- Title: Snowbreak: Containment Zone
- Platform: Microsoft Windows (via Steam)
- Also available on Android and iOS
- Developer: Amazing Seasun Games
- Publisher: Amazing Seasun Games
- Played: Version 2.0 | Adjutant Level 73 | Main Story Chapter 13 | Main Story Hard Mode Chapter 8 | Tactical Evaluation Phase 8 | Far too much money spent in real life
Note: English voice acting for Snowbreak: Containment Zone was discontinued in Version 1.4. It has also been announced on Jul 18, 2024 that the majority of the Chinese voice cast will be replaced. For any voiced characters mentioned in this review, I will be citing their Japanese actor.
Snowbreak: Containment Zone is perhaps best known in the gacha community for its comeback, in which developer and publisher Amazing Seasun Games kept the game afloat by going “screw it” and loaded the game with fanservice. To their credit, this plan has panned out rather well for them as the game has seen an increase in revenue. I imagine this is what will draw most people in but to Seasun’s credit, Snowbreak is also a fun third-person shooter for players to sink their teeth into.
I. The Plot. No, That One.
Snowbreak takes place on a post-disaster Earth, where the planet had been ravaged by the Titans, mysterious creatures that releases a highly toxic snow-like substance called Titagen. To minimize Titagen contamination and defend against the Titans, walls have built to establish several Containment Zones in the world. The game has the player assume the role of the Adjutant, a young man working for Yggdrasil Enterprises, a world leading company that helped create the Containment Zones and conducts various operations in them. Upon returning to Earth from a three year mission in space, the Adjutant is reassigned as the leader of the Heimdall Force, a paramilitary team created by Yggdrasil. All of Heimdall’s main operatives are Manifestations, enhanced humans who can tap into a special power called a Deiwos. The story primarily has the Adjutant lead Heimdall in investigating the mystery surrounding Titagen, deal with the civil unrest both in and out of the Containment Zones, and uncover a conspiracy within Yggdrasil.
Frankly, there are a couple of huge issues with the story. For one, it can be pretty darn confusing. There is simply way too much jargon for you to keep track of and the game sometimes struggles at properly explaining certain terms to you. More bafflingly than that, a lot of limited-time events are canon and while some of them appear to have been permanently added into the game, others are not. If you’re new to the game, you may run into a character and get confused as to who they are because their introduction wasn’t permanently added in. A second major issue is that the first ten chapters of the game are a huge slog, due to severely slow pacing and the cast being far too big for the game’s own good. The story does pick up starting with Chapter 11. Pacing gets a lot tighter and the story in general feels a lot more eventful and more focused. That said, the game still feels very convoluted at times. It is worth noting that Amazing Seasun are planning on reworking these chapters but whether or not they’ll be a significant improvement remains to be seen.
In spite of the narrative issues, the cast can have their moments. The Adjutant is surprisingly more involved in the story than you’d expect for a player insert and he shares some interesting scenes with his Operatives and miscellaneous members of the cast. The two most major operatives, Lyfe (Asami Seto) and Fenny (Mayu Sagara) are consistently a fun duo throughout the game thanks to their polar opposite personalities and their relationship with the Adjutant. Some of the supporting characters such as Haru (Shizuka Ishigami) and Siris (Haruka Shiraishi) have pretty good arcs in the later chapters, that makes them more interesting and/or more endearing than their initial appearances let on. There are also characters who simply fun to be around, such as Yao (Yōko Hikasa), an Operative who just wants to chill and tries to avoid working overtime.
For a game noted for its fanservice, this element isn’t actually very prevalent in the campaign. There are some romantic interactions between the Adjutant and his operatives and a couple of other subjective moments here and there but that’s about it. About the only actual eye candy in the story is some of the canon/default character designs being pretty suggestive. The story takes itself rather seriously, which is admittedly for the best given its setting and tone.
II. Combat
Combat takes place across missions in the campaign as well as various other modes found in the game. Here, you take control of a squad of up to three Operatives. Operatives can wield one of various types of firearms and they deal one of five types of Elemental DMG: Chaos, Electric Frost, Kinetic, Thermal. As you might expect, some weapon types dictate how you’ll generally control the Operative in question. For example, a shotgun wielding Operative will want to run in and fight at close quarters while a sniper rifle wielding Operative will want to maintain distance and methodically take down her opponents.
About the most interesting thing about the shooting is that your aiming reticule is present regardless if your active character is firing from the hip or aiming down the sights. While aiming down the sights allows for better accuracy, you often need to strafe, sprint, or roll out of a jam so hip fire not being completely useless in this game is very nice.
Aside from simply shooting their gun, Operatives can perform one Standard Skill while they’re on the field. If an Operative is off field, they can perform a Support Skill to back up their active teammate. The aforementioned Skills can only be used when they are off cooldown and the respective Operative has enough S-Energy to spare. While fighting, the player generally earns U-Energy; once the player has enough for a given Operative, they can then execute that character’s Ultimate Skill. Skills can be furthered augmented by passives obtained in two skill systems: Neuronics (which can be upgraded entirely for free) and Manifestations (which may or may not require real money). Some skills are self-buffs that compliment the inherent playstyle of the respective operative’s weapon type. Others are off-field, buffs, or utilities for the active teammate to utilize. Honestly, it’s a lot of fun experimenting with each Operative’s kit and seeing how they might synergize with each other.
There are a couple of baffling decisions to the combat. Snowbreak does allow you to take cover but this mechanic isn’t very good. In a lot of maps, it rarely feels like a lot of thought was put into how cover is placed. When there is cover, these often have a health bar so eventually, they get destroyed by enemies. Blind fire from cover isn’t really a thing in this game. A lot of enemy attacks are AoE so you often don’t want to take cover or else you become a sitting duck. As a result, you seldom want to take cover in this game and sometimes, you will outright forget that this mechanic exists. Also strange is the lack of a dedicated melee button. Somehow, this game has all the basic features you’d expect from a third person shooter except for striking the enemy with your gun. You do get used to it but it can be annoying when some enemies are capable of a melee attack and unless you have a close range weapon, your only option when they get close to you is to evade.
III. Grind & Endgame
Like many of gacha titles, Snowbreak follows a stamina-based activity format. Use up stamina, or Presence as it’s called in the game, to advance through campaign missions and claim materials in certain challenge modes. Frankly, it’s kind of annoying that you have to use Presence during the campaign. It is a common mechanic in this type of game but it also impedes your ability to do other stuff that you need to do to advance your account.
Grinding is more or less relegated to the Operation mode, which is comprised of nine missions that each reward you with materials you need to build your characters as well as Logistic Officers, Snowbreak‘s gear system. A lot is needed to min-max a build so expect to visit this mode frequently. Logistic Officers are particularly obnoxious as characters ideally want full set bonuses and it’s very easy to get worthless stats on these glorified PNGs. Fortunately, Snowbreak gives you an auto-battle option after clearing an Operation mission on one of its difficulties for the first time. This means you can get the daily grind done in a matter of seconds. It’s very convenient and lets you spend your time on something else in the game.
Once your characters are sufficiently built, you’re ready to tackle Snowbreak‘s endgame, which is comprised of a couple of different modes, most of which are found under the Dispatch menu. For starters, there’s Tactical Evaluation, which pits your Operatives in much tougher firefights than those found in the campaign on normal difficulty. A nice feature in this mode is that if your squad is strong enough, you can skip over to certain levels in a mission set and claim all the rewards from all the levels you bypassed. There’s also Jotun Tunnel, which has you fight a rotating roster of enemies within a time limit. This mode also has some one-off permanent gauntlets for you to sink your teeth into first and some of the challenges include in them can be pretty brutal. Like, one of them demands that you only take a certain number of hits and that’s easier said than done since every bullet that hits you counts as one hit. One last mode that I want to mention is Neural Stimulation, which has you use one squad against one of the bosses found in the campaign on the highest difficulty possible. Squads can’t be changed until the mode resets so you have to make be absolutely sure that you have the right characters for the job. All in all, there’s a good amount of content for you to periodically challenge yourself with. These modes also give you a decent amount of rewards, some related to the gacha and others needed to finish your builds.
IV. Monetization
Snowbreak‘s monetization primarily comes in the form of a gacha system called “Echoes”. Here, you pull for characters and weapons that vary in rarity, with 5-Stars being the highest one. Character dupes earn you fragments that you can then use to unlock nodes in the Manifestation skill system. Weapons can be refined into each other for an upgrade version of its passive.
In addition to a standard banner, Snowbreak releases limited banners in pairs, one for a featured character and one for their signature weapon. Each limited banner also has a “standard” and “special” version. This can be overwhelming or confusing at first but basically, the standard version has a 50/50 mechanic while the special version does not but it has an even lower drop rate for the featured drop and it requires more pulls to hit pity. Why this is a thing is beyond me (I didn’t play the patch where this system was established). I’m sure someone has done the math as to which one is slightly better but honestly, it’s kind of up to personal preference as to which banner you’d want to pull for. If you want a standard 5-Star and you don’t mind the risk of getting to pity twice, then the standard version is perfectly fine. If you just want the featured drop and you want a more reliable estimate of pulls, go with the special version.
Compared to other gachas that I’ve personally tried, Snowbreak doesn’t really have that high of a potential price tag. 5-Star weapons only need a second copy for a maxed refinement. For any 5-Star character you have on your account, you can farm their fragments via a mission mode called Personal Files and eventually obtain their Manifestations for free. There are some caveats to keep in mind. Pulling for two copies of a weapon is still going to cost you a lot of free pulls or a couple hundred dollars so you should still consider just pulling for one. You can only grind a character’s Personal File mission twice a day and you only get one fragment per battle so unlocking just the first Manifestation passive could you take several days. If you really want power, expect to whale. That all said, Snowbreak‘s gacha isn’t all that bad, at least when you see how other games in the market go about it.
Other than the gacha, Snowbreak also provides a plethora of outfits that you can buy and then give to your operatives. This is where Snowbreak mostly gets its reputation as a very “cultured” product. Some of the outfits you can get in this game are pretty darn bold, more so than the default ones. Mileage might vary with the pricing. In general, they’re about $15-30 worth of Top-Ups. On one hand, I can’t exactly say these prices are cheap for cosmetics but on the other, I have seen worse in other games. Snowbreak also occasionally releases weapon skins. I was afraid that these might be exclusively applicable to a character’s signature weapon. That would be the very stingy and greedy thing to do. Fortunately, these can be applied to any other firearm that the character can use.
Conclusion
I already have a couple of gachas that I play on a daily basis so I don’t exactly see myself playing Snowbreak regularly. Putting the issue of time aside, I still would recommend the game. I enjoy the combat a fair amount and I really appreciate that the game respects my time, allowing me to be done with the grind in seconds and instead focus on the content that’s actually worth playing. As for the fanservice, it’s obviously not for everyone and the best eye candy is locked behind paywalls. If that is something you’re into however, then this game will seldom disappoint you.
Score: 7/10
+ Fun third-person shooting, likable cast of characters, daily loop respects your time, pretty sizable endgame.
+/- Fanservice isn’t for everyone, gacha is comparatively reasonable but it’s still gacha.
– Plot can get confusing at times, some gameplay mechanics feel underdeveloped.
Xenodude Scribbles 