After the dreadful Kantai Collection anime of the last season, I’ve been wanting to try out this free to play Japanese web browser game, because its gameplay is constantly being compared to the likes of Fire Emblem by fans. However, after 40+ hours of gameplay I can say that while it is nowhere NEAR good enough to be even compared to other free to play tactical rpgs, much less Fire Emblem, I want to praise the things it does well first, because it is definitely popular for a reason.
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The game basically breaks down into a game of unit and resource management with your fleet, aka “ship girls” who have armaments identical to their real ww2 ship counterparts. As the game progresses you can choose to modernize them, and there is a somewhat extensive level of ship customization. This part I like, because it’s definitely a challenge determining which fleets you want to keep for later upgrades, while doing quests to unlock new ships and obtaining essential materials in order to do the various tasks. This forced me to think long term about my fleet because the enemies do get progressively more varied as you level up. Because of this, I found myself in situations where I wished I hadn’t scrapped an older ship because an upgrade would have been more efficient than building a newer ship.
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The voice acting and art assets are amazing, beautiful at times, and I can tell that the art department really cared about these characters when designing them. All of the characters have top notch details (such as Yamato’s decorations that are all historically accurate). But if Kadokawa Games thinks that high art production and a lazy game mechanic (more on this later) is going to cut it, it’s not.
First of all, I can’t stress how rage inducing it is to even try to start the game. Because the game’s servers at DMM Publishers are incapable of holding large numbers of people at once, they 1)don’t allow people outside of Japan to play the game and 2)In order for new players to join the game, they must take part in a lottery where the studio chooses a handful of people who can join their game. So in order for me to play, I need a VPN/ Proxy to connect to the game through a Japanese IP and enter the lottery. I was fortunate enough to register with DMM on my third lottery attempt, but I’ve heard of some fans who weren’t able to play until several draws, which is just ridiculous. This game has been out for years now and it is absolutely inexcusable that they don’t switch to a better server system. If it’s about money, charge people for some expansions or hell, even make some ships only attainable by purchase–this game NEEDS dedicated servers and the studio/publishers are clearly not seeing the value in opening up this game.
However, despite my initial excitement to finally get to play the game after that hassle, what I got was highly disappointing and I haven’t yet seen any review that was honest enough about the game’s flaws to speak about it. First of all, what immediately jumped out at me was the soundtrack–there is none. There’s a generic 10-15 second loop playing at the naval base that changes as the game progresses, but with a game that requires you to sit and grind for hours on end, I quickly played my own music over it, because holy crap it got annoying real fast. But on the other hand, it’s eerily silent at times much to my confusion. I know that it’s a free to play game so it wouldn’t have the budget of, say Civilization V or even another free to play game like League of Legends, but since its conception, this game has gotten tons of additional income sources besides the in-game purchases. Where the profits from the anime, manga spin offs, figures, and micro transactions are going, no one knows, but it’s certainly not here, in improving the core gameplay experience unfortunately.
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Now let’s delve into the meat of the game, the unit management and combat system. Unfortunately, they’re both done poorly here as well. In this game, you allocate resources to build the fleet girls and as the game progresses and you gain exp, you can build better ships like heavy cruisers, aircraft carriers, and even battleships like the Yamato. This is where patience is needed to play this game, because once you commission a ship, building a single ship can take up to eight hours of waiting (depends on the class of ship. A heavy battleship will take four times as long to build as a light aircraft carrier), which would be completely fine with me if only they DIDN’T COMPLETELY RANDOMIZE the process of getting the freaking ships after I’d waited several hours for them. I frequently got the same ship girl that I already had, forcing me to scrap the older one once they got badly damaged because I didn’t want to waste resources repairing a duplicate. Why the game doesn’t allow me to choose what ships I build according to my PLAY STYLE and SITUATIONAL NEEDS is completely beyond me, and it’s possibly the worst sin this game commits as a “strategy” rpg.
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No, I already have you. Please go away.
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Now, combat breaks down into choosing one of several battle formations in the beginning of a battle that caters to your playing style and needs–certain formations are good against certain things and weak to others. For example, the diamond formation is powerful against submarines while weak to torpedoes as opposed to the line offensive formation which is weak to submarines. This is a good concept, because certain formations allow you to avoid a lot of the enemy’s brunt force, yet sacrifice some power of your own. But I never felt the need to stray from the safe double line formation (basically one that gives the highest accuracy in shelling, but less damage than a line ahead form. Torpedoes have moderate accuracy and damage, and the fleet is moderately weak against submarines), which meant that combat was always the same old with changes to tactics only happening when I felt like it. Simply put, there never was a risk so great that would force my hand into a more extreme formation, besides bosses in the higher levels. In my opinion, allowing both sides to change their formations to outplay each other during sorties would make combat just slightly more interesting. If this were a ten hour long game, the combat here would be alright, as there are variations such as night battles to keep things a bit more interesting, but for a game that expects players to play for weeks, it just fails to stay fresh and interesting. However, I will say that the game improves in the higher levels as I’ve mentioned with the bosses, but it’s not significant enough to wash away the bad taste left in my mouth from the first handful of hours.
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At this point in the game, battles are somewhat exciting. But if you sat through hours of staring at a screen like this as I did, it’s no surprise.
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So finally, in a game that emphasized unit building and combat, the unit building relies overly on RNG, and the combat is too easy and repetitive. Yes, the main appeal in this game is the fleet girls meant solely for fan service, but that is no excuse for the fact that Kantai Collection is setting a terrible standard for free to play games in Japan by using the idea that a half-assed game is okay as long as you have amazing art and fan service. Through the stupid server practices all the way to the mind numbingly dull combat, I have to give Kantai Collection, a 45/100, a below average game, that no real fan of strategy games should play unless they can’t spare seven dollars for Battlestations Pacific on the PC.
But if you can steam through a weak game mechanic and utter lack of story (the enemy fleet are generic and have zero intrigue) just for the fan service, go right ahead, as seemingly thousands of people are doing. Yes, it is a free to play browser game so while my review may seem unfairly harsh, it is only logical to point out flaws where they exist and call them out as elements that need balance in the overall scheme of things. In the end, this just isn’t the browser game for me personally nor is it something I can recommend.
| Storytelling: | 0/10 – There is none here |
| Gameplay: | 6/10 – Simple and intuitive, but tiresome for a 20+ hour long game. |
| User Interface: | 7/10 – I’m sure if I understood Japanese and didn’t need a wiki page it’d be excellent |
| Production values: | 5/10 – Great art, music I can only describe as torture. Music should be where it matters most in a game like this. |
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From what I understand, while KanColle is popular, it isn’t profitable on it’s own, apparently because it has too many players who don’t pay to progress. It may be making money licensing it’s products out for character goods and the like cos I see Kancolle stuff everywhere in Japan. Even little snacks and toys in out of the way little shops. Given that, it makes sense to me that it would limit the losses it’s making to it’s game business and concentrate on licensing fees. AFAIK, Kancolle is kind of a side business mini-game for DMM that turned out to be unexpectedly popular.
About blocking foreign players, besides the issue of overloaded servers, there’s also the thing about these ships real-life history in WW2. Notice that these girls are only in the Japanese and German navies? So who are the Abyssals? Hint: I’m not expecting the Prince of Wales, Repulse or Missouri to show up as KanColle girls anytime soon. Maybe KanColle might be better off without a plot.
It does have a revenue making system, very typical of “free-to-play”. All those irritatingly long hours and random gambling can be mitigated with a lot of money spent in shops for time-saver pots. Remember that bucket in the anime that instantly repaired Akagi in the “repair docks?”. Spend to add new docks, spend to upgrade, spend to repair, spend to regain morale, spend for crafting and maintenance items, etc. etc. Lots of of ways to spend to avoid these “inconveniences”. Crafting items can be grind. You can take long breaks to recover damage and/or morale over time. You can risk failing missions with a low morale fleet. Etc.
Also, I’m honestly surprised you scrapped your damaged ship that had gained experience in favor of a brand new duplicate ship still stuck at level 1. The so-called repetitive easy-to-play stages are where you painfully grind your ships up to max level so they can just barely scrape by the end bosses if you’re lucky or spend on repair or emergency recovery pots. And those duplicate ships are sometimes needed to remodel an existing ship. Also, having multiple fleets let you continue playing with another fleet while one fleet rests/repairs. You know about the morale system right?
There’s a Vita version of KanColle coming out for around 6000 yen? I’m wondering if it can be played offline but I’m kinda worried that it will still have a typical F2P game shop items that you have to buy to progress. So this game might be a lot more expensive than the cover price may suggest.
That reason for not allowing foreigners to play is ridiculous.
I am pretty sure that we gamers don’t really care about whose wrong in WW2.
They are in the past. Only foolish people unable to move on from past.
Plus, it’s something that happened 70 years ago, none of us are that old.
I’m just speculating there. Don’t take it as their official reason. It makes sense to block foreigners if there’s not enough servers for the locals, who are more likely to spend.
I am pretty sure that we gamers don’t really care about whose wrong in WW2.
Depends on how you were affected by it. Some were lucky and it all happened to strangers. Others have family who lived through it and somehow survived and passed their experiences on to their children. I live in formerly japanese occupied territory. The thought of a world where the Imperial Japanese won at Midway is pretty scary to me. I’d like to think Japan now is very different from what it was like during WW2. That said, some things are just too big to just forget. For me at least, it’s not about blame and apologies. It’s about remembering a disaster that happened, how it happened and how it can be prevented from ever happening again. Think of the 2011 reactor meltdowns. How about making the electrical systems on nuclear reactors waterproof somehow so tsunamis or other floods can’t shut them down and cause a meltdown. Not going to happen if they forget how those electrical systems failed in the first place. Or even that the tsunami happened at all. Have the Germans today forgotten about Nazis? I think not. I wonder what Europe, heck, the whole world would be like if the Nazis had won.
[i]When I mentioned plot I was speaking more closely along the lines of building at least some intrigue around the enemies, because a game where your enemies are uninteresting means you lose a lot of the motivation for playing in the first place,at least for me.[/i]
I think their main interest would be their character design and how to beat them. Check out some kancolle youtubes of event boss battles to see what I mean. They can be exciting. Also, the possibility of getting a super ship as a reward.
but the fact that it ultimately merges into a punishing RNG system kills it for me.
That’s your typical F2P casino mechanic. Recovery pots, crafting equipment/licenses and some form of gambling, making you blow loads of money trying to get the ship you want. There are people out there who can blow hundreds of bucks a month doing this. They are what keeps the game, and most real life casinos alive – the whales. On the other hand, having it still being popular means in spite of the casino mechanic, free players might still have fun in this game. And well, the simple animated battle mechanics, along with having a fleet of cute girls that you can poke around with and even marry might be fun to some.
Btw, those screenshots you posted, are they yours?? Did you manage to get a Yamato in 48 hours?? How much did you spend? And that last shot has an enemy Kongou from Arpeggio. I thought she only showed up for a limited time event in 2013.
If you’re looking for a social game with gameplay, some plot and you have an IOS or Android device, try Terra Battle. By the original Cid of Final Fantasy, Hironobu Sakaguchi. It’s like a mini-digital novel with some unique shogi-like gameplay. Just play for fun and see if the mechanic works for you before you start blowing money into it. There is unfortunately a power limit that limits how many missions you can play before having to wait for power to recharge. There’s also a gambling element in it where you need to draw characters for your army. You won’t be able to clear the last few chapters without a strong deck of the best quality characters and the toughest event bosses can cream even the best quality characters if you don’t know what you’re doing. Played it and cleared the story on 5800 yen worth of power along with free power gifts from daily logins but it took months. And it was a frustrating journey. There are people who have done it for free with a lot more patience and luck.
Hm..what’s a good hc strategy game? I can’t remember the last complex strategy game I played. I know Koei games by reputation but I haven’t played in years. Romance of the 3 Kingdoms series. Dynasty Warrior-type games don’t count, right? Starcraft? Civ? I’m pretty sure Sid Meier’s Starship doesn’t count. It looks to be a smartphone mini-game to accompany Beyond Earth. Disgaea?
Shogun 2 sounds very interesting. Yeah, no comparison between Kantai and something like this. Totally different levels.
please review the new final fantasy 15 game later! Also if you have a 3ds professor layton vs phoenix wright
Please do more game reviews like this! For next time though, I hate decimal ratings because it’s too calculated in a review, which is something that makes scores based on personal opinion instead of following a list of score sheets. So just scoring out of ten for a game should be good enough.
Btw, I’d suggest when you review visual novels in the future, you do so with series which haven’t been adapted into an anime. Because they’re basically the same thing.
A suggestion but please please please review some of the Katawa Shojo games. I played all of them these past weeks and they were so so good.
Bloodborne…hm…could it be a bit too random for this site? It’s a good game but pretty far off the anime otaku scene. Unless there’s a Bloodborne anime adaptation out there I’ve not heard of.
I may be more suited to Visual novel reviews. If I remember correctly you were not very gone on them K-off.
Though to review them well I would need to play though them again. Which could take some time. Hmm…maybe I could use my old visual novel reviews as a base.
Persona games could make for some neat reviews.
Comparing to Fire Emblem? Haha i think not!
Haha this is all the wiki pages have on the Abyssal fleet. http://villains.wikia.com/wiki/Abyssal_Fleet
The anime also didn’t do anything to develop them either. The show was basically supposed to be an attempt to get fans of the game an even stronger attraction to characters in the game (or as they would call them “waifus”). Which even fans of the game didn’t appreciate.
Tbh, kancolle is only fun in the start up to the point that it will be only fun when they release a new ship aka event periods, unless you ended up spending much for the game that you have no choice but to keep on playing.
I’ve been playing for roughly a year and will quitting later on, I’m tired of this game’s P2W ideology, alongside with heavy RNG that you’d curse this game your whole life
You’ll be somewhat forced to spend for this game since you only start off with 100 slots alongside with 2 repair docks, for the longer runs, you’ll be needing a wider set of spaces for other things.
Really enjoying because of the moes and history-based game but I tell you to prepare for the heaviest RNG you’ll experience in your life.
All motion pictures are listed as free of charge and uncut.
I watched a lot of complete length movies on-line.