While I was walking through Akiba a Heaven Burns Red advertisement truck passed by and it reminded me how much I dislike that game (don't worry, this is about Blue Archive)

At work I'm noted as one of 2 people that likes BA, while Heaven Burns Red is more popular generally, so I was kinda made to play it for work research, and I really could not stomach it. It makes me wonder if I'm missing something, or am otherwise fundamentally different from some people, because when I look back on how BA starts in terms of story it is an ENORMOUS difference.

In HBR nearly every single character I met when I played it's veeeeeeeery long prologue (which I could not finish, it was all annoying me too damn much) had some very obvious "thing" to them. "I'm silly", "I'm the straightman", "I am Tsurugi--literally, I'm just Tsurugi from BA", "I'm a loli whooaaAAaaooaoa" and it's like JESUS. AM I SUPPOSED TO LIKE THESE THINGS? This world feels fucking fake

When BA starts you (properly) meet I think it's 8 characters (Rin, Yuuka, Hasumi, Suzumi, Chinatsu, Momoka, Wakamo, Arona) and when you meet them the only one that, imo, stands out as a "type" is Momoka--but her appearance is brief, she's not even a gacha character (YET??? hopefully eventually) and honestly it's pretty funny how flagrantly a piece of shit she is in the clearly high tension high stakes environment you just woke up in. Every other girl doesn't exactly scream personality, but that's like...good? It feels real, they all seem like humans with human reactions. Most of them are there because the government has gone silent, their concerns are on the current issues--Yuuka's not going waaagh I calculated the possibilities of success on my calculator XD
AND YET
I'm told a lot that HBR's story is hyper engaging and good and BA's is dull/uninteresting.

Ranty rant rant, idk, I'm just frustrated at how few people give BA the time of day/write it off as a coom game