2020, I was blissfully unaware of any sort of adult patch which exists for this game. I learned the next day that I had missed out on quite a bit of lewd content. I have updated this review to reflect my thoughts on the game as of July 9th, 2020.
Gameplay
. . . in a nutshell
Play a series of memory games that become progressively harder gain Gems. With Gems, you may purchase randomized packs of cards to add to your collection. They are serve no purpose, but they do feature scantily clad ladies with corresponding lewd CGs.
Are you convinced yet?
out the shell. . .
There are two portions to this game; a fast-paced memory game, and a gacha where you spend gems to pull a random assortment of cards. The memory game starts easy, with a two card playing board. Each level adds a new row, gently increasing the difficulty level in manageable amounts. Each card can only be turned over up to five times, making it imperative to plan your moves carefully, especially as the number of cards onscreen increase. In the event that you exhaust the number of “flips” you have for any given card, you may expend a “hint” to auto-solve any matching pair, regardless of flips available.
In addition to limited moves, you are also timed.
Hints and time can be acquired by matching marked cards. If you run out of time or exhaust your “flips” without any usable hints, it’s game-over. You will collect your experience and reward, including a Gems for each level-up you receive. Gems are used in the Gacha, where you may “pull” a random assortment of lewd cards. Many cards feature one or more lewd visual novel style sex scenes. Otherwise, cards serve no purpose but to deliver lewd imagery. Not all cards come with lewd scenes, which was a bit of a let down; I wanted to see some hornet-on-waifu action!
When viewing cards in your collection, be sure to hover over your cards in the viewing pane; you’ll thank me later.
Like most gacha games, you are encouraged to pull the maximum number of items per purchase. In Asagi Battle Arena, you should never spend anything less than one-hundred gems at a time, to increase the odds of a valuable card. There are Blue Gems and Red Gems; the former are freemium currency; and the later are premium currency. Shockingly, a ten-card pull with Red Gems would set you back over twenty dollars.
Twenty. United States. Dollars. What the fuck.
I strongly discourage you from purchasing any Red Gems. So forget about Red Gems — they would be nice to have, but you can’t have them. Cards are pretty to look at from your collection, and that’s about all they are good for. There are a total of two-hundred-forty-six cards to collect, some of which only obtainable with Red Gems. By the time you unlock every card, you can expect to be a memory champion.
. . . and yes, this is a game you can play one handed.
Story
There is no story. I understand that Taimanin universe is quite large, but none of it is explained in this game. You’d think that a free-to-play card collecting game would be a perfect opportunity to exposes users to the universe, possibly railing them into other titles. The cards themselves would have been a good way to deliver facts and trivia to new and old fans alike — this game would only appeal to pre-existing fans, and it adds nothing to the universe.
Visuals
The titlescreen is attractive, though not as flashy as I would expect for a free-to-play game. Most games of a similar vein would be spamming all sorts of advertisements and flashing icons; not seeing them is a welcome change. From “Config”, you may adjust audio and language preferences. The application cannot be borderless fullscreened, which I find very disappointing.
The Goods
There are a great deal of sexual CGs and scenes to unlock; unlocking them will take ages (or a few hundred dollars). They are linked to randomly generated cards, leaving you at the mercy of the RNG gods each day. The scenes are delivered as visual novel shorts — censored and Japanese only. The artwork is very good quality, and dare I say top-notch.
. . . expect male-on-female sexual content.
Verdict
I recommend this game if and only if you enjoy memory games, and free-to-play style gachas. Overall, this game was a disappointment. It’s a poor free-to-play title that fails to impress old and new fans of the Taimanin series. However, this game is by-far the most challenging, fast-paced game of “memory” that I ever played. As someone that thoroughly enjoys gacha games, the card collecting portion is a welcome feature. Unfortunately, I don’t have the patience to wade through hundreds of “memory” games to collect ’em all.
Wombat Woe
If you exit the memory game, you will not gain any experience. If you want to quit and gain your rewards, you must run the timer. Actually, I recommend only performing a few easy levels at a time, and allowing the timer to expire to farm for experience. Once you’re ready to quit, be sure to spend all of your “hints” for a sweet combo string!
