Punishing Review: Gray Raven, a Light Quality "Anime" Action RPG!

Currently the mobile game industry is growing even more rapidly. Initially, mobile games were dominated by strategy games like Clash of Clans. Several years ago, mobile games were dominated by competitive MOBA or battle royale games. However, lately games that offer the RPG action genre can’t be underestimated anymore. Call it some games that are quite popular like Honkai Impact 3 and Genshin Impact which are still hype today. Will Punishing: Gray Raven also get the same popularity?

The enthusiasm of gamers who make smartphones their main gaming devices has now begun to be interested in playing games with the RPG action genre. It’s no surprise that when Punishing: Gray Raven was announced to be released globally, it already managed to cause quite a bit of hype. The proof, before its release, it has managed to touch the pre-registration number of 500,000.

We get a chance to try this game first before its release on July 16th. In this review article, we will try to provide a review about Punishing: Gray Raven which might be your consideration to play it or not. Let’s see the article!

Simple Storyline

The storyline in this game is fairly simple and may be familiar in “anime” games in general. Players will take on the role of a commander with a futuristic background where the earth is being attacked by a virus called Punishing. The virus is very dangerous because when it is hit, living things including machines will become out of control and can destroy humans around them.

The role of the player here is to give various commands to the Android. You will enter into a special Task Force group called Gray Raven and return to bring peace to earth. For those of you who are weed and are used to playing anime games, you must be familiar, right?

Punishing: Gray Raven has a simple storyline and is easy for gamers to digest.

This Task Force group has several main members such as the leader Lucia, and several other individuals who have their own special talents. The threat you have to face does not only come from Corrupted creatures, because it is known that there is a special group called the Ascendant who has access to the Ascent-Network. This special access allows them to get extraordinary powers from the effects of the Punishing Virus, but at the same time can keep their consciousness from turning into Corrupted.

The storyline in this game is presented in a visual novel format which sometimes gives you the option to choose dialogue. Although this dialogue option makes your role as a Commander feel more prominent than the avatar character who is silent behind the scenes, but it feels almost no consequence whatsoever even though the dialogue you choose can change the course of operation of each mission. Even so, at least in this game your existence as the leader of the Gray Raven group is recognized which automatically makes you feel more involved in the main story.

Slightly More Difficult Hack n Slash Gamplay But More Fun!

For the quality of the gameplay offered, we are quite satisfied with the hack n slash concept it offers. You could say, the difficulty level is slightly higher when compared to Honkai Impact 3. However, it is the higher difficulty level that makes the gameplay a little more exciting than its competitors.

For example, in hack n slash RPG games on mobile in general you only need to press certain buttons to issue skills, unlike the one in Punishing: Gray Raven. So instead of displaying Skill icons with standard cooldown times like in most similar games, Punishing: Gray Raven requires you to play more aggressively in order to get skills which are then displayed on the screen in the form of rows of icons. Each skill cannot be pressed, it must be in the specified order in order to produce a combo with greater damage.

The gameplay in this game is more difficult than normal action RPGs, but more fun and addictive.

For example, Lucia’s Padma Skill to stab the enemy with a brutal attack can be multiplied by executing in one hit if three Padma skill icons appear on the screen. This also applies to all skills, so you can get a higher potential Damage, Buff and Healing effects. So basically players are required to be careful and “good at combos” to be able to bring out the best potential of their characters.

Not just using one character, players will be given the option to bring two additional party members that can be played in one mission. In addition to being able to switch characters in the middle of battle, there is a special light icon on the character’s portrait that you can press so that they can provide Skill Assist.

Fantastic Graphics But Still Light

In accordance with what is being touted that Punishing: Gray Raven is much lighter than its competitors, it is not a figment. It is known that this game requires at least a smartphone with Snapdragon 660 or Helio X30 specifications and 3GB of RAM.

Fantastic graphics in the game Punishing: Gray Raven can run well on mid-end smartphones.

We have tried it on a mid-end smartphone with Mediatek Helio G95 chipset specifications with a Mali-G76 MC4 GPU and 8GB of RAM with no problems at all when playing it. The smartphone that we played with received recommendations for High settings and a framerate that ran at 60 FPS. These specifications are still quite friendly, especially with the charming graphics and flashy hack and slash gameplay that it offers.

Character Progress with Myriad Aspects & Myriad Contents

When trying to play it within a few days, we can conclude that to run the character progress in this game is quite tiring because there are various aspects that must be completed only for one character. Players are required to improve their character’s abilities using various elements such as Equip and Memory.

To equip may be a little easy because there is only one. To equip you only need to upgrade and then do a limit break or what is commonly called Overclock in this game. While the Memory aspect here is quite complicated where players have to match it in columns 01 – 06 to get a certain effect. Once matched, you are required to upgrade to increase it. Just like equips, Memory can also be Overlocked for better stats.

As for the character, there are various aspects that need to be improved. First you are required to increase the level. Second, you are required to do a Promote when you reach a certain level to increase the stats. Then, players are also required to evolve to improve their character where B is the lowest rarity and S is the highest rarity. Evolve here can use a “fragment” obtained from Quest, Event, Challenge, or Gacha. Finally, each character also has a Skill that must be leveled up with Skill Points that can be obtained through Challenges.

As we mentioned above, there are lots of aspects that need to be improved to strengthen your character. But don’t worry, the many aspects are fortunately also balanced with a myriad of content that you can complete every day. Besides Story, there are also other modes such as Resources to get various materials, Challenges to get various attractive prizes, Events, to various Quests which also have many attractive prizes for players.

Low Gacha Rate Supported by Pity / Guaranteed System

We dare say that the gacha in this game can be said to be difficult, it can also be said to be easy because of the pity system. Gacha in this game is only divided into two important parts, namely characters and weapons. The gacha rate in this game is quite small, where the base gacha for characters & general weapons is only about 0.5% and for characters who are experiencing “rate up” it increases to 1.9% while for weapons that are experiencing “rate up” it increases to 4% .

Punishing: Gray Raven has a Pity rate or guaranteed gacha that most players prefer.

But don’t be disappointed just yet. Because Punishing: Gray Raven fortunately still has a Pity system that you may already be familiar with. The Pity or Guaranteed Gacha system will allow “definitely” to get the character or weapon with the highest rarity. In this game, at least players will get Pity every time they do 60x Gacha for characters, and 30x Gacha for weapons. So don’t worry about running out of money just to get the highest rarity character.

Oh yes, when you do gacha your characters or weapons are not purely given characters or weapons. But you will also be able to get other items such as Material or Memory. Given that there are not many characters available and there are not many weapon variants, it’s not surprising that they use such a system.

Conclusion

It is undeniable that currently mobile games with the action RPG genre cannot be underestimated anymore, one of which is Punishing: Gray Raven. How not, they managed to offer an extraordinary quality of gameplay for a mobile game class with an experience that is almost the same as a PC or console game. Moreover, you don’t need to use a smartphone with very high specifications to play it. Having a smartphone with mid-end specifications is also enough to play the game.

Punishing: Gray Raven has a very solid and addictive action RPG concept in terms of the storyline or gameplay it offers.

For Punishing: Gray Raven itself has an action RPG concept with hack n slash which is fairly solid and also addictive both in terms of storyline, visuals or gameplay offered. Moreover, the game also has a myriad of content that can be done every day and will always keep the players busy and not bored to play it.

Our main protest is that there is no PC version to make it easier for players who have a laptop or PC to play it. Given the various competitors already provide a PC version as well. We hope that in the future the developer will consider releasing a PC version.

When can the game be played?

Punishing: Gray Raven will be releasing on July 16th globally for Android and iOS.

Kuro Game announced that Punishing: Gray Raven will be released globally on July 16th for Android as well as iOS. If you are really interested in playing the game, you can pre-register HERE at the same time to get various attractive prizes when it is released later. So far there have been 500 thousand players who have pre-registered.

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Punishing: Gray Raven

Publisher: Kuro Game

Developer: Kuro Game

Release Date: 2019-12-05

Mobile Games, Android, iOS

Punishing: Gray Raven is an action RPG that offers cool hack and slash gameplay. The concept is not much different from some popular games in similar genres, such as Honkai Impact 3 for example, where both games offer a variety of stage levels to complete as well as many choices of badass characters with their own unique fighting abilities.

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