I’ve been playing Punishing: Gray Raven since long before it came to steam and I absolutely love this game.
First off, the story is presented as visual novel and starts kinda quiet - world building and setting the scene - but once you hit about chapter 9 it really starts pulling you in. The lore is deep, it’s gritty, and it doesn’t shy away from dark twists. Some chapters get truly heavy, especially around the mid-late game where everything feels hopeless and epic at the same time. It’s not just “fight bad guys” - there are emotional beats, dramatic reveals, and things that actually stick with you as you play through the struggle of humanity against the seemingly undefeatable opponent. The narrative is one of the best I’ve seen in any action RPG that isn’t triple-A console level, and it keeps getting better as you push through. You can play through all of the available story chapters without engaging with gacha system, game gives you demo characters.
Now the music might honestly be the secret sauce. The soundtrack is more than background noise - it’s like a trance-fueled adrenaline boost for every fight. From pulsing electronic beats to drum & bass drops that kick in right when you’re slicing through hordes, to ambient tracks that set the mood in story scenes, the audio fits the cyberpunk end-of-the-world aesthetic perfectly. Some tracks hit with explosive trance-leaning electronic beats and soaring synth lines that make every fight feel like it’s scored for a rave-in-space while darker moments are underscored by haunting, atmospheric melodies. Vanguard sound and PGR are a perfect match.
Combat is fast, flashy, and stupidly fun - perfect dodges, signature moves, matrix-style slow motion bursts, all synced to pounding beats. They even implemented DMC 5 Vergil and Dante almost with all of their original moves in this game during the collab. Even without newest characters in your roster, you can still clear all of the events/weeklies and earn all the rewards, meta is for competitive players in the leaderboards. And trust me, seeing a perfect rotation of your team’s skills layered over an insane OST hit just hits differently.
Speaking of characters - the gacha here is surprisingly kind if you just play regularly. 100% chance of obtaining on the rate up character, all the characters and weapons except for 1 are in standard banners for characters and weapons, you can even select any weapon on the banner and pull for it or just buy it directly in the weapon shop. On the free-to-play front, this game treats players seriously well. If you just play consistently you’ll eventually get every new featured character because income of f2p player is around 15k always which is 1 copy of limited character. That’s pretty rare for this kind of game and makes progression much more chill and satisfying. There are even a few meta-useful characters that are completely free, without temporary time limits, so you don’t feel left behind even as a free-to-play player.
Aside from combat and story, there are cool little extras like decorating dorms and building up relationships with your characters, exploring the newest semi open world hub – Babylonia, taking part in guild activities etc.

I have been playing this game since the global release back in July 2021, and the gameplay still amazes me to this day. Made by the same dev of Wuthering Waves.....PGR is brutal, fast and stylish. Its a hack n' slash action rpg that takes heavy inspiration from Nier: Automata (which they collab'd with) that adds a unique "ping orb" system inplace of regular skills. Boss fights are extremely thought out (the later ones at least) and even have their own special parry animations with certain characters.

Easily the only reason why im making a lengthy review on this game. I found out about this game not from the gameplay, but the music. Vanguard Sound Studio creates the most epic, ethereal, emotional and absolute BANGER tracks you'd never expect from a game like this. Certain tracks are actually synced to certain boss fight moves which makes them even more memorable. Here are some tracks to get you started: Narwhal, Dust, Hikari, Moonlit Occultation, To The Limit, In My Memory, Exorcism, Under Dimension, Crossing Eternities

Im addressing this ahead of time.........yes, this is a GACHA GAME. However, its possibly the most generous gacha games of this era. If you complete all the weeklies and events for the patch, you will have enough to pity the next character in the next patch. Despite that, you dont really have to pull on the gacha unless you like to be high on the leaderboard for the competitive modes (warzone, Pain cage). All story content has a forced story character to use and the events has a trial character you can use to clear said event. Everyone talks about meta and must pull teams but.......it doesnt matter. You can clear the game just fine with whatever you want to do.

All characters are extremely well designed....from their unique animations to small details, and the abilities they have. Some can parry, block, reversal, execution, counter, change forms, go into burst mode, etc....

Also dont get caught on A-ranks being useless. Most of them are more fun to play than most of the recently released S-ranks and can clear content just as fine. All you gotta do is just dodge

Luckily they recently improved the new player experience by making the story less confusing. Now every story chapter is in a timeline structure so there is no confusion on "whats next" and the boring early chapters condensed into only the important parts so you can get to the good (yet depressing) chapters. The story also includes perspectives on the political sides of war, which is a unique touch i rarely see.

- For my ultrawide users, Alt+Enter will make the game fullscreen. dont worry about the ingame resolution settings.
- The game does support controller, dont let Steam mislead you. There is a toggle for Controller mode in the Button Position setting. Also i had to disable steams' controller mode thing as it was interfering with my binds.
- Never pull on Fate banner. not even for whales.
- There are plenty of ways to get free s-rank characters. Dorm commission shop, vouchers, Thunderbolt Manual, service shop and many selectors from logins and new player missions.
- Pain Cage is your main source to upgrade your s-ranks to SS. voucher shop helps too
- Under the Study tab in the Battle screen, there is Celica's Class which you can try out different boss fights at any time. they also give out Black Cards on first clear.

Ok so I've been playing for a long time now and I cant in good conscious just openly recommend PGR but I will say it is if your willing to stick with it, it is easily one of the most rewarding games you could ever play in just watching its constant improvement over the years until it essentially just become peak.

The story has a very rough start and has some pacing issues towards the beginning and middle of what's available it has constantly improved and by the time your halfway through what is currently available its incredibly satisfying to read and for the many MANY hours to days of reading it could take i would not have traded this story for anything.

Gameplay is fairly fun with its best works always being boss fights, characters all have pretty unique playstyles especially for the limitations of controls that come from the fact that this game is playable on mobile though i wouldn't recommend it, And they continue to make characters that keep iterating and adding upon what exists.

Lastly is the gacha aspect which is a pain point for many people the only thing i can say is its definitely one of the more generous games with frequent opportunities to get rerun characters and often Kuro just decides to just give out a selector for free sometimes cause why not. Characters get powercrept but never truly leave viability like many other gacha in the space, and the game focuses primarily on adding new forms to older characters allowing favorite characters to never really become truly gone from the story which is nice.

Honestly makes me feel like a One Piece fan recommending the game but honestly atleast give it a try, its free.