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Hyperdimension Neptunia Re;Birth (Or How I Learned To Stop Worrying And Laugh at the Moe)

Hyperdimension Neptunia Re;Birth (Or How I Learned To Stop Worrying And Laugh at the Moe) published on No Comments on Hyperdimension Neptunia Re;Birth (Or How I Learned To Stop Worrying And Laugh at the Moe)

When I get into a game, I have a habit of talking the ear off anyone willing to listen about every minute thing I notice. You would think I would channel that into articles and reviews on my website more frequently or something. Well, ever since I started doing those comics, I kind of got in the habit of clamming up and trying to ‘save’ my thoughts for those, but at times a game comes along that gives me more to talk about than can gracefully fit into a comic panel layout. And as text dense as some of my worse strips can get (if I’m self aware of the problem and call attention to it, it’s totally forgiven right!?), that’s probably saying something. So that brings me to the Neptunia series, which I have sort of a history with already.

A few years ago, my friend Steve and I were trying to put together an experimental-style animated short/pilot of an Eishi n’ Dixie video series, getting as far as getting a script and dialogue recorded. The subject was a niche PS3 RPG, as I tend to wind up acquiring, and it was called Hyperdimension Neptunia. And it was dullllll. Going in, all I really knew was that it was supposed to be full of little in-jokes about the gaming industry, so I was kinda curious about where they’d go with that. Apparently, not very far- extended visual novel style dialogue sequences, soundly meh music, a battle system that kind of felt like Xenogears but less good… overall, I wasn’t particularly impressed with the game as much as the general idea. I didn’t really pay the sequels much mind beyond “how in the fuck did that get a sequel?”, until I got a half decent rig and started down the Steam Sales hole. Among the things I wound up with by the end of the 2015 summer sales were Neptunia Re;Birth 1 and 2; PC ports of the enhanced Vita port that were supposed to be vaguely “better.” And yeah, they kinda are. The battle engine had been refined through the sequels then applied to the ports to make them well, better, as well as attempt to fix some story problems, to limited success. I’ll save that part for later because complaining is fun and I don’t like to start with dessert.

Combat lets you move characters freely around within a set range circle during their turn and attacks are tied to a ‘hitbox’ area that you can fine-tune the angle of so you can catch multiple targets in your swing. Normal combat consists of combos made of slotted skills, split into Rush, Power, and Break types, which respectively build up combo hits (meh), focused strong attacks, and attacks that more quickly wear down the enemy’s Guard gauge, leading to a weakening Guard Break. These include spells in addition to physical attacks, so each turn you can choose the slotted commands that best suit the situation. Then, you have the EXE gauge, which stores power stocks and not only enables Limit Break style attacks, but adds EX Finishers to the combo chains of the party. It sort of makes you have to think whether that extra attack per turn is more useful than a flashy super move, since using an EXE depletes the gauge by one or more chunks and cuts your overall options back down. It might seem like kind of a shallow looking system, but between the free movement, targeting and the almost fighting-gamey inputs, it’s a surprisingly fun system, especially when you’ve got a boss on the ropes and finish them with an over the top special attack.

The Re;births include a new mechanic called the “Remake System,” which is kind of a crafting system that lets you not just unlock items for the shop, but ‘craft’ changes to the overall game. You can add dungeons, alter the items and enemies within them, ‘create’ bonus characters, and even affect overall game balance like permanently reducing the effectiveness of status ailments or allowing you to kill weak enemies on the map with a sword swing instead of going into battle. It’s a pretty cool setup, and I don’t even get especially annoyed gathering materials since it’s usually pretty clear what monsters drop what. (It’s a little harder to keep track of Harvested items on the maps themselves.) The other system that’s neat but not quite as important is the market share system, where doing Quests not only gives you money and items, but also pushes one faction’s market share up a percentage while lowering another. Getting different endings and unlocking all the non-DLC characters requires you to game the market to certain levels, and when shooting for the True Ending, you need to make sure that the enemy has 0% of the Shares and all four of the friendly lands are pretty evenly spread.

Which brings me to a category I like to call the Tangible Flaws. Re;Birth 1 seems to really love lulling you into a false sense of security then throwing an overpowered boss in your path, more or less mandating you re-evaluate your slotted skills and more often than not, grind for a good while until you can brute force it. It happened frequently enough early on that when actual “supposed-to-lose” fights happened, I was wasting Revives and SP Chargers trying to cling to dear life. It was irritating enough that once I progressed enough to go through the Fairy Fencer F collab fight and get some utterly broken gear from it, I squatted in the Arena until Neptune was Level 99 and took care of the last few chapters without breaking a sweat. Neptunia Re;birth 2 seems to have toned it down a bit, but in all honesty, I’ve been playing from the start with another free dlc collab weapon because I wasn’t in the mood to get brick walled every couple hours again, so it may just be me putting a band-aid over the problem before it happened. So, if you’re interested in the game, do be prepared for the occasional level grind.

The thing that I think hurts the game the most is the sheer volume of drawn out, visual novel-style portrait plus text cutscenes in it. It ties in with the more subjective problem of “How Much Fucking Kawaii Uguu Can You Stand?” Neptune and her pals are all relentlessly ‘quirky’ and chatty as hell. The actual storyline isn’t groundbreaking, but the novelty of Fantasy World Plus Video Game References is buried below giant bags of pink packing Styrofoam. Technically, you can skip about everything (even long attack animations), but if you’re fast forwarding through an RPG, it’s kind of failing in a major area. If the dialogue was edited down by a lot, you’d really end up with a pretty breezy, fun game. Hell, it would probably cut an hour off the run time if you just omitted the times a character who’s not really in on the conversation pops in to go “yes, I agree” to remind you they’re in the party. The characters aren’t without their charm, but you’re given it in way too large of a dose at a time.

In the end, I’m still having fun, so I guess that’s something. Streaming it with friends so we can groan and riff our way through the lame parts is fun, and there are some decent ideas and jokes scattered in there. It’s a fun game that I think does deserve a bit more attention, but needs to learn just a little bit of restraint in subjecting the audience to fifteen minute sequences of being stared at by doe eyed, pink haired paper dolls with Newgrounds-esque ‘breathing’ animations. Re;birth 2 has been mostly more enjoyable other than the annoying little twin girls and a certain giant pedophilic robot with a six foot tongue… so hopefully it keeps that up as I enter the last chapters. The enjoyable part. Not the tongue part. The tongue part can fuck off to hell.

RISE FROM YOUR GRAVE

RISE FROM YOUR GRAVE published on No Comments on RISE FROM YOUR GRAVE

I’ve actually been fairly active on The Twitch lately trying to plow through the Hyperdimension Neptunia series sitting in my Steam backlog, but there’s not really an easy way to automate links to the live streams so if you’re interested in joining in, please follow me at Twitch and/or watch the Twitter box in the sidebar for channel feed updates since it has a handy auto-sharing option for statuses.

I alternate programs every so often, though I’ve been trying to make a little more of an effort to see games through instead of do them as one off things, hence the live shitposting phenomena I like to call Nepstream. I’ve already finished Neptunia Re;Birth with little ‘intermissions’ demonstrating Hyperdevotion Noire and Megatagmension Blanc + Neptune vs Zombies (seriously, that’s the title.)

Of course, I also like to stream my doodling/warmup sessions as an excuse to BS with followers in chat. I’ve been better about hooking my mic up, but I still prefer not to cam during streams since I look like a Moai with a center part. Basically, I do it to unwind, so feel free to join in and chill if you happen to see that little streaming light on.

I mostly come at early afternoon. Mostly.

Nepstream Finale

Nepstream Finale published on No Comments on Nepstream Finale

I’ve been streaming Hyperdimension Neptunia Re;birth (I don’t know why they add the semicolon either) on Twitch lately and am nearing the end of the game, so I thought I’d give a little heads up to that and also toss out some thoughts about the game itself while I’m here. Until I figure out a lazy way to automate posting more places, I’ve mostly been keeping my stream notifications to Twitter and Tumblr, so feel free to follow @thethreetwo on the one and third-half at the other. There. Plugging done.

I have a little bit of history with Neptunia in that it was actually going to be the subject of the never-finished [+/-] animated pilot. That is to say, the original release for the PS3 was. It was pretty mediocre all around, but I went into it lured by a weakness for Anime Girls in Armor and the concept of an RPG based on the gaming industry. The lukewarm reception seemed to reach back to the company, though, and they tweaked things over the next couple sequels, steadily improving it. Eventually, they got Neptunia 1 and mk.2 ported to the Vita plus some new bonus material like characters from later games as unlockables and DLC as the Re;birth series, followed soon a Re;birth version of the third game, V.

So what we have in Hyperdimension Neptunia Re;birth is basically the ultimate edition of a game constructed out of almost pure fluff. As a friend put it, it’s chock full of ideas that would be great in other games. On a technical level, it’s been really fun other than a tendency to put a sharply difficult boss at the end of a dungeon that otherwise felt like a cakewalk. As such, I don’t feel especially bad about using broken DLC equipment to power level my party in the Colosseum and steamrolling the latter half of the game.

The other thing I think really hurts the game is its defiant stance to never be succinct in any situation, ever. A large portion of whether or not this game is going to appeal to anybody is how they feel about the concept of cutesy personifications of games industry entities going on quests and getting into other hi-jinks. Speaking as someone who *is* into that, even I kind of have my limits when they halt progress through a dungeon to have a little comedy bit play out about how tedious it is to have to find a thing in a dungeon. Calling attention to a cliche doesn’t exactly excuse you if you’re still going ahead and doing the thing, especially not for the length of an SNL bit. But at least you can fast forward cutscenes whenever you want and skip the longer attack animations. I think they could have pared the dialogue down a ton and still kept the characters’ personalities pretty clear, and I *know* they could have probably cut the script significantly if they cut out every instance of a character butting in to say something like “Yes, I agree!” to remind us they’re in the scene.

But seriously, if you can get past the veneer of cotton candy fluff, there’s plenty to enjoy. I particularly like the way the Remake System works, letting you craft alterations to the game at large like opening up new dungeons, increasing your jump height (not as useful as it sounds, btw) and permanent boosts to EXP and status resistance. It sort of assimilates the item discovery and scouting sub systems from the other games. The market sharing mechanic is kind of interesting in that you can’t simply grind up your desired nation without lowering the Shares of another one. There are also plenty of cosmetic upgrades to decorate the characters with, which is almost to be expected with the overall aesthetic of the game and characters. All the game references are pretty fun too, especially the ending credit sequences that mimic the styles of a bunch of old games and make me wish instead they’d do like a Wario Ware style spinoff in the future.

Hey, It’s That Time Again

Hey, It’s That Time Again published on No Comments on Hey, It’s That Time Again

After a lot of butting my head against the wall as to how to add some depth to my old card game rules without making it too baroque, I finally got a semi-workable third ‘build’ run off and played with a while tonight, and for the most part, it seems ok. Emphasis (literally, there are em tags around it) on the “ok-” the solo run was a bit too easy with a party that wasn’t even complete. I was trying out a point-buy sort of party formation this time, and in my randomly slapping numbers on, I actually *couldn’t* afford a full team with the starting allotment. I need to be stricter with hand size for items too. Basically, my Hero/Mage/Cleric trio romped through about 20 rooms and only dipped into dangerously low HP once. I’ll have to try again with a friend some time to see how the balance is with the added chaos of a second hostile player.

Overall though, it seems like the basics *work,* so I’ll start tweaking from there and hopefully have another version to share for download soon. Ish. I won’t subject you to the test build this time since I really just printed multiples of the same sheet a few times.

Something Old, Something New

Something Old, Something New published on No Comments on Something Old, Something New

I’d loaded up and messed with StarTropics 2 early in my messing with NES emulators, but didn’t play very far into it. It’d been a long time, so me being me, I just kind of assumed my old self stopped playing because they had gotten bored of it and moved on to pirating something zanier. Turns out I probably ran out of patience!

To properly describe my beefs with StarTropics 2, I have to lay out a bit about the mechanics of the original. StarTropics has a very strict tile-based movement system, and making your way through the game means mastering that particular quirk. While restrictive; the game is designed with it in mind- enemies aren’t usually super aggressive, those that are are typically slow… in general, there’s a lot more of a feel that each room is a puzzle to solve beyond ‘kill all the enemies and the door opens.’ Even when you do get a room like that, it’s usually done to make sure you know how to deal with a certain type of enemy or that you know your way around a special weapon. (In particular, the Asterisk, a.k.a. throwing star is given to you then you pass through several rooms where using its splitting ability is needed to take out paired enemies in tricky locations.) It certainly has its share of dick moves in later stages (as anyone who was watching my Twitch stream of the game can attest to) and rather unforgiving general design choices (if you die in a dungeon, you always start your next life with a meager 3 hearts, and some checkpoints are placed in a way that makes it impossible to refill your health to a decent level before the boss.)

What I’m getting at is StarTropics is awkward and fairly hard, but it checks a lot of the ‘good game design’ boxes. StarTropics 2 attempts to be more of a standard isometric action game, and it feels like a case of something that’s not broken being ‘fixed.’ Mike can move and attack diagonally, and isn’t restricted to full tile movement. You also seem (oddly) to be able to jump farther diagonally than straight across gaps, as well as alter your airborne course a little.

This is actually kind of a problem! Particularly coming straight off of the first one. Jumps across tile-wide gaps was easy the first time around, as your movement was ‘locked’ to a grid, but in more intense platforming segments like the three-lane boulder dash in the Wild West mine section, I find myself falling to my death way more often than I would have under the old system. In fact, the same basic obstacle was IN the first game before the fight with the ostrich mech. The challenge was about timing there, and more of a standard placement issue in the sequel.

So, at least part of my problem is that I’m used to the first game’s controls. That’s on me. But Mike retains just enough of his old movement habits that he’s not quite as responsive as he could be either. You can still kind of spin in place if you rotate the pad fast enough, trying to walk him in a circle around the room, however, you can feel that he still hangs a bit when changing direction. You still have more freedom of movement to be sure, but it feels less precise and measured.

Let’s talk about what it does well, though! It’s more deliberately funny than the first one. The graphics are definitely nice, more detailed. Dungeons now have multiple elevation levels, which is used to interesting effect in parts. Leaping from higher levels adds an extra ’tile’ to your jump length, and the height of yourself and enemies factors into who can hit who. It’s also kind of neat how you’re giving a telekinetic shot as a permanent secondary weapon, and your two main weapons receive upgrades throughout the story.

I’ll keep picking at the game off and on- my Twitter (@thethreetwo) and Twitch widget should say when. Currently picking at the card stuff again though.

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