Reverse: 1999 is a 20th Century Time-Travel Strategic RPG developed by Bluepoch Games. It’s a game I’ve been eagerly anticipating all year, ever since I was first made aware of it.
After investing dozens of hours into the most recent test phase, it left me wanting more. A lot more. This is a game I couldn’t put down.

Reverse: 1999 is a very unique Gacha game. It’s highly narrative driven with a very strong focus on story. And after playing for dozens of hours, I can say with certainty that I was gripped.
The narrative was compelling, completely voice acted. Admittedly, there are very few Gacha games out there that I think could potentially compete with either the voice acting or story present.
The short of it is that something catastrophic happened on the last day of 1999, and as a direct result, time has unraveled, flowing backwards, a phenomenon known as “the storm.”
We take on the role of the Timekeeper, and attempt to find out what caused this disruption in time and remedy it before it’s too late.

The story, which is a central focus of the game features some absolutely stellar voice acting. The game is dubbed in English, and every character has unique regional accents dependent on where they’re from.
British, Italian, French, Russian, Cantonese. I don’t know how they managed this, but it is by far one of the most impressive dubs I’ve heard in a game of this type.
There are numerous characters, which all take center stage at various points in the game. The English dub helps bring the game and the individual personalities of each respective character to life, regardless of unit rarity.
And the characters aren’t your traditional “hot husbando or waifu” – quite the contrary. We have characters warped in TVs. A floating apple with a bow tie. Seriously, take a moment here to appreciate some of the incredible cast – all of which are rendered in full Live2D.

And that’s just scratching the surface. This is a game with both a deep, dark, emotionally complex story but also some of the lightest, quirkiest characters you’ll come across, making for a fun blend of depth that you won’t be disappointed with.
Think STEINS;GATE, but playable.

Speaking of playing, gameplay is a targeted towards players that are interested in strategy or turn-based combat.
On the one hand, it’s pretty easy to understand.
Characters have multiple different abilities, followed by a more powerful, ultimate ability. In combat, you deploy multiple characters, and are presented with abilities in the form of cards towards the bottom right of your screen.
If you have duplicate cards of the same rarity – 1*, 2* or 3*, you can actually merge them together to increase their power level, but they need to be of the corresponding rarity for this to work.
Characters and enemies have elemental affinities, which function like a game of rock-paper-scissors. Which is where the strategy element comes in to play. The game, on the surface, can be very easy if your goal is merely to slowly push through the story without much forethought.
However, it can also be exponentially more complex the deeper you delve into character, elemental and ability synergy.

In terms of character power and progression, characters have individual levels. Levels are capped, and broken through via the Insight mechanic. The more you upgrade your characters, the more powerful they become, both statistically, and with regards to their abilities and passives.

While the main focus of the game remains the story, which you progress through via battles, there exists another feature that I found to be surprisingly entertaining to dabble in: The Wilderness.
The Wilderness functions similarly to traditional “bases” found in other Gacha games. And while typically, bases are primarily flat, with no exploration, no real purpose outside of farming resources – no interaction with your Waifu’s, Reverse: 1999 does things a little differently.
Reverse: 1999 allows you to manually alter the very foundation of the Wilderness, expanding the world size, placing down buildings, objects, and even your husbando’s and waifu’s, watching them traverse what you’ve created.
That is something I absolutely did NOT expect and will admit I probably spent a little too much time in trying to create something that looked passable as a world. I probably didn’t succeed, but hey, that didn’t stop me from trying.

This is a game that took me by absolute surprise. Never did I anticipate I would enjoy this as much as I ultimately did when I first saw the trailer for it.
Being taken across and becoming immersed in key moments and locations throughout the 20th century, the absolutely gorgeous Live2D character models, the stunning environments, the fun turn-based combat system, the incredible English dub cast, the complex yet fun narrative.
Everything about Reverse: 1999 screams “quality.” And they have absolutely delivered.

The best part of this? The game is both PC and mobile compatible, meaning you can play this on either platform. As someone that prefers playing on PC, I can log in and play this on my PC without issue. That’s something the vast majority of Gacha games don’t allow for.
Again, there’s just so many things this game does right – and I guarantee you I’ve overlooked numerous.