August 1, 2022

Artery Gear Fusion Review 2022: Is it the best RPG?

Artery Gear Fusion is a turn based RPG on a mix of anime theme and kantai(mecha and girls together). Form a team of 4 units to battle against the enemy known as the puppets. The game is said to be as good as Epic Seven, let’s check out in depth if the game is as good as it’s reputation.

What is the Story of Artery Gear Fusion?

The Puppet War is about to break out, and the human world hangs by a thread, but the two remaining forces, “Frontier” and “Autoluna”, that don’t trust each other and cannot reach a comprehensive strategic cooperation… The doomsday, people’s hearts and war, the truth of the world will slowly emerge.
You will transform into a joint fleet formed by the two forces, the commander of “Union”, and lead the mecha girl squad known as “Artery Gear” to fight against the unknown creature “Puppet”.

How is the Game play of Artery Gear Fusion?

Artery Gear Fusion starts with a short intro where the main character “Nio” is preparing to land on earth to fight the enemy. This is the tutorial where you will learn about using your skill in combat. After a mix of conversation and combat, you will encounter a boss. Note that they will borrow you some of the best units during this fight. Once you beat the boss, the game will continue with some conversation again, then will point you to continue your mini tutorials on stage 1-1.

The game play is simple, form a team of 4 units, select a stage, then move from point A to point B and clear all the waves using your skills. Of course you will have multiple mechanics to more depth and make it more interesting but the general idea is like that in all RPG. Most of the time will be managing our gears and units or mostly grinding stages for resources. This is a turn based RPG where speed is king but some unit (Alice)can boost the charge bar of other units in order to get a turn before the enemy.

Artery Gear

The units in this game are name AG, those cute mecha girl who you will need to level up and equipped. You will have 5 different class with 3 different element. The class are

Striker – Damage dealer specialist
Balance – Bruiser unit
Tank – Meat shield
Tactics – Units that mostly buffs
Healer – Units that heals

There’s a 6 one but they are not for combat, these units give you experience boost. You can also awaken a unit by obtaining duplicate of that unit up to 6 times. Let’s not forget you can upgrade technology of a unit on each 10 level, up to 6 times. The game also uses a pyramid system to upgrade your units up to 6 star. Sacrifice low star unit in order to upgrade them to the next star.

3 star
4 star – 3 Star + 3 Star + 3 Star
5 star – 4 Star + 4 Star + 4 Star + 4 Star
6 star – 5 Star + 5 Star + 5 Star +5 Star + 5 Star

Luckily this game does give you fodders and units that are already max level to make the grinding less gruesome. You can always buy those units in the shop or simply grind some stage to obtain them. They are rather easy to obtain but energy wise, it’s better you wait for events where you will need to grind currency to exchange, then you can get those units at the same time. Get two bird with one stone.The game does have an elemental weakness and strength system. The basic Molten beats Crystal, Crystal beats Thunder and Thunder beats Molten. No light or dark unit which i like very much.

Formation

Once you have obtain enough units you will select 4 of them to fight. Forming a balance team is not too important early on but later when you will fight boss, you will need a proper team formation. a healer, a tank and a dps, the 4th unit can be anything. Position 1 and 2 are normally position in the front and the 3 and 4 are the back line. The first two position will receive most of the attack but that does not mean your back line won’t get attacked.

Equipment

Gear is probably more important than your AG later on, those are your equipment which you will need to tackle harder contents. They have different rarity such as Green, Blue, Purple and Gold. Each rarity adds a line of sub stats to the gear. Meaning a green gear will have 1 line of sub stats and Gold will have 4 line of sub stats. But that’s not all, the sub stats also have the same rarity system, so getting gold sub stats is consider the best gear in the game.

Don’t forget that all sub stats have a range from minimum to maximum value which make the gear system a really complex. So before building a unit, you will need to see what stats the unit need the most. Good news is that you have people that already created a spreadsheet that can calculate those for you. So you will just need to farm the gear and evaluate if it’s a good or bad gear. Later, you can disassemble those gear for gold and a rare material which can be used to cast later on.

What Graphic does Artery Gear Fusion use?

Artery Gear Fusion uses a 2D animated art to represent the units and a static image as background. The illustration are top notch with high amount of details and you get to see the animated version if you use them as background. Unfortunately this is the only way you can see them animated as you will have no other way to see them move, but there’s nothing big your missing as tapping the unit will only change her face expression.

In combat the game, the graphic is a linear 2D with miniature version of your units including the enemy. The question is why change the art style to this? Anyway, the interface looks neat, the text conversation color are good and font are at the right side. As for people who are here for the fan service, you will be served. Skins are really cool but is only available for some units right now.

How is the Controls of Artery Gear Fusion?

Despite a rather simple look, the game does have a good layer of strategy which you have to control. Before battle you will need to set your units, gear, support units and position them correctly. In battle you will need to choose between 3 skills depending on the unit. Note that the auto play will mess the skill combination of your units most of the time if not set properly. For example use the dps ultimate before applying def reduction debuff on the enemy. But don’t worry you can set up the AI for auto in this game.

The AI has 2 drop down for each skill, those 2 are the condition that need to be fulfill. For example if you want your healer to heal after the hp is below 25% and never use the skill as priority if the condition is not met. It may sound difficult at the start but you should grasp the concept easily. During combat you can call a support unit to buff or deal damage to the enemy when the energy bar is fill. The energy bar fills up every time you take an action so be sure to know how to use it efficiently.

Sound & Music

Artery Gear Fusion has one of the best rhythmic music i’ve heard for a mobile game. The game sound effects are also good, clashing of steel or firing a laser beam, etc. All units have it’s own voice acting and does have multiple line. You do unlock more line when you level up your affection with the unit. However the game has no voice acting for any conversation in the story which is a bummer.

What is the Game Length of Artery Gear Fusion?

The daily quests takes around 10 min to complete. But in order to progress in the game, you will have to do some grinding depending on what you need. Luckily they have a good QOL(Quality of Life) which let you grind 30 times a stage if you have the energy and if you already cleared the stage. Meaning you can farm gear or other resources without having to stay and watch all 30 runs. Campaign and Events are relatively short, the story between each combat extends it.

Is Artery Gear Fusion Free to play?

Yes, Artery Gear Fusion is very F2P friendly. You will receive sufficient amount of resources and freebies to be able to complete everything in the game. You even get enough gems to do at least 2 or 3 pull for every banner which is very nice for F2P. However you should understand as a F2P that you can’t obtain all the girls and that you will reach some bottleneck of gold and energy at some point.

Is Artery Gear Fusion Pay to win?

No, Artery Gear Fusion is not P2W, Even that it does have potential of been one. As a spender you will have some advantage compare to a F2P. You will have much more resources to summon, do more runs for gear and obtain more gold. The only place where you will outshine a F2P is PVP and World Boss which is quite normal for every mobile game.

No ads beside some pop up of the game time limited packages.

Microtransaction

The cash shop has nearly everything similar to all other mobile games. The classic daily, weekly and monthly packages, Battle Pass, Skins, in game currency refill, gold refill and monthly subscription. The price of the packages varies between $0.99 to $99.99, as usual be careful and responsible when spending in a Gacha game.

What is the Life span of Artery Gear Fusion?

Artery Gear Fusion has already got the attention of many fans and players, although they had a rough start due to limited daily stamina refill issue but they manage to fix it with events and new contents in the game. They also posted a roadmap so that you can see what’s coming next and what to expect from the game. Another positive point, they do listen to the community and does not take years to answer you. That being said, i think they are the right direction and if they continue on this path. Artery Gear Fusion will be still with us for 2 or 3 years from now.

Benefits

As all RPG, managing your time, resources and units is one of the main aspect of the game. I think you will learn how to efficiently manage things to a level as a real manager. Don’t forget you will also benefit from trying different units and strategy in arena and in the game. While many of people may like the Fan service part, i would advice parents to keep this game away from your kids.

Community

Discord

Facebook

Twitter

Reddit

Suggestions

Increase the amount of gold from the gold dungeon
Add a dungeon to for gear upgrade materials
Raise the difficulty in Hard mode
Don’t put cat orb count as a units as they take a lot of space in your inventory
Develop the affection system as you can only do 2 things
Possibility to see the animated version of a unit in AG
More exclusive weapon for other unit
Longer and less grind events
Change the log in reward as some reward are insignificant after a certain level
Exchange Technology chips
Upgrade or exchange skill upgrade materials
Adjust the size of the background unit
Add multiple unit in the background

Updates

They update on every 2 weeks with new banner for summon, new events and bug fixes.You can check their road map if you want to know more about it in the community section. Any new content takes a bit more time.

Should you play Artery Gear Fusion?

It’s definitely a big YES. The game is gold, good graphics, good animation, good combat, good music and the list goes on. The game did have some issue with stamina early on but they manage to solve it. No stamina = No grind = No resources = No account progression. Another issue the game currently is still having, the events are too short and are too easy to complete. You can complete the whole game in 2 days and events within 2 hours which leave you nothing to do beside grinding to upgrade units. I really hope they can fix this issue as soon as possible.

I had a really great time playing Artery Gear Fusion, had a blast with building and trying different type of units to complete the target elimination. The campaign was relatively easy to beat, even the hard mode was not really that hard. The girls are lovable specially Corax(for me) in the background. Anyway Artery Gear Fusion hold a special place in my top list of good mobile game and sadly this game is not in par with the giant like E7, at least not yet. Thank you for reading till the end, i will see you next time.