Limbus Co quite faithfully keeps to the gameplay, story, and aesthetics style of Lobotomy Corp and LoR, their previous games - highly recommended for anyone that enjoyed those to give this a try.
Combat is based off of LoR system, but out of combat necessary optimization is lower and in-combat choices more streamlined, overall making the game more approachable - a lot of strategy will still be needed into harder stages though, with a ton of depth for those loving to optimize.
Although many parts of the game follow a fairly standard modern gatcha setup, you can actually completely ignore it for main story progression and play it like a traditional game, and overall it is significantly friendlier than most all other ones to players.
The gatcha system is basically completely optional for main story progression, as you get a base version (identity) of all characters and a base ultimate equipment (Ego) that are actually well-balanced with some strong highlights, easily capable of clearing all content so far. Thse base identities are also limit breaked for free as you progress in story.
You can also basically ignore the stamina system too. It's again optional for main story progression, especially using base identities, so you can just play whenever you want in that case. Sticking to using mostly base identities/the same identities means very little resources are needed, with what is incidentally tossed your way as you play being enough.
The leveling/limit break system for building additional characters using a stamina/daily dungeon system for materials, but XP cards and an excess of bankable stamina mean it's mostly a non-issue. You get more stamina than you need, and the farming stages (will soon next patch/already) cost E-boxes which you convert stamina to and can bank forever - you can just log in average 1-2 times per day, dump stamina into E boxes, and play when you have time; then dump resources to max out an identity you decide to build.
Gatcha just gives different versions (identities) that optionally replace the base identity and some different ego equipment for variety of gameplay (they are sidegrades, no *strict* upgrades for the most part) and some additional side story snippets. Characters and enemies have defined strengths and weaknesses you must account for anyways so you can't just sweep with one fixed team and definitely not one character.
On the gatcha itself, you get a fair bit of rolls and a newbie banner with some guarantees right off the bat. Identity rates and pull costs with the cheapest bundles are okay compared to most. Egos can come from gatcha, but rates are extremely low, so most come from a battle pass; free one gives half of the set, and afaik a fair half too in strength. Once an identity or ego is pulled, that's it, no more dupes necessary - that insteads fits into the pity system with shards. A fair number of shards are also farmable through a weekly dungeon. Although gaining shards either way is slow, it lets you select any gatcha character/ego you want in the end, including all newly released characters. These shards can also be converted to thread, the limit break material, but is not necessary for that either.
A solid and relatively friendly game. Character control is limited to initial positioning, a few combat directives (regenerating directive points, selected loadout) and casting ults. It's somewhat of a roguelike (with temporary upgrade pickups per stage in a branching map in most stages) in a usual stamina gatcha, but they avoided many punishing aspects of roguelike by allowing 10(!) resets per stage, 3 resets a floor, being able to exit for only 1 stamina spent. They also avoided a bunch of stam issues like letting you select rewards for stamina cost instead of forcing it all.
Character building is still expensive though, although easier than most gatcha due to how their shard/dupe system works. They also have a gear+substat grind endgame which is.... at least their system appears to be on the better side of that but stil.... prepare to mald I suppose. Also, with a stamina system, as usual you're flooded early and I hear somewhat limited later, although available nonlimited challenge content will alleviate that for a while I think.
However, the game is entirely PvE at the moment and the friend support system is fairly generous, so a lot can be forgiven.
UI is quite bad for a game of this era, and the English tl atm is mostly an afterthought (but not completely awful like some other games)
There's nothing all that special I see about gameplay either, although it follows the much better modern AFK grinding model rather than stamina based active grinding model
character designs are properly cute and stuff so there's that
Monetization also seems pretty standardly bad in the gatcha genre, but imo the polish doesn't hold up to that for value.
Can't wait for global release hopefully!
Graphics, sound, and gameplay are great, and I expect a lot out of FMA story.
Too bad I can't read Japanese and trying to pay for something in Japan while being outside Japan is annoyingly difficult.
Rating contingent on devs continuing to fix the launch issues. Great progress has been made already (servers mostly stable now!) but more still is to be done before I'd unconditionally recommend this game. Devs btw are extremely communicative on their Discord!
Devs in compensation have given a ton of free pulls, so try things out. Warning though that rerolling is somewhat difficult since you *must* log in with google or apple account, and account deletion has a 24 h cooldown timer.
I heard that all players will have the option to quit and refund all purchases at the end of the open beta, check that yourself though of course.
Anyways, on to the actual game.
Storyline is fairly interesting fantasy-line. There's a solid but not overwhelming amount.
Gameplay is similar to Counterside with deployment cost/limit, auto battling, and active skills best set to auto-use. It's only unit-unit combat, and is more preplanned strategic deployment rather than real-time deployment. Game balance is mostly ok although some mechanics probably would benefit from some revision. Seems to be mostly PvE focused.
There's plenty of very good lower rarity units, 3* and even 4* are extremely available so you only really need to consider 5* to build around. Low rarity stuff is also straight good for low cost filling out teams like in Counterside.
All in all, if devs can fix their server/game bugs, I have high hopes for this game - but the botched launch really hurts, as you can see in the rating.
Pros:
Offline grinding! and game is fairly generous with stamina, including for F2P
Fairly strategic with various different AG setups vs specific enemies + most 5* AG and some 4* being useful, and gearing options
decent storyline
overall good production value and polish
skin currency handouts
PvE content allows infinite free exit/resets of stages, including for the challenge content
Gear substats are not hidden and are upgradeable (with very limited mats, but still)
Notes:
Fairly heavily PvP and PvE leaderboard focused, if you like that
Action bar turn based combat
Fair bit of competitive guild challenge content
Cons:
Not very F2P friendly with pulls and certain upgrade mats being limited for F2P, and a dupe system that is impactful (albeit with a few uni dupe mats + pull currency chara refunds). Not the worst - careful planning allow F2P to compete over time - but certainly not great, especially in a competitive-focus game. Trying to whale can get VERY expensive
Gear substat grind is awful. AWFUL. and it's half the endgame.
A fair bit of accuracy and status accuracy RNG...
Rock-paper-scissors design means many characters need to be built, which gets difficult. The other half of the endgame.
Gradual powercreep on characters, with a number of must-pulls, can make it hard to keep up. Not the worst in genre, but still.
For something that's really not my style, I enjoyed this game a ton. Not sure if I'll play long-term though because of that, RT manual games are not my forte. Devs at the moment are handing out resources like crazy, which mitigates what I think (and read, i.e. "You can be continually very competitive in PvP for only $2000 USD spent carefully!" - actual review from experienced player in SEA lol) is a very p2w game at the core, although most content seems reachable by f2p. Value is still good though right now because of the stupendous amount of launch freebies!
If you want pure idle-waifu gaming and don't care for the story, well, here's your thing.
Won't break the bank if you don't want to, even for getting your waifu (maybe not if you collect a ton) although there's some P2W stuff
Also, to note, tutorial is in Chinese (although what it does is pretty obvs esp if you've played these kinds of games, I still do rec hitting [?] on every page that has it after tho) you can change to English after tutorial by hitting top left profile pic, and then settings button/settings menu are bilingual.
Just a very solid game overall with good F2P mechanics.
As a interesting note, the CN parent company started as a music company, and the music in the game shows! You can find the music on their YT account as well and they have some bangers.
Limbus Company
5.0Limbus Co quite faithfully keeps to the gameplay, story, and aesthetics style of Lobotomy Corp and LoR, their previous games - highly recommended for anyone that enjoyed those to give this a try.
Combat is based off of LoR system, but out of combat necessary optimization is lower and in-combat choices more streamlined, overall making the game more approachable - a lot of strategy will still be needed into harder stages though, with a ton of depth for those loving to optimize.
Although many parts of the game follow a fairly standard modern gatcha setup, you can actually completely ignore it for main story progression and play it like a traditional game, and overall it is significantly friendlier than most all other ones to players.
The gatcha system is basically completely optional for main story progression, as you get a base version (identity) of all characters and a base ultimate equipment (Ego) that are actually well-balanced with some strong highlights, easily capable of clearing all content so far. Thse base identities are also limit breaked for free as you progress in story.
You can also basically ignore the stamina system too. It's again optional for main story progression, especially using base identities, so you can just play whenever you want in that case. Sticking to using mostly base identities/the same identities means very little resources are needed, with what is incidentally tossed your way as you play being enough.
The leveling/limit break system for building additional characters using a stamina/daily dungeon system for materials, but XP cards and an excess of bankable stamina mean it's mostly a non-issue. You get more stamina than you need, and the farming stages (will soon next patch/already) cost E-boxes which you convert stamina to and can bank forever - you can just log in average 1-2 times per day, dump stamina into E boxes, and play when you have time; then dump resources to max out an identity you decide to build.
Gatcha just gives different versions (identities) that optionally replace the base identity and some different ego equipment for variety of gameplay (they are sidegrades, no *strict* upgrades for the most part) and some additional side story snippets. Characters and enemies have defined strengths and weaknesses you must account for anyways so you can't just sweep with one fixed team and definitely not one character.
On the gatcha itself, you get a fair bit of rolls and a newbie banner with some guarantees right off the bat. Identity rates and pull costs with the cheapest bundles are okay compared to most. Egos can come from gatcha, but rates are extremely low, so most come from a battle pass; free one gives half of the set, and afaik a fair half too in strength. Once an identity or ego is pulled, that's it, no more dupes necessary - that insteads fits into the pity system with shards. A fair number of shards are also farmable through a weekly dungeon. Although gaining shards either way is slow, it lets you select any gatcha character/ego you want in the end, including all newly released characters. These shards can also be converted to thread, the limit break material, but is not necessary for that either.