Obey Me! Nightbringer is here

Obey Me! is a mobile otome gacha game developed by NTT Solmare, the company behind the myriad of Shall We Date otome game series which apparently is now defunct(?). I’ve played several of their games but the only one that managed to capture my attention is the Obey Me! series.

I started playing the game around 2020 when COVID struck and stuck with the game for about 3 months because the storyline was really compelling and the characters are absolutely adorbs. I admit the names of the characters are a bit off-putting for a Christian (you romance fallen angels aka demons by the names of Lucifer, Mammon, Beelzebub, Satan etc.). However if you can get over that, the game is not satanic in any ways. In fact, it depicts the different sins we are susceptible to albeit in an exaggerated manner.

However I stopped playing after 3 months because I hit a wall with the game. I had reached Chapter 23 but to proceed onwards really required extensive grinding in a rather monotonous gameplay. Since I was also playing Mr Love and Tears of Themis concurrently then, Obey Me! soon fell out of my radar. It became literally non-existent after my phone was stolen in Germany and I didn’t have any way to retrieve the game data back.

Fast forward to November 2022. Obey Me! had become such a big title that they even had a presence in the first AFA post-COVID at Suntec City. I would like to think that my meagre contributions to the game had helped propelled its development. I also found out that the game had amassed a whooping 80 chapters of storyline. I was barely halfway there. As such, I wrote to NTT Solmare and begged them to help me retrieve my account with whatever little I remember of it. Thankfully I had actually spent on the game before so they managed to trace back and find my account through my Google Play transactions. (The one time spending money on a game actually had a tangible pay off!)

So I got back to playing Obey Me! just this month and then lo and behold, I found out that they have just launched the sequel to the game under the title Obey Me! Nightbringer on 12 April. I am a sucker for new games because it meant I can be right there and then at its beginning to track it development and all the fresh content whenever it is released. I was on a roll for Tears of Themis… till my Switzerland/Germany trip which caused me to miss Marius’ birthday event and everything just fell apart after that. To be honest, ToT is a great game with deep content but like all Hoyoverse games, it can be really time consuming.

The game interface for Nightbringer is very familiar as the developers didn’t change much from the original game. The one thing they did change which is a very very good change is to replace the mindless dance battles with a rhythm game! (Think Twisted Wonderland! Another otome game which I’ve stopped playing too because the grinding got too tough…) However unlike Twisted Wonderland where the tunes are instrumental, Nightbringer introduced 13 songs sung by the voice actors of the characters themselves. Though the songs are really short, I like its beat and rhythm and they actually grow on you after a while.

When I first started the game I sucked terribly at tapping to the beat at the right time but I can now pretty much ace the songs at normal level. Next step is to ace the Hard level before aiming for Extreme. Nightbringer starts off with 10 chapters of the storyline. I haven’t reached the end of Obey Me! but based on comments, I’m guessing that you inadvertently got teleported back in time to just after the Great Celestial War when the boys find themselves in Devildom. You are assigned as their demon attendant as they learn what it means to fall from grace. They have no recollection of who you are so it is with some bitterness that you have to earn their trust all over again.

I have to say that the stories actually hit you hard this time round right from the get go which is unlike Obey Me! where it starts off with a comedic approach. The boys are feeling raw coming from their big fight with their Father as they face the realities of being a fallen angel and how they are gradually succumbing to each of the seven deadly sins they are named after. There is a sense of forlorness as they say goodbye to their past to make the best of the situation they have found themselves in. It makes me wonder if that’s how people who have crossed over the ‘dark side’ feel at times.

It’s been about two weeks into the game and I’m enjoying it very much. It has a good storyline, the rhythm game makes it less repetitive and actually fun, the characters are well developed and for once they aren’t your goody two shoes. The only thing that didn’t change is that the difficulty level requires that you really really grind to build your teams.

To become strong enough to take on most challenges, you’d need to have at least 3 SSR and above character cards for each trait (Pride, Greed, Envy, Wrath, Lust, Gluttony and Sloth) AND 3 SR and above memory cards for the same seven traits. Then you need to level the cards and unlock the slots in the Devil Tree – all of which requires Grimm and/or materials which you need to spend AP to attain. Basically it’s a game that puts you in constant vicious cycle – wait for AP to slowly restore; use AP to farm for mats and Grimm; use mats and Grimm to level cards so you can progress on the story; run out of everything.. back to waiting for AP to restore again…  In short, as a free to play player, you need to be very strategic on which cards you level.

Nightbringer’s first event “The Cursed Seed and the Fertilising Flame” was released on 17 April. However it caused quite a bit of clamour amongst its fans. Many of the pay to play gamers were already feeling sour that there would be no new content on Obey Me! and were looking forward to the event. They were very disappointed to learn that the same event would be featured on both games which effectively made Obey Me! an almost dead game now. For me, I’ll still keep playing since I want to progress on the storyline – I finally hit Chapter 30, but I’ll only play the new events on Nightbringer itself.

A quick synopsis of the event story – it likely took reference from the Japanese tradition of dondoyaki where spiritual items and keepsakes from New Year such as daruma dolls and omamori are burnt to properly dispose of it rather than trashed. The burning of these items is to give it a symbolic cleansing ceremony as well as help the Japanese say goodbye to the past and look ahead to the new year.

In the event story, Solomon gifted Belphie a seed to help him sleep better but it turned out the seed was more trouble than good. Lucifer wanted to get rid of the cursed item and learnt that Moryo Town (aka Japan) would be hosting its own dondoyaki. He decided to make it a family affair by getting the brothers to do a spring clean of their rooms. On the fateful day however the bonfire was dying because the musical band that was supposed to play to keep the fire spirits hyped had been delayed. The brothers thus worked together to keep the fire alive until the band could arrive. Then you are treated to a delicious view of the boys in their respective yukatas looking mighty fine!

To maximise the points you can earn from doing the event activities, you will need the special released character cards which you can gacha pull from Nightmare. These are:

• SSR Stranger in the Mirror (Beel – Pride)
• UR+ The Gourmand’s Main Dish (Solomon – Pride)
• UR+ The Barber of Horrorville (Mammon – Pride)
• You can also earn event cards and memories as part of the event rewards:
• UR Lucifer’s Film (Lucifer – Pride)
• UR Bewitched and Bedevilled (M – Pride)
• SSR Festival for Two (M – Pride)
• SSR Memories and Pale Shades (Asmo – Pride (free card)

Alright here’s enough update for Nightbringer. Chapter 11 was released on 23 April and I’m still struggling to move on from Chapter 9. Will post more as and when there are new events.