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"Date A Live: Spirit Pledge is an innovative action/dating sim game based on the popular light novel series Date A Live and officially licensed by [Kadokawa Shoten]. It offers a fresh take on romantic visual novel formula by fusing various simulation elements to enhance the immersion of this mobile DAL world. In this game, you can control or interact with various Spirits in battle and story stages, and form strong bond and connection with them."
— Itunes and Google Play pages.
Based on the Light Novels by Tachibana Koushi, Date A Live: Spirit Pledge was a mobile game made in China by Hot Game Studios and Moonwalk Interactive Hong Kong Ltd. for the IOS and Android. It was first released in 2018, but service was terminated during March 2023.
Date A Live: Spirit Pledge provides examples of:
- Adaptational Early Appearance: Kurumi appears much earlier when Shido encounters her in the park after taking Tohka to see the pet shop.
- Amplifier Artifact: This game have several of them.
- Sephiras are non-playable characters that are equipable to the Spirits to enhance their stats and grant them unique passives. Each Spirits can equip up to three Sephiras of differing types, and may give additional passives for for equipping adjacent types. Each Sephiras can be leveled up and have additional random stats that can be customized individually, and some of them have Set Bonus on top of being adjacent to each other.
- Keepsakes are accessories (some of which are edible) that grants additional stat bonuses, which can be leveled up to 20 to 50 depending on their rarity with materials from clearing Theater stages (along with star rankups for every 10 levels, which requires materials from Kerubiel challenge).
- Last but not least, Gems are coloured plates which gains more angles with higher rank that boosts the damage inflicted by Spirits' skill. S-rank and higher-ranked gems requires a blueprint and 5 A-rank gems to craft but gains an additional passive effect.
- Allegedly Free Game: If collecting the event-exclusive Spirits doesn't force you to purchase diamonds, maxing out the Spirits' stats certainly will cost you a premium, as doing so entails spending a lot of diamonds just to roll for their Sephiras and fragments.
- Alternate Universe: Downplayed, as you actually play as the main character of the game adaptation of the source light novel. While the Spirits are still depicted as the walking calamities they were in the light novel, the game have additional challenges that requires high-level and properly geared Spirits to comfortably clear.
- And Your Reward Is Clothes: One of the items that can be unlocked by actively participating the time-limited mini-Events are additional outfits. Most of the special costumes (indicated by their gold icon frame and unique backgrounds) had to be purchased with real-life money, however.
- Brutal Bonus Level: Date A Bullet: Chapter 2, is this on steroids, as all the bosses in each stages are SNK Boss on their own right, especially for Queen.
- Combo Breaker: The game features these as part of the player characters' attacks.
- Crossover: The game had at least two of these events. One of them being A Certain Magical Index, the other being the Neptunia franchise.
- Dating Sim: The game has more elements of this trope than in the source material.
- Difficulty Levels: The Story mode is the canon difficulty in the story proper, with the battles being relatively easy to breeze through. The Hard and Hell Mode (which are unlocked by beating the preceding difficulty and chapters) ups the recommended battle power by a sizable margin, to the point that later-chapters in Hell Mode can become a Rocket-Tag Gameplay.
- Equipment Upgrade: The player can upgrade the Angels they unlock by leveling them up and choosing the stats to boost.
- Experience Points: Both the player and the Spirits gain these when they clear a battle, with the Spirit levels capped to the player's level.
- The Faceless: The player is never shown on any CGs or cutscenes. The exception being when he disguised himself as Shiori.
- Fake Difficulty: Chaos modifier in Spirit Trial. It reverses your control at complete random, meaning you can go from trying to evade bosses' attack to running straight into them.
- Gameplay Roulette: This game can shift between a dating sim, an Action RPG, and a scrolling shooter-esque gameplay. At least for the first few chapters.
- Greater-Scope Villain: In this Alternate Universe, Isaac Westcott continues in the route. Despite never coming into contact with the protagonists and the Spirits, it's the DEM Industries that is sending waves and waves of enemies at the player. Apparently, the DEM in this world has even more power than in its original universe, because not only the do DEM Wizards come after you but also the Wizards of AST, drones of the Japanese government.
- Lag Cancel: Your dash can cancel any actions in addition to evading enemies' attack. But there's a 2 seconds cooldown between each uses.
- Mechanically Unusual Fighter: Shekinah Tohka and Queen play more like a Hack and Slash character. Whereas the other characters has one attack button, and 3 attack skills, she instead has 2 attack buttons (one for her melee and the other for ranged attacks), and her attack skills are executed through an attack combination instead.
- Superdeformed: The characters are depicted this way in the RPG battles.
- Unlockable Content: Stronger bonds with the Spirits can unlock additional voice lines, favor dates and keepsakes.
