Worst Gacha of All Time? Book of Yog

Book of Yog lures you in with a beautiful splash screen. You wake up on the battlefield to a beautiful, very damaged Waifu. Seconds later, you’re in a battle, and you’re introduced to some of the game mechanics, including, but not limited to: How your character automatically navigates the world on their own, how your character automatically engages enemies and battles on their own. This is a tutorial, most, if not all Gacha games force you into learning basic functions as if this is the first time you’ve ever played a video game before.
After completing the tutorial, obtaining your first story-summon, experiencing some of the story, you’ll find yourself greeted with the overworld map and all of the features that comprise the game: Ra’s Tower, the Workshop, Labyrinth, Rankings, the Cathedral, Altar, Guild and more.
Very few features are available to me at this point, however, as I do with every Gacha game, (1:54) I felt immediately compelled to investigate my characters’ gear. We can’t go into battle without adequate weapons and armor. That’s suicide.

Every character has unique gear they can equip – weapons, armor, accessories. You can obtain gear via the main story, grinding certain instances. Gear, naturally, makes your character more powerful. But it isn’t the only way you obtain additional power. Along with gear, every character has their own unique skills.
Leveling skills makes clearing content much faster – and trust me, the first few hours might seem easy, but difficulty increases at quite the rapid rate beyond a certain point. Skills function differently for your character, and the Waifu’s you recruit over the course of the game. Waifu skills are set. They can’t be customized, only upgraded in power.
Your personal character has entire skill trees that you’re required to select between. Trees that increase your raw power, alter abilities. This adds a layer of depth I didn’t expect to see, but also doesn’t provide much – if any benefit – since the AI is absolutely atrocious and doesn’t use abilities.

Allow me to explain.

Upon gaining my freedom from the tyrannical tutorial, I opted to attempt some of the game modes, beginning with Ra’s Tower. This is one of those “endless floor” modes where every floor gets progressively more difficult than the last, rewarding you for every floor you complete.
It’s also where you farm for materials to upgrade the levels of your characters. The entire tower is auto, including initiating the next floor, meaning you can set and forget it – coming back later to see just how far you’ve come.
The combat – both in Ra’s Tower, both in the world itself, is auto. You field a group of characters comprised of the Waifu’s you obtained through summoning, your male hero, and let the AI control the movement of your character for you.
The world is void of life, uninspired. There exist waves of enemies to fight, and treasure chests to loot. You’ll engage enemies without provocation, and completely bypass treasure found out in the field. This requires you pay some attention to the game, lest you miss the juicy rewards. Which often aren’t really anything worth physically engaging with the game for.
While fighting enemies, you’ll quickly realize that your character spams a single skill. In this instance, it was his auto-slash. Investing into additional abilities felt completely pointless since the AI – which you’re pretty much forced into allowing to play for you, has no understanding of ability cycling. You can manually use your own abilities, but that requires you play the game and none of us want to do that.
It defeats the purpose of playing an idle RPG.
Abilities don’t look too bad. They lack any real impact, feel weightless. You just see some flashy effects being thrown out for a few seconds, watch your character repeatedly slash. After defeating waves of enemies, you’ll encounter a boss monster that you eliminate faster than the trash monsters leading up to him.
I found this to be very unbalanced and it made the game feel underwhelming. There was no concern for my survival. Boss monsters wouldn’t be able to kill me – not out in the field anyway. They could in Ra’s Tower after a few dozen floors.

After playing for about an hour I decided it was time for me to investigate the Waifu’s. I was sold on the game after witnessing the incredible Centaur Waifu after all, and I did not leave unimpressed.
The max rarity Waifu’s all looked absolutely stunning. Every single one of them looked at least as high quality as Genshin – or Punishing Gray Raven. Yet as soon as you drop beyond max rarity, you begin to notice their lack of originality – or care. The lowest rarity units weren’t even animated. Rather, they decided to leave them unshaded, barely colored, 2-dimensional, flat images.
Although they did have their own unique charm about them. Kinda reminded me a little of the old He-Man cartoon. Or Gargoyles. You can tell where the bulk of their funding went, though.

While the bulk of Book of Yog is comprised of auto-combat in various different game modes, the story is only progressed through the main field. You’ll navigate through different segregated zones, and after a time, see a very poorly written, poorly translated scene featuring the main cast of characters.
This typically results in a boss encounter that is even weaker than the boss monsters found outside of the story, which left me wondering why on earth combat was a feature when A.) You don’t utilize it yourself and B.) There is no threat, no urgency, absolutely no challenge at all?
You could enjoy the game just as much without the combat, and would probably save you time.

I played the game for another couple hours – and I say “played the game” but what I really mean is I let the AI play the game for me, and I made it to the Outfit store. Some of these outfits looked even better than the base models of the characters.
I probably spent too much time in there – but I couldn’t pry my eyes off of what was available. If I had money to spare, I would’ve invested the hundreds of dollars it would’ve cost me to obtain each and every single one of them. Although I wasn’t really very lucky, and never obtained any decent Waifu’s in my time playing.
I spent a ton of time pulling for characters and kept getting trash – that looked pretty hot, but were little to no help at all.

After ending stream the first day of playing, I decided I was interested enough to warrant additional playing in my spare time. So I logged in the next day and… spent minutes trying to close out of unnecessary windows that cluttered my screen and obscured the game.
I spent more time clearing Ra’s Tower, I hit over floor 100. I pushed further through the story. I leveled and upgraded my characters. I realized I unlocked a feature called the Foggy Coast, which allowed for me to challenge incredibly powerful boss monsters. These weren’t the normal trash you find out in the world, in the story.
These things beat me faster than I used to beat my meat as a teenager. Suffice it to say I didn’t stay in there long.
The Labyrinth, however, was a very fun game mode. You moved through numerous rooms, with each room providing power ups, new skills. This was a manual game mode with no auto-play at all. I think I spent about 45 minutes in here straight – it was genuinely entertaining.
After 3 days of not playing the game, finally being able to play left me with a sense of joy. If only the game outside of this mode triggered the same emotional response from me.

Sadly, that’s Book of Yog.
I wish there was more I could say about it. At the end of the day, it’s an idle RPG, so you have to go into this with the expectation that you should have no expectations.
The story was horrible. The combat could be fun, but the weightless effects felt jarring, the AI using a single ability felt inhibiting, and abilities lacked variety in terms of effects.
There wasn’t a whole lot to do. The Waifu’s looked good, but were impossible to obtain. The difficulty increased far too rapidly, requiring you let the game auto-play for you for days before coming back and continuing.

All in all, I didn’t have fun. And the centaur Waifu wasn’t reason enough to warrant a long-term stay in-game.