With the second major PvP event about to happen in Magireco, might as well give an update for where I am with the game. So far I've cleared the story through Chapter 7 and did a handful of the early parts of Chapter 8 to get some of the gem rewards when they had the story clear missions, but the berserk feather fights that make up the bulk of the quests so far are such a pain that I've put off any more story clearing until I can put together full 5* teams. Honestly, without the free weekend rolls and a bit of luck in them I probably wouldn't still be playing; having only used about... 700-800 or so gems out of "pocket" (including buying the monthly discount 10-roll from the shop), I've managed to get a natural 4* in each of Dark, Light, Forest, and Fire, and I'm still holding on to the free 4* pick until the last moment. Though given how mechanics work in this game, no matter how good their Connect is, a natural 4* with just one memoria slot feels like they could end up far inferior to a promoted 2/3* with multiple slots, at least for PvP. And to cycle back around to that point, I have no idea what kind of team I should be making for the Mirrors ranking that wouldn't get stomped flat by whales.
Still annoyed at some of the minor technical things with the game (awkward menu navigation, no visible HP numbers over each character/enemy in battle, lack of animation variety) and events are still a complete mess trying to understand how they work and deal with shop currency -- feels like you're expected to burn AP items like crazy if you want to buy even half of what's there.
The anime is absolutely incredible, though. It's captured all the style and atmosphere of the original series perfectly for a new generation; easily my preferred way to experience the story so far., though as I was going through the game chapters I was actually reading them up through chapter 4 but ended up skipping over most of the cutscenes for chapter 5 (but then started watching them again for chapter 6 onward), so since that arc is coming up next in the anime I won't have anything to compare it too. Shouldn't detract from it, hopefully.