Kantai Collection, one of the most popular Japanese online browser games is now starting to become like any other game you once played—you were so obsessed with it before, now it’s slowly becoming a memory.
I used to remember the glorious hype behind the game. Completing the quests, the almost seasonal events, and the endless discussions of recipes and strategies. You go to a convention and whenever you see fellow teitokus (admirals), you immediately jump to the basic questions like “What is your level now?”, “Who’s your waifu?”, or “Have you finished the event?”
I remembered how satisfying it was to complete certain missions and quests in the game as well as getting your favorite ship girl while doing them. The endless nights that I had to endure during the event season just to complete it while I gather buckets and resources for the next stages. Kantai Collection definitely knew how to get us hooked. It had one simple formula: World War ships in a form of cute and beautiful anime girls, good art, and RNG (which of course I hate most of the time).
It’s now the year 2017. I got back into the game for a while and nothing appears new. As I noticed, there’s not even good events to get hyped about unlike before. It seems that Kantai Collection‘s development team is losing its touch. The game remains stagnant and not really going anywhere at this point. Regardless of its constant franchise promotions (like merchandise, the portable mobile application, anime adaptation, anime movie, and spin-off games) The game’s RNG still remains a troll and I was expecting it will be a little generous now just to lure in more people to play—I guess not.
A lot of former Kantai Collection admirals as I’ve noticed have already went into playing Azur Lane due to its nice art and different game mechanics which are a breath of fresh air for some who got so used to the DMM-style of browser games. The only difference with AL is that it requires you to play on your smartphone. Players that don’t have an advance phone model to play it, have the option of using android emulators like Bluestacks or Nox.
Although Kantai Collection‘s hype is slowly going on constant decline, I still see a lot of fan art popping out in places and some awesome franchise stuff related to the game are still available. Some are still playing it and continue to gather resources for the next big seasonal event to happen.
When a game or franchise may be at the top from the others, developers mustn’t forget to always constantly think of something new if they want their players to stay.
Regardless if a lot of mobile games are popping up lately and related items are selling like hotcakes, I will still do what I can to find the time to just log in to my account and at least say “Hi” to my favorite ship girl, Shoukaku.
The game still has a massive following, it’s just that a lot have moved on from it and went into something better.
