Obey Me! – Review Update & F2P Guide
Back in February 2020, when the Obey Me! app was still relatively new, I posted my full review for this RPG Card Game developed by NTT Solmare. Considering the most recent game implementations, I realized that my original post could now be considered slightly outdated and misleading for newcomers regarding the gameplay. For this reason I am giving you an updated version of said post along with a small free-to-play guide based on my personal experience, which may help you getting started.
App title: Obey Me! (One Master to rule them all)
Developer: NTT Solmare
Compatible systems: iOS, Android
Playable on PC: Via Bluestacks emulator or other similar applications connected to your Google Play account
Note: For a good insight about the story, UI and apps from the Home screen, you can still refer to my previous article.
Overview
Although the game can be downloaded and played without purchasing the included content, there are some things you need to be prepared for as the main requirements have been modified. Last year you could build your ideal team for the Dance Battles mainly according to your preference for cards and characters, the most important thing was to upgrade them all to their fullest and use as many URs as possible when you could get them from the Gacha. This aspect has been altered in favor of more variety in the battles and the gameplay now forces you to use specific cards and grind harder than before.
The game will automatically pick the cards that match and produce better outcomes depending on your opponents’ skills. You can still edit the team and select the cards you want, but that may heavily affect the Battles if they do not meet the requirements and aren’t powerful enough to fill the meter in time. In order to continue with the main story you must upgrade the strongest cards you have in your inventory, especially the ones picked more often by the system that you know will work out better than others.
The more you proceed with the main tasks, the more difficult it will be to gain the items needed to unlock more skills and points to strengthen your cards in the tree. Items are usually gained via Dance Battles, Boot Camp Quiz Rewards between events and events themselves. Unfortunately, the drop rate can get seriously bad later on in the game.
In alternative, if you mainly care about reading the main story and aren’t bothered by a low DB rank as long as you pass it, glowsticks are going to be your best friends. They can be acquired by exchanging Devil Points, as rewards for the main tasks completion, login bonuses and events again. Sometimes the lessons include additional side books with more content that is not super essential to the main plot, but without gaining enough Stars you can’t unlock them.
The upside of these updates is that upon starting the game for the first time, your progress will proceed much faster than it used to. If you manage to get enough SSRs and at least a couple UR cards in Nightmare, you can already start building your main team and upgrade all the cards at once. Levelling up also feels a lot easier now in the first section of the game and you can skip a bunch of battles while still gaining the included items and meeting Surprise Guests. The hardest part begins when your opponents become stronger and at one point you’ll have to put the main story on hold for a while in order to collect glowsticks and enhance your cards even more.
Free-to-play Tips
As a free player myself I gained some experience with the game in the past year. This doesn’t make it any less difficult, but if you are starting the game just now and feel unsure about what to do, these suggestions might help you out.
- Grind as much as you can from the very beginning
Obviously. Events are generally easy to complete since the dance battles aren’t particularly hard, but if you barely started with the app even those might make you struggle after the first part. Considering how easy it is now to level up in the beginning, you should be able to play at least half story from the first season without too much hassle. The AP will be consumed pretty quickly, however, even if you can let the bar recharge for a couple hours or use some Devil Points to add more instantly. I would say that in order to properly clear all the battles in the first season, you would need a minimum of 200k strength points putting the right cards together.
2. Complete your daily tasks every time
Devil Points are extremely important in this game, so you need to collect as many as you can. Daily tasks give you 18 guaranteed DP every 24 hours if you complete the tasks, you need at least 10 points to receive more AP for events (optional) and 270 for a 10 pull in Nightmare in case you don’t have enough vouchers to use. DP are also useful to access the past Pop Quizzes from Lonely Devil (added to Tasks) if you don’t have any ticket for that, where you can retrieve more SSRs and URs from older events (and also the free vouchers included). Unfortunately though, the time at your disposal to clear up battles in LD is quite limited and you will need more tickets or DP to access it once more if you cannot complete it in time due to the AP consumption and new events overlapping.
3. Add friends
The friend list (found in Phone) is another useful feature that you can use to send AP to other players and also get them in return. This is part of the daily tasks anyway, so it is highly recommended to add as many people as you can find until your list is full. Keep in check how many AP you receive every day, every now and then you’ll see that some of the users you added either became inactive (you can see how long ago they were online), or they just don’t use the friends feature at all. You can remove players and add new ones whenever you want, there isn’t any chatting or general engagement involved. The current purpose of a friend list, at least for now, is purely to gain more AP (1 AP per person) daily. Sending AP won’t actually take them away from you.
4. Skip some Gacha events
I know this isn’t an easy thing to do, especially considering how pretty the cards are and their properties. It certainly feels a lot harder now that they improved the UR+ cards with Home Screen animations and anime-like sequences, but there is no guarantee that you’ll get any of those in Nightmare even if you spend points, vouchers or money on it. If you can get one or more event cards, those will help you out in the Pop Quiz tied to it (the game will automatically detect them in your inventory, you don’t need to equip them), but it still won’t be enough to go past the first page unless you spend more between real cash and DP.
Upgrading all your cards takes a lot of time, efforts and resources. If you already have some URs and URs+ in your inventory, I would mostly concentrate on those to complete their enhancement.
5. Take a break from the main story
The moment you reach a rather difficult part in the main lessons where the Dance Battles can hardly be cleared, the only thing left to do is grind. Collect Grimm, glowsticks, skulls and general items for some time, also taking part to the Pop Quiz events and clear the first page for 10 free vouchers you can collect each time. Be sure to upgrade your cards bit by bit every day even if your amount of Grimm isn’t particularly high. Game money is one of the easiest things to collect at least.
Please note that this can last for a very long time (I’m talking about months).
6. Use the Level UP offer for 99 DP
If your level is higher than 58, an offer will immediatly pop up whenever it grows (note, this only happens in lessons. The offer will NOT trigger if you level up through daily tasks). If you have 99 DP to spend you can get 3 glowsticks, 5 vouchers, 3 keys to use in Devilgram, 100 AP and 10k Grimm. I would suggest not to use the 270 DP for a 10 pull, but rather collect vouchers and only stick to those.
7. Keep around 150 DP as default value
If you manage to keep a relatively high number of DP, you will benefit from it in many ways. With the daily tasks, main lessons completion, bonuses and events you can increase them quickly enough and if you don’t spend any of them on events it will be a lot easier to bring them up to 200 or more. This will give you the chance to take advantage of the 99DP offer every time it pops up, allowing you to pile up vouchers for the next Nightmare pulls. The more battles you clear, the more frequent this option will become.
8. Take advantage of the 150DP offers for more vouchers
Sometimes the developers add a DP discount in Akuzon to purchase items; with only 150 you can get 10 vouchers in one go. This is also another reason why you should always try to keep as many DP as you can, so that the amount at your disposal won’t go down too much after using them with the offers.
9. Don’t use the 10 DP offer in Pop Quiz events
It may be impossible to finish the first page without spending those, but 10 vouchers every day until the event expires is a lot. Generally I try to only use them a couple times and just clear the battles whenever I have some AP recharched and active free ads.
10. Clear battles in Hard Mode
There is a button at the bottom left corner in each lesson page. If you click on NORMAL, it will immediatly switch to the HARD version of the main lessons where little to no story content will show up in favor of more dance battles. This will increase your EXP and give you the chance to collect more rare items for cards.
11. Create a second account
This is purely optional, but I’d definitely suggest to create an additional account for more luck in Nightmare. It is not guaranteed that the pulls won’t fail on both, but you could also use the second one to try out different strategies and see what works best for you. Remember to always note down your Transfer Data from Settings though, or else you will lose this account if Facebook is already connected to the main one.
To summarize, here’s a list of Devil Points you’d spend for the most important things:
10 Pull in Nightmare: 270 DP
More AP: 1 DP every 10AP
Special offers for packages (vouchers, Grimm, etc): 150 DP (full cost is around 300 DP)
Additional Vouchers from Akuzon: 1 voucher for 30 DP, 10 vouchers for 270 DP (not recommended)
Glow Stick exchange: 6 DP for 1 rainbow stick, 54 DP for 10 raibow sticks, 3 DP for normal colored sticks, 27 DP for 10 normal colored sticks
Level Up Offer: 99 DP
Extra AP offer in the event Pop Quiz: 10 DP
Lonely Devil access (in case of missing tickets): 10 DP
Go! Go! Goldie! Special tasks (recurring event): from 250 DP up to 2000 DP
UPDATE 07/11/2021: Recently the game has added two new Vouchers that you can spend to win a guaranteed SSR and UR card. A of yet there doesn’t seem to be an easy way to get them without buying them from Akuzon, although during a Login Bonus they once gave away an SSR Voucher.
Final Considerations
Being a free player in a game like Obey Me! will put you into a very difficult position; you need to decide whether or not to continue with it, as you will inevitably lose a lot of content because of the lack of resources to spend unless you buy them. Even completing the second season and getting on the third is not possible unless you own the strongest cards. In my personal opinion, spending money for the gacha is not worth it due to the little chance you have to draw the cards you want, don’t trust it when they say the odds have been increased for that specific event and other players show you proof of the cards they won. It’s all about luck and if it gets out of control it could make you fall into actual gambling as a few players have reported. Be careful with it and only drop money in Nightmare if you can afford it!
It all depends on how passionate you are about the game and if you are patient enough to wait for as long as you need to continue the story. People have been requesting an exchange feature to trade cards with friends for quite some time now, let’s hope they will implement it in the future!
Sadly the VIP membership never changed, which means you would basically offer your financial support to get very little in return. This feature is good if you feel like supporting Solmare for the work they do.
UPDATE 07/11/2021: The VIP membership now allows you to increase the amount of AP you can get from the Fridge mission and to access the DevilTube app where you can watch the Anime as early access. You can also skip most if not all the Event battles if your strength points are high enough and the free pulls will recharge within the next 24 hours instead of 48. It’s still not enough for me to subscribe as you still have no perks for the cards in Nightmare, but I suppose they are now working on it to improve the feature.
Personal rating story-wise: ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
Good story, nice app idea. Too many anime tropes scattered around maybe and there are times where the overall reading could result a bit boring, but the main plot so far is nice to read and the characters are lovely.
Personal rating gameplay-wise: ⭐️⭐️
Unfortunately, I was forced to drop my rating due to the negative changes that affected my f2p experience for some time. I got stuck on season 2 for a long time, unable to continue despite my efforts upgrading cards and grinding. The overall mechanics may also become repetitive the more you play, since you only have Dance Battles and nothing else do to. In my opinion, the game would benefit from additional ways to unlock the story content and it might be way too greedy for the time being.
