Probably the best of these games yet. I played trough with the free characters.
Each character having their set of stats and upgrades makes the progression satisfying. Having the upgrades linked to an outfit and a scene is a nice way to mix the lewd and gameplay.
I'm not a fan of how drafting interacts with character unlocks. The anti-duplicates upgrade makes you less likely to find upgraded characters in the first few drafts. The best way to level up a new character is to reach an Onsen with them and characters that have a Moodmaker upgrade made permanent. If you add too many new character at once you can end up stuck with a newbies team instead of your upgraded characters.
The normal battles feel worthless. They only reward negligible Exp as far as I can tell, you gain more exp from Boss wins and regional events. Normal battles are just a resources drain, you always want another node and it feels bad when you get three rows with only battles instead.
The game became much less interesting after reaching InfiniDungeon. The only goal you have left is to find and upgrade character cards. I was doing short Cave runs where I steamroll battles and rush trough Onsens and card drafts until I run out of Rerolls. Then I upgrade the cards I found and maybe recruit a new character if I completed all Commons of the last one. Upgrading a card and getting forced to watch the scene was boring at the end, I don't think the scenes are good enough to pay a premium for more of them.
Here's a few suggestion to deal with the issues I encountered:
- Replace the Consumables upgrades with new buildings, the Apothecary, Jewelry, Factory and Inn.
- These buildings have slots where you can employ your characters for starting supplies or increased supplies power. They can be upgraded to have more slots but don't give bonuses by themselves.
- Employed characters cannot be drafted in dungeons.
- This would let us control the draft pool while also encouraging recruiting new characters.
- Normal battles could give small upgrades to your team: +2 maxHP, +1 Attack. This would give them something that other nodes cannot provide, it would feel less wasteful when you face rows of battles.
- Alternatively, normal battles could make a different node appear on the next non-Boss row? This would make cases where you only find Battles less likely. You could also choose to take a battle over an Event when you are looking for Drafts.