I’ve written about Outerplane in a previous post and even voiced my excitement. I enjoy gotcha games and have been looking for a game to fill the void Dragalia Lost left behind. I’ve been playing Outerplane since launch, but today I decided to uninstall it. After running out of the free energy you get for starting the game, it becomes a grind I wasn’t enjoying.
Outerplane is an anime-themed gotcha game for Android and iOS devices. The game has a story, but it is a generic and poorly written isakai anime that doesn’t matter. I gave up on reading it pretty early on. The only real draw this game has is the art style. If you like anime and don’t mind the fan service, this game will have something worth collecting. The problem is that the grind is dull, and you will eventually come to a point where you will need to spend money to get the characters you want. There are probably guides out there to make the grind more manageable and efficient; I suggest you look into those before starting this game. The pull rates for the banners are bad, but that is to be expected for the genre. I can’t tell you how predatory the cash shop is, but there are $30 skin packs which feel steep for me. I am not shaming anyone who buys skins for games. I’ve spent a lot of money on skins over the years. If you think this game gives you a $30 value and the skin pack makes you enjoy the game more, go for it, but I don’t think Outerplanes is worth $30 in its current state.
I found the gameplay to be too simple. The voice acting and animation are fantastic until the novelty wears off, and you realize the game is rather shallow. I encountered some frame drops and stutters in the beginning and while the performance got better over time, there were still noticeable visual issues. None of the issues were game-breaking, but they are worth mentioning. I played on an iPad Pro and iPhone 12 and encountered the same issues on both.
As far are the combat goes, Outerplane gives the illusion of strategy with its gear, facilities, combo, special attacks, and type advantage systems, but this is all just stuff you’ll need to grind for. If you grind long enough, the strategy doesn’t matter unless you’re doing hardcore endgame content, but good luck getting to that point. I will commend the game for having a nice battery-saving auto battler mode to make the grind more manageable, but it still felt like a job to get the materials I needed to move to the next piece of content. I needed to punch in daily and let my phone idle as my team completed dailies, story missions, and farmed for materials before running out of energy and waiting to do it all over again later. I am sure that spending money makes the grind a little easier, but this game wasn’t fun enough to spend money on. I don’t spend money on Gotcha games. I’m just addicted to the thrill of pulling for a digital character and the disappointment that comes after when I don’t get it.
Outerplane is made with a specific audience in mind, but I am not included in that group. The game isn’t fun, the story is bad, and the grind is worth the time you put into it. I suggest you skip it because there are better gotcha games out there. You can download the game for Android and iOS devices, but make sure you look up guides. The key to success in any gotcha game is efficiency.