I've played the game long before it even existed on Steam, so my actual playtime is way higher than this.
While the review is Positive, there is an important "But" down below.
The game is worth playing for the story alone; it is fantastic and easily one of the best stories among all games out there, not just gachas.
The beginning might be a bit confusing for some readers, but everything is nicely explained after progressing for a bit, and you will have plenty of "OHHH, DAMN" moments throughout the story.
The main character (You, basically. NOT the protagonist though, that's someone else.) is also one of the best MCs I've ever seen in any game, and the best part is that HE HAS A PERSONALITY AND CAN TALK.

Yes, crazy I know, we have a real main character that isn't a cardboard self-insert garbage who only nods his head and makes affirmative grunts while people talk to him. It's amazing how writers can actually make a real character instead of an irrelevant silent self-insert who adds nothing of value.
Anyways, both the story itself and the characters are great and it's easy to see how much love and effort was put into it, as well as how much attention to detail the writers and character designers had.

The writers are really, really good and they've done pretty good research regarding references and several different things you will see — the story is pretty much a delight to go through.
The game had lots of serious scenes, funny moments, really epic battles, and plenty of scenes that made me cry. So I wholeheartedly recommend this story to anyone who enjoys this kind of thing.

With that said, however... Pvp, the other big aspect of the game, has been steadily declining over the past year and a half and is now at an all-time low regarding balance.
Every new awakened unit is an unbalanced mess that can single-handedly win a match by itself, mostly because the developers keep making retarded kits that either have completely broken mechanics (Latest character right now basically attacks all units inside her attack range at once so she ignores frontline units. ...and her attack range is literally half the map...) or just have incredibly high multipliers so they oneshot everything in seconds.

I've been playing since release in SEA server, so that's basically 1 extra year than everyone else who started in Global, and even I can't take this meta anymore as a veteran with 92% of the collection completed.
The playerbase is at fault as much as the devs, if not more; 90% of them are orphans who only know how to pick the exact same meta units every single week of pvp (There is a weekly pvp rotating ban system to "spice things up" and make players use different units for variety, but there are so many broken units at this point that there are always SEVERAL cancer units available each week...).

The players don't try things out, they don't experiment with anything, they don't play for fun, nothing.
They just slap the exact same units that the top 10 players use each week into their team and that's about it. You will be stuck in a timeloop seeing the same 10-15 units every single match, with just minor variations or different combinations of said units.
About this, you might think "Well, in pvp people want to win for rewards so that's why they play meta", but after reaching Challenger 1, where I am, you literally don't get anything else so it's just playing for fun after that.
So basically, people just keep playing cancerous meta comps just for the sake of it, because they don't really win or lose anything anymore at that point so they could play whatever they want.

A ton of players have been quitting pvp over the years and now it's basically... I won't say a ghost town because you find matches relatively quickly, but you will see the exact same names over and over again, to the point where you will basically know who is who and remember all their names after you play enough matches. I'd say there are around... maybe 100-120 active players in pvp right now, and then a bunch of people who just leave their pvp on auto for the daily missions and don't even try to play.
So yeah, pvp is kind of a ghost town in a way.

Ranks below challenger were also basically deserted because of how many people quit, so now all you find are whales in challenger. The devs had to change the rank system to, essentially, make it free and guaranteed to reach challenger by matching you against bots all the way to challenger 3.
This was because people in lower ranks quite literally couldn't find a match since there was barely a few players down there.
This new system results in any new player starting out in pvp will reach challenger after defeating several bots, and then he will start running into whales with over 15k points, maxed gear, maxed units, maxed operators, and everything.

If anyone is interested in a very good story with great plot, interconnected substories, and plenty of rich character development and worldbuilding, by all means, PLEASE download the game for free and enjoy the magnificent story it has. You won't regret it.
But for anyone who wants to play pvp, I can't recommend this game anymore.
And that's very sad to say, because it's one of my most loved games and will always have a special place in my mind.

But the developers have been ruining it more and more with every update, making pvp more p2w than it has ever been.
What used to be acceptable powercreep has degraded into "Pull new unit, win matches while drooling like a braindead ape", sadly.
I hope they at least release an offline version of the game before they eventually EOS in the future, just so that people can enjoy the amazing story the game has.
It would be a shame to lose access to it just because a bunch of greedy devs decided to ruin the game with powercreep and unbalanced ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥.

From big boobed anime girls to kids fighting mutated monsters.
10/10

mixed on the gameplay and presentation but i have fun