1286: Take a Note, Nep-Nep

When was the last time you played a video game that required you to either 1) map it yourself or 2) make notes while playing? I’m willing to bet it’s quite a long time, unless you’ve either 1) been playing the Etrian Odyssey series or 2) been playing an old-school Sierra game.

I’ve been playing a much more recent game and making notes, however. The game isn’t demanding that I make notes, but I’m getting a strange sense of satisfaction from figuring the game out for myself rather than immediately reaching for the walkthroughs, as is the common approach these days.

The game in question is Hyperdimension Neptunia Victory, which I’m now 40 hours into and probably about halfway through the plot, I estimate. I could have raced through and finished by now, I’m sure, but there’s something about this game in particular — even more than the previous two Neptunia games, which I adored in all their flawed glory — that is making me want to take my time and soak everything up.

It’s a different kind of wanting to soak things up to something like Ar Tonelico, though. In the case of Gust’s oeuvre, I wanted to continue immersing myself in the world; spend more time with the characters; see every possible conclusion to that lengthy story that I’d been enjoying so much. With Victory, meanwhile, my enjoyment is coming from the game mechanics as much as the setting and characters.

The three Neptunia games have a fun setting and some immensely entertaining characters, you see, but I wouldn’t call the world especially “immersive”. The only real “exploring” you do is going into dungeons, and these are primarily designed for being 1) a place to fight monsters and 2) a place to harvest items for use in crafting and/or quests. There’s a lot of repeated content — some dungeons are just variations on the same map, a la Phantasy Star Online and Dragon Age II — and thus they’re best regarded as a backdrop for the more interesting stuff that’s going on with the game mechanics.

More so than any of the previous Neptunia games, Victory is a case of a number of individually simplistic systems and mechanics coming together to create something significantly more complicated and deeper than the sum of its parts would appear to create at first glance. Sure, you can play through Victory without exploring these aspects of it, and that’s a perfectly valid way to play. But since mk2 in particular, I’ve found the gameplay of this series so satisfying that I want to indulge myself in all its nuances as much as possible.

Let me explain what I’ve been doing and taking notes on this evening. In doing so, you’ll hopefully see how the different individual systems at play in Victory combine to make something that is a surprisingly deep experience.

Each dungeon in Victory has a bank of monsters you’ll encounter. Like mk2 and unlike the first game, you can see the monsters on the map and attack or avoid them as you desire, though a single monster figure on the field actually represents a party of enemies that might include other opponent types.

Each monster drops at least one item, most of which are “trash” items that don’t have any use by themselves. But most of these items are used either in crafting recipes — crafting an item once means that it’s then available for purchase in all of the game’s shops, so it’s something you need to do — or for completing quests. Already we have several overlapping systems here — exploring dungeons leads to combat, which leads to the acquisition of items, which can be sold, used in crafting recipes or traded in for quest rewards.

As well as tangible rewards, quests also manipulate the game’s “shares” mechanic that has been around since the first game. I haven’t studied the effects these shares have in great detail yet, but if it’s anything like the first two games, the characters associated with a particular nation will be powered up or down according to how high their shares are. In my experience, it’s not a huge increase or decrease, but I’ll need to analyse things more comprehensively to figure that out. In mk2 the shares values also determined which ending you got; I don’t think that’s the case in Victory but I could be wrong.

Now, here’s the twist on the usual “monsters drop shit” thing — partway through the game, you gain access to a mechanic called Scouting, whereby you can send several NPCs off to scout dungeons while you do other stuff. Depending on how much you pay them and their level of proficiency, they may come back with items, money or, more importantly, a report that something has changed in the dungeon they were scouting. This could be a change in the amount of credits monsters drop or the experience points they award, or it could be a shift in the harvestable items or the monsters wandering around the dungeon.

The latter two are significant, because they are the only means of acquiring some items that are, again, used for crafting or completing quests. Most dungeons have at least one optional boss monster, and it’s usually these that are manipulated through the Scout system. Normally, these optional bosses are referred to as “Dangerous”, which simply means they’re tougher than the other stuff in the dungeon and have their own cool battle theme. However, a Scout spotting a shift in the monster patterns may turn them to either a “Risky” monster, which drops chips that can be used to burn discs with specific characteristics, abilities and stat improvements on, or a “Tough” monster, which drops medals that can be traded in to acquire the actual discs required to make use of this mechanic.

Whether a “Dangerous” monster becomes “Risky” or “Tough” when a scout finds it — actually finding something at all is determined largely by chance, but is influenced by both how much you pay the scout and their own abilities — is decided by whether a “flag” item in a dungeon is standing or broken. If it’s standing and your scout spots a change in monster patterns, you’ll come across a “Tough” monster; if it’s broken, you’ll meet a “Risky” monster. These shifts in monster patterns only last for one in-game “day”, though, so if you’ve sent your scouts off to random places all over the world and they’ve all found new monsters, you’ll need to decide which ones to take on. It becomes necessary to think about where you send your Scouts and why, otherwise it’s a bit of a waste of time.

This “flag” system also determines which harvestable items become available when a scout spots a change in the items available in the dungeon.

Confused? I was initially, too, because the game doesn’t explain this in great detail, which I was initially a bit annoyed about. However, having sat down and actually taken some notes this evening on each dungeon — what the normal lineup of collectable items and monsters are, and the differences that successfully Scouting it has, both with the flag broken and standing — I now feel like I understand this game mechanic. It isn’t explained in great detail because it’s not something you need to use to finish the game. You’re told regularly by NPCs that you don’t need to do quests and you don’t need to use Scouts, but if you do, you’ll find more cool stuff.

I could, of course, have simply gone to GameFAQs and looked all this shit up myself. But there’s something inherently very satisfying about figuring out how it all works myself. It makes me feel like I’m really “beating” the game at what it’s doing — learning how to leverage its rules to my own advantage, rather than simply getting someone to tell me how to do it. It’s something I can see myself doing a lot more in the future, as I’m appreciating the game a great deal more as a result.