A Guide To Mobile Games: Azur Lane, Honkai: Star Rail, Arknights & More

HLJ Blog

A Guide To Mobile Games: Azur Lane, Honkai: Star Rail, Arknights & More

Published on: August 16th, 2024 by The HLJ Team

The Most Popular Mobile Games (and their figures)

Although console and PC gaming remain highly lucrative industries and continue to grow exponentially, the mobile gaming space has grown significantly in the last decade, giving more traditional video game platforms a run for their money in terms of popularity and accessibility.

If you look at the top ranking apps on Apple’s App Store or Android’s Google Play Store, most regions will now show popular mobile games like Genshin Impact or Fate: Grand Order in the most popular app rankings, often outperforming more functional apps like Amazon or social media apps like Snapchat.

This is especially true in Japan, where mobile gaming has taken off in a big way. Games like Monster Strike, Uma Musume and Azur Lane are always in these top app rankings, and frequently appear in collaborations that appear in stores and restaurants across the country. If you spend any amount of time in Japan, you’re bound to run into mobile game characters in the world.

Of course, with mobile games like these making such an impact, you might be curious to learn more. If you’re more of a traditional gamer or even someone who’s never held a controller before, you may be curious about what mobile games could offer to you. If you’re already a mobile game fan, maybe you want to know where you can score some merchandise of your favorite gacha characters? In today’s HLJ blog, we’ll try and explain it all - through the lens of some of the most popular games - in a short guide!

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Azur Lane

Battleships. Anime girls. What do these two things have in common? The first and most obvious answer is nothing really, but the second answer is Azur Lane, the mobile game where anime girls are battleships and battleships are anime girls. If you’re new to this kind of thing, welcome aboard - it only gets more confusing the more questions you ask, so it’s best to just accept it at face value.

Behind the strange initial premise is a surprisingly advanced action strategy game, with some intricate personnel management mechanics. Collect ships, upgrade them, send them out on battles and more. If you’re into naval combat and/or understand the history of naval warfare, there’s probably a lot for you to enjoy here. Especially if you also like collecting a team of anime girls.

As one of the most popular mobile games of the last decade, Azur Lane has already made an impact on the kind of hobby goods we sell at HLJ. In fact, we have a lot of Azur Lane scale figures in stock right now, and we very regularly get new Azur Lane Figures appearing for preorder.

Because of the nature of Azur Lane, its most popular characters get put in some unique outfits and situations as a result of holiday events and new character skins, which usually make their way into the designs of the scale figures. This results in some very fun figures like the Bremerton '-Scorching-Hot Training-’ figure or the ‘Elbe Time to Show Off?’ figure. Because we all look our best after some rigorous tennis training, or carrying many beers on trays.

Uma Musume

Uma Musume is another game that’s made a significant impact on the mobile game scene, and much like Azur Lane, it also involves you collecting a small militia of anime girls - this time, however, the anime girls are based on race horses instead of battleships.

The Gameplay of Uma Musume combines the thrills of ‘tamagotchi’ style horse raising simulation, horse races, concert performances, visual novel style story and lots of conversation between... horses. If you enjoy minmaxing the optimal horse build and watching eagerly in anticipation as horses engage in high stakes races, this is your game. Of course, there’s also the gacha element - if you like collecting a wide variety of different horse-themed characters, this could also be your game!

Uma Musume - not unlike Azur Lane - is also hugely popular here in Japan (an English language version of the game doesn’t exist yet, but it’s on its way). Beyond the original Uma Musume game, it’s expanded out to anime series, an anime movie, other games, and of course - huge amounts of Uma Musume figures.

Uma Musume has already had many of its popular characters appear in the Nendoroid series, S.H.Figuarts and even a variety of different prize figure lines. They also have scale figures, although, with such a wide range of horse characters available, they’re pretty selective with the characters adapted into these more expensive releases - only the most popular or seasonally relevant horses - like Symboli Rudolf - make it to the scale figure selection!

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Genshin Impact & Honkai: Star Rail

The games of Hoyoverse have had a significant impact on the mobile gaming scene. Genshin Impact made huge waves upon its release, blending a ‘Breath of The Wild’ style open world with an original fantasy setting and a huge array of characters to collect within it.

In the game itself, you assemble a small band of heroes to fight enemies using elemental magic, level up and go on a mythology-led fantasy quest. As is the trend with mobile games, Genshin Impact also features a gacha system that allows players to trade virtual currency for a chance at receiving new characters at random.

Genshin Impact maintains its popularity to this day, and continues to receive regular content updates that expand the boundaries of its world and add additional characters to its story.

Genshin Impact also continues to receive figures based on its characters, and although not many are available to preorder at the moment, Genshin characters have been seen the most in the form of elaborate scale figures.

Emerging from the success of Genshin Impact is Hoyoverse’s other major title - Honkai: Star Rail. As opposed to Genshin’s fantasy world, Honkai: Star Rail has a science-fiction setting. Instead of open-world action, Star Rail is a more linear game with a turn-based combat system.

Despite the many differences, there’s still a mobile game at the core of Honkai: Star Rail, with familiar mechanics of character collection, progression and of course - gacha character collection systems. With another unique, original universe, there’s a lot to serve as inspiration for a set of original characters, and of course - Honkai Star Rail figures.

Much like the offerings from Genshin, Honkai Star Rail figures mostly take the form of scale figures, like these March 7th and Fu Xuan figures we have available to preorder at the moment. We also often see Honkai Star Rail appear in cute SD style series, and recently, more characters from the game have started to receive the Nendoroid treatment!

Arknights

Arknights is a game that mixes the simple but beloved ‘tower defense’ genre with conventions of the modern mobile game, wrapping both together in a dystopia populated primarily by animal-eared mercenaries.

As a player, you take the role of a hands-on strategist for Rhodes Island, deploying your own collection of characters to defend a point from attack. Unlike the fully 3D experiences provided by Genshin Impact, Star Rail and Uma Musume, Arknights uses chibi sprites and a tile based system for the bulk of its gameplay. It works well for Arknights, which offers some exhilarating challenges and a compelling story with a limited amount of mechanics.

Of course, the array of animal-eared companions designed for the game have also made a great source of inspiration for figure designs. Like many of the previously mentioned series, Arknights has made its way into the Nendoroid series as well as various larger scale figures. This includes some of the more popular characters like Amiya to even less popular fan-favorites like Skadi or Hoshiguma.

There are many characters that have yet to be adapted in figure form, but with the continued popularity of the game, it’s only a matter of time.

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Fate/Grand Order

As sellers of hobby goods, it’s hard for us to escape the Fate franchise as a whole, which over the 20 years since the release of the original Fate/Stay Night visual novel, has continued to grow in popularity and scope. Fate/Grand Order, the mobile game entry in the multimedia franchise, is partially to blame for this.

Fate/Grand Order continues the story of the Fate series in a universe-spanning, time-traveling adventure to collect Holy Grails, using the power of ‘servants’ - spirits of legendary historical figures - to fight alongside you. This is mostly shown through a mix of card-based, turn-based combat and a lot of visual novel style conversations.

Fate/Grand Order combines just about every character that has existed in the series prior to the game in one expansive title. In addition, there’s an abundance of alternate versions of characters and seasonally limited ‘skins’, which means there’s a lot of characters to collect. The game has been running for nearly 10 years, which means this particular mobile game’s gacha system has offered over 414 characters across its lifespan. For fans of the series’ general concept and theming, it’s an absolute dream. But getting into it at this point might be tricky, as there’s nearly a decade’s worth of content.

It goes without saying that Fate/Grand Order has its fair share of figures. Of those 414 characters, a lot of the most popular have made appearances as scale figures, Nendoroids, figma and more. This is cool in the sense that there are a lot of different options depending on your budget and the style of figure you want to display, ranging from products like the figma Berserker Miyamoto Musashi all the way to the 1 / 4 scale Saber/Altria Pendragon (Alter).

No matter what you’re after, we’ve got your covered at HLJ!

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