1895: More Noire

Been playing some more Hyperdevotion Noire today, so I make no apologies for spending another post talking about it.

I am enjoying it a whole lot so far, and although I’m still relatively early on in the game, the interesting mission and map design is starting to shine through as the game adds more and more map gimmicks and mechanics to take into account while playing.

Of the last few missions, I’ve played, for example, one saw my party of four (Noire, Neptune, Vert and Blanc) fighting against the emphatically-not-Chun-Li-oh-wait-she-clearly-is “road pugilist” Lee-Fi. She was on the far side of a large arena whose walls were electrified, which means that knockback attacks had a use beyond simply getting enemies away from you. Some of the floor was electrified, too, necessitating careful route planning and an understanding of the game’s “orientation” system, whereby the direction a character is facing when they start moving (you can change it freely) determines the initial direction they move if the target space is not in a straight line from their current position.

This was followed up by a fight against the emphatically-not-Solid-Snake-with-tits-oh-wait-she-clearly-is superspy Lid, whose battlefield was riddled with booby-traps, necessitating, again, careful navigation while fending off her supporting units. Two strips of the battlefield are also covered by large, heavy damage-dealing cannons, too, though once you notice that they can only fire in a straight line immediately in front of them it’s easy enough to avoid them.

This was then followed by a battle against the Agarest-inspired character Resta, who was on the other side of a huge chasm, the only means of traversing which was a rickety railway carriage that could only hold three of your four party members at once. Resta also has an absolutely devastating super-move which obliterated my party in a single turn by dropping giant explosive bunches of bananas on their heads, so after my second “Game Over” of the game (the first being not paying attention to the cannons in Lid’s stage) I realised that it was essential to take her down in a single turn and not get distracted by her supporting units, since the mission objective was simply to defeat her, not everything on the map.

Thus far the game has put up a reasonably stiff challenge. The first couple of missions are deceptively simple, but beginning with the Lee-Fi fight, things have been getting noticeably more difficult — and a little more gradually than most Neptunia games, which are somewhat notorious for inconsistent difficulty spikes throughout most of the experience, then becoming ridiculously easy once you pass a particular level threshold. The difficulty hasn’t been insurmountable, though, and the new mechanics have been introduced gradually enough that I haven’t felt as overwhelmed as I have done in similar games like Advance Wars and Fire Emblem, where I often can’t work out why my strategy failed when it inevitably does. Here, failure seems to generally be the result of not paying enough attention — and given that you can examine all the units on both sides of the battle before you start fighting, there’s really no excuse for the mistakes I have made up until this point; I’ve certainly learned to carefully survey the battlefield before charging in now!

I’ve always quite liked tactics games and even finished Final Fantasy Tactics way back in the day, but Hyperdevotion Noire is the first one I feel like I’m understanding a little better. It’s designed well, plays well, looks great and features probably my favourite cast of characters in gaming. What’s not to like?


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2 thoughts on “1895: More Noire

  1. Glad to hear the different stage gimmicks are keeping things interesting. This is one of those titles that comes along wherein I read reviews and get angry because so many “professional” critics don’t seem to be willing or able to provide meaningful analysis of a game’s mechanics in their evaluation. Aside from the Neptunia fanservice and moe factor, the stage gimmicks are this title’s primary selling point. They’re the thing that really differentiates this game from other strategy titles, and your piece here is the first article I’ve read that pays them any heed. If this game got a re-skin and turned out to be one of Sting’s much more celebrated Dept. Heaven games, I think we’d have seen more interesting discussions surrounding it. But since so few people take the time to even note a title’s developer, that never happened. Oh well. At least WE know it’s an interesting game.

    1. Yep. The stages are really nicely designed. This being a Neptunia game, they’re reused a fair bit, but different arrangements of enemies or taking a different party of characters into battle can force you to change your strategy somewhat.

      I’m pleased that there seems to be a variety of objectives, too; all too many strategy games rely almost exclusively on “Defeat all enemies!” as an objective. Here, however, we have turn-limited stages with objects to destroy, team-based missions where you have to get more kills than an AI opponent, stages where killing a specific character ends the mission… I’m very impressed so far.

      Pity, as you say, so few people outside of the existing fanbase for this type of thing will ever pay it any heed!

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