Finding the best gacha games isn’t quite as easy as you might think. Since Genshin Impact exploded in popularity in 2020, the global market’s seen increasingly more games like it–action-RPGs with open worlds, turn-based strategy, and striking anime-style visuals.
Over the years, though, we’ve seen a wider variety of games find their niche, like Infinity Nikki with its extensive fashion focus or Limbus Company’s heavier emphasis on storytelling. It’s a lot to sift through, but we’ve done the work for you and compiled a list of the best gacha games worth your time right now.
Fire Emblem Heroes
- Developer: Intelligent Systems
- Release date: February 2, 2017
- Platform: Android, iOS
Okay, so Heroes’ story is nothing to write home about, but if you don’t mind the fluffy insubstantial nature of something like Fire Emblem Engage, then you can get through this just fine. The real appeal, aside from having so many characters from across the series’ history, is how Heroes manages to take Fire Emblem’s brilliant tactical strategy and shrink it to pocket-sized missions without losing much of the complexity. It’s like the Fire Emblem equivalent of taking a short break for a sudoku puzzle or two–not too taxing, not too fluffy. Just right.
Infinity Nikki
- Developer: Infold
- Release date: December 5, 2024
- Platform: PC, PS5, Android, iOS
Infinity Nikki is one of the most chilled out gacha games you can play now. There’s a story, sure, all about darkness encroaching on a land of happy people, and like previous Nikki games, it gets surprisingly heavy at times. But you’re free to dip in and out as you see fit or just ignore it entirely and explore the world. Unlike previous Nikki games, style competitions come second. The real main attraction is digging into the beautifully realized open world, a combination of Breath of the Wild’s exploration and Genshin Impact’s buffet of puzzles and minigames.
And you can do it all for free. Infinity Nikki might have a baffling number of currencies and more banner changes than most gacha games, but most of the items from those banners have little bearing on your time in Miraland. You can win most style contests–and all contests required to progress the story–with outfits found in the open world or crafted from patterns you obtain during quests, so as gacha games go, Infinity Nikki is pretty low-pressure. And if you come up against a style match you can’t do at some point, you can just… not do it. There’s no penalty for skipping a challenge, and there are plenty of free ways to obtain new or better outfits
Wuthering Waves
- Developer: Kuro Games
- Release date: May 23, 2024
- Platform: PC, PS5, Android, iOS
Wuthering Waves had a rough start, thanks to some long-winded writing and a story that went nowhere, despite taking itself very seriously. However, developer Kuro Games adapted quickly based on player feedback and set Wuthering Waves on a better path. It takes more ambitious swings with its blend of fantasy and science fiction, and the visual direction and environment design alone are enough to quell those “Genshin clone” criticisms from the game’s initial launch.
That said, it is sort of like Genshin Impact. Wuthering Waves is an action-RPG set in a large open world absolutely crammed with traversal challenges and secrets to sniff out. In between story beats, you’ll gather resources and fight bosses for materials you can upgrade your characters with, but the roster of characters is where Wuthering Waves does one better than Genshin. Its combat is more skill-based, sort of like a more complex version of Zenless Zone Zero. And that reliance on skill-based combat over specific character gimmicks makes Wuthering Waves more free-to-play friendly than some of its competitors as well. Older or 4-star characters might not have novel-length skill descriptions like some of the more recent characters do. Once you learn the ins and outs of their kits, though, you can clear even challenging endgame battles just as efficiently as if you were using a meta character.
Epic Seven
- Developer: Smilegate
- Release date: August 30, 2018
- Platform: Android, iOS
The first thing that stands out about Epic Seven is how Vanillaware-coded it is, from its art direction to the side-view team combat. Stick around for long, though, and you’ll see developer Smilegate is doing quite a lot more than just copying something popular. Epic Seven’s combat system is built around a system of elemental strengths and weaknesses, but within that system is an array of unit types to plan your strategy around. Thieves, healers, and tanks sit alongside less familiar archetypes, and you can mix and match as you see fit.
Epic Seven’s gacha system is slightly more forgiving than most as well. There might be a lot of banners, for example, but once you hit pity, you’re guaranteed to get that banner’s character instead of some other 5-star you don’t want.
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