It's been more than a year now since Valkyrie Crusade (神界のヴァルキリー) has hit the mobile market and I've been there for the entirety of the ride and still to this day play it. The game originated as a very basic (primitive) card game mixed with a little farmville type of city builder to improve card stats, gather resources and overall just to have silly fun. The addiction in the beginning for most people was not the terrible card game but rather the city builder feature.Early in the game's history, most people played to improve their town and it was very difficult to do so but today they've slightly altered it so new players get a strong advantage. New buildings could be bought, territory expands (to an extend) and you only had one city. When I first joined there were a lot of server maintenance and all rewards that were given in the past prior to joining were given to you, so when I had joined I had received maybe 2000 jewels which is equivalent to $20USD. I didn't really know how the jewels system worked because this was the first F2P mobile game I had played and ended up spending most of it on quickly getting resources and expanding my territory. I know, it's gut wrenching but believe me, I'm more upset.Arcwitches or Archwitches (they have 2 different spellings in the game and I don't know which one is the right one) are big bosses that used to come in pairs. One Arcwitch in the campaign map and the other in the event map. If you beat one, you might have a chance to obtain a SR, Super-Rare card (Boss) of the opposing map's Arcwitch. Today, it differs but usually you are presented with a UR battle and a SR battle and there's a high chance of getting either. Rare, Super Rare and Ultra Rare (Introduced in December 2013) cards used to be very hard to obtain, but these days they are practically giving the cards away with little to no work. I understand I am at max level, I have nothing else to do with my resources but randomly spend them maxing out cards I'll never use, and I have more medals than the counter can read but generally the game has been made easier for everyone.Take for example when you start a new game, you can now have unlimited vitality points to use in campaign mode, which is like your stamina that gradually recovers over time unless you pay money to recover. This effect lasts for a few days I think 2-days? however back when I first started I had very little vitality and it took a lot of strategy to balance my vitality with city construction. Today, you can just keep fighting until your heart is content.City construction also changed over the year, initially there was only one city, but now you can build two cities. You share resources and you can't build the same things, rather if you have 5 gold storage that you can build, it's shared with your other town. Another thing that is different is that you can now build mini-game buildings which allows you to play one of three mini-games. When playing these mini-games you collect coins and can redeem them for various things inside a special mini-game shop. It's neat but it's been many, many months since there's been anything new in these regards. What I'm bothered about today's city builder is that there used to be a new building every 2-4weeks that you could spend your jewels on, but I don't think there's been anything new since December.There are new maps but they are easy to get through. Unfortunately when you get passed the first campaign map, you're going to get really strong, really fast. This means that maps that come after it should be harder, but they're not really. Battles are usually 1 to 2 turns and that's a big flaw in this game and it's not just for campaign but for duels as well. When fighting against other players, it's either you win or they do within one turn. Sometimes a fluke might happen and it can last more than a turn but generally it's "Will one of my party members proc and hit and kill everyone at once or will they?". The mechanics of the card game is very basic and unfortunately they think they can get away with it with amazing eye-candy... Oh wait, they do!When I first started there were somewhere around 250 cards to collect, today it's closer to 2000 and I have almost every single one of them. Sadly, there are some cards that can never be obtained because they were replaced with newer art. So if you ever plan on collecting all the cards, it's simply impossible. But cards... Yeah, over the period of a year they have went from drawing well clothed women to practically nude lolis. I'm not kidding, loli is the theme of the game these days and it seems that people are loving it over the TCGapp forums and the VC unofficial wiki.Guilds are an interesting feature that was introduced somewhere around May of last year, I can't remember exactly when but Guilds were introduced with potential and to this day that potential has barely been tapped. My guild is maxed out, there's nothing to do besides waiting for the next Alliance Duels / Battles and those only happen rarely. Ranking is not much of a thing and my alliance is somewhere in the top 200 but it's not something you could know unless there are battles. Not to mention, you can only have up to 20 people in your guild if your guild level is high enough and I don't think you can move rank titles around either.After more than a year, how would I change this game?#1: Balance the drop rates of R/SR/UR cards from SR/UR battles. There are many ways to go about this but I find it unfair that I spent 6 months or so working up for my first SR card and now just about anyone can get it if they participate in a UR battle even as a level 1 player.#2: Make Guilds useful and engaging. There's very little room to write to your guildmates and they span across many messages, it's annoying. Have a proper ranking system where guilds can always fight and become better, and the better your guild is, the more members can join, add more titles too! Recently they added more levels but it's not enough.#3: Make Alliance duels fair. Our guild is very, very strong. Almost everyone is maxed out and have a team composed of HUR cards. What happens? We end up fighting guilds that are either inactive or extremely low level. In the last alliance duel, they claimed to have resolved this but we still were in the same spot where we just destroyed new guilds. It isn't fair to the new guilds and it's not fun on our end.#4: Introduce better incentives for paid players. I'm a free player and I own every premium thing in the game and still have over 1000 jewels remaining. I never once thought "oh, I should spend money because..." because I had no reason to. I have strong cards, I get premium summon tickets, and I have over 700 maiden tickets which I won't even bother exchanging for ultimate summon tickets (probably get shoes and swords instead), my castle is maxed level, I have -everything- including max card space. Maybe they have their formula, but I would like to contribute somehow but there's nothing for me to buy.#5: Make towns more fun. I started playing because I used to play Valkyrie on the original Playstation but I got hooked on the town builder. Maybe allow level 15 upgrades?#6: Have a checklist system for the presents folder. I have like 1000+ items in there, I don't know how much anymore but I've lost track and it only displays the 100 most recent. Have a check box so I can either collect, or delete those items. At the moment I have to waste items like arcanas that take up too much visible space.#7: Allow the purchase of new card slots. 140 is the current max and there are a lot more cards to collect today than there was a year ago. 1000jewels + 10 slots, make it happen please!#8: More mini-games. I know, it's a card game and all but in order to collect certain R/SR cards, you need to play those mini-games and a lot of times. It's repetitive and boring. Even if it cost jewels, I'd be game to trade those for a new mini-game.#9: Status indicator. At the moment (OFF) and (ON) needs to be appended to the username so people don't invite you when you're not online. A year ago, the status was "1 minute ago, 5 minutes ago" but today it's "an hour ago" for everyone that last did an action.#10: Guild Bank because sharing resources would be useful when there's nothing you can do with your own resources.#11: 3+ extra characters for usernames. Try doing [guild acronym] Username (OFF), it's tough to figure out.#12: Add 2 new elements to the game. The current game is unbalanced so it doesn't really matter but having 2 new elements would be refreshing.#13: Or rather, add something completely new to the game. Valkyrie Crusade did an excellent job at adding great new features to the game. As a free-to-play player, I maxed out everything possible, I just keep collecting jewels, battles are all too easy and there's no new challenge to the game. It's just the same thing day-in-and-day-out and in order to rank really high, you don't need to be a great player but rather have a lot of time on your hands. It takes about 6hrs a day, 7-days a week to be in the top 100 and I've done it before, it's not pleasant. I get where VC is coming from, it's designed for short-term players that have a job and don't want to spend too much time playing so instead they pay to have the game play for them. It's been about 14 months since the game first came out and it offers very little to "post-game" players. But, that doesn't mean that I can't pass the torch, which I did. My wife now plays the game instead and she's the leader of my guild (same character). She likes it because it doesn't require hand-eye coordination.But overall, Valkyrie Crusade is by far the most comprehensive game, very well polished, and the eye candy is phenomenal. Kids play it, teens play it, and adults play it and gender doesn't really matter although I'm sure that guys are the bigger audience due to the fact that the game is littered with half-clothed adults and loli. But still, it passes the time, and a lot of hard work was placed in this game and it's something I can really appreciate and why I want to pay to buy something as a "thank you" to the developers. If you haven't played this game yet, I would highly recommend it, it's worth at least trying for a few days, you won't regret it.

Once again, this page is from a old section called News in Japan which hasn't been a thing since about 2016. But Jappleng has a lot more to offer such as:
- Entertainment section for Anime lineup, news, reviews and more (over 14,000 anime titles!)
- Education section to learn Japanese and about Japan for free
- Club Jappleng to create and join fan clubs, study groups etc...
- Travel Guides to learn more about Japan, immigration and tourist attractions
- Community forums, dedicated chat system, J-Spot social network
- Japanese practice games and other fun stuff like Yokai Trainers
- Massive Japanese <> English dictionary with over 500,000 words
- Achievements, unlockables and more!

We're really big with over 10-million pages! This is a volunteer / free project so please consider Registering an account and being part of our awesome community!