Although the concept of it being in a Sonic game was pretty silly (and an entire path to play through no less) and the character is really annoying, I heard that even the Big the Cat fishing mode in Sonic Adventure (originally on the Dreamcast) was even good, gameplay-wise. I have played it but I don’t have much experience in other fishing games to compare it to. The only other fishing (mini-)game I have for comparison is the fishing in the 3D Zelda games. Between the two I think I prefer Zelda, though.

Like I mentioned before, “tutorial pulls” are part of that hyper-generosity that gachas will commonly have for new players to give them enough of a dopamine rush to hang around and be more likely to spend more later. That generosity will not last and can’t last or elee the game will not make nearly as much money. Give it another week and you will find that the supposed good luck runs out, as well as the free currency offered for things like logging in, and then it will start requiring a ton of grinding or real world money to acquire the necessary currency to get to the “pity” in order to ensure you get a top-rarity item. That’s how gacha systems work.

Most “pity” systems require hundreds of pulls beforehand, which unless someone saves months worth of free currency for those pulls, can be very expensive in real world money to get the currency to afford. In a way, pity systems are just designed to increase the amount of money players spend.

The difference is in the details, that with other paid DLC, you actually get the thing you paid for, guaranteed. With a gacha, if they’re promoting some super-strong character, weapon, etc. that you want and you buy currency to spend in the gacha, you are not guaranteed to get that item or anything of the same quality/rarity in any of those pulls you make. It’s all random chance, gambling at its core. Exceptionally good or bad luck can start playing psychological tricks on you, such as FOMO (there will always be something stronger coming soon), sunk cost fallacy (you’ve already dumped this much into it and got nothing, what’s the difference with this much more?), and before you know it, if you’re not watching carefully, you’ve spent far more in in-game and/or real money than you realized. That’s far different than a one-time purchase straight-up for a cosmetic or weapon to use with no further need to spend any more, and that’s what gets people hooked like gambling. You may not have experienced this much because gachas tend to be very generous to new players in order to get them started out quickly as whales fodder and get them hooked on the adrenaline rush of “winning” in the gacha system before the gacha currency starts to dry up on them.

I mean, it can be both at the same time. The games may be good as games (I play a few myself) but the mechanic can also be extremely predatory to those who have a problem with gambling and/or controlling their spending.