Mobile games typically get a bad rep for being pay-to-win and riddled with microtransactions, and look, we’re not here to dispute that. It’s absolutely true. If you want to have any hope of breaking into the top 1% of the leaderboard rankings for any mobile game, you’ll need to shell out some cash.
However, that’s not to say that there aren’t a few good ones out there that are actually very friendly to free-to-play players or light spenders. With that in mind, here’s a rundown of the best F2P-friendly mobile gacha games you can play in 2023.
Honkai: Star Rail
Developed by HoYoverse, who’s best known for making Genshin Impact, Honkai: Star Rail is a turn-based RPG with gacha elements that you can pretty much ignore if you don’t care for getting all the new shiny characters. In fact, similar to Genshin Impact, this one of the few games that you can probably drop for a couple years, come back, and find that all of your old units are still holding up pretty well in new content.
The fact that it’s a turn-based RPG also makes it a lot more palatable for folks who may not be a fan of the fast-paced action combat of Genshin, which requires a bit more real-time reflexes. Currency isn’t easy to come by, but you don’t even need it.
Goddess of Victory: Nikke
Goddess of Victory: Nikke was one of the most hotly anticipated gacha game releases of 2022 thanks to ShiftUp’s track record with Destiny Child. While Nikke certainly isn’t as generous with its currency as Destiny Child, however, it makes up for it with a wishlist system and a high SSR pull rate.
In addition to that, all featured banner units get added to the regular banner a month after their debut, so you’ll never have to worry about missing out on powerful characters. It’s tough to show restraint, but it’s definitely doable. We’d recommend hoarding currency for collab characters, and just use your social points for the rest of your pulls.
Azur Lane
Best F2P-Friendly Gacha Games
An oldie but a goodie, Azur Lane has been in the mobile game scene for years, but it’s still going strong even today. The game is known for its large roster of ship girls, as well as its fairly simple bullet hell gameplay that you can chew through easily.
More importantly, however, Azur Lane is also best known for being one of the most generous gacha games on the market right now. This game is extremely liberal with handing out premium currencies, allowing players to pull on almost every banner that comes along. The bulk of Azur Lane’s revenus comes from skins and cosmetics, so that’s not really all that surprising but still, for folks who enjoy the thrill of pulling for characters, Azur Lane lets you do it very frequently without needing you to spend a dime.
Counter:Side
Best F2P-Friendly Gacha Games
In a similar vein, Counter:Side also likes encouraging its players to pull by showering them in premium currency. This game has been available on the SEA server for a while now, but has only recently gotten a proper global launch.
Counter:Side has quickly become one of the most popular mobile gacha games on the market thanks to the free 10 pulls that it gives to players every day on the regular banner, as well as the ease of earning blue tickets just from doing dailies and playing the game. Just like Azur Lane, Counter:Side also leans heavily into skins and cosmetics, allowing players to pull regularly while trusting that the most diehard fans will pay for those extra skins.
Blue Archive
Best F2P-Friendly Gacha Games
Blue Archive is one of the best side games available right now, thanks to how little time and commitment you need to clear your dailies. Its sweep functionality lets you farm stages easily, and building your characters isn’t some insane, soul-crushing grind either.
While its pull rates might not be quite as good as most other gacha games, Blue Archive makes up for it with generous event and login rewards, and also frequently showers players with Pyroxenes during rotating events that only need minimal participation. Tie that together with the fact that a lot of units can actually be farmed by doing hard quest sweeps, and you’ll find that you can build a good team fairly easily if you’re willing to sink the time into it.
War of the Visions
Best F2P-Friendly Gacha Games
War of the Visions: Final Fantasy Brave Exvius might be the most underrated game on this list, but it’s definitely a personal favorite of mine. While it certainly didn’t have the greatest launch two years ago, with absolutely brutal banners that had no pity system in place, and really abysmal rewards, it’s definitely gotten a lot better over the past few months.
As an F2P player, the key to succeeding in War of the Visions is being diligent with your dailies and farming the crap out of every event that comes around. It’s definitely one of the grindiest gacha games out there, but it’s also a title that really rewards players who stick around for the long-term. Without spending a single cent, it’s possible to build top tier PvP teams if you’re able to pick out just two or three elements that you want to invest in.
Combine that with careful Visiore planning, and you should be able to pull for most characters that fall in any of your three elements that come around. War of the Visions also features special Visiore Back banners during new collaborations, allowing players to potentially double their amount of Visiore if they have enough saved up.
Dissidia Final Fantasy Opera Omnia
Best F2P-Friendly Gacha Games
On the flip side, Dissidia Final Fantasy Opera Omnia is one of the more casual Final Fantasy-themed gacha games. It also happens to be among the most F2P-friendly mobile games you can play right now.
Similar to Azur Lane and Counter:Side, DFFOO also loves showering players in gems. The game doesn’t really feature any cosmetics, and most of the characters can be obtained through completing story quests. The gacha mostly comes in the form of weapons, which you should definitely pull for if you want to take your team to the next level, but considering how generous this game is, most players won’t have any issues in building a really solid team.
The only downside is that the Dissidia-style of gameplay where you have to perform Bravery attacks before HP attacks can be a bit divisive, and may not be for everyone.
Destiny Child
Best F2P-Friendly Gacha Games
As we wait for Nikke: Goddess of Victory to finally get a set release date, fans can occupy themselves by playing Shift Up’s other game instead, Destiny Child. Not to be confused with with the popular American girl group with Beyonce, Michelle Williams, and Kelly Rowland, Destiny Child is one of the most fanservice-y waifu collector games available now.
If that’s your thing, you’ll also be very pleased to know that yes, Destiny Child is also extremely generous to its F2P players. The in-game shop features some really terrible deals and poorly priced packs, but the good news is that your dailies are more than sufficient enough to get you a 10x pull every three days or so, and you’ll get even more during special events.
Destiny Child’s currency income is so generous that as long as you aren’t just spending everything willy-nilly, most F2P players will be able to save up for almost every banner and still have some left over.
Another Eden
Best F2P-Friendly Gacha Games
Another Eden is an interesting one on this list, as it isn’t exactly all that generous with its handouts per se. However, it’s unique in that it’s a full-fledged turn-based JRPG experience that you can enjoy without spending anything.
This is a game from the team that wrote Chrono Trigger and Chrono Cross, and you can really tell where it gets its inspirations from within the first few minutes. Another Eden dabbles with time travel, allowing you to visit the same locales in different time periods and recruit various characters to your party. The story is actually pretty decent for a mobile game as well, and I could definitely see this appealing to a lot of JRPG fans.
On the gacha side of things, new players will also be pleased to know that all of the collaboration events are permanent (save for Chrono Cross, which will expire in a few years), which means that you can grab those new characters at any time without feeling pressured. The Persona 5 characters are well-worth getting, as are the Tales of characters, and their stories all feel like they’ve been well thought out instead of simple cash grabs as we’ve seen in so many other collaborations.
Arknights
Best F2P-Friendly Gacha Games
Similar to Azur Lane, Arknights also hooks its players in with skins and cosmetics, rather than banner pulls for units. It’s not surprising, considering that both games were developed by Yostar, and this means that F2P players can look forward to a very F2P-friendly environment when it comes to stockpiling premium currency and saving them for banners.
To sweeten the deal even further, the skins are purely cosmetic and have no bearing on character performance. So if you’re really just here for the gameplay and story, you’ll be able to save enough currency to pull on most of the banners without spending any money. Arknights continues to stand out as one of the best mobile games on the market, and it’s definitely worth checking out if you haven’t already.
Princess Connect! Re:Dive
Best F2P-Friendly Gacha Games
Priconne follows a very similar gameplay structure to Blue Archive, and is meant to be played as a side game more than anything else. The game makes use of a character shard system, allowing you to star up your characters as you gather more of their shards.
Unlike in War of the Visions where the shard grind is more brutal, however, Priconne’s shards are made readily available to players almost all of the time, cutting down a lot of unnecessary farming time. The pull rates aren’t fantastic, but again, you’ll be able to gather lots of premium currency just by doing your dailies, and the fact that pulling dupes isn’t necessary to making your characters usable makes it much easier to save as well.
Fire Emblem Heroes
Best F2P-Friendly Gacha Games
Fire Emblem Heroes definitely got a bad rep when it first launched, and it was most certainly a game that really only catered to the whales who could drop tons of money to get the summons they wanted. However, it’s been a few years, and Fire Emblem Heroes has gradually shifted away from that monetization model.
The game is much more friendly towards F2P players and light spenders now, especially with the introduction of FEH Pass, which works very similarly to a monthly Battle Pass system that hands out oodles of rewards to players just for playing the game. And even if you’re not planning on spending, the login and event rewards are also a lot more generous these days, especially with the occasional free pulls on limited banners, and all the freebie units that the game loves giving out.
We’d still recommend playing this as a casual side game, as Fire Emblem Heroes does suffer from pretty brutal powercreep. But hey, at least you can probably still build a full Three Houses team without shelling out any money.
That does it for our list of the best F2P-friendly mobile gacha games you can play right now. Be sure to search for Twinfinite for more news and information on the mobile space.
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