On this day 7 years ago (27 September 2018), a little mobile game called Dragalia Lost launched. Which then got killed 3 years ago. But it kinda was an important game in my life, so I wanted to try and write something for it for its 7th anniversary. Hope you like it! :3

What was Dragalia Lost?

Dragalia Lost was a gacha RPG mobile game, made by Cygames (which nowadays are known for horse racing) and was published by Nintendo, which officially makes it a Nintendo IP, though it doesn't really feel like one to me (and it's probably also one of the more "obscure" ones).
In the game you had to beat levels and later defeat a boss (and the game obviously has a story that's more of the main point of it). The levels do look nice, but at some point they were boring, since you only defeat enemies, which mostly are all defeated one-hit, with nothing special happening most of the time, and also no risk (though there were some levels that took place inside a building, which were more interesting). What was more interesting were the small bosses at the end of every level, which sometimes were more difficult, but it was always like having too low gear that you had to upgrade to progress further (which I guess is something most gacha games have in common). There were higher bosses with more complex movements though (like in events or special places in the story).

How did I start playing it?

I only started paying it 11 months after launch (4 September 2019). See the fun thing was that the game never got published in Europe (or other non-English speaking countries outside Asia), only in the US and later UK and Australia. So officially I wasn't even allowed to play the game in the first place. This is also why I didn’t play it on launch day, since I never knew about the game in the first place, since they obviously never marketed it in Europe. Thankfully there were (and still are) third-party app stores where you could download it outside these regions, but it did kinda suck... Though now it'll obviously never get released in Europe...

I don’t really remember why I even started to play the game in the first place, or how I found it, or why it stuck with me for so long. I don’t know if it was the anime art style, or the music (I think I also wasn’t into Japanese music back then?) or because of the Nintendo label. I guess a large part of it was the music, since DAOKO’s songs are amazing (more on that later), and are probably the largest part of what I find nostalgic. And the art style and the characters are also great.

Story

The story was...a bit chaotic? I couldn't really remember how the story started, but thankfully Dragalia Lost had a comic/manga called "Notte's Super Rad Plot Synopsis", which summarised the chapters 1-10 of the main campaign, and was narrated by the fairy Notte. It was made for new players to quickly get started with the main campaign (at the end the main campaign had 26 chapters). It's also great to get a first look at the story (though it ends with a big cliffhanger). (The original source for the comic, which was on the official site, got taken offline, which is why this links to a re-upload)

But to quickly summarise, the 7th son of the king (Euden, the main character you play as, which is also called your username in-game), was tasked by the king to get a new shard to protect the kingdom, since the old one was wearing down. With him joined two characters, Notte and his younger sister.
On their way there, the younger sister got kidnapped, and later they realized that while they were away, the kingdom got captured by some evil being (who controlled the king). So their quest is to rescue the sister and also save the kingdom (and later save the world, no, the whole universe, because obviously). And Euden also makes a new kingdom.

Another element to the story is that people with royal blood can make pacts with dragons, and that's also one thing Euden does throughout the story. After he made a pact, he can also transform (shapeshift) into that dragon (which is also an important gameplay mechanic, kinda like a ultra move that has to be charged up first).

Characters

But what was more interesting were the characters! There were so many that I could talk so much about them.

Like there's the fairy Notte (who also narrated the synopsis comic), who's emotionally supporting the main team (but later becoming an important part), and I just love her and how she's sometimes silly and innocent:

In the boss fight in the Monster Hunter event she also shouts "You can do it! Yes you can! If you can't do it - we're all dead", which probably is my favourite line out of the game.

Or there's Sarise, a funny bunny who also sometimes teases her older brother. Or Cleo, who has a nice design and also a unique personality. Or Noelle, who loves to deliver mail, or Mitsuhide, who's a leader of the mouse clan and obviously is a mouse with a cute design. Or Ilia, an alchemist (and also goddess) who's a strong girl who I also love her design. Or Kuzunoha, a cute fox girl who's sometimes a bit...silly? (I guess you see a pattern here, they all have cool designs)

(There's this 3D model browser where you can see all the characters and how they looked in-game, which is also how I made that clip)

I could talk more about them, but I guess it doesn't interest much if you haven't played the game yourself.

Gacha & Grinding

Dragalia Lost was also well-known for its very friendly gacha system. In general the team was very generous, and often gave many things away (especially at its anniversaries), and most of the time I got the characters I wanted.
I still remember when back then Genshin Impact had its first anniversary, and they didn't get much stuff, while Dragalia Lost, which had its second anniversary at that time, got so much free stuff it made the Genshin Impact fans really jealous.

I also don't remember the game forcing you with daily quest like other gacha games. Sure it also had daily rewards, but they didn't feel that important to me? One issue I have with modern gacha games is that they're forcing you to play them daily, and if not you miss out on special rewards. While Dragalia Lost had special rewards for events (which you could complete any time during the event), it didn't have that special daily rewards (as far as I can remember).

And the grinding... yeah Dragalia Lost was kinda grindy. In that game, you had to mostly grind for better weapons, so that you can complete higher levels (the weapons also boosted the other stats), and while there were other ways to upgrade a character (like leveling up or a skill tree), weapons were the main grindy one. But unlike other games, you could just let the game run and it'd grind you the material for you. Which, now that I think about it, isn't that special from other games, but it didn't feel that awful there compared to other gacha games I played back then (or maybe it's just me).
But what I find weird is that normally I'm not a huge fan of grinding. I played Genshin Impact for a while, but the constant grinding there to unlock the story bothered me too much. But here, it was fine... Maybe because you can just let the game run and do something else at that time, which you can't really do with Genshin Impact. But I also played Arknights for a while, but also stopped playing it because at some point I couldn't continue with the story, since the enemies were too hard and I grinded and grinded and still couldn't beat them. Maybe Dragalia Lost is different here because they managed to make it more rewarding with not having to grind that often, though that's just my guess.

Also that whole RPG system wasn't really complicated for me, which I liked. Like sure there were some complexities (like with cards you could add that all have a special effect), but for the story, it was enough to just upgrade everything there is and to craft better weapons, and even with the weapons it was kinda simple, with that one weapon being the best for this character. So that was nice (since I don't like having to need a degree to understand RPG mechanics or with what to upgrade a character)

Music

Maybe the biggest thing most people remember Dragalia Lost was its music, which mostly all came from one artist: DAOKO, a J-Pop singer. Yes that's right, they took many songs for her and used it as music in the game, but they also made some original songs for the game as well. But this also made the game more iconic. Some good examples would be Owaranai Sekai de (In an Unending World), the title screen song, Bokurano Network, one of the homescreen themes (Cinderella Step being another theme), and BANG!, which was used for the gacha.

Later events also brought songs from other artists. One of these event songs that I really liked was "We Are The Lights", which played at the final stages of a boss fight in an event (the event where Ilia also gets introduced).

Final thoughts

This was the first time I wrote such a long post with over 2,000 words, and I don't know how good it is, but it was a game that did accompany me through my adolescent, even if it only existed for like 4 years, and even though I only played like 3 years of them (but I still caught the first anniversary, which was nice :>, the anniversaries there were always very nice).

It kinda makes sense why they killed the game. Back then Cygames already had a money printer that was called Uma Musume (which a few years later would also get very big in the west). Even though Dragalia Lost made quite a bit of money, it wasn't near to what Uma Musume brought in (even for being Japan-only at that time). And back then Nintendo was also slowly leaving the mobile market, and having more success with the Switch. So both companies didn't really had any interest to continue to work on the game. And maybe at the start they only planned to have the game around for 4 years.

Gacha games were kinda important to me back then, before it even went mainstream. Besides Dragalia Lost, I very much played Fire Emblem Heroes, Arknights, Azur Lane (for a while), Princess Connect Re:Dive (before it got shut down for no reason), and Animal Crossing Pocket Camp (I hope I didn't miss anything).
Nowadays I'm not playing Gacha games anymore, probably because I discovered other games, like indie games (okay sometimes I still play Project Sekai, but that also has gotten less), and also probably because I don't like being forced to play daily. Dragalia Lost already had daily rewards, but I guess they were fine by me? But every gacha game has them, in some it's even more "essential", which I guess was an issue for me.
Uma Musume being released globally and everyone getting crazy about it was also something I never expected. Back then, I and many others always wished for Uma Musume to be released globally, but nobody did it because "horse racing is too nieche", and that it only works in Japan and not in the west. But now everyone is crazy about it (or at least was when it released, it has kinda calmed down a bit now). So I was very happy when it got announced, and I even pre-registered for it. But I never opened the game... which sounds probably weird, but I guess it shows how I can't naturally play mobile games anymore (if that makes sense). (But I guess what's also true is anime getting more mainstream over that time, which probably is also a factor here)

Oh right, I forgot to mention that if you still wanted to play the game, there are private servers where you can play it. I haven't personally looked into them (I wanted to write more from memory, and I'm also kinda done with the game), but if you want to re-experience it, it's still possible! (Well at least until Nintendo shuts them down, which I guess could also never happen here, since they've already forgotten Dragalia Lost, like it never existed...)

Also, if you read through all of it, thank you very much~ :3 I hope you enjoyed it!