A Blast From the Past - Lock On Victory

I know D Series tried to bring back old Units and old mechanics back to the game, but unfortunately, it is not the same. It also feels like D Series is becoming the reboot of the game instead of focusing on a brand new VG. Anyway, I should stop talking about D Series and talk about the memory lane game, Lock on Victory.

I have played all the 3DS VG games using special methods, and my favourite have always been Lock on Victory out of all them. However, Stride to Victory was better at deck building since you can craft the final copies of the cards, especially if you were maxing the rarity of the deck, unlike LoV who needs to pull packs.

StV had potential, but the developers had to ruin the game by making NPC guard early even if they are playing a stride deck. Who even guard at 0 damage anyway? That's like when I first started VG as a beginner. The NPCs really ruins the experience for me in StV, compare to LoV where they guard normally, unless you are playing The End or Descendant.

LoV wasn't all about break riding since some decks works better without break ride than with break ride. The only downside you won't be able to grind VP if you don't power up the VG. If you want to earn as much VP as possible, then, Dark Irregulars will be the best at doing that job, since the more soul charges you do, the more power the VG gains, and you can easily hit over 50k with Dark Irregulars than other clans. But that is only if you want to grind VPs.

I literally played Revengers through the gameplay until I grind enough cards for The Rebirth deck, because Revengers were easy to build as they only had 2-3 sets of supports. Its literally one of the best beginner decks to start with, but of course, you also got Duo deck that can be grinded, since you only need to target 1 set. Although, there are no Bermuda TD to start the game, so you will need to pick a random TD.

Deck Building Function

If you played StV first, then, you won't be able to grind the cards easily, and rely on the luck of pulling the booster. However, unlike real life, you can reset the game if you did not pull any cards you want for the deck which is the quickest way to get the cards you need for LoV.

I've also made deck up to 60, I can easily fill up all 100 deck slot for LoV as this game is all about break riding, however, I've also made 2 decks for Revengers, with 1 focusing on Raging Form and the other have both Dragruler and Raging Form.

What I also like were to play these decks I never properly experiment during my time playing the break ride era, because of the old VG releasing a new set per month, so these decks get rotated out very quick. No idea if D series still follow the old set release.

The one thing you shouldn't think of is grade balance in all of these games. This is not a thing in D series because of ride decks, but grade balance played an important role to the game. But these games make grade balance bad. I could literally run 4 G1s and see all of the G1s, or run 8 G3s and see none of the G3s units. However, if you play a ride deck like my Asura build, you shouldn't care about grade balance as you only need to see 1 G1 to pop this deck off.

Wiki is also your best friend for EN translation. I memorised most of these old cards, so I know what they do when I see the image. I did not know I was that addicted to the game that I actually know what most of them do without using wiki to find the cards. But I think it also help that the anime actually pull some of the combos with some of these cards.

What I also missed are Stand triggers. If you play the old VG, Stand triggers can really help the deck to attack more, especially when you don't need draw power in the deck. I was never a big fan of Front triggers as they do nothing and really wants you to attack with VG first if you want to hit Front triggers which is never my kind of play. Unfortunately, with the direction VG is heading, we will never see Stand triggers back in the game.

NPC

What I like is that there are the reverse counterpart of the Characters as they follow the anime. So if you play a Reverse deck, you could use that Character and that Character will be able to chant the name. Not too important if you don't care about doing Chants, since I mainly skip those parts and focus on the game play.

Shop Tournament

Shop tournament is important as this is the part where you grind VPs if you want to build more decks. Every 3 fights, a shop tournament will appear to challenge, and I think you go through 3 fights in the shop tournament. When you first start the game, this is the part where you grind until you get the deck you want to go through the story modes. 

Unfortunately, when I played StV, this wasn't an option, and the shop tournament only appears randomly. But I think StV had stride which makes grinding VP a lot easier if your deck has Stride to use. So I couldn't really grind the shop tournament to get through the story mode.

Gameplay

The gameplay is enjoyable, and not like StV where NPC starts guarding so early, that you can easily win in 5 minutes. However, it does feels like the game is rigged for you to lose and your opponent to win. When that happens, I just reset the game, because this is not about skill anymore. Like every 5-6 games, you always have 1 bad game I think and that is what I noticed. The worst part is when your opponent drive check every triggers and you don't see a single trigger in your hand or the damage zone.

Triggers are predictable compare to real life, if you play the game long enough, you know when to guard and how much to guard. No point counting the amount of triggers seen because that is not how the game work. NPC can even double crit with only 2 triggers left in the deck out of 16 cards which is a low possibility in real life, but the game does it with ease.

No G assist. I think G assist was very useful feature they introduced for G era. The amount of bad hand you can get is ridiculous, and if you don't have cards that can shuffle your deck, G assist is a must. I wish they introduced G assist a lot sooner for VG.

FC14 is Missing

Unfortunately, this game would be complete if the final set was in the game which was the end of break ride era. That set had a lot of cards to power up the sub clans like Musketeers, Seal Drags, Ancient Drags etc. I did not want to play Great Daikaiser in StV since superior riding in Stride era isn't ideal as it gives your opponent to stride as soon as this hit G3.

Conclusion

If you want to play Legion, then, StV has the completed set since Legion was very short. But if you want gameplay, it will be LoV or RtV who has better gameplay. Although, do keep in mind, if you play RtV, the VP will be low because back then, power creep was very low, and if you hit over 30k, it was the most amazing thing. For me, I want to play Raizers, so LoV has more Raizers cards compare to RtV.

Afterall. this is my personal opinion. I want to rate StV as a good game, but the way they make their NPC guard early just ruins that experience for me. I thought guarding against The End at 2 damage was bad enough, but StV made it into another level. The only way the game is good is to play against another player rather than the NPC to get the proper VG experience.

Unfortunately, Bushi did not make a StV ver 2 where we get a complete set of G stuff in the game. I doubt Dear Days will be getting the complete old stuff to the game. I also quitted in the middle of G because it was insanely power creep especially since the introduction of G guard and expanding the G zone into 16. I think this is the reason why I like LoV more as I could build more decks. Maybe not Blazing Flare level, I would need to play RtV if I want to play Blazing Flare with superior ride.

Well, each game has their own uniqueness, so if you favourite decks is in 1 of these games, then, you could play either of them. Afterall, you will be still playing the old VG where 16k column and 5k triggers are normal. I haven't played D series, so I have no idea, how much power creep they have become to make certain numbers normal.