Recent reviews by ずー

This game destroyed my free time many years back, and now that it's on steam with all the arrange modes (and you don't have to hack/get a japanese xbox to run them) is probably going to consume a couple more hours again.

First impressions are that the port is pretty well done and sports the features you'd expect of a decent port. All the arrange modes and main game modes for that price is quite the offer and I would definitely recommend this to anyone looking to pick up a real shmup.

This VISUAL NOVEL has the ability to change the NUMBER OF THREADS and the FPS it runs at (hint: we're not locked at 30fps). Most AAA titles don't even come with such utlility features.

10/10 the developers thought about everything.

All I will say for the initial review is that VII has a godlike soundtrack. If you though the soundtrack from the other games were cool, VII's OST goes even further beyond with quality composers. The Earthbound Papas return to the Neptunia series once again with a couple songs you'll immediately recognize their style in. Yes, THAT Earthbound Papas, the one you know from Final Fantasy or something, because Nobuo Uematsu.

Also I get 60fps most of the time no problem. The port is pretty solid so far.

Finally a Neptunia game that's more like a AAA release:

• Almost more DLC than a AAA game
  
• DLCs combined cost more than the game

Now all we need is pre-purchasing of day 0 DLC 7 months before release and we're good to go.

IF/CH is learning from the best. 10/10 would money again.

PS: The game works fine for me with no gamebreaking bugs, but I've never had trouble with nep ports.

Stunlock Simulator 2016

You either stunlock your target permanently, or you lose two entire healthbars because you got stunlocked by enemy attacks.

Now that I've completed all quests + neptral tower all characters, I think I can write an actual review now.
Here are the main reasons to get/not get the game (in no particular order):

• You want a Nep Game
  
• COSTUME BREAK: Fanservice Unleashed
  
• You LOVE self imposed challenges
  
• You enjoy mass murdering a bunch of monsters
  
• Senran Kagura isn't quite on steam yet
  
• Game is playable on a keyboard*
  
• Decent/Good Port
  This game might default to an integrated card, but the port generally is less trouble than other games that have a "bad port" reputation.

*I have about 50/50 of my time on this game on keyboard/controller, and switching between them isn't too hard for me. Your mileage may vary, I play all the other nep games on a keyboard.

• Lack of Depth in mechanics
  Neptunia has never been the series for super in-depth complicated mechanics. It really shows. This sounds like a HUGE minus... However, It's not that bad and simple games have their place in this world. It's all about managing your expectations. It's more of a relaxing buttonmasher instead of a precise, execution heavy action RPG.
  
• 8 Directional Controls even with a controller
  (There's auto aim/locking for normal attacks, so it's not as bad as it sounds)
  
• No target locking. The WASD/Control Stick is the only way to choose your target to swing at
  
• You must win a couple quests before you unlock unbreakable outfits
  Outside of "Hard" outfits there's no way to disable costume break.
  
• The steam backgrounds/emotes aren't that fantastic this time around
  Your mileage will vary. This game features a Common Noire background, which is the first in the entire series. Also it's the only place to craft your Dengekiko and Famitsu background.
  
• There are built in cheats in this game
  
• No real New Game Plus
  
• Very limited invulnerability frames^
  
• Decent speedgame, if you're into speedrunning
  Quite a bit of the game is skipped by clipping through barriers, might not appeal to all
  
• General lack of hard challenges
  There are about 3 quests I'd consider calling them "hard", and two of them are DLC. I define hard as having to play thoughtfully, methodologically and exercise some degree of caution. Obviously your mileage will vary. The quests: Famitsu Solo Postgame, Lv99 Neptune/Dengekiko DLC Mission, Lv99 Uni/Blanc DLC Mission

^Tip: The most relaible way to get iFrames when you're hit in decreasing order: Switch Partner, Transform, SP/EXE Skill, Dash
Almost none of these work if you're knocked airborne, so watch out for that. (All the CPUs can dash once midair in HDD though)

• Port issues on AMD
  I don't have any experience on this since all nep ports have run perfectly on my machine, but some AMD users are clearly experiencing problems with this port. Consult a better source for more details. If you're having FPS issues, ensure it's not runing on your integrated graphics card.
  
• Weak Character Balance
  There aren't many examples of beat-em-ups with good character balance, and this is definitely not one of them.
  It's less broken than it seems (everyone's HDD is very strong), but there is still a clear distinction between weak/situational characters and very well rounded ones.
  
• Missable Achievements
  This one got me pretty hard. I just spent the 8 hours before this review getting 100% quest completion on a new file because I missed a few on my first playthrough and was locked out of 100%. Since there's no New Game Plus, this is a double whammy.
  
• Stat inbalance: Clear Dump Stat
  It's very obvious which stat is the best once you hit midgame, after you play the game for a bit you'll know which stat to aim for in your equipment selection and which stats are largely irrelevant once you adjust your playstyle for it. Going full glass cannon is the go-to way to play this game, since dead enemies can't kill/interrupt you. See also the next section
  
• Snowballing Mechanics: Interruption
  This is related to dump stats, but basically both enemies and you can interrupt each other indefinitely. This means that getting hit leads to next to instant death (partially thanks to lack of iFrames). However, the same applies to bosses too, if you can get the interruption on them, you'll wail on them forever and they won't have a chance to counterattack. And here's the thing: The interruption on bosses is dependent on the damage you do. If you don't hit for enough, you won't interrupt and the game becomes way harder because you cannot stop the strong or annoying attacks bosses have. This is why damage stacking is beyond OP.

Fair warning: The port is garbage. 50GB for Eng+♥♥♥ and 30GB for ♥♥♥ only. Has plenty of known issues and lacks proper things you might expect from a PC port. Thankfully there ARE refunds on steam now.


This game is a prime example of Auto-Battle done RIGHT, unlike your generic mobile game which does indeed play itself without you looking at it. I picked up this game after watching many speedruns of it, because I was intrigued by the amount of depth in an "auto-battle" game. Needless to say, it did not disappoint.

This game unfortunately doesn't have much hand-holding, you have to discover a lot of tricks and details by yourself, which is considered rare for a modern game. (At least it isn't Mario And Luigi: Tutorial Team right?) At no point does the game really go into detail about things like Cut, Keep or Chain duration. If you dislike discovering things for yourself, there are plenty of game mechanic resources online that you can find. All the same, the game is entirely playable without knowing these things.

This game is HARD. It's quite execution heavy, but you shouldn't fall into the trap of setting your ATB speed to slow in options because just about the only thing it does is help you die of boredom faster. It's a lot about finding out how to best prepare for your fights to equip the AI with the right tools to win, especially so if you want to auto-battle all day. You'll find yourself retrying fights a lot, doubly so if you're not looking to run a Sentinel in every single fight and die of old age. In fact, it's often many magnitudes faster to go into a fight, flail around to understand the enenmy, then retry and optimize your setup. This is the reason why "Retry" is a really good mechanic in this game, despite how cheesy and overly forgiving it might seem.

People like to bash this game for being Hallway Simulator. It definitely isn't the strongest part of the game, but I hated the missions a lot more. The missions felt like hallways simulator + unnecessary padding, and I'd rather play a game with a strong main experience than to be shoved a tonne of boring sidequests to inflate play hours and provide artificial "branching".

That being said, the missions are not bad, they've done a very good job with encounter design in this game. You can't always charge headfirst with the same paradigms into every fight unless you're planning to take 20mins to clear by sitting in Solidarity, Combat Clinic and Tortoise all day. The game might feel like "Stagger and win", but it isn't always the case; Sometimes you want to raise the post stagger chain to 999.9% first, other times you want to not cause the enemy to enter another phase by doing too much damage, and occasionally you want to stagger later so that you can set up a 1 stagger kill. The game has constantly encouraged a variety of strategies to efficiently take down each boss.

From the developers that brought you a brand new game (RB1) on the Victory engine and MK2 (RB2) on the Victory engine!
After a very long wait, you can now purchase Victory on the Victory engine! What took them so long to port this?! /s

The subtle changes to the system is generally good. Love it or hate it, at bare minmum it shakes up SOME of the strategy that has been recycled from both RB1 and RB2 and makes you learn and adapt new ones. The new inability to preview shop items stats without using the somewhat clunky "Equip and buy" preview menu is a slight annoyance, but other than that most of the changes to the game are positive.
EDIT: I just forgot to mention how AWESOME the new thing that shows elemental strength/weakness is. It wasn't very intuitive in the older games, but is a godsend that saves you from endless experimenting, staring and numbers and checking wikis.
I won't comment on pacing or plot because I haven't finished the game to comment on the former and the latter is irrelevant if you're playing a neptunia game not Re;birth 2. But yeah, save world from evil council of ominousness and incompetence or something like that.

Interestingly, the intro to this game is less fanservice heavy than the other two, which I feel like it's a good thing although your mileage may vary. (It makes newer people to the series not immediately have the "oh god what am I getting into" reaction, I suppose.)

As for framerate/whatever issue that plagued RB2, I didn't have much. I mean it defaulted to my integrated card again, but that's something easily fixed, I also hit 400fps in some points which glitches various animations and speed of some transitions. This can be fixed by enabling VSync on your graphics card control panel which caps the FPS to the intended 60. (I couldn't find the config file that earlier games came with... I guess I didn't search hard enough.)

And with that, now we wait for IF to announce Victory II on the Victory engine! *gets shot*

I thought this game was relatively average until now. (Average is different from bad!)
Then there was conquest ending, and the game went from average, to absolute masterpiece.
I fully recommend this title for that ending alone. Truly an experience unlike any other.

Disclaimer: Conquest ending may not be suitable for the faint of heart. It may cost you a night's sleep, or your dignity, or your manliness, or whatever. Consult your doctor to see if conquest is suitable for you.


SUPER Lengthy version to sell you on Conquest End:
I'm going to great lengths to sound as ambiguous as possible and avoid spoilers. So if it sounds weird and the phrasing is strange, it's likely intentional. Or me being stupid.

I felt like for the most part the game was playing out like a standard JRPG, gather a party, go beat up a bad guy and save the day for the most part. Which made it average, but not great (mostly due to the large amount of AAA games that already use this formula over and over). The interesting character to character interactions and quips felt like they were cut in favour of the darker overtone and the story focus.

This brings us to the subject of the conquest ending. The darkest and edgiest of endings in a darker and edgier sequel.
So in conquest, the world once again needs saving, but now there's a great cost that one must pay to save the world. In most games, this generally means the thousands of faceless enemy mook that you killed to get there, or whatever. Not this time. A hefty price must be paid, as the characters are put in a situation where there are no winners. One of them must walk the path and suffer a fate worse than death. This is the incredible weight of emotional baggage involved in this tear-jerking emotional experience. The guilt from walking the path just to prevent the end of the world. Due to the setting, it tells a tale of a highly relatable, but painfully tragic story. (This is probably the reason why it's also regarded as the most traumatic ending. Its simply our reaction to knowing that you never want to be put in a position like that ever in real life.)

Conquest is essentially a downer ending. But a very well executed one. Frequently there are shows, movies or stories with downer endings that just feel like a cheap cliffhanger or a "and then everyone died the end". Conquest sets itself apart by being different. There's resolution, but is it the one you expect? There's peace to the world at last, but will it hold? The world was saved, but does the end justify the means to do it? The beauty of the writing slowly opens up to you the further you get.

Conquest is though invoking. It makes you really think about the things we often take for granted or simply take at face value. What is saving the world? How tangible is saving the world? Does the world matter enough for you to go to ANY length to save it? Would you rather let the world end and enjoy the remainder of it with your friends? Why did you choose this path for the world? To prevent others from doing it? Or to ensure your own survival? Who's the real villian here? If you've lost everything you hold dear, does saving the world even matter anymore? The boundaries of gray morality and ethics are pushed in this ending to further make us question what's really going on.

Conquest is a masterpiece, a work of art, and a gaming experience like no other. It has changed my opinion on this game, and has shown that is far from mediocre. For an excellent game ending that's different and puches you hard in the gut, you simply have to experience the conquest ending of HDN:RB2.

(Disclaimer: There are many games that are similar in certain, highly specific ways, and or may be better in some aspects. Your mileage will vary, discretion advised.)

Summary:
Polished Gameplay ☑
Kyute Grills ☑
Annihilated 4th wall ☑
Vidayagame References ☑

Dogoos/10





Random Info:

• Still more amusing than re;birth 2. God this game is awesome.
  
• Some people like to complain about copypasta envionments, but honestly I think it serves its purpose and isnt the main focal point of the gameplay. If you'd like, you can even pretend they're parodying other games by doing this, which is sufficiently believable.
  
• Features some of the most awesome soundtrack from other neptunia games
  
• DLC is mostly a grind fest/more challenging content, should you be playing for actual gameplay. It's not like extra story or plot or anything.
  
• The progression curve in this game may be slightly augmented, since the hardest chapter is chapter 2 and the early game can be rather tough if you dont grind enough initially.
  
• Regarding the above, completing the "Weaken enemies" plan which you get just before the start of chapter 2 will make completing the game quite easy, should you only be interested in plot.
  
• Gameplay tip: Pressing the button assigned to the L bumper skips animations of skills in battle, great for grinding. Also the power of each skill is the total power of a skill, not the damage of each hit.
  
• One of my greatest issues with this game is that on your first playthrough it's quite likely that you lock yourself out of numerically high healing items due to not unlocking a certain dungeon by a certain point, forcing you to complete the game with % healing items. Interestingly this is the only gameplay affecting "lost forever" item in this game.
  
• Plot bosses always drop the same item 100% of the time. No save scumming for item drops required.

The greatest hat simulator mankind has ever seen!
11/10