For anyone checking out the game. I recommend adjusting the visual effects in the settings. You can remove screen shake, remove dynamic zoom, and lower visual effects to make it less chaotic.
Not only that, but it can also help in terms of performance, especially in PvP. Some characters, enemies, and hell - even some stages - have visual effects that can outright cause massive fps drops or game freezes. It was apparent when the first Kraken boss raid got released as some players reported massive FPS drops even when their mobile device or PC exceeded the minimum/recommended spec requirements. Hopefully that gets the fix.
Those said events are either one of two things. 1. It has near zero relevance to the main characters' goals, which is securing the last victory in the qlipoth game. 2. It's a side story meant to centre on a certain group of characters away from the main cast.
@@JustCheppo was about to comment this, well said, theres plenty of stories in other games that try to balance the large cast it has with varying success, so it cant be helped
@@Merotryz a game that revolves around a stationary character like this mc is naturally hard to world-build if you want the mc to be an active element. if you want an mc that's involved in everything so you can self insert, genshin and snowbreak have you covered.
As person that plays Counterside for over a year I have to say that story is just so freaking good, like I came for coomer reasons and stayed for the story and amazing characters. Devs are also so freaking generous, every half year we have either half anniversary or the actual anniversary that every time gives us awakened of our choice if we finish missions and stuff. Like please if any of you wants to try the game, give it a shot! It is a hidden gem among gachas. Peace!
"the lower rarities exist but lets be honest you are not gonna use them" 9:17 and then a zoom to our boy sparrow, that carries new players with that sexy 2 cost and all round attack & flying capabilities
Very important note about E7, the primary way players gain moonlight 5* units is not the moonlight summons, it's the mystic summons which is a banner with pity that carries over between rotations and has no spook for the rateup ML5, but has quite slow acquisition rate. It's very expensive to whale on this banner, hence only the big, big whales have all ML5s even to this day (even low/mid spender top100 players will not have all ML5s).
@@THEFRISKIESTDINGO his currently has better kit than the old one, just that alot of new unit release can counter him too. But his my goto dark bait in gw with abigail (protect mlken from getting one shotted)
@@secretshopper7099 wdym he is way better now than what he was, in the current shitty overpowered meta with cancerous units he can get stuff done, that says enough.
I've been playing CounterSide since it's launch on global servers and it's still one of my favourite gacha, i really think that the game deserves more attention even after the origin update, that being said i can understand why players get turned off initially as getting started can be quite difficult without the help of any ongoing events.
As much as I'd love for this game to get more recognition, it's hard to recommend when the dev's balance team keeps shooting themselves in the foot with each update. It's become more apparent recently. The writers & creative team are carrying the game hard with the stories, soundtracks & designs.
@@LauderIX I completely agree, and as a low spender i barely get by, ever since Origin we have gotten way less handouts so even with the counter pass its just not enough to get most awakened units. Also i havent touched pvp in ages because it feels like more of a chore than anything.
I also like counterside, but it just can't be mainstream (get more money) , because this game combines a lot of niches that makes it a nightmare to advertize towards the general audiences, it has a good ammount of fanservice (heavy, even, when knowing how dumb the general public -normies- sees it nowadays , but it doesn´t affect the serious moments at all and you won't notice it much when doing the story) , present either in skins or in the normal character designs (quite good designs IMO) . Also the gameplay is ... a tower defense but very linear, in most cases you either spawn your ship ( base) on the right or on the left side of the screen and then you have to destroy the enemy ship / prevent yours from being destroyed, most people don't like that that much, for example, arknights has all of the great areas mentioned above (except fanservice isn't as heavy as it is in counterside) , it has way more variance in gameplay mechanics and characters skills , but it is still a tower defense game and so the normies don't play it (thank god, smaller communities are more solid). the story is quite good but because it is pretty much a visual novel, most people don't like reading that much and will not pay that much attention to it, since it's not voiced. the thing they can work on that they SHOULD do is not having such unbalanced pvp, even when playing against ai player defense teams , you can be a new player fighting a team that looks to be the same power level as yours and then you get hit by a extremely maxed out team of 3 characters and the rest is underleveled crap, so you can't get through them since you clearly can't beat those 3 character even though the general power level is the nearly the same, and thats not even talking about the real time pvp... that is even worse, even for the ones who consume meta all day.
@@LauderIX What I hate the most is the PVP nerfs do carry over PVE. The nerf to A.Jiso was so bad we can't use her for PVE content for making her an offtank. They could easily just seperate the skills like some units have diff Pvp and Pve passives
One thing I want to mention is, while fights in this game are insanely chaotic visually and you can't see sht, eventually you realize you don't need to. Units fight on their own, you're just a general who picks when and where to deploy them. Endgame pvp, for example, is mostly about stacking your frontline and watching if the opponent has deployed any major threat so you could redirect its skill/ult or react by deploying a healer where you'd previously want a damage dealer, stuff like that.
@@limbuswowHi, t100 player here. Mostly, this statement is right, you deploy win con and keep your frontline alive with operator enabling in there sometimes.
It was great at launch. Story is surprisingly good and enjoyable. They didn't shy away from darkness and brutality of the world they built and always remind you of it is some way. Like that event where they showed how exactly corruption works on counters by also tying it up to the opening scene of the game where you fight your first corrupted counter. And later on they expanded on the lore of those characters by enacting retribution for their deaths. Was very satisfying. Gameplay was interesting and engaging and you definitely couldn't auto the higher content. Speaking of - raids are fun to build around, because you have to consider timings of enemy skills and place the character to counter it in the correct order so it has time to come out and do it's thing just at the right moment. So there's a learning curve you get from trying and failing. One thing you didn't touch is guild raids. Those have some strategies in them that depend on your entire guild to contribute and can't be done solo, so there's also co-operation in there. Sadly I stopped playing after the big UI update. It made the menus too confusing and some things couldn't be accessed easily as they were before. Launch UI was very comfy and understandable. Soldier and mech teams are great btw. they fulfil different roles and there were many times when that 2-star drone you showed won me the game. Overall characters have a lot of personality to them. It was amazing while it lasted.
Stopped playing since UI update. Only mentions bottom of the shade as sad story. Dude come back we have a lot more warcrimes now. There's no *implied* children death anymore, there's actual children death on screen now. Also lobotomizing and turning your child into a central control machine for a 10 meters tall mega death machine for the USSR and lying to your amnesiac with multidimension cancer wife is considered fatherly and loving husband now. Also there's no *implied* genocide anymore, we actually see a genocide on screen now. Also loving your non blood related sisters is considered a warcrime now. *Mega super spoilers* Dash is a demon lord. Tehee.
Finally, a gacha review about Counter:Side and it's made by our man Pseychie (love your videos btw). I have been overlooking this game since June and I've been deciding it to play it or not. Thanks for making this, I might play it when I get a new phone. I'm commenting before watching this, I'll tell my thoughts in an edit later. Edit: Alright the game looks unique in its own way, I like complicated gameplay since there are a lot of things to keep track on and honestly never tried a tower defense gacha yet. Team building is gonna be hard by just how many characters you can put in a team, and investing those characters will take time especially an F2P like me. But overall the game looks good, gacha is average, visuals look awesome, and I'm looking forward to the story when I play it.
@@Snow-1140 yo I actually just woke up, I commented that before sleeping lmao. I'll probably watch it and give my thoughts later on today, I should've said tomorrow.
It's a shame the PvP element gets so much focus out there. Counterside genuinely has the best story I've ever seen in a gacha game (apparently FGO is pretty good in that department too but I'm not playing that). I joined recently after watching cutscenes on youtube, but the whole mess with the SEA and global servers was just confusing
Really nice review as always, CS is a hard topic nowadays with how many changes it went through, i've playing for 3yrs since my acc is back from the now dead SEA server, CS is my favorite gacha but i can understand some of the negativity points and well, PvP is a sensitive topic because it's mainly made for those who spend money in overall games with that game mode but it's an optional content and you don't miss much until you have a decent team built for it or wait for a good week of ban/up but there's also a NPC option to fight "story teams" to a specific level so you can also farm the pvp points to clear the shop casually, i would recommend the game purely for the story and world building, bside is also slowly adding voice acting to the latest episodes during the finale of each story, as for black tickets for classified recruitment you can get it through pvp shop or guild as well. CS is a good game, just take your time to understand the basics of it and go deeper if you end up enjoying it.
Counter:side F2P mid-high end player here: in PVP, low rarity mech can be used as "food" for Evolve One( up to 3stacks) or for disruption (looking at you lvl 120 Sparrow) low rarity soldiers can be used for Replacer King's Army of Idiots (but almost 90% uses Blue bridge ship which summons 8 soldiers total) and there was a time where the paratroopers were one of mains counters to Dino (Shepherd & Lurcher) duo to Hit-Based Immortality, until Mordred came out for Operators just buy them on the point shop so you can just focus on the characters you can get ASSR tickets from dailies(4) and weeklies(20) and PVP shop (tier3) the ASSR missions is kinda optional since the gear they gave is not worth it the binaries I recommend using it on Raid and Dimension Trimming gears for PVP oriented guides I recommend watching Bullet's channel (Korean Player), he gives in-dept characters and teams summaries for other guides theres Mage, inFAMOUSJakey, Coffin Manager Hana
@@MerlinCross13 King is definition of P2W lmao. When he was first released he was the ONLY Battlepass Awakened character. He was stupid weak when release, they buffed him to the point that he single handedly broke the game since his release till now. So yeah the definition of your wallet right there.
@@manhphuc4335 that was back then do keep in mind you rarely see gacha's balance their own chars outside of pvp and 1st release chars tend to have a 1-week glory before getting banned to the ground by the community to make it unplayable
Day 1 SEA Counter:Side player here, enjoyed the review on this game, more attention towards this game is always appreciated. My favourite game only second to Arknights. As a casual who’s taken multiple breaks I find that some late-game content can be heavily reliant on above average characters, (e.g. Danger Close, Challenge Mode, Dimension Trimming) but overall the game is actually quite generous with resources. This may be biased coming from an early player but even after taking a couple month break I’ve managed to get over 80% of the characters, mostly missing A-SSR ones by just playing regularly and doing dailies because some events can be quite generous (recent anniversary gave a free A-SSR) so gacha really is just a hit-or-miss but I’d say it’s pretty okay. The sweep QOL is also very much appreciated compared to games like Genshin, or Wuthering Waves where I have to invest 10 - 15 minutes of my time every day to complete dailies. What I love most about this game is its varied range of characters, their personalities and character designs stand out to me. I don’t really read as much of the story these days, but the main first story part (Replacer Arc) had pretty above-average worldbuilding and a thought-out plot. It differs from the casual “hero saves the world” shtick you tend to see in fantasy gachas, and this is a better spin on the post-apocalyptic narrative. So many characters get to play their own roles and when you realise it all interconnects- that’s one of the reasons I got so hooked to the game in the first place. Aside from that it’s unfortunate most skins are locked behind paywalls (though I get why) and that the A-SSR banner can be really hard to push through, and gear grinding (don’t get me started on that nightmare, rerolls are all down to chance and they’ve added more changes which makes the UI contrived) but I appreciate how most characters have their uses, even the SR rearms. I also love, love how TUs aren’t too important and one copy can already get you a solid character to use compared to games where major buffs to a character’s kit are locked behind spending or luck. Once again, thanks for the video. Still can’t get over how polished the character designs are in this game, love ‘em lmao. (Did I mention some OSTs are a bop? It’s genuinely catchy, especially the opening song and some character themes)
yeah, its unfortunate that most skins are paywalled... but aside from the prestige skins, every skin you want can be adquired by spending a measly ammount just to get the monthly admin coin subscriptiion , I never spend money in my gacha games since they are expensive as fk, but spent a tiny ammount just to get a few skins and it was worth it, the return for investment is pretty big that way.
In all honesty, compared to other Gachas, counterside is easily one of the best F2P friendly games out there. The story is also AMAZING. The event stories are insanely high quality and always tie into the main story. I honestly wished they advertised it more. That is what I think is their biggest issue.
I was relieved they made it easier now so it's in the middle ground of f2p. But as day Week 1 SEA player, the f2p content of the story before origin update is hard, you'll die if you don't pull certain meta units.
all right three point to point out: 20:55 all units can clear story until Ep 10.( where the lv.120 enemies come out), it requieres more specific units due to some enemy mechanics. 10:13 limitbreak was simplified so it use one type of materials instead of three...(example, counter use red cubes, mech use green cubes and soldiers use blue cubes). 24:04 the ban system does more than just raise the cost, it also reduce four stats per ban, for example: A.horizon get's lv.3 ban, her cost increase to 9 and her main stats(aspd, increase damaged taken, skill haste and atk are reduced by 30%). p.s Nexon no longer owns counterside, due to a lawsuit, they have to sell the game to Bside studio...
I still play Counterside only for the story. I log in and do the story and don't log in until new story comes out. This game has one of the best stories in all of the gacha games I've played.
17:28 This feels very true. I recently started Honkai Star Rail, and received advice for a "New Player" to use Dr Ratio, a wellfare unit I didn't have from the past. I also found out the game gives out character select tickets at all, which I didn't know, and will be cool when I ever get one during an appropriate event. So these things definitely influence how people think of the game.
Missing dr ratio definitely suck but honestly you can live without him, the game has decent enough 4 star and free character that you can get passed contents (i personally never even use my Ratio), also character select tickets are 4 star only and bound to happened again in future event so don't worry too much about it, you didn't missed much
In Counterside as any other "older" game, you have staggered alot of missions and means to collect resources. Its not like you enter a fresh new game, clear it and then wait weeks or months of waiting for update. ^^
Before I watch this video, I wanna say this game holds a special place in my heart, flaws and all. Edit: Finished watching it and currently downloading again, Im gonna see If I can open my old moldy account lol.
If you are from SEA and did not save your transfer code for merger, your account is lost in the counter;side literally unfortunately. Though rewards are slightly better now for newbies, even more so if you join back at anni
The thing about ASSRs are that, while extremely strong and higher budget, gameplay-wise they're meant to be more of a trump card for teams. Having a full squad of them is just asking to get picked off and your ass kicked cause of how expensive each one is to deploy individually, meaning they get out slower and are picked off easy. In regards to PvP and the debate on whether it's F2P friendly, I'll only mention that there is a ban/buff poll that adds debuffs/buffs to specific characters with varying intensity. It encourages playing around with and changing the meta on a weekly basis cause while you can still used banned characters, their stats are lowered and cost is raised based on the level of the ban, while making less used characters more interesting with cost reduction and marginally higher stats.
6:55 That would be me LOL. Endgame C:S player here who came from the SEA server and is now in the Global server. I main Mechs in this game as the greatest appeal for me was being able to play an entirely machine team in PVP. If you play this for the "Urban Fantasy" aspect of the game, prepare to be disappointed as it will be lost over time. Soldiers and Mechs will never be equal to Counters (it is Counter:Side after all). During the first year it was fun and doable, these days you will need to mix in meta-relevant characters to keep up with competitive (as with every single Gacha game with competitive). The few competitive Mechs are gutted with nerfs or are so unpopular and hated that they are frequently banned by the top players, and story-wise the only relevant faction that produces new Mechs are the Northern Union. You know how it works, waifus sell better, so that I understand a bit. The story is slightly convoluted but very enjoyable. There are more hits for me than misses (Kim Chulsoo's story is my all-time favorite). There is a community out there who enjoy talking about the story and can explain confusing parts for you around. Overall I would still recommend the game for new players. Just do not expect consistent support for non-Counter characters.
What I like most about counterside are the story and lore, even the jokes and seasonal events. The story length and not too long and easy to follow if you pay attention (unlike FGO). All the story are cannon and it all matters and sometime influence the main story. Like what happened to Regina during the Halloween event, skipped some dialog in that event and was so confused as to what happened at the beginning of her Awaken story lol.
Small note that Nexon themselves did not develop this game, they were only responsible for publishing it in Korea, and Zlong game was the publisher responsible for SEA, TW, and CN servers, it was Studio Bside who developed this game. It was when they released global servers that Studio Bside published it themselves, the origin update (as far as I remember) was when KR servers got to be self published by Bside themselves. (Correct me if I get any mistakes) As a SEA vet, Counterside definitely spicy drama even before that origin update fiasco (Rearm drama was peak drama before origin update). As an f2p pvp main I can tell you its definitely somewhat f2p friendly as I can still somehow get to challenger 1 without using T7 gear that much, it just takes the right team during the right weeks. Its actually quite funny that its much easier to climb pvp these days than the older days as those days were definitely more skill oriented, nowadays you can invest in few awakened units or specific tems and climb freely through the PvP ranks. Makes me feel nostalgic as someone who bore witness to many things (Rearm disaster, E1 fiasco, the long wait for awakened Joo Shiyoon in SEA, Origin update fiasco and many more). Despite being so burnt out from this game it still holds a special place in my heart (kinda evident from my pfp), I could talk hours and hours about this game and everything I've seen.
Game may have some cons but it's not too bad. The story is absolutely top tier and gameplay is enjoyable when you get used to that chaos on the screen. Also one addition to the gacha system. There is a golden rule in counterside to never pull on regular character banners with quartz. It's only used to buy that ASSR packages. The game is pretty generous in case of blue tickets (pull currency). You get one every day, there is a chance to get it from dispatch missions, some punch-ins and there is a chance for them to appear in standard shop (where you can purchase them with normal currency)
First as a day one CS player all the way from their first SEA launch I just want to say thank you for mentioning one of my favorite hidden gems. You were mostly right about it but I did notice a few things I would like to comment on. Those ssr selectors you mentioned being a limited pool isn't a downside. Those are some of the most powerful characters in the game who are still being used to this day. Yang Harim is still one of the best supports and Kaci Bins was the best tank in the game hands down (she is about to get nerfed a bit). Also even as a f2p the game showers you in quartz as long as you don't blow it on skins so you can easily get the ASSR rolls each week from them without having to spend money. The main reason I don't consider the game to be p2w is because they made the rewards for almost all content minimal. The difference between the top pvp players and the lowest isn't that much. So even if you don't have all the top characters and gear, you aren't missing out on a lot. So the pressure to compete isn't there like it is in some other gacha, if you want to compete you mostly do it for fun not because you feel forced to do it. The story is one of the better ones in gacha, I would highly recommend to give it a shot and see if you like it. If you do don't neglect the side stories, they are wear the heart of the game lies.
One thing i'd comment about is the new origin update and it's effect: It was when the dupe system was implemented. It did give bonuses but personally it's only has a noticeable impact on high levels of pvp. The bigger issue was to the PvE endgame flow: Before it was a smooth flow from shadow palace -> Swift stages -> Dimension trimming. Dimension trimming was the hardest because it needed 3 separate teams at the same time so u had to gear upto 24 units. U also needed to invest in them because their is combat power (CP) system only for trimming and you would get severely debuffed if u were below the recommended power like NIKKE. Swift stages did not have this format so you could use the same units across stages. Origin messed this up by messing the shadow palace format (which has since been fixed) and adding the swift stages to Dimension trimming with the unit and CP requirements. So for global who had less time to build units compared to older servers like KR, it made it feel like a huge gap between shadow palace and Trimming.
i just start this game 4 days ago and the gacha is really good, you can FARM A FUCKING TICKET for pull WTF!. like you can get 10 pull or even more in just 1 day, and the freebies for the new player is damn good. the gacha rates is also really good, i got 4 awakened character as a new player
I'll be honest, I was already pretty far into the game when the changes with Origin happened on SEA, so I didn't really mind them all that much. I'm also the kind of person to not notice these kinds of things. The changes that I did notice was the removal of how the levels work, before the ships had a movement stat and there was a grid with all the enemies on that grid. You would then move your ship to fight the enemy while trying to position your ship in advantages positions like in Fire Emblem, I don't remember which update changed that, but now it's just a simple level select to fight the set enemy for PvE progression. I don't know if it was for good or bad but it was a change that I got used to.
I really enjoy this game, but you gotta wonder about some of the strange decisions that they've made lately, mostly with nerfing of characters just because people are salty about PvP (which doesn't even matter). Also, the Administrator is a cool protagonist that actually has personality, which is rare in gacha games.
I found much more success in battles not filling in the 8 slots(mostly 4-5 char) as it enabled me to get them deployed faster without other characters blocking them. Hilde with the knockup effect on deployment is really useful
I played Countersid when it first released on PC, and I could attest that it was one the most amazing experience I had with a gacha games. The story was a 10/10 and I'm not even exaggerating, (especially Orca's story), the visual are top notch and the gameplay is fresh since there wasn't any similar gacha game at that time. The only problem I have with the game was due to the gacha itself. There exist the rarest unit SSR but turns out there was a rarer unit a Premium SSR I would call it. And to get that Premium SSR you need an exclusive currency which already exist in the form of Diamond but they added another one just to rub it in my face that 'You need to pay to enjoy the whole experience'. That's when I stopped playing, and fyi I do not have a problem spending money on the game (which I already did back then) but to add another more premium currency just to take even more money from players? That really disappointed me.
I hope you do another review for PtN. They’ve recently added many good features like monthly bosses not having to be beat every week (once is enough and you get a good amount of points if you get to a certain level. Even the redos are counted towards the rewards now). We got that excess stamina system for those who can’t be online all the time and recently some translated dev notes have been saying about a full UI overhaul. Definitely worth the checking out.
Most sci-fi anime gacha games usually have generic soldiers as enemies out to kill you and your team of overly powered waifus. CounterSide is one of the rare ones that treats them with some redemption. It's not often you get to recruit faceless soldiers with waifus and husbandos and set them up in teams together which has always made Counter Side a hidden gem in my book
Like an old saying goes, there is a method to its madness, and that chaotic action representation of Counterside is the beauty i honestly love in this game since day 1. Just for those who criticized the game for it, i suggest it's better to focus on the MOST important details happening on battle first than the rest of details. it takes time to get into it when you're really into the game. Also, it's the only gacha game i appreciate doing PvP since meta changes every damn week for most ships and units. Lastly, the lore of Counterside is the only lore i honestly enjoyed and followed than other gacha games
I have to say this game's protag is my favorite out of other gatchas I've played, ngl. He's badass, genius and has a mysterious vibe, he works behind the scenes most of the time and uses some sort of a robot to communicate with counters. I come back to Counter Side from time to time. I love the doing pvp, guild coop and raids in this game. I hate the game modes danger close and dive(50) though.
Day 1 counterside player here. If you want to try out counterside, i suggest you try to enjoy the story that counterside have. The lore of counterside is DEEP, and truly live up to the post apocalyptic vibe it has 95% of the time. I started playing counterside because i was bord and trying to find new games to play and the only reason i have stayed for this long is because of the amazing (and heart breaking) story
normal player here ( pretty much poor, but alrdy collect all of em ) : Operator u can get for free in planet store, u only use 1 or 2 OP, so focus only on them ( ex: if haste focus on kim hana, every OP work with specific gear )... u can farm some A SSR, 1 free after ch 5 and 1 u need to farm from dive, other ASSR rerun quite frequently... blue tix for normal banner bcause u never use quartz ( 30+ SSR is farmable, more will be add to the list when new side story drop ). so what u do in this video, tiny bit, its trap and misleading ( i blame dev to design game like this )
@@Defi4nc3s1 I think he meant the one where you can choose between paying them lower (less loyalty), normal, or more (higher loyalty) in which case, yep it's gone
As a Counter:Side player, just want to say this was a good review of the current state of the game to my understanding. Thanks for taking the time to try it out and review it!
I love this game, especially the story and characters. The side scroll sprites are great as well. My main issue is definitely the game overfocusing on ASSRs and the amount of FOMO for rewards.
Surprisingly enough, there are a ton of SR units that are still viable in high level gameplay, like Lin Xien the all or nothing DP battery/Push unit that can get an entire team out extremely fast as long as you can keep her alive. There's also the Administration Riflemen and Shieldbearers, which are surprisingly much better than their SSR variants as stopgaps for most teams, due to being so cheap and effective at what they do, that being air/land damage coverage and stopping the enemy from getting close respectively. Evelyn was the best healer in the game until the Chinatsu Rearm, Rhino was once used in one of the funniest sleep and weep PvP comps where the enemy would constantly be disabled while the big guy drove through to piledrive the ship into oblivion, Hilde was a cheap but effective divebomb into the enemy backline, Shiyoon parrystunned to comedic effect, Tarrasque was constantly used in mech team comps, ETC. Don't get me started on the rearms, though. The SR upgrades are crazy strong.
one thing i want to say is, ASSR banners rotate pretty fast, so even if you miss them on their debut banner, you can always hunt for them after a few weeks or so, you wouldnt really lose anything of value other than being in time with the "meta" and the chibi throphies from the unit side quest, also the rewards for the ASSR side quest is more of a boost for building and upgrading the unit, rather than an actual incentive for you to roll on it, and last but not least, gears are more important than the unit, given that ASSR units have a higher cost value, if you cannot gear them properly their cost will eat away on your team balance and efficiency, they'll become more of a burden rather than a core unit of your team, you can also say that they are a UR Unit rather than your standard SSR unit, and once you reach the mid to end game, you'll understand that ASSR units are not really a must have theyre mostly just a luxury tool that's nice to have, but i can understand that's it's really intimidating for a beginner player because of the higher quality aspect of it.
I love counterside and been playing it for a long time i have almost all awakened units as a full f2p the game gives lots of pulls and rates are good so its mostly skill isue to get them at that point
I agree with most stuff except for the getting characters (SSR and ASSR parts) and the skins one, the monthly subscription is worth like 5$ and you can get like 2 skins with it (more if you don't buy the most expensive ones) , as a f2p, between the free ASSR tickets from anniversary and half anniversary and other major events and the currency the game gives me , I have most of the ASSR in the game that I'm interested in , and I don't play religiously, just do some auto and then that's it. also, it's a grave mistake to use your quartz on anything but the black tickets for the ASSR, they give a LOT of freee summons form time to time in specific events so generally you don't have to worry about getting SSR's. Oh, and it's a very unfair comparison to compare this game's skins with the ones from snowbreak, snowbreak is rated like 16+ and it shows, maybe if they increased the rating to 16+ they could do the same kind of spicy stuff.
I actually just got back(i also joined the same time as you cause i missed the anni by a month too lol) to counter:side a week ago and then a week later one of my favourite game reviewer/youtuber posts about it. It's so wild lol.
1of my favorite gacha game i have played. there's so many good thing about this game. the side story, the character lore, the soundtrack i played this since release on global and stayed until a year & half. and spend quite a bit. too bad, i can't keep up the grind and become busy on work and other games. i really love the real time PVP on this game, especially u can spam EMOTES.
I love counterside the problem is my phone has less storage space for it. Plus they very generous about you picking any specific awaken characters in its anniversaries. They are also not predatory about selling character packs either. I stopped playing 2 games from Bilibili because the moment I got 2 characters from a specific banner I exited the gatchq window. I went to my lobby next thing you know they are trying to sell you the same character pack that goes around $50-90 for the characters, materials, weapon, copies for the characters, and their artifacts.
Nexon isn’t developing Counterside btw. Bside separated them in an attempt to make more money and to become an independent publishing studio, which led to the hololive fiasco and Counterside origin update. Basically, they risked going independent, and in turn actually failed and shot themselves repeatedly in the foot. Good news though: everything they did mess up, they rolled back mostly. They also learned to listen very carefully to the fans too, so whenever they announce an update, fans usually have a week to voice opinions, and they change the update based on those. For example, Awakened Jake was going to get a rework. His stun (exclusive to mechas) would be replaced with a bind. For context, mechas are immune to crowd control, except when stated in a units kit that the cc effects mechas. However, Bind is a universal cc that can’t be ignored by passives or skills. Also, it wouldn’t just affect mechs, it would affect everyone, kicking an already meta unit into overdrive. When the community complained about this update, they immediately canceled it and went back to the drawing board to see how they could buff Jake without utterly breaking him
Oh i know this game i used to play it but then i forgot the name of it after like a year of not playing it and me getting a new phone i gave up trying to find it honestly
I've been playing this game since the launch on Steam. I think it helped a lot that I engaged with it as a f2p visual novel with some gacha elements on the side. It has a really good story, and the side stories are frequently some of the best in the game. The biggest issue I have with it is that endgame PVE content, and PVP in general, can be very obtuse as either abilities are poorly explained, not explained at all, or just plain hard to keep track of. Second biggest is that endgame progress also relies heavily on which awakened (ASSR) units you saved up for, because as soon as you have a decent roster, harder content shows up that (surprise!) require the newest ASSR units.
Played counterside on release pulled all A-SSR till awakened Na Yubin and then i quit, the game was really fun and events/challenges were decent. i still fondly remember everyone win-trading with everyone else in pvp as after you hit a certain points in pvp, losing doesn't lose you points and basically everyone was queuing either to win enough matches to hit the minimum or queuing to lose so the other person can hit the required points before the season cut-off.
Its been a while since i've played Counterside, and this feels really nostalgic. Really reminds me the early days of playing. on a side note, here's a few extra advice. - Follow the Task Force mission, and literally do ONLY that for the first few days. if you do correctly, you'll account level will progress faster. and yes, i really meant to follow it to the T and don't get baited with "Oh i have a lot of comission tickets, better use it asap." if i recall correctly, it also gives an ASSR - Gear doesn't matter that much for the early game. Limit break does. Just aim for full set combo and ignore the sub stats, since that's the end game content. - ASSR are strong, even a single ASSR in right teams could help you tremendously. My soldier team with Curian as the only ASSR can still crush people in standard pvp, the online PvP until diamond, or regular fight. So better save your classified ticket only to ASSR that you want. - With raid, its kinda important. This is where you need 'friends' or guilds/consortium. It gives you many resources and gears so don't slack on it - Rearm, for most part, is unnecessary. sure some rearm are nice, but as you said, it cost A LOT. Even i am lazy to rearm character due to its sheer cost. better spend those eterniums on dimensional trimmings or coin farm (yes, i still struggle with coin sometimes even on level 50+) - Anniversary event are important. It usually gives 3 ASSR at minimum (i selector/free pick, 2 random), so keep an eye on it.
Counterside and Brown Dust 2 have been my go to gacha even if theyre very low on the popularity list. The fact that you can save up premium gacha easily with minimal daily requirements/activity are what sets it apart from every one else. On the other hand, just like other gacha, events become time consuming as you do have to invest into finishing up the event stories.
I'm a day 1 SEA server player and its funny how Pseychie complains having 8 units is a squad is too much. Only O.G. players will know how it is to manage 24 units in Guild Coop mode 💀
You can use the Task Planet Point currency to get operators, no RNG required. You might need specific operators for certain content but one good operator like Kim Hana can carry you. I never leveled up my operators, I got by with just having the unit itself. The "small pool of SSRs" have some of the best SSR's in the game. (Chifuyu, Chinatsu, Gaeun, Kyle Wong, Yang Harim, Esterosa) Plus most of these units that I just listed can be rearmed to make them even better. The selectors help in getting said units and you just have to prioritize one character at a time when leveling them/gearing them. Alot of my character's got by on mediocre gear. I don't mind the awakened/moonlight system vs. how Hoyo games do things. Having only played Honkai Star Rail where every character is limited from what I know and I can only get a specific character if the banner is up, I prefer how E7 and Counterside do things. Honkai doesn't give you a free pull everyday so I just wait for banners of characters I want vs I might get a SSR from my daily pull in Counterside or better yet a moonlight from a daily pull in Epic 7. Once a moonlight character is released in Epic 7, they get added to the standard banner so a moonlight can show up if you're lucky enough. They give free pulls in Epic 7 from time to time and I have gotten a handful of moonlight 5 stars from the standard banner. You can get moonlight 5 stars through a mystic banner which is what most people do. The standard moonlight banner has all the moonlights in the game but don't rely on it to get a specific character that you might want. Just save the mystic and moonlight currency until a new unit releases and spend the moonlights first, then mystics. If you get very lucky you will get the new unit in the moonlight banner, if not use your mystics and get them there. How long have you been playing Counterside? The "drip fed currency" of classified tickets wasn't an issue for me. I'm a day one global player and didn't get A. Hilde when everyone suggested that you reroll for her. You can get by with SSRs until a good ASSR's banner shows up. The free A. Hilde you get is a good tank that can be your lead/frontline unit. I am F2P and haven't spent a single cent on the game. I only spent the quartz that you get in game buying the weekly classified tickets and rerolling the shop 5x every day. I got A. Mina and A. Seo Yoon when they released, and they got me through most of the content without a problem. After that I saved the currency and pulled on what ASSRs I wanted and have a most ASSRs in the game. Some skins being paid only is a negative for Counterside for me. In Epic 7 you can get skin tickets in game to purchase skins from the shop, albeit at a very low acquisition rate. They gave some skin selectors in Counterside but the skins that you could choose was limited to "cheaper" skins. The more premium skins are paid only.
This was a fair review I like this👍 I think that the game definitely has potential to grow further and it’s nice seeing people creating content for the game. CounterSide is one of my favorite games to play. Also to anyone who wants to start the game, I recommend doing the PVE first. The story is quite amazing. Now For the PVP Side , yea it can get pretty competitive from platinum rank and up. There’s still room to improve the system behind it however, it’s not impossible to get to higher ranks as a FTP. Considering that only 10% of your gear will be applied to your stats to give you a fighting chance. To acquire the gauntlet points you can just do the arcade or strategy battles. You can ignore the ranked if don’t want the extra rewards or skin. It will take sometime to progress but you have to treat this game as a marathon. So take your time and enjoy 😀 lol.
Day 1 Global player and year 2 SEA player here (don't play currently due to burnout). Like the review, it's rather accurate, just a couple points: - SSRs are not always useless, a big chunk of them are very good in PVE (and even PVP), and there are even SR characters who are still used on endgame content (Evelyn is a good flying healer, Mone trivialises the Guild Raid at early levels and Lin Xien is the best DR generator in the game). I've even built R characters like Claudia. Even then, rearms have given formerly mediocre characters spotlight. Nobody would care about having Chinatsu if her rearm wasn't the best healer in the game. Also, besides Clareth, every other SSR shown is very good or has an awesome rearm. Since the game actually encourages build variety through sheer quantity (Raids) or restrictions (Danger Close, Dimension Trimming), you will actually find use to more units than you'd think. Hell, even Sparrow is used on some strats. - NEVER pull on Operator banners, they are whale bait and most of them are focused on PVP anyway. Instead, it's better to use the currency you get from pulling on other banners to redeem Kim Hana and Lena, who are the best PVE operators, level them up and forget about it. - It's generally not recommended to use quartz on non-limited banners, you get a normal summon every day and free daily 10 pulls on events and even normal summon vouchers through dailies and events. - Yeah, gear system in this game is hell and so is A-SSR gacha, half of mine are from event selectors. - PLEASE MAKE AN ANIME OF THIS GAME AND LET IT BE DECENT, THIS STORY IS SO GOOD, I WANNA SEE HORIZON BEATING PEOPLE UP WITH A METAL PIPE. - While Danger Close and Raids are part of the PvE endgame, I'd say Dimension Trimming is an important part nowadays. It's a mode where you need to have THREE unique squads (that means no duplicates, unlike Danger Close) for three challenging fights. Each branch (Jungle and Volcano) will have their own fights, and beating one will unlock the higher level, with more stats and stronger debuffs. The reward is gear that either boosts healing or specific damage increases.
Aside from Noelle being best girl, I used to really like this game. I still love the art and the battles are satisfying to watch for me. Unfortunately the origin update removed my favorite part of the game, which was how instead of the sweep function, you had to actually run each battle every time you wanted to farm mats. You would set a number of runs and it would automatically go without any input from the player, but you could watch each battle happen. I am very glad they added the sweep function, but I hate that they completely removed the old farming option. You can still run each farming stage individually but it needs significantly more player input if I wanted to farm the old way. I used to just have the pc/mobile client of the game open while I watched youtube and I really liked that. Now when I play the game, I feel like I am actually barely even playing the game, I just open the game, sweep all the stages I need to do for farming/dailies, then maybe spend 10 minutes max using my 6 daily pvp tickets then close the game. I feel less attached to the game now that I can do everything faster, yes it was good it was added, believe me using all your daily eternium took a while in the old system, but it was something I wish they at least left in the game as an option, I hadn't played a game that let me do something like that before and it just allowed me to get invested in the game in a different way from other gachas. Now that that part of the game is gone I've basically dropped the game, I still open it occasionally, but I no longer have a draw to the game personally.
Honestly playing Counterside has been a wile ride already. I have been playing for 1 and a half years at this point (not long after the global servers first went online) and this has been the only gacha that I have consistently returned to. Great story, mid gameplay but honestly I don't care. Yes, when the Origins update came about, it wasn't good. The UI got revamped, and some features were slimmed down or were removed entirely. For example, like most gacha you could fuse duplicates of characters to get that character to max level, but now the dupes give small bonuses and you can only use Fusion Cores, which aren't easy to get. Also, for anyone that reads this and remembers the old salary negotiation cutscene, that was peak. Lovely added touch that didn't need cutting out but it was anyway. 10:17 Those "Cube things" are APT cores, and they have since been merged. You used to get tree different types, red, green and blue, for counter, mech and soldier respectively. Makes little difference, and does slightly improve grinding. Anyway, I liked the dact that the game only has one coomer scene in the beginning, and basically doesn't do it again apart from making ppl edge to hot skins sometimes (I have succumbed sadly). The game is also really generous, we recently had the Origins birthday and got awakened coupons and SSR coupons, along with a free SR skin coupon as well. This is one of the main reason why I still stick to this game. Overall, I really recommend this game, especially I have never seen this game advertised in Europe ever, so any free press is appreciated.
I still play it, but i have been taking breaks a bit more often lately, overall the review is good. just to clarify and a bit of personal opinion too, Gameplay wise you can avoid part of the eye melting effects or stack of visual effects by changing opacity of skills that way you can see what is happening and adjust to your preference be it by making effects invisible or tuning them down so you can see what is behind. The starter SSR selector truly is kinda limited in options, but at the same time includes some of the best ssr units you could need when starting the game and some of the best late game SSRs if you rearm them. Skins wise i agree they could drop the price a bit, but the best option for now if you are a low spender, is to just buy the monthly sub it gives you a total of 3300 admin coins for 7 dollars or so and that means if you plan to play consistently you have a choice, where you can get 3 skins every 2 months(1 skin every month with 1220 coins left over) or enhance the monthly pass for the unit and extra resources. and lastly yeah the origin update wasn't great, but it wasn't as bad either, it was mostly drama and that affected the game quite a lot, of the changes from that update the worst offender in my opinion and a change i myself didn't like was the change to the dupe system, before dupes could be used to limit break(not recommended) or to limit fusion(the recommended one) that way you could upgrade units easier as every dupe was equivalent to a certain ammount of resources and we had no extra stats bonuses per dupe besides the extra levels you get from limit fusion, with the change that was removed and they added the extra stats on dupes(tactical update) and made fusion cores more "accesible" by making a bit easier to get resources to craft them, as most of the community i didn't like the change but compared to other games the bonuses for dupes are kinda lame and will only affect your gameplay if you face a whale in pvp with a full team of dupe maxxed units, but at that point you probably didn't have a chance by gear diff anyways, not that the bonuses can't be useful, it is just that for all the drama it caused the dupe system is not that impactful if you are a casual, it can be a nice extra, but hardly will make you win or fail a stage. On the plus side it also brought one of my favorite QoL changes which was the side stories now having a chronological order on the selection screen, really liked that.
I loved the game. Gameplay clicked with me. Started it on sea server maybe one month after release. I had big account, maxed characters, dupes (many used as fuel for rearms), ships, assrs, rearms, etc. Played for maybe 2 or less years. Rearms were added way later into the game. Same with operators. Loved mecha and soldiers, unfortunately they never popped the same way as counters (maybe it's better these days). But i got stuck in a way that it always felt like i'm weak and cannot beat some of the harder content while i have everything to clear it. Not really a pvp enjoyer, but first days on account were very fun (drunk bar fights), then people got way stronger and it turned into a game of who drops juiced assr nuke first (maybe not always, but usually would end you quickly). So with no progress and too much repetition i just never used transfer code to global, or how was it done (and i dropped the game around 0.5 y or more before that).
To be honest, I do enjoy playing the game. Started the game a few month after it got released. The combat before was different. Each of the story stages has this mechanic that requires you to move the ship around. It was fun at first, then it just got redundant that I don't even want to play story anymore and there was no skip function at that time. A few patches later, they remove that ship movement mechanic (you just go straight into battle) and added skip function. This was a really good QOL and it does show that the devs are listening. More and more things are added and changed to the game. Not a fan of how the gear, operator and ship systems are implemented. Getting the ideal gear might take a long time to get unless your lucky. Pulling for an awaken unit is a pain to do. Not only that it is expensive for f2p but also time gated. You can buy about 11 pulls per week and not unlimitedly. Every week you need to save the currency to buy it which is not ideal in my opinion. This makes people who spend by passing that time gate. Not to mention they are pushing banner to catch up to KR version. I get it they want to make money and all, but at least give a fair compensation for it and remove that annoying weekly buying limit for f2p. They are gonna ran out of content for f2p to farm one day anyway. At least give them a chance to get the awaken unit they want. When I heard that the SEA server is gonna merge with global, I was really shock. I know that SEA might not make much revenue and it might get shut down later. But they decided to merge with global is pretty insane. They decided to merge the server instead of closing it got my respect. They are dedicated and I respect that.
1 reason why counter side global didn't have much player base was because sea server still existing. If I was playing in sea servers with already established account and had probably spent some money on it, I wouldn't move to a new server just to do some do over. (Although sea server and global is not exactly a 1:1 copy of each other)
Operator Banner is widely considered a scam. 300 pulls will get you 3000 pity currency. While you can use it to buy various materials and items, at 3000 you can purchase an operator from the shop. Even brand new ones that just released with their banners can be bought from there. While a few are quite strong in their own right with unique effects, they aren't the be all end all and can even cut into your teambuilding with how specific their activations need to be.
9:25 Oh boy, unlucky that he picked sparrow since that is a unit that is very much used in either Mech teams (to feed one awakened Mech unit) or as a distraction. 20:39 From that small SSR pool selection, there's only 2 units (stronghold , Kyle Wong and maybe Pendragon for being too niche) that are not really used much. The rest of them are pretty meta/very good for new players to this day. (Rearm Chinatsu is still the best healer in the entire game) 21:36 You can toggle skill effects up and down, you can remove damage numbers, buffs, etc. It's very customizable. 26:32 The reality is, the game is too generous with blue tickets. (the ones needed to pull on regular SSR banners) Dispatch missions can give blue tickets, the daily shop can give you blue tickets for either discount currency or straight up credits. (Normally you get like 0-1, but it's not that uncommon to get 2-5 per day) Daily missions give 1 ticket per day, completing weekly missions give 3 tickets. (so 10 in total per week just from dailies) The game doesn't make money from blue tickets. They make money from skins, selling the resource for gear farming and ASSR units. Like you said, the game has it's flaws and while the Origin update was a disaster (that the devs had to backtracked)....the reality is that it's been 1.5+ years since that. That's 1.5+ years of weekly updates and QoL that the game has received and yet people still talk as if we are still dealing with Origin stuff.
Let's clear up the Nexon deal. They weren't the devs, they were the (admittedly very shady) publishers. The big thing last year was Studiobside separating from them to strike out on their own with Counter:Side, which then led to the Origin update and things kind of cascading from there. With the split, Bside also had to wrangle back ownership of some of the servers, especially the SEA server, which was horribly handled by Zlong with extremely slow updates and missing characters/QoL/anything. They also announced an HSR-esque fantasy turn-based game alongside the split, which has since been unmentioned for over a year now. It's been a very interesting, if slightly depressing situation.
Lmao this video came up right on time for me. Literally started playing yesterday and had very similar experience to what you are describing already. The only thing that i differ is that the rearm system seems to make some of the accessible SSR (ones that you can pull from the SSR selection ticket guarantee given by the beginner guide mission rewards) highly unparr or straight up better than the niche ASSR. Meaning that in the long run, it is still possible to create teams capable of utilization in the endgame content (especially the PVE side). It does sucks to feel that alot of OP niche characters (and playstyle) might be gatekeep due to the ASSR gatcha, but using the accesible unit can still allow you to play majority of the content. As a story enjoyer so far, I think I am contempt wth this notion. Probably will not put any money in though give how bad the value of the exchange between currency are in this game. Nothing seems worth the money to be put in.
As a person has been playing since launch on SEA server, which is even 1 year earlier than glb server, I'd say CS is very f2p if you just want to play it casually and get the standard rewards (PVP skin, standards rewards from contents etc). However, if you want to reach the competitive reward I.e the reward for top 3% and above, it would be a bloodbath that involves a lot of rng, grinding and calculation.
this is the only gacha game that i actually put my money on and i didnt regret it. I still playing this since day 1 in SEA server and still my favorite gacha games out all of the gacha games i playing this days with blue archive coming to close. Funny enough when the drama of origin update i actually created a f2p account in global back then because of eos rumor in SEA server and i find i can still reach this highest rank in pvp within just half a year even though im behind 1 year in day 1 global players because this game is extremely f2p(and i think this is the why the low revenue of the game) well im veteran SEA player so i already know how the game works as my advantage. But yeah despite this game unpopularity i can still see myself playing this game for the coming years despite many gacha games with much better quality releasing this days
Looking at the design of the characters in this game reminds me of Closers Dimensional Conflict, the artstyle is very korean you will recognize it right away if you used to it
For anyone checking out the game. I recommend adjusting the visual effects in the settings. You can remove screen shake, remove dynamic zoom, and lower visual effects to make it less chaotic.
Not only that, but it can also help in terms of performance, especially in PvP.
Some characters, enemies, and hell - even some stages - have visual effects that can outright cause massive fps drops or game freezes.
It was apparent when the first Kraken boss raid got released as some players reported massive FPS drops even when their mobile device or PC exceeded the minimum/recommended spec requirements.
Hopefully that gets the fix.
@@lukmaanpratomo6866 ahh yea I noticed that. I thought it was my system on mobile that was messed up 🤔
yeah, lowering those is a MUST
Literally the first thing i did cause i hate screen shakes so much😂
Counterside is one of the rare game that i really like the MC
They unfertilized the mc though. Many events where he doesn't even show and only at the ends only for his machinations.
Anyone could say this for other gacha games.
Those said events are either one of two things.
1. It has near zero relevance to the main characters' goals, which is securing the last victory in the qlipoth game.
2. It's a side story meant to centre on a certain group of characters away from the main cast.
@@JustCheppo was about to comment this, well said, theres plenty of stories in other games that try to balance the large cast it has with varying success, so it cant be helped
@@Merotryz a game that revolves around a stationary character like this mc is naturally hard to world-build if you want the mc to be an active element. if you want an mc that's involved in everything so you can self insert, genshin and snowbreak have you covered.
As person that plays Counterside for over a year I have to say that story is just so freaking good, like I came for coomer reasons and stayed for the story and amazing characters. Devs are also so freaking generous, every half year we have either half anniversary or the actual anniversary that every time gives us awakened of our choice if we finish missions and stuff. Like please if any of you wants to try the game, give it a shot! It is a hidden gem among gachas. Peace!
"the lower rarities exist but lets be honest you are not gonna use them" 9:17
and then a zoom to our boy sparrow, that carries new players with that sexy 2 cost and all round attack & flying capabilities
Imagine, the disrespect he placed there to our boy.
rivet, a f2p unit that is easily farmable is a 2 cost and actually has damage, same for admin rifleman
@@xLuis89x many low rarity units are pretty alright in general. Cindy is a personal favorite due to her heal and free jason skin
"Definitely not using this" when showing Nanahara Chinatsu, a meh healer/buffer with an absolutely busted rearm that makes her god tier is also comedy
Very important note about E7, the primary way players gain moonlight 5* units is not the moonlight summons, it's the mystic summons which is a banner with pity that carries over between rotations and has no spook for the rateup ML5, but has quite slow acquisition rate. It's very expensive to whale on this banner, hence only the big, big whales have all ML5s even to this day (even low/mid spender top100 players will not have all ML5s).
Man I haven't played since ML Ken was _the_ unit to hard-counter in arena. I wonder how it's doing these days
@@THEFRISKIESTDINGOhe’s pretty good now but not as good as he used to be
@@THEFRISKIESTDINGO his currently has better kit than the old one, just that alot of new unit release can counter him too. But his my goto dark bait in gw with abigail (protect mlken from getting one shotted)
@@secretshopper7099 wdym he is way better now than what he was, in the current shitty overpowered meta with cancerous units he can get stuff done, that says enough.
It technically has a spook in mystic if you get the normal 5* instead of ML 5*, and counterside also has a pity for their ASSR like mystics.
I've been playing CounterSide since it's launch on global servers and it's still one of my favourite gacha, i really think that the game deserves more attention even after the origin update, that being said i can understand why players get turned off initially as getting started can be quite difficult without the help of any ongoing events.
As much as I'd love for this game to get more recognition, it's hard to recommend when the dev's balance team keeps shooting themselves in the foot with each update. It's become more apparent recently.
The writers & creative team are carrying the game hard with the stories, soundtracks & designs.
@@LauderIX I completely agree, and as a low spender i barely get by, ever since Origin we have gotten way less handouts so even with the counter pass its just not enough to get most awakened units. Also i havent touched pvp in ages because it feels like more of a chore than anything.
@@ghillieg4169 ive basically given up spending myself besides the admin coin sub but ill probably always play it since i love the story
I also like counterside, but it just can't be mainstream (get more money) , because this game combines a lot of niches that makes it a nightmare to advertize towards the general audiences, it has a good ammount of fanservice (heavy, even, when knowing how dumb the general public -normies- sees it nowadays , but it doesn´t affect the serious moments at all and you won't notice it much when doing the story) , present either in skins or in the normal character designs (quite good designs IMO) .
Also the gameplay is ... a tower defense but very linear, in most cases you either spawn your ship ( base) on the right or on the left side of the screen and then you have to destroy the enemy ship / prevent yours from being destroyed, most people don't like that that much, for example, arknights has all of the great areas mentioned above (except fanservice isn't as heavy as it is in counterside) , it has way more variance in gameplay mechanics and characters skills , but it is still a tower defense game and so the normies don't play it (thank god, smaller communities are more solid).
the story is quite good but because it is pretty much a visual novel, most people don't like reading that much and will not pay that much attention to it, since it's not voiced.
the thing they can work on that they SHOULD do is not having such unbalanced pvp, even when playing against ai player defense teams , you can be a new player fighting a team that looks to be the same power level as yours and then you get hit by a extremely maxed out team of 3 characters and the rest is underleveled crap, so you can't get through them since you clearly can't beat those 3 character even though the general power level is the nearly the same, and thats not even talking about the real time pvp... that is even worse, even for the ones who consume meta all day.
@@LauderIX What I hate the most is the PVP nerfs do carry over PVE. The nerf to A.Jiso was so bad we can't use her for PVE content for making her an offtank. They could easily just seperate the skills like some units have diff Pvp and Pve passives
One thing I want to mention is, while fights in this game are insanely chaotic visually and you can't see sht, eventually you realize you don't need to. Units fight on their own, you're just a general who picks when and where to deploy them. Endgame pvp, for example, is mostly about stacking your frontline and watching if the opponent has deployed any major threat so you could redirect its skill/ult or react by deploying a healer where you'd previously want a damage dealer, stuff like that.
thats cause you dont chase top 100 in end game pve for bragging rights
with 4 server merge u can try hard for shiny titles lol
@@limbuswowHi, t100 player here. Mostly, this statement is right, you deploy win con and keep your frontline alive with operator enabling in there sometimes.
It was great at launch. Story is surprisingly good and enjoyable. They didn't shy away from darkness and brutality of the world they built and always remind you of it is some way. Like that event where they showed how exactly corruption works on counters by also tying it up to the opening scene of the game where you fight your first corrupted counter. And later on they expanded on the lore of those characters by enacting retribution for their deaths. Was very satisfying. Gameplay was interesting and engaging and you definitely couldn't auto the higher content. Speaking of - raids are fun to build around, because you have to consider timings of enemy skills and place the character to counter it in the correct order so it has time to come out and do it's thing just at the right moment. So there's a learning curve you get from trying and failing. One thing you didn't touch is guild raids. Those have some strategies in them that depend on your entire guild to contribute and can't be done solo, so there's also co-operation in there. Sadly I stopped playing after the big UI update. It made the menus too confusing and some things couldn't be accessed easily as they were before. Launch UI was very comfy and understandable.
Soldier and mech teams are great btw. they fulfil different roles and there were many times when that 2-star drone you showed won me the game. Overall characters have a lot of personality to them. It was amazing while it lasted.
ah yes, bottom of the shade,the emotions being a heavy rollercoaster
Stopped playing since UI update. Only mentions bottom of the shade as sad story.
Dude come back we have a lot more warcrimes now. There's no *implied* children death anymore, there's actual children death on screen now.
Also lobotomizing and turning your child into a central control machine for a 10 meters tall mega death machine for the USSR and lying to your amnesiac with multidimension cancer wife is considered fatherly and loving husband now.
Also there's no *implied* genocide anymore, we actually see a genocide on screen now.
Also loving your non blood related sisters is considered a warcrime now.
*Mega super spoilers*
Dash is a demon lord. Tehee.
Finally, a gacha review about Counter:Side and it's made by our man Pseychie (love your videos btw). I have been overlooking this game since June and I've been deciding it to play it or not. Thanks for making this, I might play it when I get a new phone.
I'm commenting before watching this, I'll tell my thoughts in an edit later.
Edit: Alright the game looks unique in its own way, I like complicated gameplay since there are a lot of things to keep track on and honestly never tried a tower defense gacha yet. Team building is gonna be hard by just how many characters you can put in a team, and investing those characters will take time especially an F2P like me. But overall the game looks good, gacha is average, visuals look awesome, and I'm looking forward to the story when I play it.
Where the edit
@@Snow-1140 IT WAS ALL LIES
@@dychostarr - gained their trust
- betrayed them
@@Snow-1140 yo I actually just woke up, I commented that before sleeping lmao. I'll probably watch it and give my thoughts later on today, I should've said tomorrow.
Alright edit out
12:04 I respect that ad placement
It's a shame the PvP element gets so much focus out there. Counterside genuinely has the best story I've ever seen in a gacha game (apparently FGO is pretty good in that department too but I'm not playing that). I joined recently after watching cutscenes on youtube, but the whole mess with the SEA and global servers was just confusing
Really nice review as always, CS is a hard topic nowadays with how many changes it went through, i've playing for 3yrs since my acc is back from the now dead SEA server, CS is my favorite gacha but i can understand some of the negativity points and well, PvP is a sensitive topic because it's mainly made for those who spend money in overall games with that game mode but it's an optional content and you don't miss much until you have a decent team built for it or wait for a good week of ban/up but there's also a NPC option to fight "story teams" to a specific level so you can also farm the pvp points to clear the shop casually, i would recommend the game purely for the story and world building, bside is also slowly adding voice acting to the latest episodes during the finale of each story, as for black tickets for classified recruitment you can get it through pvp shop or guild as well.
CS is a good game, just take your time to understand the basics of it and go deeper if you end up enjoying it.
Now that Reverse: 1999 has integrated their launcher into Steam. I can feel the full review incoming in a few months.
He already reviewed Reverse 1999
@@acardoza1234 Full review
@@aerissai8341 He already reviewed Reverse 1999 (2)
Counter:side F2P mid-high end player here:
in PVP,
low rarity mech can be used as "food" for Evolve One( up to 3stacks) or for disruption (looking at you lvl 120 Sparrow)
low rarity soldiers can be used for Replacer King's Army of Idiots (but almost 90% uses Blue bridge ship which summons 8 soldiers total) and there was a time where the paratroopers were one of mains counters to Dino (Shepherd & Lurcher) duo to Hit-Based Immortality, until Mordred came out
for Operators just buy them on the point shop so you can just focus on the characters
you can get ASSR tickets from dailies(4) and weeklies(20) and PVP shop (tier3)
the ASSR missions is kinda optional since the gear they gave is not worth it
the binaries I recommend using it on Raid and Dimension Trimming gears
for PVP oriented guides I recommend watching Bullet's channel (Korean Player), he gives in-dept characters and teams summaries
for other guides theres Mage, inFAMOUSJakey, Coffin Manager Hana
You could. But the Wallet is right there.
@@MerlinCross13 King is definition of P2W lmao. When he was first released he was the ONLY Battlepass Awakened character. He was stupid weak when release, they buffed him to the point that he single handedly broke the game since his release till now. So yeah the definition of your wallet right there.
@@manhphuc4335 King has not been the top meta for a while now.
the ASSR missions are optional, but if you get the character... do them! EZ resources.
@@manhphuc4335 that was back then do keep in mind you rarely see gacha's balance their own chars outside of pvp and 1st release chars tend to have a 1-week glory before getting banned to the ground by the community to make it unplayable
I do like that it's on Steam and I don't have to download an emulator. I'll give it a try
ive been playing csgbl since release with a few breaks, love to see you trying this game.
Day 1 SEA Counter:Side player here, enjoyed the review on this game, more attention towards this game is always appreciated. My favourite game only second to Arknights.
As a casual who’s taken multiple breaks I find that some late-game content can be heavily reliant on above average characters, (e.g. Danger Close, Challenge Mode, Dimension Trimming) but overall the game is actually quite generous with resources.
This may be biased coming from an early player but even after taking a couple month break I’ve managed to get over 80% of the characters, mostly missing A-SSR ones by just playing regularly and doing dailies because some events can be quite generous (recent anniversary gave a free A-SSR) so gacha really is just a hit-or-miss but I’d say it’s pretty okay. The sweep QOL is also very much appreciated compared to games like Genshin, or Wuthering Waves where I have to invest 10 - 15 minutes of my time every day to complete dailies.
What I love most about this game is its varied range of characters, their personalities and character designs stand out to me. I don’t really read as much of the story these days, but the main first story part (Replacer Arc) had pretty above-average worldbuilding and a thought-out plot. It differs from the casual “hero saves the world” shtick you tend to see in fantasy gachas, and this is a better spin on the post-apocalyptic narrative. So many characters get to play their own roles and when you realise it all interconnects- that’s one of the reasons I got so hooked to the game in the first place.
Aside from that it’s unfortunate most skins are locked behind paywalls (though I get why) and that the A-SSR banner can be really hard to push through, and gear grinding (don’t get me started on that nightmare, rerolls are all down to chance and they’ve added more changes which makes the UI contrived) but I appreciate how most characters have their uses, even the SR rearms. I also love, love how TUs aren’t too important and one copy can already get you a solid character to use compared to games where major buffs to a character’s kit are locked behind spending or luck.
Once again, thanks for the video. Still can’t get over how polished the character designs are in this game, love ‘em lmao. (Did I mention some OSTs are a bop? It’s genuinely catchy, especially the opening song and some character themes)
yeah, its unfortunate that most skins are paywalled... but aside from the prestige skins, every skin you want can be adquired by spending a measly ammount just to get the monthly admin coin subscriptiion , I never spend money in my gacha games since they are expensive as fk, but spent a tiny ammount just to get a few skins and it was worth it, the return for investment is pretty big that way.
In all honesty, compared to other Gachas, counterside is easily one of the best F2P friendly games out there. The story is also AMAZING. The event stories are insanely high quality and always tie into the main story. I honestly wished they advertised it more. That is what I think is their biggest issue.
I was relieved they made it easier now so it's in the middle ground of f2p. But as day Week 1 SEA player, the f2p content of the story before origin update is hard, you'll die if you don't pull certain meta units.
all right three point to point out:
20:55 all units can clear story until Ep 10.( where the lv.120 enemies come out), it requieres more specific units due to some enemy mechanics.
10:13 limitbreak was simplified so it use one type of materials instead of three...(example, counter use red cubes, mech use green cubes and soldiers use blue cubes).
24:04 the ban system does more than just raise the cost, it also reduce four stats per ban, for example: A.horizon get's lv.3 ban, her cost increase to 9 and her main stats(aspd, increase damaged taken, skill haste and atk are reduced by 30%).
p.s Nexon no longer owns counterside, due to a lawsuit, they have to sell the game to Bside studio...
since when did they make the three cubes become one? last time i left this game is around sheperd's banner
* sheperd's release
@@aimannaizar4541 when they released the lv120 cap
@@aimannaizar4541 basically september last patch
For the p.s i rember it is due to the contract expired,not because of a lawsuit
I still play Counterside only for the story. I log in and do the story and don't log in until new story comes out. This game has one of the best stories in all of the gacha games I've played.
Try Arknights
@@maulanabintang9090arknight is in its own league but not having voice kinda turn it down a little for me
Are you already tried Nikke? that game also has good story
i only play for pvp 😭
battle cats mentioned!!
also, would love for you to cover Last Claudia. a 5 year old pixel gacha game with not much players, but with a cult following
17:28 This feels very true. I recently started Honkai Star Rail, and received advice for a "New Player" to use Dr Ratio, a wellfare unit I didn't have from the past. I also found out the game gives out character select tickets at all, which I didn't know, and will be cool when I ever get one during an appropriate event. So these things definitely influence how people think of the game.
Missing dr ratio definitely suck but honestly you can live without him, the game has decent enough 4 star and free character that you can get passed contents (i personally never even use my Ratio), also character select tickets are 4 star only and bound to happened again in future event so don't worry too much about it, you didn't missed much
In Counterside as any other "older" game, you have staggered alot of missions and means to collect resources. Its not like you enter a fresh new game, clear it and then wait weeks or months of waiting for update. ^^
Before I watch this video, I wanna say this game holds a special place in my heart, flaws and all.
Edit: Finished watching it and currently downloading again, Im gonna see If I can open my old moldy account lol.
If you are from SEA and did not save your transfer code for merger, your account is lost in the counter;side literally unfortunately. Though rewards are slightly better now for newbies, even more so if you join back at anni
@@Azure-r4q When is the anni in SEA?
@@Azure-r4q Damn, just finished updating it . I guess I'll give it another spin this time around tomorrow thanks for the heads up much appreciated!
@@pentagrama5523 Half Anni was about 1 month ago, full anni should be a few months later. And no SEA merged with global so we are global now
@@Azure-r4q i was gonna redownload and after reading this i will not download it anymore lmao
The thing about ASSRs are that, while extremely strong and higher budget, gameplay-wise they're meant to be more of a trump card for teams. Having a full squad of them is just asking to get picked off and your ass kicked cause of how expensive each one is to deploy individually, meaning they get out slower and are picked off easy.
In regards to PvP and the debate on whether it's F2P friendly, I'll only mention that there is a ban/buff poll that adds debuffs/buffs to specific characters with varying intensity. It encourages playing around with and changing the meta on a weekly basis cause while you can still used banned characters, their stats are lowered and cost is raised based on the level of the ban, while making less used characters more interesting with cost reduction and marginally higher stats.
6:55 That would be me LOL.
Endgame C:S player here who came from the SEA server and is now in the Global server. I main Mechs in this game as the greatest appeal for me was being able to play an entirely machine team in PVP.
If you play this for the "Urban Fantasy" aspect of the game, prepare to be disappointed as it will be lost over time. Soldiers and Mechs will never be equal to Counters (it is Counter:Side after all). During the first year it was fun and doable, these days you will need to mix in meta-relevant characters to keep up with competitive (as with every single Gacha game with competitive). The few competitive Mechs are gutted with nerfs or are so unpopular and hated that they are frequently banned by the top players, and story-wise the only relevant faction that produces new Mechs are the Northern Union. You know how it works, waifus sell better, so that I understand a bit.
The story is slightly convoluted but very enjoyable. There are more hits for me than misses (Kim Chulsoo's story is my all-time favorite). There is a community out there who enjoy talking about the story and can explain confusing parts for you around.
Overall I would still recommend the game for new players. Just do not expect consistent support for non-Counter characters.
What I like most about counterside are the story and lore, even the jokes and seasonal events. The story length and not too long and easy to follow if you pay attention (unlike FGO). All the story are cannon and it all matters and sometime influence the main story. Like what happened to Regina during the Halloween event, skipped some dialog in that event and was so confused as to what happened at the beginning of her Awaken story lol.
Small note that Nexon themselves did not develop this game, they were only responsible for publishing it in Korea, and Zlong game was the publisher responsible for SEA, TW, and CN servers, it was Studio Bside who developed this game. It was when they released global servers that Studio Bside published it themselves, the origin update (as far as I remember) was when KR servers got to be self published by Bside themselves. (Correct me if I get any mistakes)
As a SEA vet, Counterside definitely spicy drama even before that origin update fiasco (Rearm drama was peak drama before origin update). As an f2p pvp main I can tell you its definitely somewhat f2p friendly as I can still somehow get to challenger 1 without using T7 gear that much, it just takes the right team during the right weeks. Its actually quite funny that its much easier to climb pvp these days than the older days as those days were definitely more skill oriented, nowadays you can invest in few awakened units or specific tems and climb freely through the PvP ranks. Makes me feel nostalgic as someone who bore witness to many things (Rearm disaster, E1 fiasco, the long wait for awakened Joo Shiyoon in SEA, Origin update fiasco and many more). Despite being so burnt out from this game it still holds a special place in my heart (kinda evident from my pfp), I could talk hours and hours about this game and everything I've seen.
is all bside now except china cause is china ...... kr, global, china, taiwan (not sure what their deal is )
I hope that Counterside can make a comeback in popularity
Game may have some cons but it's not too bad. The story is absolutely top tier and gameplay is enjoyable when you get used to that chaos on the screen. Also one addition to the gacha system. There is a golden rule in counterside to never pull on regular character banners with quartz. It's only used to buy that ASSR packages. The game is pretty generous in case of blue tickets (pull currency). You get one every day, there is a chance to get it from dispatch missions, some punch-ins and there is a chance for them to appear in standard shop (where you can purchase them with normal currency)
First as a day one CS player all the way from their first SEA launch I just want to say thank you for mentioning one of my favorite hidden gems. You were mostly right about it but I did notice a few things I would like to comment on. Those ssr selectors you mentioned being a limited pool isn't a downside.
Those are some of the most powerful characters in the game who are still being used to this day. Yang Harim is still one of the best supports and Kaci Bins was the best tank in the game hands down (she is about to get nerfed a bit). Also even as a f2p the game showers you in quartz as long as you don't blow it on skins so you can easily get the ASSR rolls each week from them without having to spend money.
The main reason I don't consider the game to be p2w is because they made the rewards for almost all content minimal. The difference between the top pvp players and the lowest isn't that much. So even if you don't have all the top characters and gear, you aren't missing out on a lot. So the pressure to compete isn't there like it is in some other gacha, if you want to compete you mostly do it for fun not because you feel forced to do it. The story is one of the better ones in gacha, I would highly recommend to give it a shot and see if you like it. If you do don't neglect the side stories, they are wear the heart of the game lies.
One thing i'd comment about is the new origin update and it's effect:
It was when the dupe system was implemented. It did give bonuses but personally it's only has a noticeable impact on high levels of pvp.
The bigger issue was to the PvE endgame flow:
Before it was a smooth flow from shadow palace -> Swift stages -> Dimension trimming.
Dimension trimming was the hardest because it needed 3 separate teams at the same time so u had to gear upto 24 units. U also needed to invest in them because their is combat power (CP) system only for trimming and you would get severely debuffed if u were below the recommended power like NIKKE. Swift stages did not have this format so you could use the same units across stages.
Origin messed this up by messing the shadow palace format (which has since been fixed) and adding the swift stages to Dimension trimming with the unit and CP requirements. So for global who had less time to build units compared to older servers like KR, it made it feel like a huge gap between shadow palace and Trimming.
i just start this game 4 days ago and the gacha is really good, you can FARM A FUCKING TICKET for pull WTF!. like you can get 10 pull or even more in just 1 day, and the freebies for the new player is damn good. the gacha rates is also really good, i got 4 awakened character as a new player
I'll be honest, I was already pretty far into the game when the changes with Origin happened on SEA, so I didn't really mind them all that much. I'm also the kind of person to not notice these kinds of things. The changes that I did notice was the removal of how the levels work, before the ships had a movement stat and there was a grid with all the enemies on that grid. You would then move your ship to fight the enemy while trying to position your ship in advantages positions like in Fire Emblem, I don't remember which update changed that, but now it's just a simple level select to fight the set enemy for PvE progression. I don't know if it was for good or bad but it was a change that I got used to.
Been playing global since day 1. Thank you for your review.
I really loved playing this game. Too bad my Korean account died during the merger and 3 plus years of effort was lost.
Fond memories.
started day 1 but i had to pity 3 awaken units in a roll. Left a sour taste and haven't gone back since
I really enjoy this game, but you gotta wonder about some of the strange decisions that they've made lately, mostly with nerfing of characters just because people are salty about PvP (which doesn't even matter).
Also, the Administrator is a cool protagonist that actually has personality, which is rare in gacha games.
I enjoyed the story but that bloody gear system made me drop it once I got to the point I needed to fiddle with gear to progress.
perfect timing for ad 10/10
I found much more success in battles not filling in the 8 slots(mostly 4-5 char) as it enabled me to get them deployed faster without other characters blocking them. Hilde with the knockup effect on deployment is really useful
I played Countersid when it first released on PC, and I could attest that it was one the most amazing experience I had with a gacha games. The story was a 10/10 and I'm not even exaggerating, (especially Orca's story), the visual are top notch and the gameplay is fresh since there wasn't any similar gacha game at that time. The only problem I have with the game was due to the gacha itself. There exist the rarest unit SSR but turns out there was a rarer unit a Premium SSR I would call it. And to get that Premium SSR you need an exclusive currency which already exist in the form of Diamond but they added another one just to rub it in my face that 'You need to pay to enjoy the whole experience'. That's when I stopped playing, and fyi I do not have a problem spending money on the game (which I already did back then) but to add another more premium currency just to take even more money from players? That really disappointed me.
I remember playing counterside at launch and putting down the big robot and winning every game with the big robot
I hope you do another review for PtN. They’ve recently added many good features like monthly bosses not having to be beat every week (once is enough and you get a good amount of points if you get to a certain level. Even the redos are counted towards the rewards now).
We got that excess stamina system for those who can’t be online all the time and recently some translated dev notes have been saying about a full UI overhaul. Definitely worth the checking out.
Most sci-fi anime gacha games usually have generic soldiers as enemies out to kill you and your team of overly powered waifus. CounterSide is one of the rare ones that treats them with some redemption. It's not often you get to recruit faceless soldiers with waifus and husbandos and set them up in teams together which has always made Counter Side a hidden gem in my book
Like an old saying goes, there is a method to its madness, and that chaotic action representation of Counterside is the beauty i honestly love in this game since day 1. Just for those who criticized the game for it, i suggest it's better to focus on the MOST important details happening on battle first than the rest of details. it takes time to get into it when you're really into the game. Also, it's the only gacha game i appreciate doing PvP since meta changes every damn week for most ships and units.
Lastly, the lore of Counterside is the only lore i honestly enjoyed and followed than other gacha games
6:58, me looking at Horizon and Dinosaur who are mechs and has been DOMINATING the PVP for some times
I have to say this game's protag is my favorite out of other gatchas I've played, ngl. He's badass, genius and has a mysterious vibe, he works behind the scenes most of the time and uses some sort of a robot to communicate with counters.
I come back to Counter Side from time to time. I love the doing pvp, guild coop and raids in this game. I hate the game modes danger close and dive(50) though.
One of the very few gacha games where i love the male casts just as much as the female ones
Joo Shiyoon best boi
Day 1 counterside player here. If you want to try out counterside, i suggest you try to enjoy the story that counterside have. The lore of counterside is DEEP, and truly live up to the post apocalyptic vibe it has 95% of the time. I started playing counterside because i was bord and trying to find new games to play and the only reason i have stayed for this long is because of the amazing (and heart breaking) story
TBH, this is the recommendation everyone gives when punting their gacha or choice ;-)
Counterside mentioned
I haven't played this game in like 2 years but it is awesome
feels so happy pseychie cover this i started this game not too long ago
Counterside will always have a special place in my heart. Never know why I stepped away from it tho, I was really enjoying the story.
normal player here ( pretty much poor, but alrdy collect all of em ) :
Operator u can get for free in planet store, u only use 1 or 2 OP, so focus only on them ( ex: if haste focus on kim hana, every OP work with specific gear )... u can farm some A SSR, 1 free after ch 5 and 1 u need to farm from dive, other ASSR rerun quite frequently... blue tix for normal banner bcause u never use quartz ( 30+ SSR is farmable, more will be add to the list when new side story drop ). so what u do in this video, tiny bit, its trap and misleading ( i blame dev to design game like this )
Wait did devs removed actual salary negtiation from lvlups? I played it last time like 3 years ago and that was cool feature
It is still there, but right now is the main course of leveling units. You can't level them by bringing to the stages.
@@Defi4nc3s1 I think he meant the one where you can choose between paying them lower (less loyalty), normal, or more (higher loyalty) in which case, yep it's gone
As a Counter:Side player, just want to say this was a good review of the current state of the game to my understanding. Thanks for taking the time to try it out and review it!
I love this game, especially the story and characters. The side scroll sprites are great as well. My main issue is definitely the game overfocusing on ASSRs and the amount of FOMO for rewards.
Surprisingly enough, there are a ton of SR units that are still viable in high level gameplay, like Lin Xien the all or nothing DP battery/Push unit that can get an entire team out extremely fast as long as you can keep her alive. There's also the Administration Riflemen and Shieldbearers, which are surprisingly much better than their SSR variants as stopgaps for most teams, due to being so cheap and effective at what they do, that being air/land damage coverage and stopping the enemy from getting close respectively. Evelyn was the best healer in the game until the Chinatsu Rearm, Rhino was once used in one of the funniest sleep and weep PvP comps where the enemy would constantly be disabled while the big guy drove through to piledrive the ship into oblivion, Hilde was a cheap but effective divebomb into the enemy backline, Shiyoon parrystunned to comedic effect, Tarrasque was constantly used in mech team comps, ETC.
Don't get me started on the rearms, though. The SR upgrades are crazy strong.
one thing i want to say is, ASSR banners rotate pretty fast, so even if you miss them on their debut banner, you can always hunt for them after a few weeks or so, you wouldnt really lose anything of value other than being in time with the "meta" and the chibi throphies from the unit side quest, also the rewards for the ASSR side quest is more of a boost for building and upgrading the unit, rather than an actual incentive for you to roll on it, and last but not least, gears are more important than the unit, given that ASSR units have a higher cost value, if you cannot gear them properly their cost will eat away on your team balance and efficiency, they'll become more of a burden rather than a core unit of your team, you can also say that they are a UR Unit rather than your standard SSR unit, and once you reach the mid to end game, you'll understand that ASSR units are not really a must have theyre mostly just a luxury tool that's nice to have, but i can understand that's it's really intimidating for a beginner player because of the higher quality aspect of it.
i remember their song was everywhere in my yt.. 😂
"So you remember we lost the time~"
I love counterside and been playing it for a long time i have almost all awakened units as a full f2p the game gives lots of pulls and rates are good so its mostly skill isue to get them at that point
I agree with most stuff except for the getting characters (SSR and ASSR parts) and the skins one, the monthly subscription is worth like 5$ and you can get like 2 skins with it (more if you don't buy the most expensive ones) , as a f2p, between the free ASSR tickets from anniversary and half anniversary and other major events and the currency the game gives me , I have most of the ASSR in the game that I'm interested in , and I don't play religiously, just do some auto and then that's it.
also, it's a grave mistake to use your quartz on anything but the black tickets for the ASSR, they give a LOT of freee summons form time to time in specific events so generally you don't have to worry about getting SSR's.
Oh, and it's a very unfair comparison to compare this game's skins with the ones from snowbreak, snowbreak is rated like 16+ and it shows, maybe if they increased the rating to 16+ they could do the same kind of spicy stuff.
I actually just got back(i also joined the same time as you cause i missed the anni by a month too lol) to counter:side a week ago and then a week later one of my favourite game reviewer/youtuber posts about it. It's so wild lol.
it wasn't developed by Nexon, but studio b side. Nexon was the publisher 0:54
1of my favorite gacha game i have played. there's so many good thing about this game. the side story, the character lore, the soundtrack
i played this since release on global and stayed until a year & half. and spend quite a bit.
too bad, i can't keep up the grind and become busy on work and other games. i really love the real time PVP on this game, especially u can spam EMOTES.
on 12:04 my video got interrupted with native youtube add, what an irony lol
I love counterside the problem is my phone has less storage space for it. Plus they very generous about you picking any specific awaken characters in its anniversaries. They are also not predatory about selling character packs either. I stopped playing 2 games from Bilibili because the moment I got 2 characters from a specific banner I exited the gatchq window. I went to my lobby next thing you know they are trying to sell you the same character pack that goes around $50-90 for the characters, materials, weapon, copies for the characters, and their artifacts.
Thank you Pseychie for this review!! 🎉🎉
Nexon isn’t developing Counterside btw. Bside separated them in an attempt to make more money and to become an independent publishing studio, which led to the hololive fiasco and Counterside origin update. Basically, they risked going independent, and in turn actually failed and shot themselves repeatedly in the foot. Good news though: everything they did mess up, they rolled back mostly. They also learned to listen very carefully to the fans too, so whenever they announce an update, fans usually have a week to voice opinions, and they change the update based on those. For example, Awakened Jake was going to get a rework. His stun (exclusive to mechas) would be replaced with a bind. For context, mechas are immune to crowd control, except when stated in a units kit that the cc effects mechas. However, Bind is a universal cc that can’t be ignored by passives or skills. Also, it wouldn’t just affect mechs, it would affect everyone, kicking an already meta unit into overdrive. When the community complained about this update, they immediately canceled it and went back to the drawing board to see how they could buff Jake without utterly breaking him
Oh i know this game i used to play it but then i forgot the name of it after like a year of not playing it and me getting a new phone i gave up trying to find it honestly
I've been playing this game since the launch on Steam. I think it helped a lot that I engaged with it as a f2p visual novel with some gacha elements on the side. It has a really good story, and the side stories are frequently some of the best in the game. The biggest issue I have with it is that endgame PVE content, and PVP in general, can be very obtuse as either abilities are poorly explained, not explained at all, or just plain hard to keep track of. Second biggest is that endgame progress also relies heavily on which awakened (ASSR) units you saved up for, because as soon as you have a decent roster, harder content shows up that (surprise!) require the newest ASSR units.
Played counterside on release pulled all A-SSR till awakened Na Yubin and then i quit, the game was really fun and events/challenges were decent. i still fondly remember everyone win-trading with everyone else in pvp as after you hit a certain points in pvp, losing doesn't lose you points and basically everyone was queuing either to win enough matches to hit the minimum or queuing to lose so the other person can hit the required points before the season cut-off.
Banners cycle regularly (excluding collabs), and awaken banners pity carries over so its not too hard to get the awakens you want over time.
Its been a while since i've played Counterside, and this feels really nostalgic. Really reminds me the early days of playing. on a side note, here's a few extra advice.
- Follow the Task Force mission, and literally do ONLY that for the first few days. if you do correctly, you'll account level will progress faster. and yes, i really meant to follow it to the T and don't get baited with "Oh i have a lot of comission tickets, better use it asap." if i recall correctly, it also gives an ASSR
- Gear doesn't matter that much for the early game. Limit break does. Just aim for full set combo and ignore the sub stats, since that's the end game content.
- ASSR are strong, even a single ASSR in right teams could help you tremendously. My soldier team with Curian as the only ASSR can still crush people in standard pvp, the online PvP until diamond, or regular fight. So better save your classified ticket only to ASSR that you want.
- With raid, its kinda important. This is where you need 'friends' or guilds/consortium. It gives you many resources and gears so don't slack on it
- Rearm, for most part, is unnecessary. sure some rearm are nice, but as you said, it cost A LOT. Even i am lazy to rearm character due to its sheer cost. better spend those eterniums on dimensional trimmings or coin farm (yes, i still struggle with coin sometimes even on level 50+)
- Anniversary event are important. It usually gives 3 ASSR at minimum (i selector/free pick, 2 random), so keep an eye on it.
Some rearms are straight broken, but they changed the resource requirement to be alot harder.
Counterside and Brown Dust 2 have been my go to gacha even if theyre very low on the popularity list. The fact that you can save up premium gacha easily with minimal daily requirements/activity are what sets it apart from every one else.
On the other hand, just like other gacha, events become time consuming as you do have to invest into finishing up the event stories.
I'm a day 1 SEA server player and its funny how Pseychie complains having 8 units is a squad is too much. Only O.G. players will know how it is to manage 24 units in Guild Coop mode 💀
As a long time Epic 7 Player, and about a year long counterside player, I’m enjoying this review
You can use the Task Planet Point currency to get operators, no RNG required. You might need specific operators for certain content but one good operator like Kim Hana can carry you. I never leveled up my operators, I got by with just having the unit itself. The "small pool of SSRs" have some of the best SSR's in the game. (Chifuyu, Chinatsu, Gaeun, Kyle Wong, Yang Harim, Esterosa) Plus most of these units that I just listed can be rearmed to make them even better. The selectors help in getting said units and you just have to prioritize one character at a time when leveling them/gearing them. Alot of my character's got by on mediocre gear.
I don't mind the awakened/moonlight system vs. how Hoyo games do things. Having only played Honkai Star Rail where every character is limited from what I know and I can only get a specific character if the banner is up, I prefer how E7 and Counterside do things. Honkai doesn't give you a free pull everyday so I just wait for banners of characters I want vs I might get a SSR from my daily pull in Counterside or better yet a moonlight from a daily pull in Epic 7. Once a moonlight character is released in Epic 7, they get added to the standard banner so a moonlight can show up if you're lucky enough. They give free pulls in Epic 7 from time to time and I have gotten a handful of moonlight 5 stars from the standard banner. You can get moonlight 5 stars through a mystic banner which is what most people do. The standard moonlight banner has all the moonlights in the game but don't rely on it to get a specific character that you might want. Just save the mystic and moonlight currency until a new unit releases and spend the moonlights first, then mystics. If you get very lucky you will get the new unit in the moonlight banner, if not use your mystics and get them there.
How long have you been playing Counterside? The "drip fed currency" of classified tickets wasn't an issue for me. I'm a day one global player and didn't get A. Hilde when everyone suggested that you reroll for her. You can get by with SSRs until a good ASSR's banner shows up. The free A. Hilde you get is a good tank that can be your lead/frontline unit. I am F2P and haven't spent a single cent on the game. I only spent the quartz that you get in game buying the weekly classified tickets and rerolling the shop 5x every day. I got A. Mina and A. Seo Yoon when they released, and they got me through most of the content without a problem. After that I saved the currency and pulled on what ASSRs I wanted and have a most ASSRs in the game.
Some skins being paid only is a negative for Counterside for me. In Epic 7 you can get skin tickets in game to purchase skins from the shop, albeit at a very low acquisition rate. They gave some skin selectors in Counterside but the skins that you could choose was limited to "cheaper" skins. The more premium skins are paid only.
This was a fair review I like this👍 I think that the game definitely has potential to grow further and it’s nice seeing people creating content for the game. CounterSide is one of my favorite games to play. Also to anyone who wants to start the game, I recommend doing the PVE first. The story is quite amazing. Now For the PVP Side , yea it can get pretty competitive from platinum rank and up. There’s still room to improve the system behind it however, it’s not impossible to get to higher ranks as a FTP. Considering that only 10% of your gear will be applied to your stats to give you a fighting chance. To acquire the gauntlet points you can just do the arcade or strategy battles. You can ignore the ranked if don’t want the extra rewards or skin. It will take sometime to progress but you have to treat this game as a marathon. So take your time and enjoy 😀 lol.
Day 1 Global player and year 2 SEA player here (don't play currently due to burnout). Like the review, it's rather accurate, just a couple points:
- SSRs are not always useless, a big chunk of them are very good in PVE (and even PVP), and there are even SR characters who are still used on endgame content (Evelyn is a good flying healer, Mone trivialises the Guild Raid at early levels and Lin Xien is the best DR generator in the game). I've even built R characters like Claudia. Even then, rearms have given formerly mediocre characters spotlight. Nobody would care about having Chinatsu if her rearm wasn't the best healer in the game. Also, besides Clareth, every other SSR shown is very good or has an awesome rearm. Since the game actually encourages build variety through sheer quantity (Raids) or restrictions (Danger Close, Dimension Trimming), you will actually find use to more units than you'd think. Hell, even Sparrow is used on some strats.
- NEVER pull on Operator banners, they are whale bait and most of them are focused on PVP anyway. Instead, it's better to use the currency you get from pulling on other banners to redeem Kim Hana and Lena, who are the best PVE operators, level them up and forget about it.
- It's generally not recommended to use quartz on non-limited banners, you get a normal summon every day and free daily 10 pulls on events and even normal summon vouchers through dailies and events.
- Yeah, gear system in this game is hell and so is A-SSR gacha, half of mine are from event selectors.
- PLEASE MAKE AN ANIME OF THIS GAME AND LET IT BE DECENT, THIS STORY IS SO GOOD, I WANNA SEE HORIZON BEATING PEOPLE UP WITH A METAL PIPE.
- While Danger Close and Raids are part of the PvE endgame, I'd say Dimension Trimming is an important part nowadays. It's a mode where you need to have THREE unique squads (that means no duplicates, unlike Danger Close) for three challenging fights. Each branch (Jungle and Volcano) will have their own fights, and beating one will unlock the higher level, with more stats and stronger debuffs. The reward is gear that either boosts healing or specific damage increases.
Aside from Noelle being best girl, I used to really like this game. I still love the art and the battles are satisfying to watch for me. Unfortunately the origin update removed my favorite part of the game, which was how instead of the sweep function, you had to actually run each battle every time you wanted to farm mats. You would set a number of runs and it would automatically go without any input from the player, but you could watch each battle happen. I am very glad they added the sweep function, but I hate that they completely removed the old farming option. You can still run each farming stage individually but it needs significantly more player input if I wanted to farm the old way. I used to just have the pc/mobile client of the game open while I watched youtube and I really liked that. Now when I play the game, I feel like I am actually barely even playing the game, I just open the game, sweep all the stages I need to do for farming/dailies, then maybe spend 10 minutes max using my 6 daily pvp tickets then close the game. I feel less attached to the game now that I can do everything faster, yes it was good it was added, believe me using all your daily eternium took a while in the old system, but it was something I wish they at least left in the game as an option, I hadn't played a game that let me do something like that before and it just allowed me to get invested in the game in a different way from other gachas. Now that that part of the game is gone I've basically dropped the game, I still open it occasionally, but I no longer have a draw to the game personally.
Honestly playing Counterside has been a wile ride already. I have been playing for 1 and a half years at this point (not long after the global servers first went online) and this has been the only gacha that I have consistently returned to. Great story, mid gameplay but honestly I don't care.
Yes, when the Origins update came about, it wasn't good. The UI got revamped, and some features were slimmed down or were removed entirely. For example, like most gacha you could fuse duplicates of characters to get that character to max level, but now the dupes give small bonuses and you can only use Fusion Cores, which aren't easy to get. Also, for anyone that reads this and remembers the old salary negotiation cutscene, that was peak. Lovely added touch that didn't need cutting out but it was anyway.
10:17 Those "Cube things" are APT cores, and they have since been merged. You used to get tree different types, red, green and blue, for counter, mech and soldier respectively. Makes little difference, and does slightly improve grinding.
Anyway, I liked the dact that the game only has one coomer scene in the beginning, and basically doesn't do it again apart from making ppl edge to hot skins sometimes (I have succumbed sadly). The game is also really generous, we recently had the Origins birthday and got awakened coupons and SSR coupons, along with a free SR skin coupon as well. This is one of the main reason why I still stick to this game.
Overall, I really recommend this game, especially I have never seen this game advertised in Europe ever, so any free press is appreciated.
I still play it, but i have been taking breaks a bit more often lately, overall the review is good.
just to clarify and a bit of personal opinion too, Gameplay wise you can avoid part of the eye melting effects or stack of visual effects by changing opacity of skills that way you can see what is happening and adjust to your preference be it by making effects invisible or tuning them down so you can see what is behind.
The starter SSR selector truly is kinda limited in options, but at the same time includes some of the best ssr units you could need when starting the game and some of the best late game SSRs if you rearm them.
Skins wise i agree they could drop the price a bit, but the best option for now if you are a low spender, is to just buy the monthly sub it gives you a total of 3300 admin coins for 7 dollars or so and that means if you plan to play consistently you have a choice, where you can get 3 skins every 2 months(1 skin every month with 1220 coins left over) or enhance the monthly pass for the unit and extra resources.
and lastly yeah the origin update wasn't great, but it wasn't as bad either, it was mostly drama and that affected the game quite a lot, of the changes from that update the worst offender in my opinion and a change i myself didn't like was the change to the dupe system, before dupes could be used to limit break(not recommended) or to limit fusion(the recommended one) that way you could upgrade units easier as every dupe was equivalent to a certain ammount of resources and we had no extra stats bonuses per dupe besides the extra levels you get from limit fusion, with the change that was removed and they added the extra stats on dupes(tactical update) and made fusion cores more "accesible" by making a bit easier to get resources to craft them, as most of the community i didn't like the change but compared to other games the bonuses for dupes are kinda lame and will only affect your gameplay if you face a whale in pvp with a full team of dupe maxxed units, but at that point you probably didn't have a chance by gear diff anyways, not that the bonuses can't be useful, it is just that for all the drama it caused the dupe system is not that impactful if you are a casual, it can be a nice extra, but hardly will make you win or fail a stage. On the plus side it also brought one of my favorite QoL changes which was the side stories now having a chronological order on the selection screen, really liked that.
I loved the game. Gameplay clicked with me. Started it on sea server maybe one month after release. I had big account, maxed characters, dupes (many used as fuel for rearms), ships, assrs, rearms, etc. Played for maybe 2 or less years. Rearms were added way later into the game. Same with operators. Loved mecha and soldiers, unfortunately they never popped the same way as counters (maybe it's better these days). But i got stuck in a way that it always felt like i'm weak and cannot beat some of the harder content while i have everything to clear it. Not really a pvp enjoyer, but first days on account were very fun (drunk bar fights), then people got way stronger and it turned into a game of who drops juiced assr nuke first (maybe not always, but usually would end you quickly). So with no progress and too much repetition i just never used transfer code to global, or how was it done (and i dropped the game around 0.5 y or more before that).
To be honest, I do enjoy playing the game. Started the game a few month after it got released. The combat before was different. Each of the story stages has this mechanic that requires you to move the ship around. It was fun at first, then it just got redundant that I don't even want to play story anymore and there was no skip function at that time. A few patches later, they remove that ship movement mechanic (you just go straight into battle) and added skip function. This was a really good QOL and it does show that the devs are listening. More and more things are added and changed to the game.
Not a fan of how the gear, operator and ship systems are implemented. Getting the ideal gear might take a long time to get unless your lucky. Pulling for an awaken unit is a pain to do. Not only that it is expensive for f2p but also time gated. You can buy about 11 pulls per week and not unlimitedly. Every week you need to save the currency to buy it which is not ideal in my opinion. This makes people who spend by passing that time gate. Not to mention they are pushing banner to catch up to KR version. I get it they want to make money and all, but at least give a fair compensation for it and remove that annoying weekly buying limit for f2p. They are gonna ran out of content for f2p to farm one day anyway. At least give them a chance to get the awaken unit they want.
When I heard that the SEA server is gonna merge with global, I was really shock. I know that SEA might not make much revenue and it might get shut down later. But they decided to merge with global is pretty insane. They decided to merge the server instead of closing it got my respect. They are dedicated and I respect that.
I didn't even know that eternium was capped the last time i played, i just stocked up until it reached almost 500 mil
1 reason why counter side global didn't have much player base was because sea server still existing. If I was playing in sea servers with already established account and had probably spent some money on it, I wouldn't move to a new server just to do some do over. (Although sea server and global is not exactly a 1:1 copy of each other)
Operator Banner is widely considered a scam. 300 pulls will get you 3000 pity currency. While you can use it to buy various materials and items, at 3000 you can purchase an operator from the shop. Even brand new ones that just released with their banners can be bought from there. While a few are quite strong in their own right with unique effects, they aren't the be all end all and can even cut into your teambuilding with how specific their activations need to be.
Great videos as always. I wanted to ask, will you do a review of epic seven?
9:25 Oh boy, unlucky that he picked sparrow since that is a unit that is very much used in either Mech teams (to feed one awakened Mech unit) or as a distraction.
20:39 From that small SSR pool selection, there's only 2 units (stronghold , Kyle Wong and maybe Pendragon for being too niche) that are not really used much. The rest of them are pretty meta/very good for new players to this day. (Rearm Chinatsu is still the best healer in the entire game)
21:36 You can toggle skill effects up and down, you can remove damage numbers, buffs, etc. It's very customizable.
26:32 The reality is, the game is too generous with blue tickets. (the ones needed to pull on regular SSR banners) Dispatch missions can give blue tickets, the daily shop can give you blue tickets for either discount currency or straight up credits. (Normally you get like 0-1, but it's not that uncommon to get 2-5 per day) Daily missions give 1 ticket per day, completing weekly missions give 3 tickets. (so 10 in total per week just from dailies) The game doesn't make money from blue tickets. They make money from skins, selling the resource for gear farming and ASSR units.
Like you said, the game has it's flaws and while the Origin update was a disaster (that the devs had to backtracked)....the reality is that it's been 1.5+ years since that. That's 1.5+ years of weekly updates and QoL that the game has received and yet people still talk as if we are still dealing with Origin stuff.
6:54 Silence ye old fool. The machine spirit will not be disrespected!
Let's clear up the Nexon deal. They weren't the devs, they were the (admittedly very shady) publishers. The big thing last year was Studiobside separating from them to strike out on their own with Counter:Side, which then led to the Origin update and things kind of cascading from there. With the split, Bside also had to wrangle back ownership of some of the servers, especially the SEA server, which was horribly handled by Zlong with extremely slow updates and missing characters/QoL/anything. They also announced an HSR-esque fantasy turn-based game alongside the split, which has since been unmentioned for over a year now. It's been a very interesting, if slightly depressing situation.
Lmao this video came up right on time for me. Literally started playing yesterday and had very similar experience to what you are describing already. The only thing that i differ is that the rearm system seems to make some of the accessible SSR (ones that you can pull from the SSR selection ticket guarantee given by the beginner guide mission rewards) highly unparr or straight up better than the niche ASSR. Meaning that in the long run, it is still possible to create teams capable of utilization in the endgame content (especially the PVE side). It does sucks to feel that alot of OP niche characters (and playstyle) might be gatekeep due to the ASSR gatcha, but using the accesible unit can still allow you to play majority of the content. As a story enjoyer so far, I think I am contempt wth this notion. Probably will not put any money in though give how bad the value of the exchange between currency are in this game. Nothing seems worth the money to be put in.
As a person has been playing since launch on SEA server, which is even 1 year earlier than glb server, I'd say CS is very f2p if you just want to play it casually and get the standard rewards (PVP skin, standards rewards from contents etc). However, if you want to reach the competitive reward I.e the reward for top 3% and above, it would be a bloodbath that involves a lot of rng, grinding and calculation.
this is the only gacha game that i actually put my money on and i didnt regret it. I still playing this since day 1 in SEA server and still my favorite gacha games out all of the gacha games i playing this days with blue archive coming to close. Funny enough when the drama of origin update i actually created a f2p account in global back then because of eos rumor in SEA server and i find i can still reach this highest rank in pvp within just half a year even though im behind 1 year in day 1 global players because this game is extremely f2p(and i think this is the why the low revenue of the game) well im veteran SEA player so i already know how the game works as my advantage. But yeah despite this game unpopularity i can still see myself playing this game for the coming years despite many gacha games with much better quality releasing this days
Definitely not the one I expected to see a review on, but definitely a welcomed one
Looking at the design of the characters in this game reminds me of Closers Dimensional Conflict, the artstyle is very korean you will recognize it right away if you used to it
It must be a tiring time working on this video. The thumbnail has the official art un-altered.
Still. Thank you!
4:20
Bro, is that the OST from Tsui no Sora or perhaps Subahibi?
If yes, nice.
I can't believe I'll see counter side review.
hell yea new gacha review video thanks pseychie