Hyperdimension Neptunia + MK2 + V(victory)

[Tobi]

http://nisamerica.com/games/neptunia/

Official English Trailer:


Gameplay vids









Siliconera Playtest/Review of game, pretty detailed, I guess
http://www.siliconera.com/2010/09/15...-you-say-what/

Once again, thanks for tagging along with us for a Neptune marathon clocking in at a massive 62 hours from one end to another, and for asking questions of the game. I’d like to acknowledge Alaylle for helping me so much with logistics and support – It can be a bit difficult managing a live video stream all on your own.

So what did we sit down to watch this time? A console war, cute girls, and a storyline literally out of this world… If you want absurd creativity with a game that pokes all sorts of fun at… well, just about anything game or anime related, look no further than Super Dimension Game Neptune.

The story starts with a virtual caricature of what happened back in the ‘90s, with Vert (Xbox 360), Noire (PS3) and Blanc (Wii) ganging up on Purple Heart, representing the unreleased Sega Neptune, because she wasn’t relevant anymore. Events are more out of this world after the opening sequence, where we are introduced to Neptune, and Compa, Compile Heart’s in-game representative. Compa’s a ditzy nurse who’s very… direct in her medical treatment. IF (Idea Factory) is considerably more sensible contrast to the rest of the cast… although I have no idea where she gets reception for all of her mobile phones she carries. There’s also Nippon Ichi, who you’d suspect took a little too many lessons from various wannabe heroes, like a certain scarfed Prinny. Gust is so adorable, yet you can’t help but wonder if she’s going to accidently blow a hole in a nearby wall.

The Hearts are no different. Each console goddess has a distinct personality, which you might even expect if your console came to life, took a female form and started talking with you. Noire’s a classical tsundere. Vert’s a narcoleptic otaku. Blanc’s… well, just say she’s a bit scatterbrained. And Neptune’s by far the creepiest cheerful little girl you’ll ever meet. During the cutscenes, you’ll laugh a lot as you see references and cameos from various Sega games to Fist of the North Star and Sailor Moon. Even if you only understand a little, you’ll find yourself laughing at the characters themselves — Compa’s cluelessness, Neptune’s overly enthusiastic outlook (albeit with violent tendencies), Vert falling asleep in conversations, and IF just standing there thinking "Wait, what did I just see?", disbelieving what she just saw… with you most likely you’ll think the same thing.

A major part of Neptune is combat. The attack system itself is highly customizable, where you can pick attacks. The moves vary from two basic melee blows and a single gun shot, to more spectacular attacks with both gunplay and the weapons. IF may be relatively boring, but there’s something to be said when you watch Compa tear into an enemy… by shooting lots and lots of elemental bullets using with oversized syringe. The strangest attack would be Purple Heart’s Planetune – the game even adds a little disclaimer as you watch the entire planet being blown up telling you it’s a bit of a dramatization, which you’d wish they add to other games with world ending attacks. Like many other Idea Factory developed games, each attack costs AP. Once you’re out of AP or you end the turn, the next person in line takes theirs.

A lot of games from the cameo companies appear in little discs where you can summon them to do an elemental damage attack. If you know your gaming, you’ll recognize these characters, and if you remember any of them, it’s kinda neat to see them. If it wasn’t for the fact they don’t do all that much damage for the AP cost, I’d use them more often. Another nifty feature lets players import a picture, and throw that on the blank disc attacks the characters have. It’s silly, and rather pointless due to the fact it costs more AP to use this, but for the aspiring artist, having your favorite character or logo cloned around while an enemy gets torched is priceless.

The little details in Neptune show even during battle, like when you watch Neptune’s matrix style transformation where she changes from hyper silly to hardened heroine. It looks cool, and pokes much fun at the transformation genre at the same time. As you progress through the game, you’ll get access to more parts, to make her look anything from powerful to downright weird in a mix and match process. Leveling up isn’t left out on the silliness – among other things you’ll even hear Neptune manually (and quite badly I might add) sing out the beginning of a very familiar Final Fantasy tune when she levels up. Virtually no stone was unturned. Compile Heart decided to take a shot at everything. There are subtle references in naming, character design, and a fair amount of events. I really enjoyed how they hammed up everything that moved, and for some reason, watching Neptune introduce herself as the planetary game defender Neptune.

For most part, Neptune can deliver its parody promises in spades, but with all of its strengths, it also has quite a number of weaknesses, with design decisions leaving you scratching your head. I’d like to note, that the game does a bit of deceptive advertising. You might have seen the various videos of the Hearts, even the visual artbook and the opening trailer has them prominently on them. It is entirely possible, and somewhat likely that you’ll never actually get the other goddesses, particularly if you find some of the mechanics just plain confusing. You can, right at the very end, literally before the last battle, although that requires a lot of work to pull off.

Even though Gust and Ippon Ichi join your party, they don’t actually help in battle either. These characters are passive members that help with shopping. I felt that both Nppon Ichi and Gust were short changed, just looking from the sidelines, and probably pointing and laughing at just how I could have used them. It’s particularly confusing when you realize in the game that you have them, complete with combat stats and equipment, and it’s almost insult to injury if they end up be unlocked as DLC sometime later in September. This means for a significant amount of the game (right up until the end), you’re stuck with three characters for the entirety of the game. This wouldn’t be so bad, except that the game also builds the concept of being able to tag in and out to continue chains with another character. It’s almost like Compile Heart is taunting you for the lack of any real ability to actually use it, since you have three frontline spots, and particularly on hard difficulty, you’d actually want them there.

This leads to another struggling system I found – healing is on a conditional basis. You need to meet certain conditions (all in combat) before you can heal yourself. It’s unique, but it’s also really obtuse. Essentially, you can only heal yourself if your HP is below a certain level and you match a certain condition. Then you recover a percentage of your life. Often, the one time you need to heal, is the one time it doesn’t, and it can end a combat there. Granted, the game does let you just retry battles, and if you think Neptune is too hard period, you can go to the options and just turn the difficulty down to reduces the amount of damage you take from enemies before trying again.

Consider that enemies can have well in excess of a couple of hundred thousand HP. You can tell you’re going to be in battle awhile regardless of difficulty just due to the amount of chipping away you need to do. I found that it killed the fun of making your own combos, since I was using the combos so many times it proved to be mindless button mashing.

Even for me, someone who regularly spends time grinding away, I found Neptune can be quite draining. I wanted to get on with the storyline. I have no real problems with random battles, but sometimes you can’t help wonder if Compile Heart deliberately cranked up the encounter rate. The only exploring you’ll find yourself doing is inside dungeons, and sadly, most of those are indoors. Sometimes, I really wished for a change of scenery, you know, like running through Planetune’s streets, instead of the same generic cave, dungeon or tower.

I find the best way to describe Neptune would be like this – it represents the absolute best, and unfortunately some of the absolute worst of Japanese RPGs. Neptune has a genuinely off the wall plot, with an outstanding cast of characters you can’t help but laugh at, beautiful (sometimes disturbingly wrong artwork), and moments where you’ll just either laugh or stare at the screen in amazement because you’ll say ‘Wait, you did not just say that!’ It also has some of the worst sticks in the business. Compile Heart tease you with the prospect of all these awesome characters, but you’ll never get to use them, lots (lots and LOTS) of random combat, and elements that deliberately thrown in just to make things difficult.

[Tobi]

Sorry for double post, but I couldn't space the paragraphs out like they are in the link, so for easier reading, it'll be best to read it off the link I gave. Only reason it's one big paragraph is due to me running out of text space on my phone, so I couldn't go back and do it myself.

Anyway... The game sounds pretty interesting, dunno if I'ma try it out or not. I'm guessing it'll release sometime early next year in NA or the summer. Just released in Japan not too long ago. Here's another link I forgot to post in OP.
http://www.siliconera.com/2010/09/08...announcements/

[Atreides]

not really the place for this but speaking of NIS, this is coming out next week, anyone heard of it or plan on getting it?


Classic Dungeon, they're calling it Cladun in the US

[Tobi]

Oh shit, I wasn't even aware of that game, lol. I knew about ZHP, but not Cladun. I'm definitely buying this, looks like a lot of fun especially for only 20 bucks. Replay Value seems to be pretty high as well, so that's a plus. Too many damn games releasing now for me to keep up with them all, not to mention trying to juggle them all as well.

[Atreides]

have you played Cladun at all Tobi? How is it?

also apparently the people who made Cladun have this game coming out in japan this week, should be out in the US pretty soon too, Dot Defense
http://www.andriasang.com/e/blog/201...se_hits_today/

[Tobi]

Haven't tried it yet, will probably buy it at the end of the week or next week if I don't forget about it. I have too much shit to play now. I'm thinking of just focusing mostly on PSP2 now so I don't get too far behind, since I'm about to start playing lolFFXI again.

[Tobi]

Well shit, this is actually is being released here. They changed the name, though.

NIS America formally announced Hyperdimension Neptunia (aka
Super Dimension Neptune) for PlayStation 3.

Compile Heart’s RPG takes place in the land of Gamindustri, which is
overrun by monsters summoned by the evil Aroire. The heroes,
actually heroines, are personified video game companies and
consoles. You’ll control Neptune, Compa (the company Compile Heart
personified as a character), IF (Idea Factory) plus run into video
game goddess consoles or CPUs (short for Console Patron Units).
NIS America confirms iconic characters from classic games will be
in the North American version of Neptunia. They’re probably talking
about these Sega cameos.

Hyperdimension Neptunia is slated for release in spring 2011.

http://www.siliconera.com/2010/10/28...n-spring-2011/


So much shit to buy in spring... Ar Tonelico 3 releases in spring as wel...l

[Insanecyclone]

[Tobi]

Looks and plays a lot like Trinity Universe from what I read, which I've still yet to play. I'll be playing this just to hold me over till AT3 releases. I know this has random encounters just like TU, but I don't know if it's worse or not, I don't even know how bad TU random encounters are. Guess it's time to finally pick up TU before this releases in Feb

[Insanecyclone]

You get to summon Space Harrier...fucking SPACE HARRIER AND SHINOBI!

[Hiryo]

My gf made a face at me for the lolicon images in that youtube thread.

Otherwise, the game looks pretty entertaining. Almost looks like a Xenosaga style Universe with 10x more lolis

[Tobi]

There's couple other oldschool appearances as well

from 2:17-3:49 and 6:50-8:36

Spoiler: show

There's probably more, since it looks like each character have their own set of game discs.

And after looking at LL's skill exhibition, the skills actually look a lot cooler than I imagined. Unlike TU, I'll try my best to get this Day 1

Edit: If anyone wants to be spoiled a bit and see some of main characters skills, here they are:

Spoiler: show

derp, posted wrong vid for first one... fixed now

[Insanecyclone]

lol @ rrod

[Illumina]

Thought I'd give a heads to all the NISA fans around here, pre-orders for Hyperdimension Neptunia opened this afternoon at the NISA online store.

If you order direct from NISA (who now provides FREE SHIPPING to anyone in the US!) you get the premium box set being offered by gamestop and amazon, PLUS the first 1000 NISA direct pre-orders get a full set of snazzy Neptunia playing cards featuring the ladies of the game.

http://store.nisamerica.com/Neptunia...d-Edition-Pack

[Tobi]

Siliconera's Q&A with NIS America about HN if anyone wants to read it

Part1: http://www.siliconera.com/2011/01/17...red-qa-part-1/

Part 2: http://www.siliconera.com/2011/01/20...red-qa-part-2/

Keep forgetting the name change, still have thread going by it's JP name

[SephYuyX]

Heard this game was exactlly like Trinity Universe. Pass, as much as I wanted to like it.

[GentaiShinigami]

Couldn't tell too well from the videos, but is this game turn based or RT like the tales series etc.? Been wanting a really good turn based RPG on the PS3 I recently got, but having a hard time really finding any. They are all (domestic at least - US) strategy or real-time RPGs. ~_~

Edit: Hmmm, reading that first interview they say it's turn based so guess that answers my question. Feel free to correct me if it's not though.

[Tobi]

Yup, turn based. It plays alot like Trinity Universe though, at least from what I've seen and kept reading. Dunno if you played TU or not though


2 New videos that I didn't see before:

[Insanecyclone]

THUNDER TITS

Purple Heart = Sega

White Heart = Nintendo

Black Heart = Sony

Green Heart = Microsoft

[SephYuyX]

Look at them jigglies.