For anyone curious, it's a "new" game from Dynamis One, the studio made up of former Blue Archive developers. Dynamis One tried to launch their first game called Project KV but it was cancelled since it was just Blue Archive with swords and it was later revealed the characters in KV were stolen from Nexon and originally meant for Blue Archive, thus explaining how the new studio managed to create a new game despite the Studio being six months old (which got them raided by the South Korean Police) and public backlash for going to Comiket to show the game by claiming it was a doujin game when it wasn't.

Looks like Astrae Oratio will be different since it takes places in an alternate 1889 Tokyo but looks like 1990s Tokyo due to magic advancing civilization much quicker than our world and the player character is a magic government official.

I lost interest the moment I saw the player self-insert is male.
At least Blue Archive pretends that they don't completely disregard their female players.

fsnfanboy said in comment #2599123:

alternate 1889 Tokyo but looks like 1990s Tokyo due to magic advancing civilization much quicker

Does one-ish year(s) really make that much of a difference?

bunkhead said in comment #2599125:

Does one-ish year(s) really make that much of a difference?

101 years.

Incineration said in comment #2599124:

I lost interest the moment I saw the player self-insert is male.
At least Blue Archive pretends that they don't completely disregard their female players.

Is this a joke?

AlsoSprachOdin2 said in comment #2599129:

Is this a joke?

It isn't, and I get why I'm getting downvoted for that.
Doesn't change the fact that I'm sick and tired of pretty much every single gacha game pandering almost exclusively to straight guys.
Like, if you're playing something like Blue Archive or Azur Lane and complaining about the lack of appeal to straight women and gay men that's entirely your own fault.
But it really isn't that much extra work to make your faceless player character gender neutral on paper without pretending that don't you intend them to be male.
There are more than enough gacha games with an all female cast to play, this is just my method of sorting out the ones which I won't even give a chance.

Incineration said in comment #2599133:
It isn't, and I get why I'm getting downvoted for that.

Well I don't get why I'm getting upvoted for asking, so I'm downvoting my previous comment.

Incineration said in comment #2599133:
every single gacha game pandering almost exclusively to straight guys.

I know very little about gacha games. Are they actually dating similators? I can understand not wanting to simulate dating girls if you're a girl - I wouldn't want to play a gay dating sim. But I don't think I would have a problem playing a lesbian one.

bunkhead said in comment #2599125:

Does one-ish year(s) really make that much of a difference?

Read again what I said. The setting is Tokyo in 1899 during the Victorian era but because of magic, society advanced quickly to the point this universe Tokyo looks like the Tokyo of our world in the 1990s-2000s which the protagonists wear modern office suits. Think the 1st Red Alert game which is set in the 1940s-1950s where Joseph Stalin wages war against Europe but everyone uses modern 1990s tech like colored television, modern tanks and attack helicopters and assault rifles like the M16 and AK-47.

AlsoSprachOdin2 said in comment #2599147:
I know very little about gacha games. Are they actually dating similators?

No and yes. The genre of the gacha depends on the title itself; Blue Archive is a RTS, Azur Lane is a shoot-'em-up, NIKKE is a cover shooter, and so on.
But the draw of the game is trying to collect the pretty girls, and each character will often have an affection meter, moments where they interact with the player alone, and varying amounts of closeness depending on the character.
Like you suggested, given the choice in such a situation, I'd rather play as a female character, since I like yuri more than het, so it can be disappointing when they don't give you the option.

>From studio made up of of former Blue Archive developers.
>Set in 1889 Japan.

Jarvis, find me any law about age of consent in Japan during that time period.

AlsoSprachOdin2 said in comment #2599147:

Well I don't get why I'm getting upvoted for asking, so I'm downvoting my previous comment.

I know very little about gacha games. Are they actually dating similators? I can understand not wanting to simulate dating girls if you're a girl - I wouldn't want to play a gay dating sim. But I don't think I would have a problem playing a lesbian one.

"Gacha" specifically refers to the mode of character acquisition in any game regardless of the actual gameplay (see Leaf's comment above), wherein you are not actually guaranteed by default to get anything specific and must instead roll/pull to get characters randomly from a set pool of options.

It's actually a shorthand and comes form the physical equivalent, see here