Megadimension Neptunia VIIR (PS4) Review

The mainline Neptunia series is no stranger to updated re-releases, and Megadimension Neptunia VIIR (Vee-two-are) keeps it rolling.  Besides sounding like a new Star Wars droid, the name also clues you in to one of the biggest additions: there's new VR scenes.  Thankfully, you don't need a VR headset to play the game, because I don't have one yet.   In addition, there is a new graphics engine for smoother visuals, and the combat has be revamped.

For better or worse, the game starts with one of the new VR sections.  You can still view it without a headset, but I imagine it would be a lot cooler with the new hardware.  Some scenes pop up between chapters, while others have to be selected from the player's room.  In fact, most things are done from this new area. It's where you can view the scenes, or jump back into the stories.  As far as I can tell, all three stories from the original release are intact and unchanged, save for a few changes for the endings.

The other major change in the game is the combat.  Before, you would put your unlocked moves in a combo flowchart, which was determined by your weapon.   It...wasn’t my favorite, not by a long shot.  Now, moves require AP to use, but you can attack multiple times in a turn if you have enough stored up.  Plus, you have access to all of your unlocked moves...sort of.  Your weapon again determines which of the three types you can use, but you are free to use any in those.  It’s certainly an improvement.  The only real downside is that each move now costs money to unlock. Early on I just didn’t have enough to buy many moves, so I was stuck using the same ones for awhile.  After each combo or special move, you have to select “defend” now.  It’s not the most streamlined process, but it does work in the player’s favor.

That’s not all.   There’s now a skill that lets you heal when you de-transform from CPU form.  I think that’s pretty neat, and useful.  HP is fully restored after each fight, which does make the game easier and faster.  SP is used for special moves, which is built up while you fight.  SP build up feels a bit slow, especially in the giant battles, but the system is functional.  Thankfully, the middle act now allows all players to share items.  It should be less of a pain to complete.

Challenges from previous Neptunia games (like jumping a lot, or getting symbol attacks) return, but with a re-tooled purpose.  Before, they gave stat boosts. Now, they give bonus points that you can put into stats of your choosing.  The best part is that these stat points can be re-allocated on a whim.   No need to visit a special person, or use an item to respec your stat bonus, just decrease the number.  Part of the reason for this is weapon balance.  Now, weapons need a balance between to stats to keep a high accuracy.   You can pump everything into strength, but it will eventually lower your accuracy.  Keeping in mind what stats balance your weapon will still allow you to get stronger, but it’s not as simple as dumping everything into one thing.

I don’t like all the changes.  It might be minor to some, but the saving has changed.  It’s nice that it saves so often, but it is an auto save, and it’s all in the same slot.   I would think most RPG fans prefer to at least have a few slots, or be allowed to manually save before stopping.  I know I do.  I haven’t had any issues with it, but it makes me a little paranoid.  Oh, and if you had any DLC for the previous release (yo), it sadly doesn’t work here.  I can guess there was a licensing issue for some of them, but at least Umio could have been there.

The new additions and reworked combat are nice, but not necessarily worth coming back for.  It might be a different story if you have a PSVR.  If you haven't played the first release, or wanted it to be better, then it is worth trying out Megadimension Neptunia VIIR.


The Good:
Combat was re-worked and is much improved.  Graphics look better, too.

The Bad:
DLC doesn't carry over from the previous release.  Game is auto save in one slot.

The SaHD:
So is the next remake/rebirth game 4GO VR?

(Review code for Megadimension Neptunia VIIR was received from the publisher)

Dark Rose Valkyrie (PS4) Review [5/28/18: Updated for PC]

As a fan of most Idea Factory and Compile Heart games, I was eager to try out Dark Rose Valkyrie.  It sets you in a world where a virus is turning people into monsters called Chimera, and you head up a special group tasked with fighting them and keeping citizens safe.

The game started off pretty strange, by offering me the three difficulty levels of easy, hard, and very hard.  So...no normal?  The one difficulty level you should have is not present?  Well, against my better judgment I went with hard.  For the most part, it worked out pretty well except for some boss and mini-boss fights.  It just involves more grinding.  After about 30 hours I put it down to easy.  You get more experience after fights, but quest rewards are reduced.

Grinding does actually take time, since the game sports day/night and moon phase cycles.  As you spend time in the world map, it will slowly move from day to night, and back to day again.  After each day, the moon shifts forward one phase.  While you are in a dungeon, time will pass, but it will not be reflected as long as you are inside.  Once you leave, it will jump to where it is supposed to be.  This is helpful for the times when you need to fight a monster that is only around a certain time of the cycle.  However, enemies are stronger at night.  Unfortunately, the first time you do a dungeon, it will always be night.  Seems a bit steep to me.

Thankfully you won't waste time walking back to a dungeon, because there is a very helpful warp feature.  There are a few warp points scattered around each dungeon and the world map, and you can fairly easily warp among them from a warp point or a save point.  Sadly, you can't warp to a save point, which would have been nice.  Especially since they don't always have great placement for the warp and save points.  You can work with them, but they aren't in the most convenient locations.

Combat is some good old fashioned turn based goodness.  On the left side of the screen is a long bar with icons for everyone in the battle.  Your icon moves up (based on your speed stat) and you can take action at an appropriate time.  If you have played any of the Grandia games, you will quickly realize the basics.  When your turn comes up, you can attack, charge attack, use a skill, or even switch to your back up character.  The attacks have three different levels that you set the combo for, and each higher one is stronger, but takes more time before you do it.  For whatever reason, I stuck mostly with the level 2 combo for 90% of my attacks.  While hitting an enemy, their icon is stalled, which makes fighting one target easier than a group.

The charge attack will knock an enemy's icon back a bit.  I rarely used this, since the benefit is about equal to stalling them while you do a normal combo, but you get higher damage doing that.  Skills are things I mostly used on boss and mini-boss fights, at least in the early stages to knock down the extra targets.  There are plenty of elemental attacks in there to take advantage of enemy weaknesses, but no way to change your attack type (strike, slash, pierce).  There are healing skills, but they felt very weak versus the damage strong monsters could do.  Not good.  It was better to use them between fights and instead rely on expensive items for battle.

Since it is a Compile Heart game, enemies have guard gauges.  If you deplete it before their icon starts over at the bottom, you get some extra damage, plus your EX attack at the end of your normal combos.  You also build up TP while attacking, which you can use to defend from an enemy's special attack (SUPER useful) or unleash a powerful sync attack.  Using it for defense felt necessary for the boss fights (especially on hard), but using it for attack was more fun and flashy.  After you execute an EX move, the person behind you may rush in to get in a few more hits.  Afterwords, you can choose to spend 1 TP for a total (all enemies) or single (the target) sync attack.  The entire backrow will appear an unload their shots on the foes.  It's fun, and useful to rack up the hit count for extra damage and reward and the end of the fight.  Problem is, they don't always seem to activate when you actually need them, and instead are available many times when weak targets are already dead.

Lastly, your characters can use TP to activate a power-up for a few turns.  Called Ignition, it boosts your stats and protects from status ailments.  Honestly, I rarely ended up using it, which may explain why some boss battles are hard.  In my defense, I needed the TP to block (so I don't have to use the weak heals), and therefore didn't really have it to spend otherwise.  Also, the stat boost didn't seem that great, but I always appreciate abnormal status protection.

When not fighting or exploring, you will be spending your time at the ACID base.  Here you can make new items, sell items, rest, and accept quests.  They don't call it "sell items", so it took me a bit to realize that was what turning them in was.  The last section of items to turn in will give money and also components that you need for powering up your weapon and making pieces of equipment, so make sure to sell some of those when you get the chance.  You can also talk to party members for extra events, which will affect their relationship with you (and the ending).

The game follows a fairly simple path: event(s) in base, go to dungeon, return, event(s), do missions, return, rinse, repeat.  A lot more of the missions are required than I thought.  Even so, I was stubborn about doing all of them, even those not required, before moving on.  I didn't really run low on days to turn them in, either.  To mix things up, interrogations have also been included.  You see, not everyone is who they appear to be.  One of the group is a traitor, and you (Asahi) have to figure out who it is.  To do that, you will question characters about themselves and the others at a few points in the game.  These were...ok...but I found it odd you could only ask so many questions.  Yeah, it's probably to make it harder, but it feels a bit too limiting and hard to put it all together in a satisfactory way.

Even though I enjoyed Dark Rose Valkyrie and its high-hitting combo battles, there are a lot of little things that bug me.  Money is really hard to come by early on, story dungeons force it to be nighttime, and boss battles are aggravating on the hard setting (sometimes on easy, too).  It should take well over 40 hours to complete the game, especially if you try to do all the side quests like me.  Still, I'd say it's worth trying out for JRPG fans, even if you were put of by some of Idea Factory's non-Neptunia offerings.

5/28/18: PC Release Update
I recently got a code for the PC release on Steam.  While most PC releases of games I have already reviewed run well, Dark Rose Valkyrie broke the streak.  The story and dialog scenes ran perfectly fine.  Battles and moving around the map were choppy messes.  It looked like it was running at 10 fps.  I'm not a stickler for graphics, but it should not look like a failing flip-book animation.  Audio seemed to skip at times.  Battles aren't hampered by the choppiness, but they look bad.  On the map, the bad frame rate makes getting those first strikes all but impossible.

At first I thought maybe running on higher settings, or on a hot day, made it run so poorly.  I turned the settings down to low (which seems crazy for my i9, but I digress), and ran the game on other, cooler nights.  There was a slight improvement, but not one that actually helped.  I'm not sure what happened to this PC release, or if there is something amiss on my machine, but it ran poorly.  If you can, stick to the PS4 release.


The Good:
Fun combat in a completely stand alone game.

The Bad:
Lots of little nitpicks, like the high damage you take and the low amount of healing, among others.

The SaHD:
Another Asahi?!

(Review code for Dark Rose Valkyrie was provided by the publisher)

Hakuoki: Kyoto Winds (PS Vita) Review

Hakuoki: Kyoto Winds is a visual novel set in Kyoto, Japan in the mid 1860s.  It stars a female protagonist searching for her father.  She quickly becomes a "guest" of the Shinsengumi, and the story unfolds from there.  Kyoto Winds is also a remaster of the previous Hakuoki, which came out a few years ago on the PS3 and Vita.  The story has been partially reworked, adding more minor characters and romance-able targets for the leading lady.  Sadly, the story has also been split in two, and this is the first part of it.

The story is pretty entertaining overall.  You interact with many different characters, which feels more logical for such a big group, as opposed to cramming all the characters into every scene.  There's also a fair amount of voiced dialogue.  Of course I expected some, but with so many characters, I expected less than there ended up being.  If the dates in the game match up with historical dates, it would make sense why there are sometimes big jumps in time (up to about a year) during the story.  Otherwise, it would be kind of strange that a lot of things happen in a month or two, but then nothing for the next four months.

Many points in the story will task the player with choosing an option which affects how the story unfolds.  Some of these make big differences in the short run, but in the long run, the story unfolds in much the same way.  Since the story is based on historical events, it makes sense that that would be the case.  Sometimes the following scenes feel a bit disconnected from some of the choices.  Basically, there seem to be better options to make the story flow perfectly, but you don't have to do that.  What your choices do greatly affect is which characters you can raise your relationship with.  This, in turn, changes which final chapter you get in the game.

When I say "final chapter", I don't mean the story's conclusion...yet.  It's only the first half of the entire tale.  This was a bit of a disappointment.  The breaking point is a pretty logical one (at least in the routes I did), so it isn't some awful cliffhanger to leave you waiting for the next part.  With so many different last chapters, I'm curious to see how the second game deals with that at the start.

Like most visual novel games, Hakuoki runs about 4-6 hours for your first playthrough.  There are several points where a different choice will change parts of the game, plus a route for each of the characters gives you some good replay value.  Finishing the game once allows you to choose at what point to start at, and then select one guy to set the relationship at high or low.  This makes it easier to see the alternate routes without having to skip through parts you have already seen.  Plus, when you come to a choice, previous selections will be marked with different font color, which aids in choosing another.  While a lot of this stuff should be standard in visual novels, I'm still very happy that it's included here.

If you think it would be hard for a guy to play and enjoy an Otome game, you would be mistaken.  Hakuoki: Kyoto Winds in an interesting story that is unfortunately split in two.  That is made better by the fact that it splits in a logical place, and with so many different ending chapters, has replay value for hours, even if you have to wait for the full story to conclude.  Visual novel fans should definitely give it a try.


The Good:
Interesting story with some nice twists, and plenty of ending routes.

The Bad:
Having to wait for part 2 to finish the story.

The SaHD:
I've seen Ruroni Kenshin, so I recognize a few of those names.

(Review code for Hakuoki: Kyoto Winds was provided by the publisher)

Trillion: God of Destruction (PC) Review

Trillion: God of Destruction is part sim and part strategy RPG, combined together in a game I rather enjoyed on the PS Vita.  You take control of the Supreme Overlord, and must train your chosen vassal to make them strong enough to defeat the underworld eater with one trillion hit points.  It's a very daunting task that has you managing stat growth, rest and attacking the beast in short bursts to whittle down its massive HP bar.

The game is divided into two main parts: training and battle.  Training is basically selecting things from menus to increase your experience in one of 6 areas.  This experience is used to purchase stat upgrades, active skills, and passive skills.  Each training increases fatigue, which in turn increases the chance for getting a bad result from training (either lower experience gain or even injury).  So, you have to balance getting stats and resting, while also juggling the time limit before Trillion eats its way through the Netherworld.  What, you thought it would wait for you?

Battles are all grid-based and resemble strategy RPGs, or more accurately, mystery dungeon style games.  All turns are taken at the same time, depending on speed.  So, if you are fast enough, you can move twice in the span others move once.  You can move or attack in the eight adjacent squares.  Each character also has special attacks that consume MP when used.  Besides the fights against Trillion itself, there are smaller fights in the Valley of Swords and the mock battles against Mokujin.  The latter is very useful in figuring out how best to battle Trillion...except for the final form.

Time ticks down for every choice, from training to resting.  There is a constant counter on the menu that shows how long you have left before Trillion moves.  However, you can flee the battle with the mighty beast and buy yourself more time.  There is a limit to this, so you can't do it indefinitely.  When Trillion does inevitably destroy one of the overlords, another steps up to take her place, and even inherits some of the experience to make it easier the next time.  Easier does not mean easy, as it is very much possible and probable that you will lose your first run through the game, even with its numerous extensions.  Still, future runs are easier with new game+, so you can eventually win.

I played a few hours of the PC version on my i7 with 16GB RAM.  The game looks its best on the PC, and the frame rate was really smooth in battle.  However, there were two separate times the game soft locked on me.  Both times it was trying to load up a tutorial message, and got stuck on a black loading screen.  I'm not sure why that is, since many other similar messages happened without incident.  Since the game is not very action heavy, the keyboard and mouse works fine for the game, but I still prefer to use a controller.

Trillion: God of Destruction is a game I very much enjoyed on the Vita, and this version looks slightly better.  I had a few hiccups when playing the game, but it is still a game that I would recommend to JRPG fans, as it is a very unique offering and worth trying out.


The Good:
Best looking version of a game I enjoyed playing.  Very unique blend of training sim and mystery dungeon RPG.

The Bad:
Very easy to fail your first run, too many random events.

The SaHD:
The third form of Trillion is really a pain in the butt.

(Review code for Trillion was provided by the publisher)