Zhiqing Wan
The gacha games that tend to pull me in are usually already associated with an established IP, like War of the Visions with Final Fantasy, or NieR Reincarnation with, well, NieR. There are exceptions, like Genshin Impact and the upcoming Honkai: Star Rail, but those games are pretty major exceptions as they’re the outliers that are very obviously head and shoulders above the rest of the competition. So when Dislyte came along, I was pleasantly surprised to see that I’d finally found an original IP gacha game that I could really invest my time into.
First impressions matter the most with mobile games, especially when they’re free-to-play. If something doesn’t grab you within the first 15 minutes, just uninstall the game and move on to the next one. Dislyte understands this at a very fundamental level, which is why the first thing you’ll notice about this game is its distinct comic book-like art style and flashy animations.
If nothing else, Dislyte scores top marks when it comes to presentation. The synth music is catchy as hell, the combat animations are smooth and fast, the urban city-style menus are so pretty to look at, and the character designs are remarkably diverse and varied. Truly, my favorite thing about this game is just how body positive the character designs are –not something you see in most of your gacha games. It feels like Lilith Games really took the time to make sure the roster was as diverse as possible, and that it was able to deliver as much representation as possible.
Even the summoning animations are top tier. Doing a 10x pull gives you an awesome-looking animation where all the characters fade in and out as a spotlight shines down on them, and they do a little dance or a pose to introduce themselves. It’s just so incredibly flavorful; these characters have a lot of personality to them, which makes it very exciting when you do pull a new character.
Speaking of the characters, I suppose I should talk a little bit about what Dislyte’s actually about. The game is billed as an urban mythological fantasy RPG, where all of the characters are based off of gods from various cultures and mythologies. You’ve got Sun Wukong, Nezha, Hades, Thor, Anubis, and Osiris, just to name a few.
They’re all depicted as hip, attractive young adults outside of battle, and just the trendy streetwear vibe of the game reminded me a lot of Splatoon. In fact, the best way I could describe this game’s aesthetic is that it feels like an awesome mesh of Splatoon and Hades. Attractive gods who party and listen to music and keep up with the latest fashion? Yup, sign me up.
Dislyte also shines in the combat department, where you’ll battle enemies in a turn-based affair. Every character comes with three abilities, and some of their more powerful skills are on turn cooldowns. With that in mind, it’s imperative that you think carefully about when you want to use those powerful skills, and when you want to save them for a crucial turn.
The way the turn order is determined is where things start to get interesting. Dislyte’s combat is heavily centered around speed, and basically, the faster a character is, the sooner they’ll get to take their turn. You can also manipulate the turn order by equipping relics on a character that help boost their speed, and use characters with skills that absorb AP (Action Points) from their foes to slow them down.
Combat quickly becomes a fun dance of boosting your own party’s speed as much as possible, while also slowing down your foes as much as you can to prevent them from even being able to take a turn. It becomes immensely satisfying when you finally find a team composition that lets you do just that, and most of the fun comes from building a team and leveling them up enough so that you don’t even have to lift a finger when you turn on auto-battle and let them do their thing.
There are plenty of things to grind for as well, including relics which you get from Ritual Miracle stages, and Waves, which are used to ascend your characters and are farmed from Sonic Miracles. There’s also a Tower mode that gets progressively difficult as you climb it, but the rewards are definitely well worth it, as you can get a powerful Legendary character for clearing floor 100.
Content-wise, Dislyte’s doing pretty alright so far, though it definitely needs some endgame content sooner rather than later. Right now, the relic farm is all there is. Endgame content mostly consists of farming for relics in hopes of getting the ultimate perfect relic with optimal substats for each character, and that’s not the kind of grind I find very interesting whatsoever.
As much as I’d love to keep singing Dislyte’s praises, however, it must be acknowledged that this game also has some serious flaws for a modern gacha game.
Let’s address the elephant in the room: the Legendary and Epic rates are pretty abysmal, and it’s only made worse by the Shimmer element. Every character in the game is associated with an element: Inferno, Wind, Flow, and Shimmer. The first three follow a rock paper scissors system where they’re strong against one element, but weak to another. Shimmer characters, on the other hand, don’t have any strengths or weaknesses. They deal and receive flat percentages of damage from all enemy types.
Dislyte’s rates are 9% for an Epic drop and 1% for a Legendary drop, and it’s even lower than that for the Legendary and Epic Shimmers. The game does have a fairly generous pity system, where you’re guaranteed to pull a Legendary every 120 pulls. Dislyte also differs from most other gacha games in that it’s actually possible to get Gold Record drops from farming regular stages, which let you do a single pull. That’s not something you see in a lot of gachas.
The drawback, however, is that Dislyte can feel incredibly stingy in virtually every other aspect of the game. The stamina system is extremely limiting, only allowing players to farm stages for about an hour each day, unless they want to spend some of their precious premium currency to refresh their stamina. This issue is only exacerbated by the fact that a lot of the late-game grinding stages cost massive amounts of stamina.
And then we have the event banner. At the time of writing, Dislyte’s first official event has gone live, and it introduces a new Legendary character, Ollie. As part of the event, Ollie’s drop rate has been boosted, so whereas you have a 1% chance of getting the regular pool Legendaries when you hit pity, Ollie has a 10% chance of dropping. That’s okay, but not exactly a great rate either.
And then you have the event banner pity system that just feels like a slap in the face for F2P players. The regular pity of 120 pulls still applies here, but your chances of getting Ollie will only start to increase once you’ve reached 350 pulls. After 350 pulls, Ollie’s drop rate whenever you pull a Legendary goes up by 10% at every 50 pulls. This means that in order to guarantee Ollie, you’ll have to hit over 900 pulls.
For reference, most modern gacha games allow you to grab the featured character after around 200 pulls. War of the Visions and NieR Reincarnation do this, and games like Alchemy Stars, Counter:Side, and Arknights even have slightly more generous pity systems than those two games. Granted, these games prioritize dupes, as they can really unlock your character’s potential, so I understand the decision to make it a bit harder to pull Legendaries in Dislyte. But even so, 900 pulls is pretty crazy.
Now to be clear, it’s extremely unlikely that you would have to do 900 pulls in order to get Ollie. For most people, chances are pretty good that you’ll luck out and get him way before then, but there’s always that chance that you could get massively unlucky even when Ollie has a 90% chance of dropping, and having to go all the way just feels bad. To put things into perspective, it costs about $100 for 40 pulls if you’re planning on dropping money to purchase Gold Records. You’re looking at potentially upwards of $2,000 just to get Ollie if you go all the way.
Full disclosure here: Lilith Games was kind enough to send some resources my way for this review, including 100 Gold Records, and 20,000 Nexus Crystals which translates to another 100 Gold Records for a total of 200 pulls. That’s not even a quarter of the way to pity, and blowing all those Records on this banner just seemed like a total waste.
I did end up doing those 200 pulls by the way, and I got three Legendaries: Donar and two copies of Sun Wukong. I should mention that pulling duplicate Legendaries in this game also feels pretty bad as dupes aren’t quite as important in Dislyte as they are in most other gacha games. Dupes can be fused together to give you some extra stat points, but that boost isn’t going to make much of a difference unless you’re in the tippy top PvP tiers where all your relics are perfectly optimized.
I’m someone who typically likes spending a little money on my gacha games, and I was seriously considering buying the monthly pass that gives you a few hundred Nexus Crystals for daily logins. After looking at the event banner, however, it’s clear that Lilith Games needs to do something about their rate-up characters and take a second look at the pity system. Until the rates become a little more F2P-friendly, I’m probably gonna stay F2P and keep that wallet closed.
Gacha players are more inclined to spend money on a game when they feel like they’re getting a lot of value out of their cash. As it stands, Dislyte’s rates and deals are just a bridge too far for most people. It’s such a shame because Dislyte’s potential is massive, and as someone who genuinely enjoys playing it, it would be crushing if the game ends up dying because of its unfriendly F2P decisions that eventually chase the majority of its player base away.
At the end of the day, I’d still recommend Dislyte to anyone looking for a truly unique gacha game with striking character designs and a cool aesthetic. The team-building aspect is on point, and the entire vibe of the game just oozes charm and style. Just keep your wallets closed until we see some tangible improvements in those pull rates.
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