Originally Posted by Lied

I'm convinced the free gacha is the way to go. I've lost count of how many seeds I have poured into it, but I've gotten 7 4-star girls from it so far. Instead of pulling the premium gacha again, I've been using my gems (efficiently) to restore stamina while farming, which has let me level my team, get gold, get player levels (which makes restoring stamina even better), and get lots of seeds which occasionally gets me a 4 star girl.

I'd probably get more 4 star girls per seed from the premium gacha, but then I'd be spread really thin on resources trying to level/evolve/max affection them all. The way I'm doing it now, I only have a few girls to focus on, so when I do happen to pull a new 4 star girl I have lots of stocked manyus and gifts to immediately get her up to speed. It also lets me actually play the game instead of running a few maps and then leaving for a few hours.

Premium gacha seem like it's more for:
1. First 50 pull to get you started with some 4 star+ girls
2. Shortcut for people with money to burn
3. Only way to get 5/6 stars (which is sadly why I'll eventually need to pull it again once I can't improve my current girls anymore)

But for 4-star girls, free gacha feels to be the way to go as long as you're patient.

Free gacha is probably the real way to go. I patiently saved up 100 stones and didn't get any 5* from premium. In fact, I rolled 19 3* and 3 4*. Then I tried money just in case that was pure bad luck and it got even worse at an 11 roll of all 3*. I'm saving the rest of the $50 purchase to use for other gameplay.
Free gacha at least doesn't disappoint so hard for such a high cost, since you're not expecting anything beyond solid, usable units that WILL get you very far. The 5*+ are not only unnecessary to actually advancing, but are also not even existent in Nutaku's lie of a premium gacha and WILL sorely disappoint anybody hoping for that kind of premium content.