Is Punishing Gray Raven Worth Playing?

Is Punishing Gray Raven worth playing and investing time into? Punishing Gray Raven is highly polished and executes its concepts well enough that it warrants a try, especially if players like active, action combat. There’s almost nothing automatic in the game. Therefore, players that want a more involved gaming experience will likely enjoy Punishing Gray Raven.

Another action gacha? Companies are really trying to chase some of that Genshin Impact market share! However, the thing is that Punishing Gray Raven only has the action combat part in common. The other parts of Punishing Gray Raven are more along the lines with the gachas that already exist.

If I had to describe Punishing Gray Raven using the existing gachas in this current market, it’s more like Arknight’s futuristic aesthetic (minus the furries) mixed with the action, quick-switching, team combat of Genshin Impact. In terms of mechanics, the game matches most with Honkai Impact 3rd, where it’s clear that the core of the Punishing Gray Raven is based upon.

Punishing Gray Raven menus. — In typical gacha fashion, I present to you: menus.

The game is a bit early to judge completely, but here at GachaFix, we’re gonna do it anyway. The game does have some concerning things that have to do with the free-to-playness of the game, but we will discuss that later on in the next sections.

Is Punishing Gray Raven a Good Fit For You?

Many gacha players have probably played either Honkai Impact or Genshin Impact. This game plays similarly to those games. Action combat style with instant character switching during combat. It’s a fun concept in those games, and it works well here in Punishing Gray Raven as well.

Punishing Gray Raven team. — Each team composition will contain 3 characters. Each character has its own separate element associated with them.

Kamui in combat. — Activating abilities is easy. As players fight, they gain different colored icons above their dodge and attack buttons. Simply pressing onto the icons uses the ability associated with that icon. Depending on the order and how many of the same colored icons are side-by-side when the player touches them, it can change the attack’s power or style.

What Makes Punishing Gray Raven Worth Playing

Pros of Punishing Gray Raven:

The action combat is the star here as it’s snappy, intuitive and controls are great for the touch screen – which is a bit weird to say about a mobiel game. It’s actually a game that players should play on their phones for the best control.
The visuals are crisp and a treat for the eyes. For players that have a sweet spot for futuristic themes and visuals, the graphics in Punishing Gray Raven hits the spot.
The game has one of the lowest pity counters in the gacha market. To reach pity (for a guaranteed S-rank character), players only have to roll 60 times (40 for the beginner banner). The average gacha game will require at least 70+ rolls to reach pity.
The game makes it easy to hop into the action. Almost all the stages are combat stages and navigating the menus/loading times are quick as well.
Every character is visually quite unique and feels great to play. Punishing Gray Raven makes you want to try out each character to see how they play.
The story seems quite Nier inspired. Not entirely original but still a decent experience. Not surprising that there will be a Nier collaboration in the future.

Co-op in Punishing Gray Raven. — One thing that Punishing Gray Raven has does exceptionally well is in its Co-Op modes. It’s incredibly fun partying up with people to take down futuristic-waifu robots.

What Makes Punishing Gray Raven Not Worth Playing

Cons of Punishing Gray Raven:

No PC client. These days, for action gachas to reach a wider player base, they usually include a PC client. Unfortunately, Punishing Gray Raven does not have a native PC client yet. Luckily, the game runs well on various emulators.
No voice acting for the story bits. Like Arknights, it will be a lot of reading if players want to know what’s going on.
Accessing content in the game is done through menus (therefore, a lot of button pressing). For players looking for a world to explore won’t find it here. Unfortunate but not a deal breaker.
Currently the character pool is quite shallow. This is usually expected of 3D action-focused gachas, but the game has fewer characters than Genshin Impact did when it launched.
While the game supports controllers natively, the controller scheme is strange and players connot interact with menus or pause while ingame. It needs a lot of work.
There are so many resources and materials in the game that it is confusing for new players to figure out how best to progress their accounts. There are weapons, character levels, memory fragments, promotions, and…basically just a lot to manage.
The content in the game seems a bit thin, even at launch. Therefore, the game isn’t worth being rushed to endgame.
Although the stages are fairly short, no auto-battling can put some mobile gamers off (like myself). However, the game does have an auto-clear option which allows players to clear previously cleared stages automatically.

As a side point, Punishing Gray Raven has quite a painful reroll process, which takes about 20-30 minutes for quite a low chance at getting an S rank. The game has such a small character pool, and they all feel great to play. Therefore, it’s not worth rerolling in Punishing Gray Raven.

Is Punishing Gray Raven Free-to-Play Friendly?

So far, the game is quite Free-to-Play friendly in completing the game’s core content. All the characters are useable and have value towards most of the content in the game. Also, the game is very generous in terms of obtaining S-ranked characters. Players can pity all banners in the game without much effort due to how low the pity counter is.

However, some things might be a concern for the game’s future. The gacha community is quick to see things that might be a concern for the future. Punishing Gray Raven has incurred some wrath within the gacha gaming community due to some practices that it has recently been doing.

First, the global version of the game has paywalled parts of the event so that F2P players cannot get all of the rewards available (skin included). They have tried to extend the event to accomodate the F2P players but still, some players might not be able to get all of the rewards from the events.
Second, the game’s monthly pass requires players to purchase a bit more than the required amount of premium currency due to not having the option to pay for the exact amount of currency required. While the game has addressed this by adding a lesser monthly pass to the game – it wasn’t the expected fix that players wanted.

Because of these reasons, players thinking of supporting the game are careful about busting out their wallets on this one. Of course, the game is still early in its service – so it’s best to take a wait-and-see approach.

A stingy game will always lead to stingy players – not to mention a game that f2pers will feel unrewarded and leave altogether.

What is the Endgame in Punishing Gray Raven?

Currently, there’s not much of an Endgame in Punishing Gray Raven. There’s no PVP currently, and the game is still rolling out some of the harder content in the global version of the game.

However, how heavily inspired Punishing Gray Raven by Honkai Impact 3rd will likely focus on PVE challenges and bosses first and eventually release a PvP mode.

Therefore, after doing the story missions, it’s time to start the continuous grind to max out favorite characters and wait for new content to be dropped. For those people that are starting their endgame journey, members of the Punishing Gray Raven community put together a great team composition guide here.

Punishing Gray Raven Verdict

In its current state, Punishing Gray Raven is a great game to hop into and enjoy for the combat and mechanics in the game. The game is more of a side game since the game is quite thin in terms of content, which is actually great for more casual players.

The moment-to-moment gameplay of Punishing Gray Raven is really the star here. In conclusion, the game has a lot of potential and room for growth. Hopefully, the developers and publishers can be a little bit more flexible towards free-to-play players as it can only benefit the game.