Kancolle
by Aethyna
Dec 8, 2016 |
1
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5
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Genres:
RPG , MMOGraphics:
2DLabels:
Warships , Naval Battles , Party-Based , AnimePlatforms:
Publishers:
Go Games Based on manga of the same name, Kancolle is an MMORPG that offers plenty of watery locations for you to explore and conquer with your own fleets of powerful warships captained by cute anime girls. Do you have what it takes to take up the role of admiral in Kancolle and conquer the seven seas? Play Now Similar Games Played
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Summary
Based on manga of the same name, Kancolle is an MMORPG that offers plenty of watery locations for you to explore and conquer with your own fleets of warships captained by cute anime girls. Customize your fleets with the best ships, while ensuring that all your best ships are equipped with the best equipment you can offer. Don’t forget to keep your ships well-supplied and repaired so they could take on enemy ships without any crippling disadvantages. You could craft your own ships and items in this game too! Sounds like fun? Well, take up the role of admiral in Kancolle now and conquer the seven seas today!
Plotline
What if the warships in a fleet are liken to the different girl personalities? That’s the avenue of thought inspired by the popular Japanese manga, Kancolle, which has eventually led to the development and publishing of this MMORPG.
Unfortunately, unlike its manga counterpart, the game Kancolle doesn’t exactly offer a lot when it comes to the storyline. The game seems to assumed that for a player to be interested in playing Kancolle, he or she must have already read the manga and the player must have been a fan of the series.
Gameplay
Due to the rather unique premise of the game, Kancolle is very unlike any of the browser MMORPGs that you might have played before. For starters, you don’t get to choose a character nor a character class. Instead, you’re shown an epic 2D naval battle as an introduction to the game before being appointed admiral and given your very first “ship girl” to command.
One thing to note in this game is that Kancolle frequently refers to the individual ships that you command as “girls”. This is mainly because the ships you can own are all captained by anime girls. That being said, it’s still incredibly odd and perhaps even confusing at times, especially during situations when you are required to “choose a ‘girl’ to repair”.
Once you’ve gotten over the fact that ships in this game are liken to girls, you should have already completed the game’s tutorial and are dropped at your “naval base”, the nerve center for all ship-related operations. From the naval base, you could send your fleet to attack enemy ships or to gather resources via Sortie, organize your fleet of warships, resupply and repair your ships, as well as construct new items and ships at the Factory. There are also quests that you can complete for some really nice rewards, including more resources and sometimes, even a free ship.
Right, let’s take a look at the game’s Sortie first and subsequently its combat system. Through Sortie, you’ll gain access to the game’s campaign and its expedition, which will only be unlocked after level 5. In campaign, you’ll get to explore and conquer various locations around the map, including the anchorage, Pacific Ocean, Central Pacific Ocean and the Indian Ocean, while expeditions are mainly for resource runs.
Each location in the campaign offers several instances that you can get into. Every instance, on the other hand, has its own battle map with a not-so linear path from enemy ships to the boss at the end. Instead, there are a few alternate paths that kind of crisscrossed over each other and which path your fleet will take falls entirely into the hands (and the whims) of the game’s digital “dice rolls” masquerading as a wildly spinning compass.
This is good and all if not for the instance’s challenge requirements. Each instance will have their own instance requirements that need to be fulfilled before you can take on the boss. However, since the game’s a translated game, the instructions sound like some badly written code. Anyway, if you aren’t able to complete the challenge requirements, you won’t be able to reach the boss and well, this basically means that you’ll need to challenge the same instance again. As long as you’re not in favor with the God of Random Numbers, you might be required to repeat an instance multiple times before you can proceed to the next one.
Similar to the rather badly structured instances, the combat system in Kancolle leaves much to be desired as well. So, each battle will start off with a reconnaissance phase which will allow you to get the chance to strike first with an aerial attack if and only if you managed to locate the enemy ships before they found you. Most of the time, you’ll fail this phase though, so don’t get your hopes up too high.
After reconnaissance, you’ll get into the battle proper... that is to say you’ll get to view the battle play out without needing to do anything aside from maybe twiddling your thumbs as you wait. The turn-based combat system is completely automated and if you pay attention to the combat itself, you’ll notice a sort of random disarray when it comes to determining whose turn it is and which enemy your ship will attack. Couple that with statuses that pop up like “T-shape”, “Parallel sailing” and “Inward sailing” which means absolutely nothing to even a seasoned MMO gamer, you’ll get a hot mess. By the end of your first battle, you might actually be thankful that the battle was completely automated.
Anyway, aside from the reconnaissance phase, each battle can be separated into 2 phases – day battle and night battle. Day battle is what you’ll usually start with and during this time, you’ll be bombing the hell out of the enemy ships. However, if both sides managed to dodge or take minimal damage from these attacks (for the first 2 rounds or so), you can then choose to either pursue the enemy at night instead or simply to retreat.
Night battles are somewhat like the final KO round that you’ll get when both you and your opponent are tied. During this time, the firepower of all ships increases drastically while their armor is decreased by half. This allow you to make quick work of an enemy fleet if your fleet is truly superior than theirs.
It’s also interesting to note that you’ll be able to choose the fleet formation before you enter a battle. There are 5 different formations, namely line ahead, double line, diamond, echelon or line abreast that you can choose from. Different formations will offer different advantages and disadvantages, and well, certain formations will allow you to easily counter an enemy’s formation while sometimes, you may choose a formation that might just put your fleet at a distinct disadvantage instead.
Since you have no way to find out what formation the enemy fleet is using, it’s a bit of a gamble to pick a formation other than Double Line. It seems to be the only formation with all advantages and none of the disadvantages.
Now that we’ve got that covered, let’s move on to the fleet customization part of the game. You are allowed to own more than 1 fleet at a time and each fleet can be staffed with up to 6 different ships. New ships can be earned by completing instances, quests and by constructing them at the Factory.
Through the Organize interface, you could also access the Supply and Repair sections whereby you can quickly restock your fleet with fresh ammunition and fuel, while patching up any major holes on the hull. You won’t be able to resupply or repair while you’re in an instance so be sure to do all of this before entering an instance. There is also a fatigue indicator for your each of ships. If the indicator drops down to 0, you will no longer be able to deploy that ship in your fleet... at least until the fatigue level resets.
Besides your fleet, you will need to show some love to your individual ships too. There are many types of ships in this game, such as DD, Cruiser, BB, CV and others, and each of them comes in different qualities as indicated by their background colors (green for uncommon; blue for rare and purple for epic).
You can also train the skills of your ships within the fleet, though the skill level cannot exceed the level of the admiral (that’s you) and that each training will require some Fuel, Ammo, Steel and Bauxite (all the 4 resources available in the game). Personally, I would recommend training the Torpedoes skill – it’s very OP (overpowered).
You can customize your ships in Kancolle as well. Each ship can be assigned to carry certain weapons. How many weapons a ship can have depends on the equipment slots that it has. These items can also be upgraded using Enhancement chips and resources. Similar to ships, you will eventually be able to craft weapons at the Factory too. Crafting is quite the tricky business in Kancolle because you actually get to determine how much resources you want to invest into building a new ship or item. Naturally, the more resources you invest, the higher chance you’ll land on something that’s worth all the hassle.
Kancolle provides a ton of other game features which will be unlocked once you reached the required level, such as the PvP Arena and the Research Center. There are even special events like the Underground Repair Factory where you can exchange 1 type of resource for other types of resources in a slots mini-game.
If you would like to get a leg up in the game, you might want to check out some of the amazing convenience items at the in-game shop, including experience boosts, compasses of speed (to speed up cooldowns), equipment or fleet slot increases, and extra resources. By spending real money, you can also earn VIP ranks, which will then open up an entirely new avenue of VIP-related purchases and perks, such as instant repairs or constructions.
Community
Although the game can be considered as pretty popular in China, this translated version of Kancolle has just been recently released so admittedly, the community in the game is rather limited. Taking into account the many frustrating problems highlighted above, it is possible that not many players stayed after their first initial contact with the game. That being said, due to its casual/ idle nature, this MMO game might be suitable for some players to enjoy. If you happen to enjoy the game, you can also share the game with your friends. After all, the more the merrier!
Graphics/ Sound
Kancolle features some amazing anime visuals, but it is somewhat disconcerting that the game features a very disproportionate number of females in this game. In fact, I can’t say that I’ve actually seen a male character at all while I was reviewing the game.
Sound-wise, the game is apparently half-translated. The voice overs are still in Chinese and the music, despite being okay enough to listen to, seems to be choppy (not continuous) during certain scenarios within the game. Overall, I’d say that the graphics of the game is okay, but they really need to work on their sound.
Conclusion
Although Kancolle seems to be at best a semi-translated (and perhaps sub-par) naval-themed anime MMORPG, the game does feature a rather interesting and unique premise which no other game has tried doing. It is in unknown waters so to speak, and due to that, it is possible to give the game a certain amount of leeway when it comes to criticizing its faults. However, there are plenty more room for improvement - improvements that the developers behind Kancolle will really need to get started on or they might just lose whatever player base they might have.
Kancolle Blog
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