Godzilla Battle Lines Review - Godzilla Gatcha
Written by Rei Caldombra 3/19/2024 Video version: https://youtu.be/cwC60_0osnw
Nearly dead lone survivor Kamacrus secures the win while facing down 3 Godzillas.
Here’s a review of Godzilla Battle Lines, the official Godzilla Gatcha game. I’ll keep my history with Godzilla short; I have been a Godzilla fan since I was a kid, with one of my fondest childhood memories being going to Blockbuster with my family to rent Godzilla DVDs. I love this franchise. I’ve been playing the game for a few months now and wanted to give my thoughts on it. If you’re curious about where I’m at as a free to play currently- I am Rank 7, amassed 69/87 of the monsters currently in the game and the highest arena rank I have gotten on the ladder is 40. I do not follow the meta or do any online research for gameplay, my conclusions are just based off my own experience with the game.
One of my favorite aspects of the game is that there is a lot of background info in the game for each monster. Each monster has footage from the source material and gives a description. This is just awesome; the game basically works as a Pokédex for Godzilla monsters. If you are a longtime fan of Godzilla like me, then you will really enjoy this. My main motivation for playing is collecting everything rather than laddering, which I will get to later.
One strong positive is that the game constantly throws pulls at you constantly and even gives 4-star units for free pretty often. Outside of that event currency gives you many opportunities to get specific 4 stars you want, such as through the fragments you can redeem for units. If you are primarily just interested in collecting the roster like me, then the game makes that far more doable than other gatcha games. This game has been out for 3 years and after about 4 months I already have 75% of the roster. The real reason why they give you so many pulls though is because the way you level units is based entirely on getting duplicates. There’s no equipment, no experience levels, and no additional skills from dupes. You level up from dupes and that increases your stats. There are the star points as well, but those boosts are pretty minor and also predicated on how many dupes you have. If you like games where you can customize your units to any degree, this game does not provide that. Units are very static, and improvement just comes from pulling. At times this can feel boring, but it also makes it very easy to play. If you want very simple gameplay, this is a positive. If not, it’s a negative. But while it does throw tons of pulls at you, like most gatchas the rates are very low. You will get tons of non 4 star guarantee pulls but most of them will just get you the same units you already have a ton of and likely don’t have enough G-tokens to level up. Be smart with your G-tokens. I have gotten a 4 star from a non-guaranteed probably 4 times now, after hundreds of pulls. It does happen, but I wouldn’t get your hopes up and recommend saving your premium currency G-stones for guaranteed maps. The normal pull rate for gold maps is 3%, and all the other maps get lower. There is also no pity system.
The normal expedition map has a .01% chance for a 4 star. It was even one I wanted and didn’t have. Gotta brag about that.
Whether I would recommend this game to someone who plans to be f2p depends on your motivation. If you primarily want to collect, then you will be fine as getting just 1 version of 4 stars really is not that bad considering how many free ones they give you, which can include the non-general pool ones. If you seriously want to ladder then being free to play absolutely sucks once you get to higher ranks.
Now onto the general ranked gameplay which is what you will spend most of your time doing, as it’s the main way you get rewards outside of the side game modes that run at certain times like most gatcha games do. In general, I would say it’s pretty fun but has glaring issues that have only gotten worse as I’ve played more. I’ve had some awesome close matches. Both of us low heath, battling down the wire. This is the most fun I’ve had in ranked, whether I win or lose doesn’t even matter. This is the gameplay at its best. The problem is that doesn’t happen a lot of the time, and the higher you ladder the less that happens for a free to play player. This game is pay to win, plain and simple. I have little experience with pvp gatcha games so I don’t know how out of the norm Battle Line’s level of p2w is but for me it is very apparent and makes rank matches not fun to play. There are some matches where it is extremely obvious that their units are far higher level than mine. One example I’ve had a lot is where both of us are using the Minus One Godzilla that nukes in the water on spawn. A higher level one is so clear when mine coming down just does a decent amount of damage to everything and theirs coming out kills everything around it. When the newest Orga first came out I remember multiple moments where we both had fresh Orgas fighting each other one on one. Mine does 1/4 of their health, theirs does 1/2 of mine. It is just a blatant advantage and when it’s bad just makes the game feel unfair. It’s not like level difference cannot be overcome at all through good teams, but it is such a daunting uphill battle that just is not fun most of the time. The difference between units can feel like night and day. Go ahead and say “git gud lol” if you want. I won’t claim to be great at the game, but when levels can more than double your stats it is objectively true that it is a massive advantage to spend more money. It also makes it difficult to feel like you have a good grasp of the game. Every time I think I find a unit that I can consider tanking or powerful, I get a match where it dies instantly or does pathetic damage. It’s just frustrating. Getting these types of matches where it feels like no matter how good I play I will lose is so demotivating. I have had lots of matches where it felt fair, and also ones where I completely destroyed them. I do think the units feel decently balanced, where you can try different team comps and actually have some success. An especially great aspect is that the lower rank and lower cost units do actually have a lot of value. Some favorites of mine are the trio of MBAW-93, Minilla 1967, and the trio of Kamacurus. You really should have a variety of cost units so you can adapt to different matches. You don’t just spam high cost premium characters to win… most of the time. This is kind of broken by one of the most recent units, Thousand Year King Ghidora. This thing is too strong. This thing should be 10 cost for how good it is, Godzilla Earth has nothing on it. I finally got it just recently and before then it was so daunting to win against people who had it. Whether the opponent is using this thing or not singlehandedly puts you on the back foot all game if you aren’t using it. Now as I am trying to get the achievements to use it as a leader it's right back to feeling ridiculously difficult, because that means I can’t properly use this thing as a field unit. It’s just not balanced well and feels overcentralizing.
They do have a matchmaking mode that puts everyone’s units at the same level. This is a good mode to have and it’s better that it’s there rather than not at all. But this is in free mode rather than in rank battle, which is the mode you need to play in order to complete missions and other objectives. So while you can do it for your own enjoyment, you aren’t rewarded for it. If you stop doing ranked, you will be giving up way too many rewards. At least there are other game modes that do have pretty good rewards and can be fun. All-star battle is a very good side mode fundamentally. It lets you use pretty much the entire roster, but with it being random who you can use each match. So you have a chance to use characters you don’t have and get to use units you normally wouldn’t. This is great for gameplay variety. But once you get far in the difficulty gets absurdly hard. The game uses your unit level for the ones you have and any you don’t are base level, which means this mode also suffers from the reliance on dupes. In my experience when you get to the 60s it becomes absurdly difficult, where they’re constantly spamming units way faster than you can defend against. It stops being fun because I see no way through these later levels without having most units in the game extremely high level and having perfect luck with what units show up when. It just becomes very frustrating and end up redoing the old levels instead. The other game mode, the egg hatching one, is fine. I don’t have a lot to say about it, it can get you a 4 star if you get lucky and don’t miss out on playing. And it does encourage you to use different units as it puts some restrictions on team building. So that is also some more varied gameplay which is good for things not getting too repetitive through ranked.
If you like missions and achievements this is the game for you. There are thousands of missions and achievements- every character has achievements for getting kills, being used in a team, being used as a leader, etc. If you’re one of those people who just loves the joy of seeing a goal get checked off this game gives you plenty to do. And these missions and achievements give you additional incentive to use a variety of units and leaders. The rewards for the special missions in particular can be pretty rewarding, and as long as the units are balanced well enough, I think rewarding players from diversifying is great.
The game does push ads a lot while also being highly monetized. It's the only gatcha game i’ve played that pushes ads this hard. It really wants you to watch ads and play other companies’ games. You can get a free pull every day by watching an ad. One of the daily missions that i’ve gotten is to watch 4 ads. As i'm writing this I have TWO of my 5 daily missions be to watch ads. Not even kidding. While all traditional gatcha games are highly monetized, with premium currencies, packs etc., this one does all of that while also pushing ads at you. I could see people getting annoyed over it. At this point I’m mostly skipping the free daily normal map because I don’t want to have more ads shoved in my face. The expedition system is also a minor annoyance that wants you to spend more money to not get annoyed. Normally it’s not a big deal since I’m not doing tons of matches every day and frequently maxing out the limit. But limited expeditions demotivate me from playing lots of matches when I am really getting into it because the extra ones that get converted give less than they would. While I understand monetization, this game is already highly monetized, and this just makes me want to play their game less when I do actually feel like playing a lot.
To conclude, I do plan to continue playing the game despite my problems. I want to continue collecting all the monsters from Godzilla’s long history, and the game does make doing that generally fun and not feel impossible without dedicating my entire life and savings to it. While it is very monetized, being free to play doesn’t feel too bad and things like watching ads can be ignored. When the gameplay feels balanced, it is genuinely very fun. I’ll just step away from ranked and all-star when it gets frustrating and say whatever to the lost rewards, I’m not a person who needs to complete everything. If you aren’t seriously trying to rank and just pursuing the many missions, the pvp aspect of the game is not that bad. There’s plenty of other things to do. Thanks for reading!
My Patreon: patreon.com/ReiCaldombra
