2188: Neptunia Games I’d Like to See

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With Megadimension Neptunia V-II and Megatagmension Blanc and Neptune vs. Zombies on the way to the West, hopefully with Neptunia vs. Sega Hard Girls to follow in the near future, a Neptunia fan such as myself has to ponder what might be next for the series, particularly now it’s made the jump to PlayStation 4 and PC as well as Vita.

With that in mind, I had a think about some Neptunia games I’d like to see, particularly in the vein of “spin-offs” such as Hyperdimension Neptunia U Action Unleashed and Hyperdevotion Noire. Here are said thoughts, expressed in the style of a overly excitable PR blast, overuse of exclamation marks and all.

Hyperdimension Neptunia Infinity Dungeon

Gamindustri is in peril once again… and the CPUs are nowhere to be seen?!

Top Guild agent IF is assigned to the mystery and quickly discovers that the monsters pouring out into Gamindustri appear to be coming from a new dungeon that opened in the vicinity of Planeptune. Not knowing what to expect, she begins her quest to uncover the fates of her friends, the CPUs and the CPU Candidates. Just how deep does this mysterious dungeon, whose walls seem to shift and twist before her very eyes, really go?

FEATURES

The first Neptunia roguelike! Explore an infinite array of procedurally generated levels as IF and your favourite Neptunia characters as you attempt to discover the source of the Infinity Dungeon’s power!
An all-new twist on Neptunia’s crazy combat! Tactical turn-based movement allows for seamless transitions between exploration and combat; meanwhile, for the first time in the series, make use of the environment in creative ways to defend yourself and inflict massive damage on your foes!
Looking for a more direct route? Make your own! All of Hyperdimension Neptunia Infinity Dungeon’s levels are fully destructible, with IF and friends’ special moves just as likely to bash holes in the walls of the dungeon as they are to smash their enemies into oblivion!
Mix it up with Irregular Quest conditions! The Infinity Dungeon works in strange and mysterious ways; some floors will challenge you to clear them against the clock, while others will task you with defeating the enemies as stylishly as possible. Uncover and fulfil the Irregular Quest conditions to maximise your rewards!
A wide cast of playable characters! Explore the dungeon as IF, Compa, Neptune and the rest of the gang — plus a few special guests!

Coming soon to PlayStation Vita and PlayStation 4, featuring Cross-Save support. Pre-order your Limited Edition now, featuring a 2CD soundtrack, artbook and fully poseable IF figurine.

Hyperdimension Neptunia U2 Action Unchained

Peace reigns once again in Gamindustri, but the world — and its CPUs — are restless.

Enter, once again, intrepid journalists Dengekiko and Famitsu, who once again have an offer for the CPUs and their Candidates: a means of entertaining both themselves and their people, plus a way to keep their fighting skills in shape.

FEATURES

Hack, slash… and think?! Hyperdimension Neptunia U2 Action Unchained’s dungeons are like nothing you’ve ever seen in the Neptunia series, combining challenging combat encounters with head-scratching puzzles that will require you to use your smarts, dexterity and a bevy of interactive items to progress. Nep-Nep might need some help with that last bit!
Custom combos GET! Edit your favourite fighter’s moves and abilities as you see fit from a wide palette of options that expands as you progress. Develop your own personal fighting style for each character and display your skills with a selection of different weapons, each with their own movesets!
Fight one-on-one or go toe-to-toe against the horde! Hyperdimension Neptunia U2 Action Unchained’s combat encounters range from challenging one-on-one battles against both monsters and incarnations of Gamindustri’s great heroes to large-scale battles against overwhelming odds. Can you stem a seemingly never-ending tide of monsters?!
Fight smart, and fight cool! It’s not just about beating your opponents; it’s about making yourself look great! Mix up your combos, SP Moves and EXE Drives to impress the audience and earn more Shares to maximise your favourite character’s abilities!

Coming soon to PlayStation Vita and PlayStation 4, featuring Cross-Save support and Cross-Play online co-op for 1-4 players. Pre-order your limited edition now, featuring a 2CD soundtrack, huge wallscroll and collection of chibi Neptunia figurines.

Hyperdimension Neptunia Gamindustri Idol Project

“Is anyone else getting a distinct sense of deja vu?!”

A new foe threatens Gamindustri — and this time it’s not the fault of the monsters. No, the CPUs’ very power is threatened by the rise in popularity of idols — and this time there’s no Producer to help them out! Fortunately, old friend 5pb. is on hand to give the CPUs and their Candidates a bit of advice on winning the love of the people back…

FEATURES

Rhythm action gameplay developed in collaboration with SEGA and Crypton Future Media, developers of the Hatsune Miku Project DIVA series! Enjoy 35 songs, including classics from the Neptunia series and originals composed specifically for this game, as you challenge taxing note charts at four levels of difficulty!
Customise the CPUs as they aim for idol glory! A huge variety of costumes, accessories and stage props are on offer for both the CPUs and the Candidates; some even have special effects, but you’ll have to experiment to find out what works best for you!
Two ways to play! Take on a new story of the CPUs and the Candidates attempting to win back the support of the people of Gamindustri, or play for fun in Arcade mode as you try to top your best scores!
Take the battle for best idol online! Join the Guild online to track your progress and best performances against players from all over the world! Share your customised CPU Idols and stage setups as you attempt to dominate not just Gamindustri, but our world too!

Coming soon to PlayStation Vita and PlayStation 4, featuring Cross-Save support and Cross-Play online functionality including social features, sharing and leaderboards. Pre-order your limited edition now, featuring a 2CD soundtrack, commemorative concert programme and collection of pendants, allowing you to proudly show the world who your favourite CPU Idol is!

Note: I know these games are not real. I also know that Hyperdimension Neptunia: Producing Perfection is a thing. Thank you in advance for your time and your desire to point these things out to me, though.

2186: Hyperdimension Action

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I’m well into the post-game of Hyperdimension Neptunia U Action Unleashed (or, as certain parts of the Vita interface refer to it, Hyperdimension Action Unleashed Neptunia U, and I’m pretty sure there are a few other combinations too) and enjoying the game a great deal.

It’s not the deepest game in the world, I’ll be the first to admit: while there are a few levels that take place in “dungeons” — in true Neptunia fashion, these are, of course, recycled from the mainline games — on the whole, it’s mostly an arena-based brawler in which you hack and slash your way through hordes of enemies using a few different moves with each character.

It is a game where you can win most of the levels by hammering the Square button repeatedly, but experimenting with the combos and special moves somewhat produces a much more satisfying experience. In many ways, I kind of wish there was more reward for doing so — some sort of style bonus, or a bonus for completing a level particularly quickly, or even a time limit — but seeing the combo meter rise into ridiculously high numbers is, to be honest, reward enough for me.

What I like about the post-game is that there’s several different things to do. Firstly, there are some extra quests in the game’s story mode that, in a twist on the game up until that point, only allow you to use a single character instead of the usual duo. This means you don’t have the safety net of a partner if you get knocked down, and make these missions actually quite challenging for the characters you haven’t levelled quite as much as the others. I had a bit of difficulty with Famitsu’s mission, for one, but actually rather enjoyed this, as it forced me to figure out how her moves actually worked and use them effectively rather than just, as previously mentioned, hammering Square.

Once you’re done with those, there’s the Gamindustri Gauntlet, which is a tournament of one-on-one fights between a character you choose — in this mode, the characters’ HDD/goddess forms are treated as separate characters — and a random (or player-chosen) selection of others. There are three difficulty modes, with the first being ridiculously easy (like, one-hit-kill easy if you’ve levelled your characters even a little bit) and the middle offering a decent but not insurmountable challenge. I haven’t tried the top one yet. This mode reminds me a little of Neptunia U’s stablemate Senran Kagura Estival Versus, which was a similar kind of game with a strong focus on one-on-one battles rather than hordes. It works quite well, though I do find myself wishing for a lock-on system at times. This mode does nicely highlight the fact the characters do all play rather differently from one another, though, with the contrast between ranged characters such as Rom, Ram and Uni and the rest of the cast being most apparent.

After you clear Gamindustri Gauntlet once, you unlock Neptral Tower, which is a string of 50 arena battles that, if you want the Platinum trophy, you’re going to have to do with every character. Thankfully, a pair of characters reaching the top does count as them both having cleared it, regardless of which one you were playing as when you won, and Neptral Tower as a whole acts as a solid means of grinding out both levels for characters and Lily Ranks for bonuses — the latter, of course, being essential for the Platinum trophy, too, because what would a Neptunia game be without an epic Lily Rank grind?

Neptral Tower is quite interesting to play through because progress is recorded on a per-character basis, meaning you can’t just take your strongest character all the way up and change partners as you max out Lily Ranks. Instead, you can voluntarily reset progress at any point and start bringing another character up as you so desire. While you could get that Platinum trophy by clearing all 50 floors with each character one at a time, it’s much more efficient — and interesting — to make strategic use of this reset function to grind out the Lily Ranks you need and level your characters before making a break for the top floors when you’re good and ready.

Neptunia U is a good game, then, and it makes me rather curious for the upcoming Megatagmension Blanc and Neptune vs Zombies, which is coming later this year. It’s also been reminding me quite how much I love Neptunia, and it’s got me very much in the mood to finally get around to playing Re;Birth 2 and 3 when I’m done — just in time for Megadimension Neptunia V-II, which looks quite likely to release next month.

Nepu!

2182: The Comforting Familiarity of Nep-Nep

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There’s a reason I frequently quote the Hyperdimension Neptunia series as my favourite game series of all time. And it’s not because any of the games are particularly outstanding — though, it must be said, each and every one is far better than most reviews give them credit for — or because they’re particularly impressive. In fact, technically speaking, outside of some excellent character models and animation, the Neptunia series as a whole is fairly flawed, though since making the jump to Vita, PC and PS4 rather than PS3, its average framerate has gone through the roof.

No, the reason I love Neptunia so is its comforting familiarity. Firing up one of these games is like meeting up with the sort of friends you always have a good time with. The kind of friends you might not see for months or years at a time on some occasions, but the kind of friends who allow you to pick right up where you left off when you do meet up again.

There are a number of ways the series achieves this. The first and most obvious is through its main cast: the combination of Tsunako’s gorgeous character and costume designs, the excellent voice acting (in Japanese, anyway; I haven’t spent long with the English dub) and a sharp, witty script really brings these characters to life and, over the course of all the games they’ve starred in to date, they’ve developed and become distinct. The Neptunia writers and localisers aren’t under any misconceptions that these characters are particularly deep, flawed or, for want of a better word, “literary”, but this adds to the series’ charm; it’s infused with a gentle sense of good-natured humour and an aesthetic that combines the bright, primary colours of a children’s TV show with a strong sense of self-awareness and recognition that yes, grown-ups play this and appreciate a few dirty jokes here and there. It’s unpretentious and casual; you never feel like you have to make an effort to enjoy spending time with the Neptunia characters, and, perhaps paradoxically, this makes you want to spend more time with them, to find out more about them.

The second way Neptunia brings a sense of warm familiarity to me is through its aesthetic. Developer Compile Heart frequently gets lambasted in reviews for recycling graphical, sound and music assets wholesale from game to game, but somehow this has never mattered to me; I like the fact that you know what a Neptunia game is going to look and sound like before you boot it up. I like the fact that the series has developed its own kind of non-verbal language using its soundtrack to denote what is happening on. And the fact that the same dungeon maps are used from game to game — or even, in some cases, recycled within the same game — has never mattered to me; on the contrary, these places are now familiar and comfortable to me, even if the occupants may differ from visit to visit and occasionally incorporate superbosses that splatter me up the nearest wall.

The third reason Neptunia makes me happy is because the whole thing is clearly infused with such joy and love for these characters and the setting in which they live that it’s hard not to smile all the time you’re playing. While it’s questionable as to whether or not Compile Heart knew precisely how popular the series would become when the original Hyperdimension Neptunia was released in 2010, it’s clear to see today, six years later, that the creators still adore their creations as much as the audience do. And, more to the point, the various spinoffs in the series allow fans to celebrate their favourite characters in a variety of different ways, be it through the clothes-ripping hack-and-slash action of Hyperdimension Neptunia U, the strategic battling of Hyperdevotion Noire or the purely “social” gameplay of Hyperdimension Neptunia Producing Perfection. We’ve seen these girls at work, rest and play over the course of these games, and it doesn’t take long to fall in love with them.

Me, I’m at a stage where I honestly think I might be quite happy playing nothing but Neptunia games until the end of time, assuming that Compile Heart continued to explore collaborations with other developers such as Sting (Hyperdevotion Noire) and Tamsoft (Hyperdimension Neptunia U) as well as producing strong mainline installments in the series. Of course, this is an exaggeration, but one thing is true: I never have a bad time playing a Neptunia game, and I never feel sad while I’m playing a Neptunia game; I hope we continue to see them for many years to come.

2180: Action Unleashed

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I had a sudden and irrepressible urge for some Neptunia today, so I fired up the Neptunia game I was last working on: Hyperdimension Neptunia U: Action Unleashed. Having figured out that yes, it is indeed possible to stop the PlayStation TV from recognising accidental clicking of L3 or R3 as simulated touchscreen touches (which had previously made getting overexcited in this game somewhat hazardous, since I have a habit of clicking one or both of the sticks in when gripping the controller tightly) I decided to play it on the big screen. And I was reminded what an enjoyable game it is.

For those unfamiliar, Neptunia U, as I shall refer to it hereafter, is a collaborative, non-canonical entry in the Neptunia series (inasmuch as Neptunia even has a coherent canon, which is perhaps questionable) developed by both series creators Compile Heart and Senran Kagura developers Tamsoft. The latter’s influence is very much evident in the game, since it plays rather like their other Vita game, Senran Kagura Estival Versus, right down to the characters’ clothes getting ripped as they take damage.

Much like Senran Kagura, Neptunia U presents you with a series of missions to undertake, some of which are purely designed to challenge you and/or allow you to level up your characters, while others advance the plot. Neptunia U also throws a spanner in the works in its second chapter with “Irregular Quests”, which generally have some sort of condition to you beating them rather than simply killing everything. The twist is that the game doesn’t tell you what this objective is outright; you’re expected to figure it out for yourself, though starting and quitting the mission does trigger a scene where the characters give you a few hints as to what you might want to do. Irregular objectives range from killing all of a specific type of enemy (while others respawn infinitely) to swapping characters in order to temporarily be able to deal damage to otherwise-invincible enemies.

Neptunia U’s systems are fairly simple — like Senran Kagura, each character has both a fast, weak attack and a strong, slow attack as well as a couple of limited-use special moves. And, again, like its titty-ninja counterpart, the challenge is not necessarily in being able to perform these moves and combos — pretty much all of the combos in question run Square 4 or 5 times followed by Triangle — but in understanding the animations and movements involved in the abilities in order to deal damage most efficiently and clear levels quickly. Efficient performance results in bigger experience rewards at the conclusion of the level, as well as providing you with more Medals that drop from monsters. Collecting medals unlocks permanent stat boosts for the entire cast as well as new equippable items to boost (or, in some cases, deliberately penalise) their abilities.

Neptunia U is a game made for people who love the grind. It’s not a particularly difficult game for the most part — at least its rather short, sub-6 hour story mode isn’t; I’m yet to get into the substantial endgame involving the Neptral Tower dungeon — but in order to unlock everything and see everything, you’ll need to grind a fair bit in various ways. You’ll need to grind missions to gain enough experience to level up the characters. You’ll need to grind specific missions in order to collect the enemy medals you need to unlock all the equipment. You’ll need to grind specific partnerships of characters in order to raise everyone’s Lily Rank to maximum — always the most time-consuming part of any Neptunia game, but pretty much everyone who calls themselves a fan somehow cannot resist this task every time it comes up — and you’ll need to make sure said partnerships are levelled enough to clear the few character-specific missions throughout the game. In other words, if you’re not up for a bit of grinding, this game will last you about 6 hours; if you are, however, it will push into substantial double-digit territory at the very least.

Mostly, I just like it because it’s an enjoyable, simple brawler with quick, snappy levels and my favourite characters in the world smacking the shit out of all manner of different enemies. Of particular note is the game’s implementation of the series’ iconic “HDD” forms for the characters: in some of the mainline installments, these transformations didn’t feel substantially more powerful than the characters’ “human” counterparts, but here, their new movesets, animations and massively increased damage potential makes them feel as they should: earth-shatteringly powerful, cutting through enemies like butter. They are goddesses, after all.

I’m going to try and bash out the rest of the story mode in the next few days and then investigate the endgame. Whether it will crush my soul like the Lily Rank grind in Hyperdevotion Noire remains to be seen, but it’s Nep-Nep, so of course I’m going to see it through to the bitter end; spending some time away from my favourite goddesses has only reminded me how much I love them. Absence makes the heart grow fonder and all that.

2099: Further Travels in the Dungeons

I’ve played about twelve hours or so of Dungeon Travelers 2 so far, and despite my relative inexperience with the genre, I’m inclined to agree with those people who describe it as one of the best dungeon crawlers on the Vita. The really exciting thing about it is that I know I haven’t seen everything the game has to offer, and that it’s gradually increasing in depth and complexity as I progress.

This is a good structure: it keeps a challenging game accessible and easy to understand, and allows the player to spread their wings a bit as they become more confident with the various systems.

A case in point is the party formation and progression systems, which gradually introduce you to core concepts of the game a little bit at a time, then present you with more and more unusual cases, then open up progression a bit, then a lot, then give you more party members, and so on.

You start the game with just two characters: a Fighter (tank) and Magic User (damage dealer/healer). Shortly afterwards you’re joined by a Spieler (essentially a damage dealer, but with many skills relying on RNG), then later by a Maid (a support class that doesn’t use “TP” to power her skills) and a Scout (a high-speed damage dealer that can either be a melee or ranged combatant).

Once each of these characters hits level 15, they can move up a tier of classes, with each class splitting into two or three alternatives, then each of those splitting into another two possibilities further down the levelling track. Fighter can become either Paladin (damage-soaking tank) or Berserker (damage-dealing tank), for example; Magic User can become a Sorceress (straight damage dealer), Enchantress (buffer) or Priestess (healer). The interesting thing is that changing class in this way doesn’t prevent you from accessing the skill tree of the old class; it simply adds a new skill tree, offering you more choices to spend your skill points on with each level up. In this way, you can customise each character significantly — and, importantly, there’s the opportunity to undo things if you made a mistake, though this does involve resetting their level to one of the significant milestones (level 1, level 15 and so forth) and levelling them again.

I like this approach; it’s a little different from the Demon Gaze/Etrian Odyssey approach of allowing you to create your own party completely, because it means that you’re eased into the game’s systems with a proven, workable party lineup that you get more and more freedom to play with as the game progresses. The drip-feed of new characters into your party is entirely deliberate, too; in total, there are 16 different playable characters in the game, but rather than overwhelming you with endless possibilities from the outset, you’re introduced to these characters and their classes one at a time, giving you the opportunity to get a feel for how they work in a party situation, then by the end of the game you’ll have a complete lineup of available characters to pick and choose for your active party as you see fit. Given the apparent complexity of the game’s systems, this seems like an eminently sensible way to do things, striking a good balance between accessibility for genre newcomers and flexibility for veterans. True dungeon crawler vets will doubtless be most interested in the “endgame” dungeons, anyway, by which point any frustration they might have felt at the artificial limitations imposed on them in the early game will have been removed entirely.

So the systems are good, then — at least, they certainly appear to be from my experience thus far. What I’ve been pleasantly surprised to see alongside these solid mechanics is some decent writing, story and characterisation. Dungeon crawlers are often designed in such a way that the story just sort of happens with or without the player character(s) having an active role in the unfolding narrative, but Dungeon Travelers 2 makes a point of making each and every party member — including your protagonist — into a human being rather than a set of stats and abilities. This is achieved in a variety of ways: interactions and conversations in the story scenes between dungeon missions; one-liner comments as you explore the dungeons; and “sub-events” that are triggered by the actions you’ve taken in the dungeon and in battle. This latter aspect is particularly impressive; there are sub-events for a wide variety of different situations and events, ranging from equipping a particular item to a character getting knocked out in battle, and as well as being entertaining and amusing, they can also help you figure out things about the game systems for yourself. When Melvy the Magic User complains that her spells were being interrupted by heavy hits, for example, you then become aware that you, too, can interrupt enemy spells if you hit them hard enough — and that you need to shield Melvy from attack when she’s chanting.

The other good thing about this part of the game is that it gives a strong sense that the game world is bigger than the part of it that you see. As the name suggests, Dungeon Travelers 2 unfolds almost entirely in dungeons, with story scenes confined to menu screens and visual novel-style talking head segments. Despite the lack of an “overworld” and “towns” to explore, you get a very clear sense that the writers have thought about the game’s overall context, including off-screen characters, how society works, events that occurred prior to (and during) the game’s narrative and relationships between characters. You see all this through the eyes of just one individual, but there’s a strong feeling that you’re part of a much bigger world, even if you won’t see most of it in the game itself. This is good; it gives your actions in the game context and meaning, and helps provide some impetus to keep pushing forwards. It’s no good being told to save the realm if you don’t know anything about the realm in question, after all.

As you can tell, then, I’m having a real blast with the game so far. After my initial embarrassing death in just my third fight, the game hasn’t kicked my ass too severely, though it is pretty good at sending clear signals that Now Would Probably Be A Good Time to End This Expedition and Go Back to Town, usually by flattening one or more party members unexpectedly. It never feels cheap, though; any and all character KO’s are usually the result of overextending yourself and getting a bit ambitious, and as I recall from my tentative first steps into Demon Gaze, dungeon crawlers are all about being cautious as well as killing things and taking their stuff.

I’ve no idea how long the game is or indeed how large the dungeons get. I’m hoping this is a game that’s going to last me a while, though; I have every intention of trying to see everything it has to offer.

2097: Dungeon Travelers 2: Some Initial Impressions

Dungeon Travelers 2 came out on PlayStation Vita yesterday. To say I’ve been eagerly anticipating this game is something of an understatement; I’ve been deliberately holding off playing anything else “big” until it came out, because I was keen to be able to devote some time to it. And, after a good few hours with it today, I’m not at all disappointed with my decision to do so.

For the unfamiliar, Dungeon Travelers 2 is a first-person perspective dungeon crawler RPG (of the Wizardry mould that Japan loves so) created as a collaborative effort between visual novel producers Aquaplus, weird-but-cool RPG specialists Sting and That Company People Mostly Know The Name Of Because of Persona, Atlus. It has a somewhat convoluted history: its Japan-only predecessor Dungeon Travelers was a fleshed-out remake of a dungeon crawler that was part of a fandisc for Aquaplus’ visual novel ToHeart 2, though Dungeon Travelers 2 itself doesn’t have anything to do with either the first game or ToHeart 2, simply sharing some aesthetic sensibilities and mechanics.

Dungeon Travelers 2 shot to notoriety a few months back when Polygon’s Phil Kollar berated publisher Atlus for localising the game, which he referred to as a “creepy, porn-lite dungeon crawler”. I responded in some detail to Kollar’s nonsense back when he first blurted it out over at MoeGamer; take a look. Ironically, Kollar’s condemnation of the game actually made a lot of people — me included — who had never heard of it before aware of its existence, and I can’t help feeling that the game has been a bigger success than it probably would have been if he’d just kept his mouth shut. In that sense, I’m not complaining; it’s just a little frustrating to know that he almost certainly won’t have given it any time and attention since that initial piece, having written it off as the usual pervy nonsense.

Dungeon Travelers 2 is an ecchi game, though, make no mistake, if you hadn’t already noticed from the artwork that peppers this post; within five minutes of starting the first dungeon, you’re presented with a rather fetching view of one of the heroines’ panties-clad buttocks, and every boss fight is followed by some rather beautifully drawn artwork of said boss in a somewhat disheveled, suggestive state. Not only that, but the vast majority of enemies are scantily clad cute female characters (the rest are, inexplicably, sentient fruit) that draw a certain degree of inspiration from the popular “monster girl” aesthetic, albeit in a less overt way than something like the anime Monster Musume.

Here’s the thing, though; the ecchi content of Dungeon Travelers 2 works because, like other games that fully embrace their ecchi (or even hentai) side, it’s consistent in its use and it thus becomes part of the overall aesthetic. It’s a sexy game; it’s not about sex as such, mind you, but beautiful girls in sexy poses are very much part of the way it looks, and it is not at all ashamed of that fact. In order to fully enjoy it, you absolutely can’t be ashamed of it, either.

But the ecchi content is the least interesting thing to talk about when it comes to Dungeon Travelers 2, because it’s a really solid game with some interesting mechanics. Of particular note is the game’s approach to teaching you how to play; the electronic manual provided with the software gives you only a bare-bones outline of the interface, but through a combination of in-game lectures (delivered by the deliciously sarcastic Maid-Sensei) and in-context, in-character sub-events that are triggered by your various actions in the dungeon and in battle, the game teaches you how to play and things to watch out for without resorting to insulting your intelligence. Maid-Sensei’s lectures are the nearest thing to an outright tutorial, but those are skippable; the sub-events, meanwhile, are short, snappy, humorous and get their point across without being dull.

There are some interesting systems at play. The concept of the game revolves around “Libras”, who are individuals that are able to seal away monsters in books. The protagonist character is one of these Libras, but he doesn’t take an active role in battle; instead, the game is presented as you, playing the role of Fried the Libra, issuing orders to your gradually expanding party of pretty girl bodyguards and performing the important task of sealing away the monsters when they’ve been defeated.

It doesn’t stop there, though; the Libra concept is a core system of the game. By defeating enough monsters, you can create “Sealbooks” which have two main functions: firstly, they represent the fact that you have researched the monster sufficiently to understand their behaviour and characteristics, depicted in game as revealing their full stats, and secondly, they can be used as a piece of equipment, with each individual monster’s Sealbook having a different special effect. Thanks to a “completion percentage” figure in the game, there’s a definite element of “gotta catch ’em all” going on that I anticipate is going to cause me some issues in the future.

Alongside this is a detailed class system for all your party members, with each character able to level up a number of different classes and learn skills using earned skill points. It’s possible to build and specialise characters in a variety of different ways, and the early game introduces you to a selection of interesting classes, beginning with a fairly straightforward tank and DPS combo — pleasingly, the tank class is able to provoke enemies and increase the likelihood that they’ll be hit in favour of squishy mages — before giving you the peculiar “Spieler” class, which so far appears to be heavily based on luck and random chance, and the “Maid” class, which plays a supportive role that is very distinct from a dedicated healer by buffing and allowing characters to restore the points they use on skills as well as their all-important HP.

I’m not particularly deep into the game as yet, so the dungeons haven’t got especially complicated so far. There have already been some challenging fights, though, and the game is not afraid to slap you about a bit until you remember that you have to play dungeon crawlers a little differently to more conventional RPGs. I got a Game Over in the third fight I had in the whole game, for example, because I overextended myself and forgot that it’s perfectly acceptable in this type of game to advance a bit then run screaming for the exit to lick your wounds and restock; compare and contrast to your more typical JRPG, meanwhile, in which you tend to always be moving forwards rather than backtracking or making multiple expeditions.

In fact, what Dungeon Travelers 2 reminded me of, of all things, is a board game of the Advanced Heroquest ilk. The basic structure is the same: get overarching quest, go into dungeon, come back out if things get hairy, go back in, find treasure, go back out, resupply, go back in, fight a bit further… and so on. The “multiple expeditions” nature of exploration in the game is inherently satisfying, since you can easily see on the convenient automap when you’re making progress, because you’ll be revealing new areas. Discovering new monsters is enjoyable, too, since they’re all depicted with some truly lovely artwork, and the juxtaposition between the “pretty girl” monsters and the “sentient fruit” monsters is bizarre and hilarious.

I’m enjoying it a great deal so far, then, and I’m looking forward to spending a lot of time with it. I’m a relative newbie to the dungeon crawler subgenre of RPGs as a whole, but between Demon Gaze (which was my first real hardcore dungeon-crawling experience) and what I’ve experienced of this so far, I’m very much a believer already.

To the dungeons, then, where pretty girls await!

2057: Assault Android Cactus is Out Later This Month, and Here’s Why You Should Buy It

First things first: please forgive the Kotaku-style headline, but I started capitalising headlines in this way when I first started posting on this blog and now I can’t bring myself to change to AP style without going back and changing all my previous ones. And, since there are well over 2,000 “previous ones”, that would take a very long time indeed. So awkwardly capitalised headlines it is for now.

But I digress, and I haven’t even started yet, so let’s begin again.

Nearly two years ago, my then-managing editor Jaz Rignall pointed me in the direction of an intriguing-looking Early Access game on Steam called Assault Android Cactus. After taking a peek at the pre-alpha build, I began corresponding with Mr Sanatana Mishra from developer Witch Beam Games, and it transpired that the game would be on show at the then-new Eurogamer Expo (now known as EGX). Since I was heading to EGX anyway, I made an appointment to meet with Mishra and have a chat about the game, and in the meantime I familiarised myself a little more with the early build.

When I first heard about Assault Android Cactus, I wasn’t sure what to think. On paper, it sounds like any number of games that bloat Steam’s marketplace daily — it’s an arcade-style twin-stick shooter inspired by retro classics — but it quickly became apparent from playing through the limited number of levels in the early build that there was actually something quite special taking shape here. This feeling was further compounded when I eventually made it to the Eurogamer Expo and had a thoroughly enjoyable chat with Mishra about the game and the team’s plans for it in the long-term — to cut a long story (which you can read in full here) short, it was apparent that Witch Beam was a small team who were absolutely dedicated to making Cactus the best experience it could possibly be, and to creating a truly authentic Dreamcast-style experience heavily inspired by the masters of Japanese shoot ’em ups like Treasure, Cave and their ilk.

Since I first gave Cactus its glowing write-up on USgamer, I’ve checked in on the Early Access build numerous times as it’s developed, and regularly talked about how much I like it. I’ve also kept in touch with Mishra and the rest of the team at Witch Beam via Twitter, and it’s been a genuine pleasure to witness the passion they’ve been pouring into their project. It’s been a long and slow road to release for the game, but recently the team finally announced that the full, non-Early Access version would be hitting Steam on September 23, 2015, and that the promised console versions would be following early next year.

I received an email from Mishra last night containing a beta code for the review build of Assault Android Cactus’ full version as a “thank you” for the support I’ve shown them over the last couple of years. Touched by this thoroughly nice gesture of appreciation, I made a point of downloading the new build this morning and playing it for a good few hours. And it seems my early impressions were very much correct: Assault Android Cactus is something very special indeed, and if it doesn’t end up taking its rightful place of honour alongside modern arcade classics like Ikaruga, DoDonPachi, Geometry Wars and their ilk, something is very, very wrong.

For the unfamiliar, Assault Android Cactus is, as previously mentioned, a twin-stick shooter. There’s a few twists on the usual formula, though: the right stick just aims rather than shoots, for one, so you have to actually pull the trigger to fire, while the left trigger swaps between your chosen character’s main and secondary weapon. Main weapons have unlimited ammunition; secondary weapons have a cooldown before they can be used again, but tend to be considerably more powerful.

Another major twist on the formula is the fact that there’s no lives system, with the challenge factor instead coming from a time limit represented by the characters’ declining battery charge. Blowing up a wave of enemies allows you to collect a recharge item, while getting knocked down wastes time and battery charge as well as costing you some points, so avoiding getting hit is a very important part of going for high scores. The battery system proved to be a controversial addition to the game when it was first put in place, but it’s now such an integral part of the game structure that it’s difficult to imagine Assault Android Cactus without it. It ensures the game strikes a good balance between accessibility for casual players and rewarding skilful play from the people who know what “1CC” stands for.

One of the most noteworthy aspects of Cactus’ gameplay is its selectable characters, who are gradually unlocked as you progress through the main series of levels. Far from just being different skins, each of the playable android characters handles uniquely, with very different main and secondary weapons allowing you to play in different ways. Title character Cactus is the most straightforward, boasting a simple machine gun and short-range flamethrower combination, while Aubergine is one of the more peculiar offerings due to her main weapon being an independently controlled helicopter drone and her secondary weapon being the ability to summon a quantum singularity and suck everything into it. The way the different characters play is one area where Witch Beam has clearly taken inspiration from classic Japanese shoot ’em ups, since many of these have selectable ships with different weapon setups. There’s a huge amount of creativity in the way the characters play, though, and it’s a real pleasure to get a handle on how some of the more outlandish characters work. (I still have no idea how to use Aubergine effectively, mind.)

Another interesting aspect is in the level design. Cactus could have easily been a straightforward arena shooter, but instead the levels show a great deal of variety in their structure. While they all have the same goal — destroy all the enemies — some of them take place in a confined space; some of them unfold in an arena that changes shape over time; some of them are in levels that force you to move from one place to another. One particularly memorable one scrolls infinitely in every direction, with checkerboard floor tiles flipping up and down according to which direction you’re going; the backdrops are always interesting and exciting to look at as much as the main action is.

Cactus’ long-term appeal comes from the same place as other arcade-style shooters: score attack. Completing a level immediately shows you a leaderboard as well as a letter grade, with the elusive “S+” rank being reserved for those who chained all of the enemies in a level into a single combo, didn’t die and were generally a bit of a superstar. After attaining an S+ rank, you unlock “Pro Mode”, which puts an on-screen indicator on your HUD showing whether or not it’s still possible to attain an S+ on the level you’re playing; you can also quickly restart a level if you make a mistake along the way somewhere.

The ranking system has been well thought out. Levels are designed so that you can “learn” them, much like a bullet hell shooter, and attaining the best ranks is dependent on you figuring out these enemy patterns, how to avoid their attacks and how to ensure that you’re always on the offensive to keep your combo active. Bosses are similar, unfolding across several learnable phases, with the boss’ health bar clearly showing where there’s a phase transition so you can ensure you’re in an advantageous position ahead of time.

If you’re not in the mood for score attack, though, some Sega-inspired “EX options” allow you to play the game in various different ways. You can try the game in first-person, for example, or from a fixed isometric perspective rather than the dynamic camera angles of the regular game — though both of these options disable the leaderboards. There are also several graphical filter options — including an entertaining “JJ Mode”, which spooges lens flare and bloom all over the screen for an incredibly colourful experience — as well as options for having AI players alongside you or taking on co-op enemy waves with just a single player.

In short, if you’re a fan of arcade-style shooters and you’re looking for something entertaining to feed your virtual quarters into, Assault Android Cactus is pretty much an essential purchase. Combine the solid main campaign with other enjoyable modes such as the never-ending Infinity Drive mode and the randomly generated Daily Drive confrontation, and you have a game that will keep you occupied for a very long time indeed — and one that I will quite happily purchase again on PS4 when that version hits early next year.

2052: Platinum Grind

I’m coming up on the Platinum trophy for Hyperdevotion Noire on Vita, and I’ve asked myself more than once why I was doing it, given that it’s completely unnecessary to fully appreciate the game, and has extended what would probably be a 40-50 hour game well over the 100 hour mark.

Despite questioning my motivation a few times, I’ve never found myself resenting the game, somehow — this is partly because I undertook the most grindy of grinds for the Platinum trophy while watching several seasons of Community on Netflix (#teamhandheld) and consequently wasn’t just staring at a screen repeating the same actions over and over again, which is essentially what I was required to do to get 20+ of the trophies in the list.

Now I’m approaching the end of that epic grind, I’m glad that I’ve done it. It hasn’t been difficult in the sense of the game being difficult to complete — on the contrary, once all the characters are level 99 you can steamroller pretty much everything in the game with a few exceptions — but it has been challenging from the perspective of committing to the long-term goal and seeing it through to its conclusion.

This raises an interesting point about the nature of “challenge”. When we talk about “challenge” in games we’re normally referring to something along the lines of Dark Souls, which requires you to understand its systems thoroughly, otherwise it will punish you until you mend your ways and play better. But “challenge” can exist in other ways, too. It can refer to subject matter that makes you uncomfortable — not generally a problem with the Neptunia series, though mk2 does some interesting things with the squick factor and some people still won’t check the series out because of assumptions about fanservice. It can also refer to the challenge of making it through something lengthy and weighty, or holding out in a test of endurance, such as I’ve been doing with Hyperdevotion Noire.

And that, I think, is why I’ve been doing the Platinum grind. The challenge factor. Overcoming challenges is satisfying, even if they’re more endurance than skill. Endurance and patience are worthwhile traits, and I’ve noted on a number of past occasions that I feel my experiences with role-playing games over the years — and my willingness to see them through to the end, even if they have a three- or four-digit hour count — have helped me train these particular abilities in myself. And these abilities are something that transfers across to life at large; it can be difficult to wait for things, or hold out against something that is proving to be an obstacle, but with patience and endurance in spades, you can usually overcome most challenges.

Anyway. After all that, I will say that I will be glad to finally see that Platinum trophy pop in Hyperdevotion Noire, because it means I’ll finally be able to put that game to bed and move on to something else without feeling like I need to try and get anything else out of it. And, as I’ve noted before, it feels good to know that trophies are used as metrics by developers and publishers — unlikely though it might be, someone might see my Platinum trophy in the game and recognise that it is something only achieved by people who have truly engaged with it and want to see everything it has to offer.

Also I can’t break my streak of Platinum trophies on Neptunia games now, can I?

2041: A Little Respect Goes a Long Way

Whew, that got pretty heated, huh? I make absolutely no apologies for yesterday’s post: it needed to be said, and I stand by every word of it. To reiterate: if you don’t like ecchi content in your games, that’s absolutely A-OK. The second you start branding people who do like ecchi content in their games as paedophiles, though, that’s when you cross a line from “opinionated person” into “total cunt”.

I’m really disappointed to hear of the number of NeoGAF bans that have resulted from the article I mentioned yesterday. (Still not going to link to it.) Quite a few friends — and quite a few new acquaintances — all found themselves banned simply for expressing dissent or dissatisfaction with the article, often in a polite manner. And no, that’s not just excuse-making — they really were polite about it. More polite than I was yesterday, anyway.

I’ve never been a member of NeoGAF. Not through lack of trying, though every time I have tried, my email address hasn’t been “good enough” for them to allow me in, whatever the hell that means. In one particular instance, it took nearly two years for my “application” to be rejected; I didn’t try again after that.

If it hadn't been Omega Labyrinth, some other game would have been the victim (and, likely, beneficiary of a ton of new publicity) of the latest round of outrage. — If it hadn’t been Omega Labyrinth, some other game would have been the victim of the latest round of outrage — and, it has to be said, likely a beneficiary of a ton of awareness it wouldn’t have had otherwise, so it’s not all bad.

NeoGAF is regarded by many as the de facto gaming community online. It’s where all the game journalists from the mainstream publications hang out, it’s where game developers and publishers hang out — in short, it’s a huge, centralised place to talk about games. Or at least, it should be: in the last few years, however, there’s been an increasingly tight leash put on exactly what is and is not acceptable to talk about there — and, relevant to what we’ve been talking about, a lot of the stuff that is outright banned from discussion falls under the Japanese gaming umbrella.

Trouble is, from what I can tell as an outsider to the overall community, there is pretty much no rhyme or reason to what is and is not acceptable. Senran Kagura is acceptable, it seems — or, at least, it was; a significant number of participants in the long, active Senran Kagura thread got banned as part of this latest nonsense — but something like Criminal Girls is not. Japanese games are the only games that appear to be subject to this much scrutiny; big Western games are discussed without any issues whatsoever, regardless of if they have any sexual or violent content in them.

I don’t want to dwell too much on NeoGAF because, as I’ve already said, I’m not a member there and so cannot comment with authority from the perspective of an actual community member. What I do want to talk about, however, is the broader problem that NeoGAF’s situation and yesterday’s debacle really highlights: the fact that it’s deliberately (and, I’d argue, maliciously) creating a divide between different “strata” of people who enjoy video games. In other words, if you like one of the “approved” games, you’re absolutely fine; you can continue discussing games and gaming culture as much as you like. But if you like one of the “forbidden” games — regardless of the fact that these games are not illegal, are not banned and are sold at retail — then your opinion is, it seems, automatically invalid; you’re not welcome to discuss it in the Internet’s equivalent of “polite society” and are instead forced underground to find cliques and subcultures who will accept you for your tastes, rather than everyone being in a happy melting pot respectfully exchanging opinions and learning from one another.

Dungeon Travelers 2 was the last game to come under the microscope for being responsible for all society's ills. Unfortunately for the outrage brigade, it turned out to actually be a really good game, too. — Dungeon Travelers 2 was the last game to come under the microscope for being responsible for all society’s ills. Unfortunately for the outrage brigade, it turned out to actually be a really good game, too.

As I’ve argued before both here and over on MoeGamer, this situation does a lot of creative works an enormous disservice. In my last ever JPgamer column at USgamer, I commented on the fact that a lot of the games that are habitually branded as “creepy” (or worse) by mainstream critics actually tick a considerable number of the boxes that these people tend to want to see as evidence that gaming is “growing up”.

Female protagonists? Or at least women in important positions with regard to the narrative? Sure; check out the Neptunia series, Omega Quintet, Criminal Girls, the Agarest series, Akiba’s Trip, Monster Monpiece, Moe Chronicle, Demon Gaze, Dungeon Travelers 2.

Unconventional storyline that isn’t simply “solve all your problems by punching/shooting/swording them to death”? Sure! Check out the Atelier series, Recettear, the Ar Tonelico series and plenty more.

Ambitious narrative themes? Sure! Take a look at The Witch and the Hundred Knight (coming soon to PS4!), Time and Eternity, Senran Kagura, Criminal Girls, Ar Tonelico…

You get the idea: these games don’t get anywhere near enough credit and are, more often than not, either ignored or derided by people purely on the grounds that they’re open and up-front about — in most, not all cases — wanting to indulge in a bit of light-hearted, cheeky teasing as part of their overall aesthetic. In some cases, the ecchi content is even used genuinely effectively to depict the growing relationship between characters; Time and Eternity and Demon Gaze were both particularly good in this regard, reflecting the protagonist’s sexual frustration and the growing relationship of trust and love between the player character and their main quest-giving “contact” Fran respectively.

Now, as Brad Gallaway wrote in his absolutely exemplary review of Dungeon Travelers 2, “people who are allergic to skin-heavy content might have a hard time getting past it to enjoy the game underneath. And honestly, that’s all right. I’ve always said that not every game is right for every person, so bouncing off of Dungeon Travelers 2 for that reason alone would be totally understandable.” This is the point that appears to be most frequently missed: games are not always for everyone. Sure, there are plenty of box-ticking focus-grouped triple-A games out there that are designed to appeal to the broadest possible demographic: they have to, because they cost an absolute fortune to make, so they’d better sell through multiple millions of copies to prove all the developers’ hard work wasn’t for naught.

I was specifically forbidden from even mentioning Monster Monpiece during my time at USgamer because of its provocative artwork -- despite the fact that it's a really interesting collectible card game. — I was specifically forbidden from even mentioning Monster Monpiece during my time at USgamer because of its provocative artwork — despite the fact that it’s a really interesting collectible card game.

But here’s the important thing: not every game is like that, nor should it be. Games with ecchi content are designed for a specific audience — and that audience cannot simply be defined or written off as “horny teenage boys”, as it usually is, though they are certainly part of it. In reality, the market for otaku games is male and female; young and old; straight and gay; trans and cis; and made up of pretty much each and every race, nationality and religion. The one thing they have in common? They like what they like. Simple as that. And these games are designed to push their buttons without caring what people outside that existing niche think of them. And that’s absolutely fine.

Tastes in art are complex, fluid, ever-changing, and one person can be into lots of things. You can enjoy high-class art and the most lowbrow of entertainment, and I know plenty of people who do. Likewise, you can also choose to enjoy just high-class art or just the most lowbrow of entertainment, or something middle-of-the-road. In the world of games, you can be someone who plays every “walking simulator” out there and believes they’re the future of interactive entertainment. You can be like my Dad, and only ever play Microsoft Flight Simulator. You can play nothing but hidden object adventure games. You can be someone who just plays Call of Duty with their friends on weeknights. You can be someone who has invested a thousand or more hours into Dota 2. Or you can be someone who enjoys games where anime girls have breasts and flash their panties.

Or — and here’s how you get the richest possible experience from one of the most exciting and complex forms of creative media in the world in 2015 — you can be into multiple things, and you can be open to new experiences. You don’t have to like everything, and you almost certainly won’t. That’s all absolutely, completely and utterly fine; the diversity in tastes is one of the best things about modern gaming, and the fact that month after month, all manner of different tastes are specifically catered to by developers and publishers is absolutely brilliant.

I maintain that anyone who hates Neptunia needs far more joy in their life.

What’s emphatically Not Okay by any stretch of the imagination is, as we’ve already said, shaming people for what they are into, regardless of what it is. Don’t like anime panties? Fine. Don’t throw horrible names at people who do. Don’t like Gone Home? Also fine; likewise, don’t throw horrible names at people who do. Don’t like Call of Duty? Also fine… you get the idea, no? To sum up: don’t be a total cunt.

A little respect goes a very long way. And gaming culture as a whole is not remembering that fact right now, and it saddens me greatly. Let’s all try and do our bit to make our wonderful medium a little bit better for everyone, shall we?

2026: Hollow Fragment

The next “big game” of the moment for me is Sword Art Online: Re: Hollow Fragment, a PlayStation 4 rerelease of an earlier Vita game, which itself was an expanded version of an even earlier PSP game. The Vita version had a notoriously dreadful translation, but I’m pleased to report that the PlayStation 4 version is at least readable — though the conversation system is still bafflingly nonsensical at first.

Sword Art Online, for those not into the animes, was a popular show a couple of years back. It was one of those “mainstream” shows that became really popular and which everyone subsequently decided they hated for one reason or another. I never quite understood the hate; sure, it was cheesy as fuck in places, but it was an enjoyable, beautifully presented show with an amazing soundtrack and a concept I’ve always loved ever since I played .hack for the first time: the MMO that is trying to kill you.

The Sword Art Online anime concerns Kirito, a protagonist who is a blatant self-insert for the writer, but I won’t hold that against anyone, since self-inserts can be a wonderful means of escapism. Kirito becomes trapped in the new virtual reality MMO Sword Art Online after the game launches out of beta and the “logout” button is removed by its designer, capturing all 10,000 launch day players in the virtual world. To make matters worse, said designer — the villain of the piece — informs the players of a little tweak to the rules of the game: if they are forcibly removed from their VR equipment, or if they run out of HP and “die” in the game, then their VR equipment will fry their brain with microwaves, killing them instantly.

There’s a get-out clause, though; if the game is cleared by someone defeating the final boss on the 100th “floor”, everyone who survived will be allowed to escape. After two years of the game, it becomes apparent that this goal is still a long way off, and player numbers are dwindling as more and more people either fall victim to carelessness or despair along the way. Ultimately, the first arc of the anime concludes with Kirito and his friends defeating Sword Art Online’s designer and freeing themselves from the virtual world of Aincrad, only to find themselves in numerous subsequent adventures in other virtual worlds. You’d think they’d learn.

Hollow Fragment, meanwhile, takes place in a reality where Kirito’s defeat of Heathcliff at the end of the first arc was not the end of Sword Art Online, and the players find themselves still trapped within the game. Moreover, they discover that once they pass the 75th floor — the floor where Kirito defeated Heathcliff — they are unable to return to the lower floors, and many of their skills and items become “corrupted”, mere shadows of their former selves. The game, then, continues; it looks as if the only way to escape really will be to defeat the boss on the 100th floor.

Except that’s not all, because clearing out 25 floors of dungeon would be far too easy a task. In the opening of the game, Kirito finds himself transported to the “Hollow Area”, an unexplored part of the Sword Art Online world where strange things happen and rare, high-level monsters and items abound. Acting as a sort of “testing area”, the Hollow Area allows Kirito to uncover a number of mysteries surrounding the virtual world of Aincrad as well as beef up his own character’s power significantly through various research trees. The flow of the game then becomes a journey back and forth between three distinct components, then: Aincrad, the Hollow Area, and what I like to refer to as Waifutown.

Aincrad is pretty straightforward. Upon arriving on a new floor, you’re shown a big tower off in the distance and informed the boss is waiting for you at the top of it. Between you and said tower are several overworld areas populated by enemies, so you’ll need to fight your way up to the boss room in order to challenge it. Along the way you’ll also need to gather intelligence on the boss by completing quests and defeating specific named monsters (NMs) as well as helping your fellow “players” to level up enough to take on the challenges ahead. Each “floor” is pretty linear in its design, though the dungeon at the end of it is more maze-like and unfolds across several levels, and you’ll be doing a fair amount of backtracking to complete quests.

The Hollow Area works a little differently. Rather than a linear sequence of areas leading to a dungeon maze, the Hollow Area is an interconnected network of zones more akin to a regular RPG or even MMO map. The Hollow Area is split into several different regions, each of which you’ll need to build up points in by completing “Hollow Missions” that appear and disappear in real-time as you play. While completing Hollow Missions, you can take on research tasks, which give you specific objectives to complete; once these are completed, you can then implement the research into Kirito’s character to improve it. You have to content with bosses here, too, though in the Hollow Area they guard region transitions rather than separate floors.

Waifutown, meanwhile, is what you do when you’re not adventuring. The town on the 76th floor that acts as your adventuring home base is home to most of the characters who got their own episode in the original Sword Art Online anime arc, along with a couple from the later arcs (Leafa and Sinon) who have been shoehorned in for the sake of having a few more waifus to pursue. In town, you can shop, upgrade weapons and hang out with your fellow adventurers. This latter aspect is important; by hanging out with your prospective adventuring partners, you can increase your relationship with them (up to and including sleeping with them) which subsequently helps them perform better in battle. By building up your relationship as well as “training” their AI by praising it when it does well, you can tailor each of the companion characters to your own liking. Or you can pick a waifu and spend the whole game with them if you so desire.

Sword Art Online is an enormous and surprisingly complex game. There are a lot of different systems at play — it’s going all-out with the “simulated MMO” aspect in this regard — and, while it’s daunting to begin with, the many different ways in which it’s possible to progress in the game make it feel like you’re always achieving something, and that there’s always a choice of things to do at any given moment. While its graphics look like butt outside of the beautiful 2D artwork — its PSP roots are very apparent — it really doesn’t matter all that much; it plays satisfyingly well, feeling quite like a high-speed Phantasy Star Online at times, and there’s a wonderful, constant sense of discovery and exploration as you work your way around this strange and wonderful virtual world. (And yes, I’ll probably make a video about this at some point so you can actually see how it plays.)

Also you can bed Lisbeth. 10/10