Video Game / Soul Tide

From a divergent universe, a soul is about to be awakened. Those moments reflected in the Mirror of Souls once belonged to...

Soul Tide is a Dungeon Crawling gacha mobile game with Dating Sim and roguelite elements, developed by Chinese game developer IQI Games and published by LemcnSun^*read as "Lemon Sun" Entertainment. Initially released in China on August 24, 2021, it was released in Japanese on March 22, 2022, with the global version following a week later on March 29.

Ever since the dawn of time, the world was threatened by a group of witches called the Scarlet Moon for unknown reasons. Humanity almost died out as a result of the multitudes of disasters these witches brought with their magic. But then, humanity was saved when they discovered faith, as the goddess Shera, the Lady of the Moon, descended and bestowed hope upon humanity, establishing the Templar Order of Luna and commencing humanity's counter-attack. The witches that got captured were burned at the stake, and peace was finally attained after years of despair, but the witches fought back from the shadows, conjuring a great earthquake that destroyed the continent. In response, Shera blessed humans with witch-like powers called sorcery to repair the destruction.

Years later, massive trees arose from the ground that were gateways to a mysterious and dangerous realm called "Graveland", siphoning the world's essence and driving anyone unlucky enough to end up within it into madness, while housing the few remaining witches that survived the witch-hunt, hoping to get their revenge when the time comes. As such, the Order begins gathering talented humans — Evokers — those specially trained and cultivated to control "Dolls", manifestations of the lost souls of the dead from other worlds that resonate with an Evoker's soul, and can survive in the Graveland for prolonged periods of time without going mad.

You are one of these Evokers, stationed in the city of Litoris on the Crescent Kingdom, and you, along with a few others, are tasked with investigating the Graveland and finding a way to destroy this phenomenon.

Soul Tide is a dungeon crawler in which you control five Dolls from your roster and delve into the perilous Graveland, slaying monsters and solving puzzles to get through each level. Beside this is its roguelite mode Abyss Rift, which pits you and your party of Dolls against a linear but unpredictable dungeon, slaying monsters and gathering buffs called Gifts, trying to reach the end of the dungeon without healing spots. In addition, it also contains a home simulation mode, a bonding system with your Dolls, and many, many more...

Visit their official website here.

Soul Tide evokes examples of the following:

• 100% Completion: The Graveland stages have an exploration rating that rewards players for collecting treasures, completing objectives, and progressing the story.
• Absurdly High Level Cap: Typical of gacha games. The Dolls and their Verves' level cap are dictated by the player's current level, which gets raised with certain major updates, currently sitting at a maximum of Lvl. 60.
• Action Girl: All of the playable characters in the game are female.
• Actually Four Mooks: Baddies (enemies) in stages are represented by two tokens, one for the regular file and the other for tougher enemies; the same goes for Overlords who show up on the map as their own sprites. When facing them, enemies can number from one to five.
• An Adventurer Is You: There are three roles your Dolls can have in battle depending on what skillset they are using: Attacker, Defender, and Supporter. Get your player level to 15 and your Dolls' levels to that point too, and your Dolls will gain access to their second skillset, which may or may not have a different role and/or primary element; Level 20 allows for a third customizable skillset to mix-and-match skills between the two previous default sets, but be wary that the skill associated with their role grant specific stat boosts (skills of a Defender boost HP and defense, Attacker skills boost attack, and so on). Moreover, each Doll has skills, traits and targeting types different from each other, such that there are nuances between, for example, Attackers who are purely about damage and Attackers who debuff and/or improve the squad's damage dealt^ExampleSatya and Virgina are both AOE Attackers, but the former is a Nuker while the latter is a Debuffer, Defenders who focus on themselves or protect the entire team^ExampleDreizehn (Regenerator) and Ennis (Avoidance Tank) are examples of the former, while Freesia and Alisa (Preemptive Healer-Tanks) are the latter, albeit still Freesia negates Control Effects whereas Alisa creates shields, and Supporters that heal one tank, heal everyone, boost SP, cast buffs or debuffs, and all sorts of other flavors.
• And Your Reward Is Clothes: You can gain purely cosmetic skins for your Dolls, but there are very few skins that you can get for free, such as Asuna's schoolgirl outfit that is obtainable by pre-registering for the game. Everything else needs Lunarite, the premium currency only earned by spending real money. Skins bought with Lunarite however have more features such as voice lines unique to the skin.
• Anime Theme Song: The initial loading screen theme "Soul Tide", which has two versions: the CN version sung by the utaite Sawako碎花子, and the JP/Global version, sung by Yuki Hazuki's voice actress Emiri Katou. Notable differences are in parts of the melody and lyrics.
• Anti-Frustration Features:
  • Evoking (Gacha):
    • The gacha contains a pity system that activates every 50 pulls without a Doll pulled in-between. When hit, it usually gives you one of the rate-up Dolls in the banner you're pulling on, if not any of the off-banner Dolls. In the case of normal rate-up banners, the pity is carried over to the next, whether this holds true for special rate-up banners remains to be seen.
    • The gacha also provides a set currency whenever the player pulls on a banner. Doll and Verve banners give separate currencies and provide their own shop items. 20 of any Doll's shards can be taken from the Doll gacha shop when the player has done 300 pulls, and the same applies to the Verves shop, but for the rate-up Verves instead.
    • A Global update on September 6th, 2022 gives Evoke Preferences for the Lunar Evoke, which allows players to adjust what element type of Dolls they want to roll for.
  • Abyss Rift:
    • The Abyss Rift allows players to grind for Dolls' shards to rank them up. To ease grinding, the game is set to give more shards to the first Doll in the party, followed by random shards for anyone in the party.
    • Common enemies can be wiped except for Overlords (boss enemies).
  • Illusory Limbo:
    • Illusory Limbo allows players to take any cards they obtain in one run to the next with no caveat whatsoever. This allows players to gather as much usable cards as they can and then use them anytime they feel they want more Emotion Keys or when in a severe pinch.
    • An update now adds an option to do wipes for all runs, but it's only unlocked if they open five chests for one run, and lasts only for the rest of the week it was done in. It should also be noted that wipes only give you the keys of five chests, not ten.
    • A merchant is added that acts as a storage for your lanterns, available at the start and end of each stage; he can give you extra lanterns whenever needed at the start, and he can store leftover lanterns (up to a maximum of 30) you give him (but only up to 3) at the last chamber.
  • Graveland:
    • You can skip cleared stages for a number of times you can set for their rewards, only limited by your Sanity. This also applies to Trials in a later update.
    • In every stage, whenever you reach the Overlord, an Overlord Portal will appear next to it that transports you back to the start of the stage. The portal is two-way, so one could double back for whatever was missed and come back for the Overlord later, or skip the obstacles and go straight for the Overlord if you had to quit the stage for whatever reason, like changing your team composition.
    • You can choose to exit a stage and return to where you and your squad left off.
    • Previously mapped paths in stages are saved even after leaving without saving progress. If you choose to restart the stage, those explored paths will be revealed from the start.
  • Others:
    • The game provides emotion icons for gifts you can give to your Dolls to raise their bond level^*smiley face for Like, flat mouth for Neutral, and a frown for Dislike. In addition, it doesn't let you gift the girls items that they don't like, only items they like and items they can accept.
    • You can go to Settings^note in the game, press on the profile icon in the top left corner and turn Ultimate skill cut-ins on, once a day, or off if they get too tedious.
    • When trawling in your home's Fishing Minigame, you can do it one at a time, or ten times at once to save on time and finger-tapping.
    • Story modes for RPG Events allow you to wipe low-level enemies once you're deemed too powerful for them. This gives players a chance to power level themselves quickly and without hassle when needed, as well as gather currency and drop items faster.
    • In the Dream Quest event series, you're given more than enough moves to sweep an entire stage's tiles the first time you enter one, though it's reduced for subsequent playthroughs. This ensures you get to view the story without having to waste your Sanity on retries if you run out of moves.
• Anti Poop-Socking: As is tradition with gacha games, Soul Tide has its own stamina system called "Sanity" that lets you play through the game as long as there's enough Sanity to be spent.
• Arbitrary Headcount Limit:
  • In gameplay battles, squads can only have up to five Dolls. Likewise, there can only be a maximum of five enemies in every battle.
  • Assigning tasks at your Home allows up to three Dolls to be selected for a single job.
• Arc Villain: At least one stars in every Graveland world.
  • While the Seven Sins are constant enemies in the Dire Forest, Pride is the mastermind behind the deaths of Ebony Squad and is the Final Boss for the world.
  • The first bosses, Shiro and Kuro, at most are Starter Villains for this world, whereas Jyou is ultimately a neutral figure. The one with more investment is the Daimyo, who is responsible for the tragedies he inflicted on Singer and Performer.
  • The Wild Crater's villain is the very first person you meet, Gawana, who is actually attempting to revive her tribespeople by killing people in soul-based experiments and now wants the heroes as her latest victims.
  • Played With in the case of the Star Ruins. The one responsible for the fall of the Zoek Empire is Prince Albert, but he is already dead long before our heroes have arrived. Instead, you have to put down Lil' Margaret, who has turned into the berserking monster known as Crown Enigma.
  • The Monsta Play may make one assume that the eyeball thing known as "The Gaze" is one, but it's really just a passive observer looking out for Amon. For a given measure of villain, it's Asagiri, whose machinations become the reason why the entire arc's Timey-Wimey Ball is happening and even becomes the final boss.
  • The Snow Realm doesn't have much in the way of Big Bads, especially when the deities responsible for the war have been reduced to shells of their former selves. The Divine Phantasm is only following it's last orders to guard the Pantheon, while the Spring Deity has gone berserk and must be put down.
• Artificial Intelligence: The Templar Order of Luna makes use of them, one being SID30072, a rather jokey AI who mostly helps Evokers in summoning Dolls. You also meet another one in the Illusionary Sins event, SID30075, who creates simulacra of the Seven Sins enemies, though her rigid personality keeps her from emulating the sins needed to make them stronger. Oh, and they identify as girls.
• Artificial Stupidity: The way the game handles your movement on the map while Delving is by taking the shortest path to the tile you tapped on... even if it means taking a path you wouldn't have taken if you had moved only one tile at a time. It gets frustrating in Illusory Limbo in which every move counts, and making a mistake may cost you valuable currency needed to get the prizes at the end of the maze.
• ASMR Video: The Trysts found in the store are recordings over a dozen minutes long of you and a Doll sharing a private moment together as the latter speaks to you. Each one costs 38 Lunarite and are only available for Dolls you have Oathed.
• Back from the Dead:
  • The Dolls are this in essence, whose souls can only be evoked once their physical bodies have expired and into manmade bodies they can possess.
  • This is played with the Evoker in the Stringed Puppet event, where he goes into a coma from a truck crashing into him and for once is the one being evoked to another world. Luckily, his body back in Continent Crescent is still living and gives him a chance of returning.
• Backtracking: This often happens in some Graveland stages when you have to go back for something in order to progress. Can also happen when you have to restart a stage if you missed something on the first run.
• Bittersweet Ending: Can be said for some of the Dolls that led rather tragic lives up to their deaths. They can no longer go back to their home worlds and reverse any of their mistakes by then, but at least they've found a new place to call home alongside the Evoker and the other Dolls.
• "Blind Idiot" Translation: The English localization... isn't exactly the best, ranging from small spelling and grammatical errors to fractured and even undecipherable sentences. The developers/publishers blame it on the lack of manpower, but there are parts of the script that can easily be fixed with a simple edit. It's been alleviated in later updates, but this hasn't been completely fixed.
• Break Meter: Instead of Elemental Rock-Paper-Scissors as seen in other gacha games and much like Octopath Traveler, enemies have a numbered shield icon to the left of their health bar that can be reduced by attacking them with elements they are weak to. Once the number reaches 0, they are given the Vulnerable state, allowing Dolls to deal more damage to them. However, enemies can still act even when Vulnerable.
• Breaking Old Trends:
  • Chapters 14 and 15 of Graveland features a hub stage each that is meant for repeated exploration, which had never shown up in previous chapters.
  • Qing Dai and Qing Hao mark the first instance of two new Dolls featuring in a single update.
• Burn the Witch!: Any witches that were captured after humanity's counter-attack were burned at the stake, and are still done so in present day when a witch gets caught. This was also Virgina's fate when she was still alive.
• Call a Hit Point a "Smeerp": Enemies in this game are called "baddies". In-universe though, they're simply called monsters.
• Cerebus Syndrome: The game may seem like a typical waifu collector at first glance, but the main storyline and much of the Dolls' backstories aren't as campy and lighthearted as the individual Doll stories make it seem to be.
• Church Militant: The main cast are part of the templars that protect the world from the Witches that desire revenge on humanity for their defeat.
• City of Adventure: Litoris, where the main cast is stationed in, is a city built on a number of islands situated around a huge tree towering over them, beneath it a gateway into the Graveland and a top secret that the 11th Branch Order safeguards. It has several distinct locations that the player can patrol, ranging from busy districts to the ruins of where the Grand Earthquake originated, all of which can trigger brief hijinks the Evoker gets mixed up in. In a more serious and immediate sense, the game has a storyline situated in the city that progresses alongside Graveland's.
• Color-Coded Elements: Doll Skills will have a color associated with each of the five elements: White for Physical, red for Fire, blue for Frost, yellow for Lightning, and purple for Shadow. These also show as pips underneath enemy health bars to represent their weaknesses.
• Color-Coded Item Tiers: For all consumable items, there are five backgrounds of color denoting their rarity, starting from lowest to highest: grey -> green -> blue -> purple -> gold. Verves use the same tier colors, although it has no grey-rarity tier.
• Combat and Support: For the most part, all Attackers are responsible for Combat, while Defenders and Supporters are the Support. Each Doll however has their own subtle playstyles that the roles can be divided into sub-roles, or sometimes their roles cross each other when switching skills for the third set.
• Costume Porn: Between certain Dolls' default skins and their premium skins, there's a remarkable display to point out such as Colcher's feathery royal dress, Lilyiro's dancer outfit, Qu Ling's fairy qipao and veil, Mako's crisp train conductor uniform, and so on.
• Crapsack World:
  • Not Continent Crescent for the most part, but some of the other worlds the Dolls come from certainly fulfill this trope. To name a few examples:
    • Asuna was a high school girl who lived in a modern city not unlike Earth's Japan in real life, except it was really a militaristic dictatorship that motivated her into rebelling against this system.
    • Dreizhen came from a wartorn world where Living Is More than Surviving is likely an unfathomable concept to its inhabitants, where she fought for an army that turned her into a Robot Girl without her consent from a young age.
    • Gawana's world has been dying for a long while due to a desertification problem affecting plants and animals alike that has made her nomadic tribe's life difficult.
    • Lilyiro's world has elves and goblins fighting each other for no apparent reason other than racial animosity. Made worse when Lilyiro's Past makes it clear that elves and goblins are one and the same, and all they've essentially done is fight against and kill their own brethren, sparking Lilyiro's own brand of justice.
  • Every world found in Graveland is always full of hostile monsters, and in the cases of civilizations, they have already experienced it's own world-ending apocalypse like the Star Ruins and the Snow Realm.
• Crossover: The game has a collaboration event with gaming smartphone brand Black Shark, featuring their mascot Sharkie as a new SR Verve and in-game collectibles.
• Cult: The Scarlet Moon is a cult of witches that once dominated humanity for many years until they fought back with Shera's blessings.
• Damage Over Time: Burn and Bleed teams all prioritize DoT to fight against foes. Not the best for killing mooks, but definitely the best for killing bosses, especially in the Overlord Invasions where the higher the damage count, the better.
• Damage-Sponge Boss: Overlords in Overlord Invasions, especially high-leveled ones where a normal squad just won't cut it and a specialized squad like a DoT-focused team is much more needed to deal higher damage.
• Damager, Healer, Tank: The Dolls fall within either one or two of three roles: Attackers that are oriented towards dealing damage, Supporters that provide their party with buffs and/or heals, and Defenders that take damage dealt towards the player's side as much as possible. However, most Dolls have their own Traits and skill-exclusive buffs and debuffs, not to mention enemy weaknesses, the number of targets skills cover or how it works (single-target, AOE, row, single-hit, and multi-hit), encouraging you to swap out your Dolls based on what baddie(s) you fight. Some possible team compositions include:
  • Satya's skills perform better on baddies with Eclipse debuffs. Virgina's Attacker skillset has her dole out AOE attacks, which lets her Romance Reader trait inflict Eclipse on any enemy she hits on top of her Ultimate Skill Startide's defense reduction, and Mako's Defender skills are based around inflicting her unique Calamity debuff, whereupon the Mortal Coil passive can be upgraded to also include Eclipse.
  • Lilyiro's Lightning multi-hit skillset pairs well with Colcher's Shadow Ultimate, Echoes of Hope, letting her repeat her own, Spark Splash, for four hits and quickly triggering Shock upon four stacks. This also works with Lightning Attacker Dreizehn, whose passive skill Sword of Storms triggers every 6 times^note 5 after upgrade the squad does a Lightning attack.
• Dating Sim: Its other highlight feature. Each girl has a bond level and you can level it up by giving them gifts, especially ones they prefer. Once enough levels are gained, you can take them on a date, which gives you keys to unlock their pasts, and also get a bond story that expand more on their new life with you.
• Dead to Begin With: The Dolls, as they are lost souls called to Continent Crescent to assist in the Graveland investigation. They are given physical bodies, which means they get a second chance in life, and they may not even be aware of them being once dead in the first place.
• Depending on the Writer: Depending on the Doll's personality, the way the protagonist acts may differ between each of the Dolls' Present and Date stories, to accommodate for their quirks and backstories.
• Disc-One Nuke: Surprisingly, some of the starter units will still hold up in the lategame, and could even be your best damage dealers whichever point you are in the game.
  • Asuna and Lilyiro in particular, as they both have a passive skill that enhances their critical hit chances and damage, and a high-damage single-target ultimate skill that can deal ludicrous damage when buffed properly.
  • Unlike most gacha hero collectors, there are no character rarity-tiers in the game, so it's likely intended for all the playable Dolls to be balanced and/or each having their own niche they can fulfill (Whether they actually are balanced or not would presumably be due to normal human error on the developers' part). Currently four out of five of the starter Dolls show up quite often in the top teams for the weekly Overlord competition.
• Dramatic Shattering: Whenever an enemy is rendered Vulnerable, this gets punctuated by the sound of glass shattering and their vulnerability gauge turning into a red fragmented shield.
• Dungeon Crawling: The main gameplay feature. You take five Dolls into the Graveland, fighting monsters, solving puzzles, seeking out secrets, and many more while going from Point A to B. Even the battle interface is reminiscent of classic dungeon crawlers, taking a first-person view with enemies in front of you.
• Dysfunction Junction: In regards to Dolls, the very premise of evoking long dead souls should already be a warning sign of whatever Dark and Troubled Past they went through. Let's start with the first five Dolls you meet: despite having no obligation to and being just an ordinary nun, Virgina braved through many dangers to warn her kingdom of a conspiracy, only to be dismissed, accused as a witch to keep the status quo and died burning at the stake; Asuna was a rebel schoolgirl who fought against tyranny but lost her ordinary life and eventually her comrades; Lilyiro is obsessed with doing good acts to make up for how much blood she spilt during war in her world; Freesia hates adults, having been tortured by them for her gemstone tears and committed suicide; and Nankung gave up her childhood for training to control her inhuman strength.
• Eldritch Location: The Graveland is a mysterious and perilous land found within the roots of the giant trees that sprouted after the Scarlet Moon's defeat, housing monsters and witches alike within its ever-changing landscape. Without proper precautions, any unlucky sap that winds up in this place would slowly have their sanity degraded, as they are either slowly morphed into a monster, or get killed by said monsters and/or the environment hazards. A surprising thing about Graveland is that it can also connect to other worlds for some reason, examples being Gawana's world for Chapters V-VII, and Akaset's world for Chapter VIII.
• Elemental Powers: Dolls have skills that associate with an element in order to deplete the enemy's Break Meter: Physical, Fire, Frost, Lightning, and Shadow. Besides the Dolls' unique debuffs, each element has at least one common debuff associated with them that can also be inflicted on Dolls.
  • Physical: Stun^*unable to act and Bleed^*at the end of each turn, take (2% of the attacker's ATK) Bleed damage; stackable
  • Fire: Burn^*at the end of each turn, take (0.5% of maximum HP) Burn damage, up to 15% of foes' average attack; stacks up to 10 times)
  • Frost: Freeze^*unable to act; increases damage taken by 10%
  • Lightning: Shock^*upon 4 stacks of Shock, take (120% of the attacker's ATK) Electrocute damage, then removes all stacks
  • Shadow: Eclipse^*increases damage taken by 4%; stacks up to 10 times
• Evolutionary Levels: Dolls each have five stars that players can raise to upgrade their stat growth and improve their unique passives. Players can grind the materials for this through the Abyss Rift, or by gathering shards from the gacha.
• Fictional Board Game: "Luna Chess", a virtual board game created by the Great Sage Egbert as a means of promoting the Templar Order of Luna. It's meant for 2~4 players, which combines chess with a Collectible Card Game (Yu-Gi-Oh! is a close example), mixed with elements of go and Blokus. The details are as follows: 1) The game is played on a grid divided into 366 cells based on Continent Crescent which is shrouded in the darkness of a Witch; the players' objective is to dispel this gloom with their light, winning by having the most captured area; 2) each player starts from a corner and control a chess piece they move once per turn (unless there is a card skill that affects this); 3) cards are drawn every round and are activated during a player's turn, which have skills that confer unique effects such as increasing the grid range of a chess piece's light.
• Gameplay and Story Segregation:
  • No matter which Doll you bring into the Graveland stages, the story will proceed with the Dolls that may seem relevant for the current world, as the story also assumes the Evoker has gathered all the Dolls that can be summoned.
  • Dolls in stages make tapping sounds with their footsteps as they walk from one point to another, so it's jarring to hear footsteps coming from those who fly/float like Satya and Minerdwen.
• Ghost City: The Star Ruins count as this, being the devastated remains of a once intergalactic empire now taken over by Graveland. Then it gets subverted when you reach the Holy Mountain, where the survivors still lived by staying within a barrier that froze time, survivors included, inside of it.
• Healer Signs On Early: Virgina, the very first Doll you evoke, starts with a Supporter skillset based on single-target healing.
• Health/Damage Asymmetry: A Level 65 Doll's maximum HP augmented by Verves could reach to or over ten thousand. Most enemies of the appropriate level, especially bosses, can have HP that number in the hundreds of thousands.
• Hello, [Insert Name Here]: The Evoker's name can be changed, the first one being free and subsequent changes requiring free crystals.
• Home Base: The Home, an big, old mansion given to you by the Templar Order where you, your Task Squad (except Yannick and Isabelle who live together in the former's house), and your Dolls live. You're also given liberty to switch between themes of various parts of the mansion, with more detailing to do in the Dorm rooms.
• Hub Under Attack: A downplayed and solely in-story example happens in Chapter 2, Part 6. A Witch, a serial killer now attempting to kidnap Coco, launched a fireball at the mansion earlier when the Evoker leaves to help Yannick chase the killer, but Deanna was there to keep guard. Later when two private guards of Baron Campbell attempt to take Coco for questioning about her friend Gretchen's whereabouts, who had been kidnapped by the serial killer, one of them gets killed by a spell cast said killer. The brief attack turned out to be an elaborate plan to frame the Task Squad as murderers and Deanna a Witch (which is ironically true), forcing them to leave the mansion.
• Improbably Female Cast: Putting aside the generic male NPCs, the only main story-relevant male characters so far are the Evoker and Yannick, and Graveland NPCs Singer and Performer of Yomi Marsh and Albert of the Star Ruins. Nearly everyone else is a female, and so are most bosses; Dolls especially have no explanation why they're always a girl.
• Inexplicable Treasure Chests: Besides some junk piles, you'll stumble upon actual treasure chests in delves you can run over to open for loot, usually coins, Sigil upgrade materials, and Verves. This can be justified by the fact that Graveland takes over worlds formerly inhabited by civilizations, so what you dug up is likely possessions that belonged to the deceased.
• An Interior Designer Is You: Early on in the game, players gain access to their Home, in which activities related to progression can be performed, as well as buying and modifying decorations within each room and the separate Dorm rooms to provide Morale recovery boosts for the whole roster.
• Kick Them While They're Down: Well, not exactly, but depleting the Break Meter and getting the enemy to Vulnerable status is the real viable way of dishing damage especially on later stages and levels, and especially true for modes like Overlord Invasions.
• Level Cap: The Dolls' level cap depends on the player's level, leveled up through completing story dungeons and doing daily quests. It initially reached up to Level 40 on release, then a subsequent update raised the cap to Level 55, then 60, and again to 65.
• Level Grinding: You can strengthen your Dolls in a multitude of ways: Levels, Sigils, Ascension, Skills, Verves, Memory/Past, and Essence. A lot of Coins are also needed for some of these methods, so expect to use up millions.
  • Levels are raised through increasing their Experience Points, which require Souls. Doing so increases their stats, as well as unlocking other Doll upgrades: Sigil nodes gated by Doll levels; the Doll's second set of Skills at Lv. 15 and a customized one at Lv. 20; active and passive Skill upgrades also level-gated; and the Essence system at Lv. 40.
  • Completing Sigils raises stats for every node broken through, most notably Speed for completing a chain. These need materials named [X] of Sun, Moon, and Star, which are farmed from Graveland stages.
  • Ascension uses Doll Shards which can be earned by rolling the gacha for duplicates (20 shards for rolling a duplicate Doll), random amounts from rolling, or going through the Abyss Rift. This raises the Doll's stat growth curve and their traits.
  • A Doll will have two sets of four Skills, each skill increasing in effectiveness and, sometimes, gain new effects by consuming Glyphs of Power and Coins. Skills have four levels of power (denoted by having '+1/2/3/4' at the side of their icon).
  • Verves, like Dolls, have the options "Level Up" and "Limit Break"—the former uses Wisps to level and increase stats, while the latter fuses copies of itself to boost their passive trait, stat growth rate, and reveal more of their story.
  • Memory (read as "Past" in the Bond section) comes in 18 chapters, each having four locks that unlock using four types of keys (two kinds for each lock) and gated behind Affection Levels. Unlocking each lock gives a significant boost in specific stats, the bottommost of which uniquely boosts starting SP.
  • The latest addition to the upgrade system, Essence, which is only available for Dolls at Lv. 40, not only boosts stats but also grants additional affects to your Ultimate Skills. However, they can only be upgraded using Essence Stones (and a fair bit of coin), and unlike other upgrades, they do not have a dedicated Trial to farm them and instead are often only found during special events.
• Loading Screen: You'll get a lot of loading cards throughout the game, like moving in between the base and home screens, and transitioning into battle in a dungeon instance.
• Magic Is Evil: Mostly subverted for the people of Continent Crescent. The prologue explains that magic used to be the sole power of Witches until the Great Earthquake, after which the goddess Shera granted magic to people. These magic-users were feared at first until it is understood that With Great Power Comes Great Responsibility, thus leading to the current present where legalized Sorcerors and Magitek are a common sight.
• Magitek: A majority of Continent Crescent's technology is mostly similar to that of our world's 20th-century prototypes prior to the modern era, the only difference being that they run on magic. So far it's applied to the Evokers' communication device, the Compass, and transportation such as steam ships and trams.
• Male Gaze: As it's a game oriented towards a male audience, the Dolls can appear as such, especially with the more fanservice-laden Dolls even in their normal outfits or skins that apply it.
• Min-Maxing: Aside from Experience Points, Evolutionary Levels, and Level-Up at Intimacy 5, players will also take into account Verves, which are cards that can be equipped on a Doll to give special passive skills alongside stat ups. Depending on the situation, one may have to switch these around while keeping in mind the stat ups they give, especially when using Verves of the same rarity or higher.
• Morale Mechanic: Dolls have a Morale counter that gives them a buff to basic stats when high enough. Use them for long enough, or have them lose in battle, especially in Delve missions, and morale will sharply decline. Morale is generally restored through placing them in Dorms or passive restoration, which goes up depending on Bond level.
• No Hugging, No Kissing: Averted; there are next to no displays of intimacy between the Dolls and the Evoker at lower bond levels, but things become explicit at higher levels, especially upon Oathing certain Dolls, such as Minerdwen kissing the Evoker full on the lips in the second-to-last Date, the Evoker sharing a bath with Colcher, the details skipped over, and Gawana pushing the Evoker down for... stuff. It's enough to make anyone suspect Did They or Didn't They?.
• The Power of Love: Enforced. To go along with the Dating Sim aspect of the game, each Doll has a Bond level that players raise by either reading through their Date and Present stories or by giving them gifts. This allows players to unlock their Past story piece by piece, giving them stat ups alongside knowing how the girls became the way they are now. In the Chinese server, there is also an oath system that allows players to marry their favorite Doll, or marry multiple if you have the money for it.
• Premium Currency:
  • Crystals, which are exchanged for Lunar and Astral Cards used for evoking Dolls or Verves respectively, or certain store packs and furniture vouchers, amongst many other things. They can be earned in a number of ways: getting chests in your Friends' homes, planting Realm Seeds in your Home and using its fruit (which nets random amounts of 100, 200, or 500), completing Tasks, buying them in special events, doing achievements, and increasing a Doll's affection at large amounts which leads to her giving you a present in your Home's mailbox.
  • Lunarite can only be bought using real money, which is the only way to buy Oath Rings (besides in some special or seasonal events), Trysts, and store packs that use it. It can also be converted to Crystals if you want.
• Quantity vs. Quality: Quantity for the heroes against quality for antagonists, at least most of the time.
  • For the main and event stories, you, your squadmates and Dolls are a big family pitted against whatever issue comes your way, often overcoming it by having each other's back and forming new allies as opposed to the villains often acting in fewer numbers that make up for it with their own advantages, at times only united for a common objective.
  • Zigzagged from a gameplay perspective. You always have a squad of five Dolls whenever delving through Graveland or facing against bosses. You only ever face five enemies at maximum in any battle, but, discounting the empowered versions of regular mooks, the bosses are incredibly strong regardless of numbers and can take a lot planning and team management to defeat.
• Rank Scales with Asskicking: Aurora and Colcher are pretty princesses, but they are certainly no helpless Damsel in Distress (ignoring Aurora's past, at least).
• Resources Management Gameplay: All Dolls need SP to cast Active Skills, barring Basics and Passives, holding up to a maximum of 120 SP and no further. Their costs vary between Dolls and are based on their utility and power with the Ultimate being the most costly. There are a few ways of alleviating this.
  • In battle, Dolls regenerate 16 SP for every round that passes. They can also immediately gain 4 more SP for breaking every enemy's Guard to '0'.
  • You can upgrade said skills to lower their cost, level Doll stats up to increase initial SP, and equip Verves that influence SP gain. Equipping three Verves at once boosts stats too, including initial SP, with Gold-colored rarities offering the most.
  • In roguelite modes, the player will get the chance to find Runes, a couple of which also influences SP gain or even Skill usage, like getting SP for using attacks of a specific element or a chance to repeat a Skill.
• Roguelike: More of a roguelite, but the Abyss Rift mode pits players into a linear path with increasingly difficult monsters. Without any healing spots in the map, players will have to rely on gained buffs, their Dolls' strengths, and their own wits to trek as deep into the Rift as possible. The deeper players go, the more fragment rewards they can gain to star-up the characters used in the trek.
• Rule of Funny: Generally speaking, a lot of the Litoris, Doll and event stories run on this, even if there are sad and dark moments right around the corner.
• Running Gag: Ever since Deanna showed disguised as a caterpillar in Dream Quest v1.0, a talking caterpillar tends to show up in other Dream Quest events, Cultivation Cradle being an exception.
• Schizo Tech: Continent Crescent is primarily a fantasy setting, but it doesn't bar sci-fi characters like a Spaceship Girl, a girl piloting a mech suit, and an alien catgirl that can destroy worlds from being summoned as Dolls. The world itself is one due to the rapidly evolving technology sprung from the advent of sorcery.
• The Seven Mysteries: Throughout Patrols of Litoris you will stumble upon the "Seven Wonders", people who gained titles based on their quirks. So far they are:
  • "The Apple Girl", a country girl milling in the Forest during daytime, who offers an apple to passerby said to make anyone "vanish off the face of the planet" when they bite it, which then turns redder the next day. Uniquely, she is found as one of Nicolette's patrol stories, and the Doll in question tries it despite its suspicious nature. It turns out it was just pumped full of sweetener to make anyone's teeth rot.
  • "The Divine Sage", an old man who fishes at night at the Harbor, rumored to be waiting for the one he chose to speak with him. As the Evoker observes on one night, whenever the Sage fishes, many will swim over to him attracted to the lamp at his side, although he doesn't snag any for some reason and makes the Evoker wonder if he's waiting for him to ask any question, just as a sage would. But when the Sage leaves, he curses loudly when he finds out that his fishing hook got straightened.
  • "The Invisible Girl", a white dress seemingly being worn by no one and floating on its own on the second floor of an abandoned house, at the Terrace during nighttime. When the Evoker does a stakeout, the girl, possibly the Invisible Girl of the rumor, comes up to him and reveals she has dark skin, which the Evoker reasons would let her blend into the darkness of the house. But then the girl asks at the end, "Did you see my eyes?"
  • "The King of No Shots", a middle-aged man who interrupts a group of kids playing soccer in the Waterfront during daytime. He tries—and fails—to land a shot through the goal and hits the frame instead, which is seemingly a curse that has haunted him throughout his soccer career and to this day.
  • "The Psychic Girl", a girl who sells flowers during the day in the Trade District. The catch is that she only sells to (romantically) single people and leaves couples alone, somehow knowing which is which without needing to ask. The Evoker wants to find out how she does this, so he approaches her pretending to be single, only to be instantly rebuffed and pegged as a "harem degenerate", leaving the Evoker confused by what she meant.
  • "The Siren's Singing", a girl who can be found singing in the Ruins at night. Although the Evoker gets a Naked First Impression when he finally gets a look at her, the sight of which causes him to faint from a nosebleed.
  • "The Boytoy"... who is the Evoker himself as he discovers from a thief he catches in the Trade District during the day. The latter explains this is because whenever the citizens see the former in trouble, he is always rescued by a girl.
• Shout-Out: Has its own page right here.
• Smart People Play Chess: Luna Chess that is, essentially a marriage of chess and Blokus with TCG. So far, a number of people in leadership positions or are intelligent have played it:
  • In the "Luna Chess" side story, Rosario, despite being new, was already skilled after some advice from Baisley, who himself is a four-time tournament champion.
  • In one of Silenus's Dates, she and the Evoker compete against each other in the final round of a Luna Chess tournament, deadlocked against each other in masterful plays until the scientist let the Evoker win.
• Socialization Bonus:
  • When visiting friends, players can find and open up to five boxes called "ally chests" (though there are always only three in each mansion) that contains some coin and Crystals^note totaling up to 25000 coins and 25 Crystals. Doing so also fulfills the quest to open three chests.
  • The Guilds lean on this aspect further, being a group effort where the rewards gained by taking on the weekly boss and completing guild quests requires numerous people helping, in turn giving all members Supply Vouchers they can collect for every collective milestone reached.
• Socketed Equipment: Verves, which are cards that can be slotted into every Doll, up to three each, and give the Doll raised stats and new passive effects. Any of them can be upgraded by levelling them up using Wisps and Coins, and get limit breaks that raise a card's passive effect by fusing copies of the same card. Their rarity is denoted by color, starting from lowest to highest: green -> blue -> purple -> gold.
• Starter Mon: Virgina, followed by Asuna and Freesia, then Lin Nankung from the gacha, and finally Lilyiro, whose character shards can be gained by completing missions given to players starting out. You can also get Benten Kaminori by buying a starter pack using real-world money.
• Stock Video Game Puzzle: Aside from the main dungeons containing a few of them, the Illusory Limbo, the main way of obtaining emotion keys for the Dolls' Pasts, is a game mode that contains 3-4 map puzzles that players have to go through while managing their stock of Lanterns to gain more rewards at the end of the dungeon. Lanterns are usually consumed by walking every 3 tiles with the "Darkness" condition, or by various interactions with the map. Puzzles can range from multiple pressure plate switches to navigating a spike-filled room as safely and efficiently as possible.
• Stripperific: Quite a few of the Dolls expose quite a bit of skin, with special mentions going to the vampire Minerdwen and the demon princess Satya.
• Super-Deformed: All Dolls are represented by chibi forms in exploration gameplay and your home. Special mention goes to Qu Ling, whose chibi form replaces her usual sprite after a shrinking spell gone wrong in one Date.
• Through Her Stomach: Besides using gifts to raise Doll bond levels, you can also give foods you cooked in the Base's kitchen that yield significantly more affection than gifts do. They take time to cook depending on how much you want in one sitting and use quite a lot of ingredients, so make sure to stock up from the store and your Farm.
• Unexpected Gameplay Change:
  • The normal dungeon crawling style of the base game (set up squads then take on dungeons, no extra embellishments) gets changed into a more traditional RPG-styled fare (leveling up, buying equipment, cooking for food buffs, etc.) when dealing with special character-specific events, called "RPG Dungeons/RPG Events". Only applies to the event story mode though; the Boss Challenge mode uses the normal style.
  • The Dream Quest event series features no combat, just story cutscenes and event currencies you gain by playing a game of Minesweeper adapted in a hexagonal format.
  • Playtime’s Over introduces the use of two squads on the field (no squad must have the same Doll), where the player controls one at a time to solve puzzles that make use of this mechanic.
  • Newer Dolls such as Mist, Miko, and Miyo’s Past story chapters are presented in an adventure game style, where you actively control the girl and advance the scene instead of watch.
• Valentine's Day Episode: The game had two events in 2023: Romance Melody, a seven-day login reward event, and Sweet Invitation, which gave Evokers a chance of getting a blue-tier Doll present, a rose^note whenever a crop is harvested, a part-time job is completed, and opening ally chests, as well as the Dolls giving a unique line for this occasion. For the 2024 Valentine's Day however, a special side story is added that shows the Dolls celebrating with the Evoker, popping up in his room that day having prepared a surprise party, all while things get chaotic as ever as everyone tries to profess their love for their Evoker.
• Victory Quote: After emerging victorious in a battle, a random Doll in your squad will have something to say about it.
• Video Game Tutorial: The 0-numbered stages of Graveland act as this right after the prologue, easing you into basic instance exploration and battle mechanics.
• Weird Moon: As pointed out in Benten's third Present story, the moon that comes out at night is a round object surrounded by a halo with a mark inscribed by Shera on it.
• Yellow Lightning, Blue Lightning: The Lightning element is characterized with yellow colors and skill animations matching it. Some animations however color the sparks blue, special mention going to Dreizehn, all of whose lightning abilities are primarily blue.

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