Review: Dislyte brings a fresh mix to the mobile Gacha RPG realm

Title: Dislyte
Developer: Lilith Games
Publisher: Lilith Games
Platforms: iOS, Android (reviewed on)
Release Date: May 10, 2022

Lilith Games, creator of such well-known titles as AFK Arena and Rise of Kingdoms: Lost Crusade has launched a new mobile RPG and it is a banger. This fresh new title drops a fire mix of new elements that…um…dab and…okay, I’m 41. It’s good, alright?

Dislyte takes place in the year 2027, which looks super futuristic until you remember that that’s like 5 years from now. Apparently, we put aside a LOT of political discourse and evolve from a technological standpoint in a BIG way over the next few years so strap in. Personally, I’m just excited to get my flying jellyfish robot friend like one of the characters in this game has.

Another thing we have to look forward to five years from now is the awaking of the chaotic Miramon who is basically an elder god of mayhem and destruction. What awakes it? Miracles. These things “blinked” into existence and people who are sensitive to them absorbed powers from them and, in the process, absorbed the essence of famous gods, deities, and mythological beasts from various belief systems and religions. Christ isn’t in the game but I’m holding out for future DLC because my team needs a new healer and I think his ability to turn water into wine would be cool for the intense party vibe the future seems to have.

Many of these Miracles were absorbed by musicians, primarily EDM ones which, at first, seems silly as the whys are never explained. But it makes sense now because it is the only reason people would be dressed like this and, while it ain’t anything I would wear, having a modern-day RPG with a bunch of people dressed like shlubs would get pretty boring. And as someone who has, in the past, heavily talked about the clothing in various Pokemon games like Pokemon Conquest as well as all the Pokemon villain teams, I gotta say I’m somewhat of an in-game clothing snob.

I wouldn’t normally reveal too much of a story like this but this came from the press release as the game takes place AFTER all this happens and, for some reason, never gives you the origin of all these abilities, which is a shame because it’s honestly pretty interesting.

It does lead to some absolutely beautiful characters though. For the sake of the review I used 10 summon tickets at once and, I’m definitely not gonna say that my luck is normally this good with the game, but I definitely got lucky when I decided to record. Check it out.

As for the game itself, it’s played in your standard Gacha Game RPG format but the characters have enough unique moves where it’s more than just clicking and telling them to go. For example, Mona and Drew, two of your earliest characters that have moves where, if it kills an enemy, gives that character another turn. The Eros inspired Q, one of the earliest characters you get, has a really cool move called Joke of the Aether which “Links” two enemies together with a heart thread. Damaging one damages the other and it’s pretty great. Even if you do an attack that hits both at once, they also get the additional damage of their partner getting hit. One I’ve come to straight up abuse is Horus inspired Falken who has a passive ability called Eye of Vengeance. When he hits an enemy with any attack (even if it’s all enemies at once) they get inflicted with the Eye of Horus. If an enemy with Eye of Horus attacks, Falken automatically counterattacks them.

This is all done to a pretty interesting EDM/hip-hop inspired soundtrack that, combined with the city/club themed areas, make a fantastic change to these games normally being all forest/cave type stuff. You can see how the battle menus and battles themselves are set up here. I recorded two battles in a row just so you can get a basic idea of what the fighting looks like.

Another cool game mode is the DJ Battle. As of the time of writing, DJ Battle only has three songs but I’m sure more will be added. Upon picking your song and difficulty you get thrown into a game that reminds me a lot like DJ Hero. You play a rhythm game in which you match the turntable at the bottom to the upcoming notes. Do well and you’ll unlock in-game items. Once a day if you manage to do well twice you’ll also get a big daily gift.

I don’t know if YouTube will let me keep this video but in the odd chance it does, here’s a stage of DJ Battle.

Unfortunately, the story is lacking. It’s afraid to elaborate on anything so you’ll be going after organizations you don’t understand to save people you don’t know from villains you’ve never met. There’s no history or motivation for a lot of this and, as someone who’s gotten pretty far in the story, I can honestly say that absolutely nothing has happened yet. Hopefully that gets worked on because as it now story progresses very slowly. Every few stages you get static images and speech bubbles telling you what’s going down.

Also, every character looks fascinating in their own way and you can determine a lot of the personality from their look, which is good because the story of each character is absolutely minimal. Why do all the ones based on Egyptian gods wear suits? If Q just got the powers of Eros, who gave him that weird heart gun? In fact, if these people all just got the strength and abilities, where DID most of their fancy weapons come from. I’ve met DJs, they cannot afford these things.

Another thing that didn’t make me happy is that this game is THIRSTY for whales. Like, I’ve never seen a game so quick to let me know that for $100 I can get packs that will help me move forward quicker. There are also so many tiers to their season passes that it would make Sonic Origins blush. This is odd because the season pass does not offer anything useful. Like, you can work really hard to level up to achieve the sort of things you’ll get from beating a basic state. I’m not really sure why I’d pay this but maybe that’ll change over time.

My final complaint, and hopefully this changes, is something I talked about a lot in the past. I’ve already started seeing ads for this game that are NOT this game. Have you seen that commercial for Dislyte in which a character finds a winged girl trapped in rubble and gets the option to help her or leave her? First off, that is not gameplay. Secondly, the story does not offer you choices. Third, the girl trapped in the rubble? THAT is your main character.

Why Dislyte? For real. Your game is gorgeous. The characters are unique. Everything about it is flashy and yet y’all are resorting to fake ads before the game is even out. The weirdest part is, unlike a lot of these other games, the fake ads show a game that looks like absolute trash compared to what the actual game is. That’s fascinating to me because they literally created fake footage of a game that looks nowhere near as good as Dislyte actually is — all in a misguided effort to trick people.

But if you manage to look past those few cons, Dislyte actually has a lot of cool modes, characters and a bunch of other things to keep any type of player engaged. Even as a free-to-play sort of gent, I’ve got plenty of characters already and I feel pretty powerful. If you happen to give it a shot and you unlock clubs…feel free to look up the PhantomThieves and say hi. That’s my group.

Dislyte (Android) Score: 7.5/10

Despite minimal storytelling, Dislyte is a refreshing and unique free-to-play mobile RPG. The characters are all unique and interesting enough that sometimes even a bad gacha pull is still worthwhile. The blend of a unique environment of the futuristic realm of five years from now, mixed with the club scene look of the world and characters and the amazing EDM soundtrack makes this such a solid change over the standard fantasy RPGs.

A copy of this game was provided to App Trigger for the purpose of this review. All scores are ranked out of 10, with .5 increments. Click here to learn more about our Review Policy.