Phones are not only bad for gaming, but I don't turn my phone on more than a couple times a month.

i hate mobagames

I like the Love Live and Idolm@ster rhythm games. They're pretty good at not feeling like p2w for some aspects of the game. Paid players still have an advantage, but it doesn't "break" the game. As far as the gameplay goes, they're about as good as I can imagine a phone rhythm game being. The "story" is about what you'd expect: focus on the characters' interaction rather than an overarching plot.

> It feels like mobages on the whole are pretty cancerous
I usually find that the people who think this are mainly familiar with the big name f2p games.

The paid sphere has far less of the mobage BS, and often don't require many permissions. They're nice a straightforward. As well, there are many free games that avoid these things as well: Kemco has carved out a niche for itself for selling SNES-style JRPGs with minimal microtransactions, their games can be played to the end without spending a dime (in addition to actually ending rather than being perpetual grind fests), and with a relatively low amount of permission requests. Since I have not kept up with console gaming, I had to put more effort in to finding mobile games I actually liked, and found that they're not too difficult to find with minimal effort. A few of the games I've been enjoying now include:

Danmaku Death
Bullet Hell Monday
Meganoid (2017)
Asdivine Cross
Mystic Guardian
Dragon's Blade
Void Pyramid
Punch Quest
SurvivalCraft
Sonic 1 - 2
DATA WING
Hiversaires
Alto's Adventure

If you look beyond stuff like the OP pic and the other big name f2p games, you'll find a lot of nice little experiences you can have with you phone. While you're not going to get console-quality polish from games you can pay pennies-to-nothing for (Unless you go for mobile ports of console games like what Sega and SquareEnix offers), they're definitely charming and fun little affairs.

Azur Lane is pretty good and doesnt require you to spend any real money (unless you want a fuckton of character skins)

also danmaku unlimited 3 which is $7 on app store or you can pirate it with appsync :)

>>7
Danmaku Unlimited 3 is a legit good game. I liked it enough to even double dip on the PC version. I also really dig its look.
Have you tried out the Bullet Hell Monday games? Those are some excellent STGs as well.

>>8
I don't remember if I played the 2nd or the 3rd but the pc version was pretty good, I don't like playing shmups on a phone though

I mean honestly, fuck the story, fuck paying money. I usually play these to kill some time before sleeping. And most of the time the girls are cute. Used to play FGO earlier and sold my account a few years back, made a few hundred out of it.
Playing princess connect currently. You can totally F2P these games but you will miss out on some characters.

>>10
Impressive, how many hours logged? Not that RMT is exactly worth the time "investment" in itself, I already know.
Also, don't these games having login/out encourage that kind of behaviour? I didn't know phone games even had usernames and passwords. Unless you're just sharing a key or something.

>>11
How many hours no clue, but I am usually very thorough and I wont deny I had quite some luck aswell. Had about 19 ssr in fgo, few max bond characters aswell. Most of them were maxed in skills aswell I think. Big pain in the ass and eventually got bored. The game is not really exiting since the combat is freaking easy, outside of challenge events or weird comps I guess. Basically every character that got released at some point felt the same. Should just play these games for the waifu values honestly.
And yeah you dont really need to make an account usually, but if you want to transfer an account to a different mobile there are different ways to do it. In fgo it was some kind of key I think?

I gave a couple of them a try. Mainichi Compile Heart, Megami Tensei D×2, Blue Archive, it was all bleeeegh.
The only mobile games I've ever liked weren't even really mobile games. Sorcery!, Taiko no Tatsujin, Mojipittan, et al. Hell, Tux Math has an Android port and I found THAT "game" more engaging than a lot of them.