16 best gacha games in 2024 (2024)

Taming a gacha game is a completely different beast than other genres; you must be aware of, and okay with some predatory practices these games introduce. However, despite these setbacks clouding the genre, gachas can still go toe-to-toe with some of the best Android games you can find on the platform.

Great gacha games offer sizable content. Plus, you'd be surprised how much those top-end titles can put premium gaming phones through a stress test on the sheer scale alone. On the other hand, bad gachas are always looking to squeeze out money and are often created on a much lower budget and feed very little of it back, operating in maintenance mode for years to come. So, to help filter out the bad gachas from the great, we've compiled a roundup to outline some of the best gacha games worth gambling your time on.

1 Another Eden

Another Eden is a narrative-driven gacha game without the pressurized grind, and you're the one who gets to set the pace; there's no energy mechanic, no PvP, and no dailies for you to stress over. The best part is that it's a free-to-play single-player experience written and directed by Masato Kato and music composer Yasunori Mitsuda, both responsible for the classic RPGs Chrono Trigger and Chrono Cross. Another Eden doesn't push its gacha as the primary focus but instead wants to drive the traditional JRPG experience for the player, making it an excellent choice for newcomers unfamiliar with gacha gaming.

2 Arknights

Arknights is like no other gacha game; there's a strong focus on tower defense, which requires an actual strategy to win. You'll find a mixture of other gameplay elements like card collecting and auto-play (but with restrictions) that's convenient for when you have to step away from your device. The game is known for being F2P friendly, where you can invest into 4-star units to get you through most of the content, leaving the 5 and 6-stars as added luxuries for your team, and there are no competitive modes that force you to pay to win anyway. All that's required is a bit of understanding of the game's mechanics to get you through, where working hard and strategizing well pays off.

3 Honkai Impact 3rd

It may take some time to get into Honkai Impact 3rd, as the writing and gameplay don't feel very polished at first. However, this is still one of HoYoverse's core projects even after seven years. Honkai Impact 3rd offers impressive visuals, an addictive rock-paper-scissors combat system, and an evolving deep story that's heavily emotional. In addition, due to the age of Honkai Impact 3rd, you can now obtain currency outside of the gacha to acquire older units. Still, for a new player trying to get through the PvE content, these units are more than enough to get you through the main content. Meta units and duplicates become necessary in the late game, but you have years of content to get through before getting there.

4 Punishing: Gray Raven

It is a disservice not to mention Punishing: Gray Raven in today's gacha roundup. The combat is exceptionally fluid and polished compared to a vast majority of action RPGs on Android. However, the game can be challenging since you'll have to execute perfect dodges, play at a fast pace to carry out your combos, and utilize your orb mechanics to take down bosses. The story and setting are not for the faint of heart, taking great inspiration from NieR:Automata and Honkai Impact 3rd, both known for offering darker, mature, and gloomy themes.

5 Honkai: Star Rail

So you may know Honkai: Star Rail is basically Genshin Impact but in outerspace. But there's more than meets the eye with HoYoverse's shiny new toy; Star Rail is a superbly polished standalone game that took Genshin Impact's shortcomings (higher stamina cap, faster refills, for example) and created one of the best turn-based gacha games to date, even winning Best Mobile Game in 2023.

So far, the game remains free-to-play friendly, taking pages out of the Genshin storybook, where most units and standard banner pulls remain relevant in the main content. Fans of turn-based titles (especially coming from Persona 5 and Trails) should try this polished product — and don't be shy about greeting a trashcan or two.

6 Guardian Tales

An underrated entry on this list; Guardian Tales will make any old-school Zelda fans feel welcome. The gameplay focuses on dungeon-crawling, puzzle-solving, and 2D action combat. The game is also F2P friendly outside of PvP, while the gacha is only there to help speed things along, but it is not mandatory for in-game progression. Guardian Tales offers a humorous and cute storyline while adding unique gameplay elements that you can't depend on auto-battling your way to victory.

7 Genshin Impact

HoYoverse is rapidly making waves with Genshin Impact, becoming the most expensive video game ever. HoYoverse spends millions on content, artwork, and music to raise the experience as a triple AAA game. Genshin Impact is still primarily a single-player open-world game, so whaling isn't a necessity to beat the main content; the most challenging content currently is the spiral abyss in which anyone can achieve 36 stars if you spend your resources wisely, invest in your units and plan your team around based on the buffs/enemy line-ups. Genshin Impact is still considered one of Android's finest titles, but given how much of a time-sink it can be for free players, you'll either love or hate the game.

8 Counter:Side

At first glance, Counter:Side stands out for its flashy 2D visuals and unique setting/premise, but it has plenty to offer for a gacha. The main character is a company's CEO trying to prevent bankruptcy while casually saving the world. But a good CEO must carefully select the right employees to fulfill this tall order. Overall, Counter:Side is a guilty pleasure gacha game, requiring extensive resources and team planning. Outside the unique premise, the most significant selling point for Counter:Side is the ongoing story, told through episodes and character side stories, which neither is too much of a time sink to experience.

9 Dragon Ball Z: Dokkan Battle

An anime action puzzle game that's seen a ton of success since its 2015 release is still going strong today. Dragon Ball Z: Dokkan Battle offers a PvE focus compared to Dragon Ball Legends, which means you can take the game at your own pace and not be forced to keep up with ongoing meta builds after every update. Thousands of characters are recruitable (perfect for team-building goals), and new players will have access to SSRs from the start. The game has received plenty of quality-of-life updates over the years, making this gacha a reliable title to get into.

10 Alice Fiction

Alice Fiction combines puzzle mechanics and tactical RPG battling that focuses on stringing together a team filled with familiar historical figures. The exceedingly high visual quality and amazing soundtrack can carry the experience by itself, which is the main drawing point for Alice Fiction. Overall the gacha isn't anything to write right home about, but it's also not an intrusive feature that takes away from the experiences. But Alice Fiction is a worthy choice when seeking to dabble and play casually on mobile.

11 Aether Gazer

Yostar published a well-thought-out casual combo of Honkai Impact 3rd and Punishing: Gray Raven; fans of action RPGs will feel right at home with Aether Gazer. The launch had a shaky start (if you were there for the first few hours, the audio bugs weren't pleasant to the ears), but after ironing out those issues, it has been coming out strong since. Overall the gameplay is exceptionally smooth, even on a touchscreen, and more impressively, in battle, your AI-controlled teammates hold their own. Aether Gazer might've slipped the radar, thanks to the less-than-ideal release date (overshadowed by Honkai: Star Rail), but it doesn't mean it deserves to be overlooked.

12 Tower of Fantasy

Tower of Fantasy is the odd man out on this list due to its focus on MMO gameplay over its gacha system. But it still has plenty of gacha mechanics that require attention while you're playing, vitality is essentially your energy meter that limits your daily progression, and your weapon builds require summoning on the gacha banners for Simulacrum team upgrades.

Tower of Fantasy is a jack-of-all-trades game that will offer plenty to do while immersing yourself in a fully explorable map where you can team up with friends. MMORPGs and gacha games often don't go hand-in-hand since the combo quickly exploits the pay-to-win factor. Still, at least Tower of Fantasy has content to offer outside of its competitive game modes that extends some generosity when using the gacha system.

13 Star Wars: Galaxy of Heroes

Star Wars: Galaxy of Heroes is a collection-based RPG that has you gathering legendary ships and iconic characters across the Star Wars Universe to engage in epic team battles against light and darkness. After completing your roster, you can join a guild to fight in territory battles to conquer the Galaxy, bringing the gameplay grind onto a macro scale. In addition, a recent update enables gearing up newly acquired characters much faster, so putting together your dream team is manageable for the new player experience. So far, Galaxy of Heroes is the most faithful adaptation on mobile, offering lots of replayability and exploration. And clearly, one that has earned over 50 million downloads on the Google Play Store for a good reason.

14 Alchemy Stars

The music and art are top-tier in Alchemy Stars. The bite-sized strategy turn-based battles fit naturally for mobile while not needing to include action-oriented open-world elements to expand on the experience (as fun as that is, sometimes we need a happy medium between the two sides for mobile gaming). Staying free-to-play isn't a challenge, either. Completing in-game events will warrant enough resources to keep your account healthy; plus, you can't just turn your brain off while playing Alchemy Stars since the auto-battle function isn't always the most efficient way to clear levels. But needless to say, the story mode isn't difficult to play through, so you don't have to stress about obtaining meta units at the start.

15 Brown Dust 2

Gachas have a poor reputation for having a non-existent plot paired with incredibly weak snooezefest gameplay. Some gachas boldly try to hide the half-baked story while fooling others that the story "gets better" over time. But most of those games were mainly designed to entice players to spend money and then cash out.

Despite these worries, it is safe to say that Brown Dust 2 has gone over and beyond what's expected. Brown Dust 2 combines the best aspects of old-school RPGs and turn-based strategy to yield a console-level (Switch) game. It manages to add in some gacha without taking away from the overall experience. Brown Dust 2 has a plot with a built-up multi-world system and a cast of characters that don't feel as flat as their pixels. For a smaller gacha, this is as organic as it gets. Overall, Brown Dust 2 allows you to forget that it is gacha-driven until you've uncovered the dupes system (and how reliant the game gets on collecting character dupes). But even with these drawbacks, the game still has plenty to offer.

16 Reverse: 1999

Reverse: 1999 was a bit of a later bloomer, releasing in October 2023, six months after the official launch in China. The game was rough around the edges; the localization was a bit sloppy, which took attention away from the immersion and gameplay. But after letting the dust settle, Reverse: 1999 proved to be a winner in the gacha gaming realm. It continues to sprew out slick animations and keeps adding to its complex (even if slightly convoluted) story chapters. The gacha rates are also slightly generous compared to others in the genre. Reverse: 1999 works well on mobile out the gate, so there's no need to worry about this game melting your device anytime soon.

Know what you are getting into with the best gacha games

Gacha games are an acquired taste. It's a famous debate whether gacha gaming is virtual gambling, leading to many grey areas in gaming. But not all gacha games are there to satisfy a gambling addiction. Some offer fully fleshed-out storylines that you'd find in other paid titles. But they happen in increments, much like what you'd expect from any live service title. But just like other games, you must keep your expectations in check and try them before selling off your time. Sometimes, you hit a gem; other times, it's a dud — such is the nature of many gachas.

Suppose you discover gachas are not in tune with your gaming habits, especially because you need an established internet connection to play most of them. In that case, the Google Play Store has a decent catalog of offline titles you can try.