Another shockingly great gacha RPG adapted from anime - Black Clover M Quick Review
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SHOULD I PLAY BLACK CLOVER M?
Yes! As long as you enjoy anime stories and don’t mind the gacha gameplay loop, Black Clover M is a great choice. Even as someone who was only barely familiar with the long-running manga and anime it’s based on, this adaptation quickly pulled me in with rock-solid turn-based RPG gameplay and exploration, alongside a well-told story that includes scenes pulled directly from the show. Existing Black Clover fans should get even more out of the game, given how respectful it is to the source material, but newcomers will find a lot to enjoy here too.
TIME PLAYED
I’ve spent around ten hours with the soft launch version of Black Clover M, which is currently only available in a handful of regions unless you’re handy with a VPN. That ten hours has taken me through the entirety of the game’s first chapter and about a third of the way through Chapter 2. Beyond the story, I’ve done a lot of exploring the couple areas of the game world currently open to me and have taken on quite a few side quests. I’ve been able to do maybe around fifty pulls at the gacha without spending any money and have recruited twenty-five playable characters who will be familiar to Black Clover fans. Protagonist Asta is, appropriately enough, my highest-level character, currently sitting at level 30. However, I’ve really only scratched the surface of the game’s deep, complex character progression systems.
WHAT’S AWESOME ABOUT BLACK CLOVER M?
• Fantastic presentation of a well-liked shonen story. As I mentioned before, I went into Black Clover M with minimal knowledge of the manga that’s been running since 2015 and the popular anime adaptation. I didn’t need that knowledge, though, as Black Clover M does a much better job of presenting its story compared to the average mobile spin-off. Cutscenes are well-animated—often including clips pulled from the show—the voice acting is great, and I was given plenty of time to get to know the wide cast of characters as each one was introduced. It even made me want to check out the anime for myself!
• Solid turn-based battles. Black Clover M doesn’t reinvent the wheel with its RPG combat system, but it does a serviceable job of emulating old-school JRPGs like Final Fantasy and Dragon Quest. Elemental strengths and weaknesses have to be taken into consideration, and there’s a great team-up mechanic for pulling off powerful moves as a duo. Perhaps most importantly, though, the game showcases its anime flair with over-the-top special abilities that range from hilariously goofy to badass.
• Tons of side content. Some gacha and idle RPGs become so single-mindedly focused on pushing players on specific type of content—whether that’s the main story, the PvP mode, or live events—that everything else suffers. So far, at least, that doesn’t seem to be the case with Black Clover M. In addition to the great main story, I’ve spent a lot of time just exploring, fishing, taking on lengthy series of side quests, running dungeons, and looking for treasure. There’s a lot of extra stuff to take in, and the game does a great job of rewarding players for actually digging into it all.
• Yo, this dude has a baseball bat that’s on fire. See the guy pictured below? His name’s Magna Swing—“Magna” for fire and “Swing” for bat. He dresses like a 1950s-era street punk, and he drives around on a magic broom that looks more like a hot rod. He calls this sick ride the Crazy Cyclone. It’s awesome, and he’s awesome. Magna is rough around the edges, but he's good people. What a good dude.
WHAT SUCKS ABOUT BLACK CLOVER M?
• The usual free-to-play gacha game monetization stuff. If you’ve played any game of this type before, you know what I mean. As I mentioned earlier, I haven’t actually spent any money on Black Clover M, but that hasn’t stopped the game from constantly pushing me to the store and flooding my screen with pop-ups for deals every time I log in. I’m immune to being annoyed by these shenanigans at this point, but if you aren’t, it may be enough to sour the whole game for you.
• The usual free-to-play gacha game endless grind stuff. I haven’t completed the story mode in Black Clover M yet, but I suspect that once I do, I’m going to stay out of the game until it’s updated with more story content. That’s because the game’s only other major hook is a bottomless grind to improve the massive roster of characters in ways that take increasingly longer. I appreciate the depth of the character progression systems here and how many different avenues I had for powering up each of my mages. But the flip side is that I could spend years, if not decades, playing only this game and still not reach the pinnacle.
• Lack of camera control. While I enjoyed exploring the colorful environments of Black Clover M, there’s one thing I hated: the fact that I couldn’t change my point of view. Despite having fully 3D environments, the game’s camera is fixed. That works fine for smaller areas or linear plot events, but when I had to explore a big city looking for quest items, it got a bit frustrating.
💬 Are you going to start your journey to become the Wizard King in Black Clover M, or are you good leaving magic to the experts and skipping this one? Share your thoughts in the comments!
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