2490: Root Letter: Some First Impressions

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Today I’ve been playing a bunch of Root Letter from Kadokawa Games, localised and published by PQube over here. I’m honestly surprised that I’ve heard pretty much jack squat about this game except press releases from the publisher, because it’s turning out to be a most intriguing, enjoyable visual novel/adventure game hybrid.

Root Letter’s basic premise runs thus. 15 years ago, you were penpals with a high school girl named Aya Fumino. In total, you exchanged ten letters with one another before drifting apart, but one day, 15 years later, you discover an eleventh letter with no postmark. In this letter, Aya appears to confess to a murder, but gives no details about the crime, the victim or her current status. Understandably somewhat perturbed by this alarming discovery, you set off for her hometown with only her return address to guide you.

Upon arriving, you find an empty plot where her house is supposed to be, and quickly discover two rather strange stories: firstly, that while the Fumino house did indeed once stand on that plot, it burned down fifteen years ago; secondly, and more disturbingly, the only person by the name of “Aya Fumino” that people in the area seem to know died twenty-five years ago from a mysterious disease.

What unfolds from this point is a mystery story as you attempt to piece together what really happened to Aya — and, if the stories about her death are true, who the person you’ve been corresponding with actually is — by using her letters from 15 years ago as guidance. Using a combination of the information in the letters and evidence you gather through investigating scenes and conversing with various characters, you gradually come to figure out the identities of “Aya’s” classmates, each of whom theoretically hold a piece of the puzzle, but all of whom are extremely reluctant to speak of the past, and of their classmate — the girl you knew as Aya — in particular.

I’m roughly halfway through a first playthrough after a little over five hours, and I believe there are four discrete “routes” for the final two chapters to take, varying according to how you remember your replies to Aya’s letters went at the start of each chapter. It’s given me a solid idea of how the game works.

Essentially, it’s a modern take on old-school “ADV”-style visual novels such as Nocturnal Illusion in that you’re given an interface and a variety of actions to perform — including moving between locations, looking at things in a location, asking characters about topics, showing items from your inventory to characters and just standing around thinking — but in practice there’s generally only one “correct” option to push the story onward. At the end of most of the chapters, there’s an “investigation” sequence where you interrogate someone you suspect to be one of Aya’s classmates from 15 years ago, using knowledge you’ve obtained and physical evidence you’ve gathered to destroy their arguments.

If this all sounds a bit Ace Attorney, you’d be absolutely right; the structure is very similar, with the standard wandering around exploring gameplay mirroring Ace Attorney’s investigation sequences, and the interrogation sequences working much like the courtroom scenes, right down to having a limited number of chances to present the correct piece of evidence and proceed. Pleasingly, the interrogation sequences also feature some ridiculously overdramatic music that rivals Ace Attorney’s classic Pursuit ~ Cornered! theme in terms of ramping up the intensity.

One interesting mechanic the game has comes from the protagonist’s nickname “Max”, which comes from his apparent predilection to give things everything he’s got, even when it’s not strictly necessary to do so. In mechanical terms, this is represented as “Max Mode”, where a meter pulses up the sides of the screen with four different divisions, each representing a particular “intensity” of comment that you want to fling at someone. The bottom of the meter represents simple statements, moving up through lightly provocative, very provocative all the way to “I can’t believe you just said that”. When these sequences present themselves, you have a limited amount of time to determine how intensely would be appropriate to argue the point Max is presently debating, and the meter moves seemingly unpredictably at times, making it a bit of a test of reactions as much as choosing the right option. Fortunately for those blessed with less than stellar reflexes, you don’t lose a “life” if you get one of these wrong; you can simply try again.

Thus far the story has been highly intriguing and hinted at several different directions it could (and probably will) branch off into in its final chapters. The setup is an interesting one, and it’s satisfying to gradually see the truth slowly coming into focus as you progress. I have no idea what the actual “truth” is at this point, but I’m very interested to find out.

Since this game has had so little coverage on the Internet at large, I’m going to devote some time on MoeGamer to it at some point in the near future. Whether there’s enough to give it the full Cover Game treatment or if it will simply be a one-off article remains to be seen, but count on some more detailed thoughts once I’ve seen how the whole thing ends up.

For now, if you’ve been thinking about grabbing this, I’d say do so. And if you’ve never heard of it and enjoyed titles like Danganronpa or Ace Attorney, you’ll definitely want to give this one a go.

2456: Miku in the Clouds

I’ve been playing some of Hatsune Miku Project Diva X recently. I opted for the Vita version because I enjoyed the previous installments in this series the most in handheld form, and when I tried the PS4 demo version, the timing calibration was so far off that it was borderline impossible to play.

So far I’ve been enjoying it a great deal. It’s an interesting new structure compared to previous installments in the series in that it… well, has a structure. Previous games in the Project Diva series were all business, presenting you with a list of songs and a selection of difficulty levels to try them on, gradually unlocking new songs as you completed previous ones but never really having a sense of overall “coherence” — they were pure arcade rhythm action experiences, in other words.

Project Diva X, meanwhile, takes a much more formal structure from the outset, in effect acting as an interactive tutorial to concepts important to the game as a whole and locking off things that the player isn’t “ready” for yet. Series veterans may find this a bit frustrating — though the Free Play option unlocks quite early — but newcomers to the series in particular will doubtless find it a lot more accessible, plus there’s a rather charming story to tie it all together, giving the whole experience a significant injection of personality between the songs. (During the songs, one can never say that Project Diva lacked personality; in between them, however, was another matter.)

The basic structure for Project Diva X’s early game sees you (as “you”) collaborating with Miku in an attempt to restore power to the various “clouds” and consequently enable Miku and her friends to remember how to perform. It’s lightweight fluff, of course, but it does a good job of tying things together, and also has the added benefit of grouping songs into categories according to their overall character.

New to Project Diva X is a gear system, where you can equip Miku or one of the other Vocaloids in various costumes and accessories, with a suitably coordinated outfit gracing you with an “aura bonus” and consequent increase to the “voltage” (score) you generate during a song. New gear is unlocked in several ways: accessories can be gained after a song if you filled the voltage bar at least once, while “modules” (full-on costumes) are acquired by successfully completing the “Chance Time” section of a song — this is accompanied by a satisfying magical girl-style transformation sequence.

This gear system is, I imagine, what will give Project Diva X a lot of its longevity along with the addictive high-score chasing of previous installments. There’s something very satisfying about unlocking new items and producing new ensembles for Miku and the gang, and there’s an element of loot-whoring gameplay about the whole thing thanks to varying degrees of rarity on the items.

On top of all this, there’s a relationship-building metagame with Miku and the other Vocaloids where you can provide them with gifts and build up your affinity with each of them. This is a bit pared back from previous Project Diva games, in which you effectively hung out with the characters in their rooms and triggered various events according to what you put where, but there are still numerous special events to discover by providing the right gifts to the right Vocaloids.

Overall, I’ve been enjoying Project Diva X a lot. It remains to be seen if it has the same “legs” as its enormously addictive predecessors — whether it has a decent “endgame”, in other words — but so far it’s been a blast, and I can confidently recommend it to any fans of rhythm action games.

2380: Gal*Gun: Deeper Than You Think

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Lightgun and rail shooters generally aren’t regarded as particularly deep and meaningful experiences for the most part, and this is fine; after all, sometimes all you want to do is hold a plastic gun in your hand (or aim a crosshair) and blow seven shades of shit out of everything walking your way.

Sometimes, though, these games go the extra mile and provide a surprising amount of depth beneath the facade of mindless blasting. Nintendo’s Star Fox series has been a good example of this in the rail shooter genre since Star Fox 64, with its complex scoring and medals system, and Gal*Gun: Double Peace does something similar for the (lightgun-less) lightgun shooter genre. Which may surprise you.

Gal*Gun’s wrapper mechanics are that of a dating sim — a proper, full-on, stats-based one like True Love rather than the games that get called “dating sims” but are actually just visual novels with romantic themes. The protagonist has statistics determining his intelligence, athleticism, fashion style and lewdness, and these can be adjusted over the course of a playthrough either by taking girls into the “Doki Doki Field” and poking them until they emit some extremely suggestive moans, or by purchasing items between stages. The difference between the two approaches is that while purchasing items allows you to choose the stats you raise (or lower, if you need to) so long as you have the ability to pay for it, taking girls into the Doki Doki Field generally affects more than one stat at a time to a more significant degree, and each and every one of the girls in the game has a different impact on your stats. In other words, if you’re trying to form a particular “build” — something that becomes particularly important in the more “freeform” mode that unlocks after you’ve beaten the main story-based routes — you’d better learn which girls are most useful for your purposes.

The stats are relevant in a couple of instances. Firstly, in the story-based routes, your stats need to be at a particular level in order to choose certain dialogue options. For example, if your lewdness level is too low, you are unable to make lecherous comments towards the heroines, which is probably for the best. Secondly, in the freeform mode, in order to pursue a particular girl, you’ll need your stats to be in specific regions in order to be the type of guy they want you to be. I haven’t got far enough to try out this mode yet, but it presents an interesting twist on the formula; in the story-based routes, you can pretty much get away with just raising all your stats as high as possible in order to have the maximum available options in dialogue.

As for the story-based routes’ structure, they have a Good End and a True End, with the latter being dependent on a combination of your overall score for the playthrough being high enough and your affection rating with the heroine being high enough by the time you reach the final chapter. The latter is mostly a case of saying the right things in dialogue sequences, but it’s also affected by the “event” levels where you’re doing something other than just blasting incoming girls.

The scoring system, meanwhile, has a certain degree of depth to it, too. Most of your points come from fending off the girls who relentlessly charge towards the protagonist, but just blindly blasting away won’t get you the best scores. No, in order to score highly, you need to achieve “Ecstasy Shots”, which allow you to one-hit eliminate a girl by hitting her in a weak point. These are helpfully indicated when you move your crosshair over the girl by a piece of Japanese onomatopoeia appearing, though you can also learn where each girl’s weak point is over time, too. There are four main weak areas: red popups indicate you should hit them in the head, orange means the neck, yellow means the torso and pink means the legs.

Each time you get an Ecstasy Shot, your combo counter increases by one. Your combo is broken if you take damage or eliminate a girl “normally” without performing an Ecstasy Shot. There’s also an additional Quick Bonus for eliminating girls in rapid succession.

The Ecstasy Shot system makes the shooting a lot slower and methodical than the typical franticness of regular lightgun shooters, and there are a couple of other techniques you can use to tip the scales in your advantage, too. Firstly, shooting a girl anywhere but her weak spot without eliminating her stuns her for a moment, preventing her from doing her attack animation briefly. Secondly, holding down the fire button allows you to do a “Charged Shot”, which covers a wider area and can likewise stun enemies briefly. Thirdly, taking one or more girls into the Doki Doki Field and poking them until not-an-orgasm-honest causes a smart bomb effect to go off, taking out all girls in the vicinity as if you’d Ecstasy Shotted them. These techniques are particularly helpful — even essential — during the sequences where enemies come at you from all sides and you have to manually turn to face several different directions to fend them off as they approach.

As well as the points earned through eliminating enemies in each level — not all of whom charge at you, so some need to be quickly taken out as they wander past during transitions between “shooting gallery” areas — there are also three bonuses at the end of each level for clear time (the quicker the better), amount of damage taken and accuracy, ranked between one and five stars, with five stars providing significantly more points than anything below. Clear Time is a particularly variable one, as many of the levels offer branching routes, with some being significantly quicker than others, but perhaps counterbalancing this with fewer enemies to chain Ecstasy Shots off.

As well as clearing the various story routes and attaining high scores, there are loads of hidden collectibles to uncover throughout the game. Some of these are hinted at by the “requests” you receive on your phone between levels, and largely involve finding either hidden objects or characters and shooting or staring at them, depending on what the request was. Others are simply hidden objects and provide anything from point bonuses to new costumes — the game’s Dressing Room mode allows you to customise each and every character in the entire game to your own personal preferences (including undies), though disappointingly, the PS4’s Share facility is blocked while you are using this, meaning you can’t take pictures of your own personal take on the cast.

Alongside the hidden objects are student and teacher handbooks hidden in plain sight around the levels; shooting these unlocks parts of each character’s profile, and you can complete said profile by taking each character’s bust, waist and hips measurements by using the “zoom” function (also used to locate hidden objects by seeing through otherwise opaque scenery such as locker doors) and staring at them in the appropriate region before you blast them into euphoria.

On top of all that, there’s at least one hidden ending that you can achieve by fulfilling a particular set of conditions (they’re fairly obvious, but I wasn’t expecting them to actually lead to a full-on ending) and a Score Attack mode that allows you to play either a whole story route or an individual stage and record your best score and highest combo.

So yes. There’s a lot to this game. It’s no Time Crisis, in other words, which, while it was great, pretty much played all its cards within twenty minutes if you were the slightest bit skilled with a lightgun. Gal*Gun, meanwhile, looks set to keep me busy for a very long time indeed.

2376: Gal*Gun: Gloriously Stupid

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Gal*Gun: Double Peace came out today, and my preorder from a while back arrived right on time. The limited edition comes in an absolutely enormous box thanks to the nice quality wallscroll in there.

But let’s talk about the game!

Gal*Gun, as I shall refer to it from hereon, is a peculiar affair that is part dating sim and part lightgun-style shooter. The story concerns our protagonist inadvertently being hit with a fully charged angel’s bullet that is 32 times the normal strength of a Cupid’s arrow, which means that for the next 24 hours, he will be completely and utterly irresistible to women. There’s a catch, however: if he fails to find his true love during this period of unprecedented popularity, he will remain alone for the rest of his life. Thus begins a rather peculiar adventure.

Gal*Gun is split into a number of different components when playing through its Story mode. Firstly, there are straightforward visual novel-style sections with occasional choices, some of which are locked off if your stats are too low or too high. Secondly, there’s an “intermission” between the action stages where you can visit the school shop to purchase items that either buff up your character’s base stats and personality traits or provide protection against various types of attacks. Thirdly, there are the rail shooter segments, which also incorporate “Doki Doki Mode”. And finally, there are minigames corresponding with various events.

The visual novel sections see you pursuing one of several different love interests, with the aim being to get their affection rating as high as possible by the end of the game. You’re given auditory cues when you make a choice as to whether or not you picked the correct choice to increase their affection rating, allowing you to make better choices on a subsequent playthrough. The presentation uses a combination of polygonal animated characters for most of the dialogue, and hand-drawn event pictures for noteworthy things happening. The 2D art is quite a lot more detailed than the 3D models, but the 3D models are animated nicely and presented in an attractive cel-shaded style.

During the intermission sequences, as well as purchasing various items from the shop, you can also read a virtual message board, on which the various characters in the game post about problems they’ve been having or things they’ve lost. These exchanges contain cryptic clues for hidden items you need to look out for in the coming action stage, as well as whether these hidden things are something you need to actually shoot or just stare at until they register. Sometimes you get a choice of stages to proceed onward to, and certain requests only apply to certain locations, so if you’re interested in pursuing a particular girl, you need to pay careful attention to her messages.

The action stages unfold in fairly standard lightgun fashion, with a few twists. Firstly, you’re not actually killing anyone; you’re fending them off with a “Pheromone Shot” until they collapse from “euphoria”. Different girls have different weak spots that allow you to one-shot eliminate them, and doing so is called an “Ecstasy Shot”. You can also zoom in while playing the action sequences, and this has several uses: firstly, it allows for more accurate (albeit slower) aiming; secondly, it allows you to see hidden things; thirdly, it allows you to see through things, including tree leaves, items of furniture and, of course, clothing. Ogling a girl for long enough also allows you to determine what her measurements are, which are subsequently recorded in the in-game database.

As you progress, the challenge escalates somewhat. Initially, the girls run towards you and “attack” you with love letters, hugs and kisses, but later in the game as the plot gets underway, you start coming across sadistic girls who have been afflicted by a demon’s curse; these rather aggressive young ladies like to slap, punch and step on you, and the only way to snap them out of it is to find the hidden “mini-demon” floating around them, then shoot it before eliminating them in the usual manner.

Success in the action phases increases a meter in the upper corner of the screen; when this is at 1 or higher, you can enter Doki Doki Mode and bring as many girls as the meter indicates. In Doki Doki Mode, the girl(s) are presented posing provocatively, and you’re tasked with finding where they like to be poked and rubbed to increase an affection meter at the side of the screen. The main use of this mode is to affect your stats, since each and every girl affects one or more stats in different ways. There’s a secondary benefit, though: successfully completing a Doki Doki sequence unleashes a “bomb” when you return to the action phase, making it a good way to clear a particularly stubborn crowd.

Finally, the event sequences occur when the protagonist and a girl find themselves in a somewhat awkward situation; for example, early in one of the routes, the hero’s love interest finds herself stuck in a window as she tried to escape being locked in the PE equipment closet. In order to free her, you have to find and shoot various hidden targets over her body, and in some cases do motions on the touchpad, to increase her “Satisfaction” level. Once this phase is completed, you then have a particular action to complete as many times as possible in a short time limit, then you repeat the process twice.

At the end of each section of the game, your score is tallied up and you are graded on your total progress. You’re also awarded Angel Feathers to purchase items from the store in the intermission menu.

There are several story routes, an absolute shit-ton of collectibles and a customisation system for all the characters in the game. There’s also a score attack mode that can be played independently of the main story mode.

Gal*Gun is gloriously, deliciously stupid. It knows exactly what it is, and isn’t trying to be intelligent or clever about it whatsoever. It’s colourful, high-energy, joyful fun with a filthy sense of humour, and yet it somehow manages to come across as charming rather than sleazy. The story is surprisingly enjoyable and the characters are fun; I’m looking forward to seeing what hidden depths this game offers! Failing that, just a bit of looking at pantsu will do me nicely.

2361: Up to Date on Ys

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Just in time to cover it extensively this month over on MoeGamer, I’m finally up to date on the Ys series, as I finished Memories of Celceta tonight.

I’m glad I finally took the time to play through it all, as it really is a remarkable series that has evolved considerably since its humble beginnings. I’ll save the history lesson for MoeGamer, though, and talk a bit about Memories of Celceta specifically.

Memories of Celceta builds on what Ys Seven started, and does it very well. While Ys Seven felt a little bit clunky at times — at least partly due to the fact that it was running on the crusty old PSP hardware — Celceta feels much more fluid and refined. It’s not perfect — the poor old Vita struggles to keep the framerate up when there’s lots happening on screen, but it never really becomes a problem. No, I’m talking more about the gameplay; combat is fluid and satisfying, and the skills each character has all feel a lot more distinct than the rather feeble ones you had for the majority of Seven. Different characters have clear purposes, both in and out of combat, and each one is enjoyable to fight as.

The thing I liked the most about it, I think, was the emphasis on exploration. The central concept of the game is that protagonist Adol is exploring the uncharted forest of Celceta, a job well suited to an adventurer such as he. Indeed, your progress in the game roughly corresponds to your progress uncovering the surprisingly sprawling map, and by the end of the game you’ll be at, or at least close to, 100% of the forest being mapped out.

And it’s an interesting forest, too, with plenty of distinct areas rather than remaining uniformly green and leafy throughout. There are plains-like clearings, towering mountains, crystalline lakes and damp, soggy marshland. Later in the game there’s the Ashen Forest, which is a beautiful, almost otherworldly area bathed in a curious sparkling, purple mist.

I found myself missing the “jump” button from Oath in Felghana and its ilk less in Celceta than I did in Ys Seven. This is because the maps were overall better designed and more interesting to explore. Ys Seven’s dungeons in particular weren’t bad as such, but it’s clear that technological limitations, at times, held Falcom’s designers back a bit from making some really interesting levels.

I particularly liked the various “artifacts” you acquire throughout Celceta, many of which provide you with new traversal abilities in true Metroidvania tradition. The Hydra Scales, for example, allow you to swim underwater and reach otherwise inaccessible chests and areas, while the Gale Boots allow you to run incredibly fast, even straight up certain walls. The controls for some of these non-standard means of traversal are occasionally a bit wobbly — steering the Gale Boots is near-impossible, so you better line up before you unleash them, for example, and combat underwater is a terrible experience proving that Falcom, unfortunately, didn’t learn anything from Ys Origin’s excellent underwater section — but they never get in the way of gameplay, because they’re usually required only to bypass a particular obstacle, at which point you can just get back to doing what Adol does best — hacking and slashing through hordes of enemies.

I won’t spoil anything, but the finale was fantastic, too. The Ys games have all had excellent finales so far, and Celceta certainly didn’t disappoint with a particularly strong final confrontation and the unusual move of having a few things extra to do after the “final” boss. It was dramatic, exciting — and, perhaps most importantly, extremely relevant to the overall Ys lore, which, again, is something that Falcom excels at. By now, the lore of the world of Ys is extremely well-realised, with each new game bringing us new information about a region or country; effectively, we learn about these lands alongside Adol as he continues his quest to see every part of the world “without shortcuts”.

I’m a total convert to Ys, then, and you better believe I’ll be all over Ys VIII when it inevitably comes West. In the meantime, have a rest, Adol Christin, you’ve definitely earned it.

2317: 25 Floors Up

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I’m on the 25th floor of the Tower of Bogomil, Dungeon Travelers 2’s very definitely, totally, positively final dungeon, honest. There are just five floors to go until I reach the top and the final final boss, though I suspect I will probably have to go and fight at least one of the “Gods” that lurk at the bottom of the other postgame dungeons before it will let me in to get my teeth kicked in by the boss. Oh, there’s also a five-floor annex to the tower, because of course there is. Each floor of this is pretty small, from what I understand, though; they’re mostly about additional boss fights.

I checked the clock when I made my last save tonight: 208 hours. This is officially the longest I’ve ever spent on a completely single-player game. Final Fantasy XIV has it beat in terms of total playtime, of course, but being an evolving MMO, that’s a somewhat different situation. Previous holders of the personal playtime records for me included Persona 3 (somewhere around 90 hours), Persona 4 (likewise), several of the Hyperdimension Neptunia games (100+ hours each, albeit split across several playthroughs) and Xenoblade Chronicles X (well over 100 hours and I hadn’t even finished half of it — must go back sometime).

What’s kind of impressive about that playtime for Dungeon Travelers 2 is that it’s a single playthrough. I haven’t started again, I haven’t done a New Game Plus — this is the same save file I started months ago. And only now, after 208 hours, am I even vaguely near finished.

What’s also impressive about the playtime for Dungeon Travelers 2 is that the vast majority of it occurred after the main ending to the story. The “Otherworld Chapter”, as the postgame is called, unfolds largely without an ongoing narrative — it simply unlocks a series of challenging dungeons in sequence and tasks you with navigating your way through some increasingly perilous and head-scratchingly confusing locales with a mind to eventually opening up the aforementioned Tower of Bogomil and making your way to the top. Why? Just because. (Well, technically you think the final boss of the story, who managed to escape after you defeated her, might be lurking up there.)

This motivation for dungeon-crawling is one of the purest there is: the simple joy of exploration and discovery. And this is one thing that Dungeon Travelers 2 is absolutely exceptional at that. It may obviously be working within some tight budget constraints — there are a lot of palette-swapped enemies throughout the game, and each dungeon is based on a single tileset, which in the case of the Tower of Bogomil you see a whole lot — but the absolutely exemplary level design makes up for these limitations and then some.

What I found interesting is that Dungeon Travelers 2 keeps a lot of its tricks up its sleeve until the postgame. One of the latter story dungeons features some switch puzzles that involve opening either red or blue gates at once, never both, but the postgame also adds floors with conveyor belts, floors that are interconnected by ladders and pitfalls, floors that are full of teleporters on every step, one-way walls, secret passages and doors that demand you have a specific party makeup or class present in order to proceed.

Essentially, the main story of the game is getting you prepared for this pure exploration, combat and character-building experience in the postgame. You get a taste of what to expect in the future in the story; you get thrown in at the deep end once you’re past the “final” boss. And it’s hugely enjoyable, as my playtime will attest.

Five floors to go, then. I’m hoping I get it finished by the beginning of next month, because there’s a ton I’d like to write about this game over on MoeGamer, so watch over there for some in-depth thoughts.

2252: Estival Versus: Early Impressions

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As I said the other day after finishing Senran Kagura 2: Deep Crimson, the follow-up to the Vita spinoff Shinovi Versus, Estival Versus, was waiting for me to stick it in my PS4 and start rumbling in the sunshine. So that’s what I’ve been doing.

A recap for those who aren’t familiar with the complete Senran Kagura series and its continuity: first came 3DS game Senran Kagura Burst (actually a remake of the Japan-only Senran Kagura: Portrait of Girls with an additional full-length story from the perspective of the “evil” shinobi), which introduced the ten girls who make up the cast members from “good” shinobi school Hanzou and “evil” shinobi school Hebijo (as well as recurring guest characters Daidouji and Rin) and took the form of a 2.5D brawler with simple RPG-style character progression.

Then came Vita game Senran Kagura Shinovi Versus, which followed on directly from Burst’s story and introduced ten new characters: five from another “good” shinobi school Gessen and five who took the place of the now-renegade Homura’s Crimson Squad at Hebijo. The story focused on characterisation of the four groups and their interactions with one another, but in its final moments teased what would become the main conflict of the Senran Kagura series: the clash between shinobi (both good and evil) and the demonic youma. Gameplay made the jump from fixed-perspective 2.5D to third-person 3D, leading many to (somewhat erroneously) draw comparisons to Koei Tecmo’s Warriors series.

This was followed by 3DS game Senran Kagura 2: Deep Crimson, which left behind the new Gessen and Hebijo characters in favour of focusing on the original cast once again, and pushing the shinobi-youma plot arc forward with the introduction of legendary character Kagura and a strong focus on the machinations of the evil Hebijo chairman Dougen. Deep Crimson returned to fixed camera angles but had a stronger sense of depth than Burst, making it feel more along the lines of a somewhat less setpiece-heavy Devil May Cry than Streets of Rage.

And then we come to Estival Versus, the latest release. (There was also Senran Kagura Bon Appetit among all that lot somewhere, but that’s a deliberately comedic spinoff rather than a canonical entry in the main narrative.) Estival Versus is the first of the series to appear on home consoles as well as handhelds thanks to its simultaneous PlayStation 4 and Vita releases, and it marks a return to Shinovi Versus’ 3D fighting formula, with battles unfolding in large 3D arenas rather than side-on, linear levels.

My initial impressions here are based exclusively on the PlayStation 4 version, I should probably point out; from what I understand, the Vita version is pretty solid, mind, it just runs at a lower framerate and resolution — and, obviously, is on a smaller screen (unless you use a PlayStation TV). As such, take comments about the technical performance of the game accordingly.

Well, then, that would seem like a decent place to start: for the most part, Estival Versus runs beautifully fluidly, with crisp, high-definition graphics, the beautiful character animation that has come to exemplify the series, and a smooth framerate that usually sticks around the 60 mark with a few exceptions when things get particularly busy. Even when the framerate drops, however, the action continues to feel fast and fluid, giving the game a pleasantly “arcadey” feel.

The jump to the big screen makes a surprising amount of difference. Combat feels rather more weighty than it did in Shinovi Versus, particularly when you use the characters that wield heavy, slow weapons rather than the more hack-and-slash-friendly characters. This is a good thing, on the whole; every character feels noticeably distinct from one another, and getting to learn some of the more challenging characters is satisfying.

Besides the returning cast from Shinovi Versus, there are a number of new characters, too: the three “Mikaruga Sisters”, each of whom handles very differently, along with some other characters who are particularly important to a number of aspects of Senran Kagura lore at large.

I can’t speak for the entire story yet, but Estival Versus so far seems to be following a similar pattern to Shinovi Versus: beginning with what sounds like it should be a throwaway plot that simply provides an excuse for all the characters to fight one another, but which actually turns out to be a means of exploring these characters in a considerable amount of depth. Here, the basic concept is that the casts from the four schools have been somehow whisked away to a tropical paradise where dead shinobi who have not yet found rest appear to linger. Shortly after arriving, the girls are challenged to take part in the “Shinobi bon dance” ritual — a battle royale that demands each of the groups smash the others’ festival platforms in an attempt to assert their dominance and, subsequently, be allowed home first.

It sounds kind of dumb initially, and indeed the first couple of chapters of the game largely consist of the girls messing around and being silly with one another. By the third “day” of the festival, however, things start picking up, and some of the central mysteries surrounding the situation the girls find themselves in start to unfold. I anticipate that by the eighth day, there will have been some very significant happenings in the world of Senran Kagura, though I shall refrain from conjecture here for fear of inadvertent spoilers.

Estival Versus so far appears to be a very fun game indeed, with a solid single-player mode, some interesting-sounding online multiplayer modes (both cooperative and adversarial) and the now-obligatory Dressing Room feature, which allows you to play dress-up with your favourite girls, pose up to five of them in a diorama and then snap pictures of them from various angles. I’m not sure I’d recommend it to someone as their first Senran Kagura game, since, like Deep Crimson, it’s the midpoint of a series — a series that currently has no end in sight, I should add — and, unlike many other franchises out there, it begins by immediately working on the assumption that you already know who these characters are, how they relate to one another and what they went through together in the previous games. Like Deep Crimson, there are some efforts made to give a bit of context in the early hours of the narrative, but you’ll get far more out of it if you’ve played through the stories of Burst, Shinovi Versus and Deep Crimson beforehand to understand where things are in these girls’ world right now.

Very much looking forward to seeing how things develop — and perhaps jumping into the multiplayer a bit, too. If you have a copy and are playing online, feel free to add my PSN ID Angry_Jedi to your friends list; do please leave a note with your friend request if you know me from here or Twitter, however!

2245: Dungeon Travelers 2: Some Tips and Tricks

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With my post from the other day in mind, I thought I’d do the greater community a favour and compile some observations, tips and tricks that I’ve stumbled across during my time with Dungeon Travelers 2 on the Vita.

Dungeon Travelers 2 is a surprisingly complex game. Don’t be discouraged if you find yourself struggling in the early game — there are plenty of opportunities to power yourself up and even put right any mistakes you might have made with character advancement. Experiment and find things that work for you; there is no real one “definitive” way to play that works for everyone, which is part of the beauty of the game.

I say this because the tips and tricks I’m about to share with you are based on my own experiences, and your mileage may vary according to how you prefer to play. In other words, these are not definitive strategies; rather, they’re what’s worked for me and the way I play.

So let’s jump in.

Illuminate the situation

Light is your friend. It may not seem important in the early dungeons — largely because it isn’t, for the most part — but the further you progress in the game, the more you’re going to start running into illusionary walls, which are a real pain, since they, well, look like walls, but you can walk through them.

Fortunately, you’re not expected to walk around butting your head into every wall on the off-chance it might lead somewhere. Firstly, you can use your map to determine if there’s likely to be something beyond a wall; if there’s a conspicuous gap, there might be something there, so you could try walking into it — or you could light up the dungeon using either the Flashlight item or the Priestess spell Light.

What does this do? Simple. Not only does it make the field screen brighter — helpful in those pesky Dark Zones — but it also renders all illusionary walls invisible, making formerly hidden passages visible. As such, you’ll want to keep Light pretty much permanently up via one means or another — if you have a Priestess in your party, they can take care of this, otherwise you should make sure you carry a bunch of Flashlights with you.

Don’t be too proud to retreat

Along the same lines, being able to escape quickly is also your friend. Conveniently, there’s both an item and a Priestess spell to help with this too: the item Emergency Exit and the Priestess spell Return both immediately transport you out of the dungeon and back to the world map, allowing you to nip back to the Library to lick your wounds, sell all the crap cluttering up your inventory and restock on any items you might have used up.

Don’t be too proud to do this. If your inventory is full, or your party is struggling, take a step back and return later.

Look out for shortcuts; unlock them before ending an expedition

With the above in mind, you’ll want to keep an eye out for shortcuts, particularly if you were deep inside a dungeon. Shortcuts can usually be spotted by doors that are locked “from the other side” when you first come across them. At some point later in the dungeon, you’ll reach the other side of that door and be able to unlock it, allowing you quick and easy access to the deeper reaches of the dungeon without having to go through the rigmarole you went through first time. Ideally, if you can push far enough through a dungeon to unlock a shortcut before escaping, that will make your life easier when you return.

Buff up before bosses

You will always get a warning before a boss fight — you’ll “hear someone on the other side of the door” or “sense a strong presence on the other side of the door”. When this happens, save and use any and all buff spells and abilities you have — because many of them can be used outside of combat. If you can go into a boss battle with useful skills like Brave, Protect and Moon Curtain up before you start, that means fewer initial turns wasted getting into a good position — initial turns where the boss may well decimate your party if you’re not careful.

Think about party composition

There’s a certain degree of flexibility in party composition, but you’ll have an easier time of it if you stick to the old faithful “holy trinity” of tank, healer and damage-dealers. One or two tanks can make up your front line, while your back line can be ranged damage-dealers and your healer.

Remember that not everyone has to deal damage to be useful; tanks, for example, are well-served by investing skill points in defensive abilities that help them protect the rest of the party, rather than trying to be a physical damage-dealer class.

Do note that if you want to see all the sub-events in the game, you’ll need to take trips into the dungeons with as many different combinations of characters as possible — and sometimes ensure you have some peculiar items in your inventory.

Know your stats and equip your party accordingly

Tanks want DEF and probably some decent ATK too.

Ranged attackers want ATK, DEX and AGI doesn’t hurt.

Mages want INT, which primarily comes from staves.

Priestesses and other healers want RES, which primarily comes from tomes.

Maids want AGI.

Everyone wants as much physical and elemental resistance as you can possibly get them.

Tank, tank, tank?

I’ve spotted three distinct ways to tank with the characters I have so far in the game.

Alisia is set up to be a damage-resisting tank — she progresses naturally into the Paladin and Valkyrie classes, which are able to equip heavy armour, protect and cover the party and have extremely good defensive capabilities on their own. Alisia works well using the Paladin’s Cover ability, perhaps coupled with the physical damage-nullifying Parry, since this can protect squishy back-liners from powerful single-target attacks. The Valkyrie ability that allows her to reduce damage to the back line if she has a shield equipped is very helpful, too.

Grishna, meanwhile, is set up to soak large amounts of damage through her large pool of HP and her Berserker abilities that allow her to buff her maximum HP still further. She also benefits from a very helpful ability that debuffs enemy stats if they hit her — the more points you throw into this, the more stats are affected when she takes damage. The fact that you essentially want Grishna to be the one getting hit is further compounded by abilities that make her more powerful and faster when she is low on HP — though, obviously, use these with care!

Eltricia, you may be surprised to hear, can also tank to a certain degree if you advance her into the Magical Princess class, even though this class is an offshoot of the Magic User base class. Magical Princess boasts Paladin’s Cover ability as well as a Kunoichi-style ability to absorb damage into illusionary afterimages. In other words, you can use an appropriately set up Eltricia as an evasion tank; as a Magical Princess, she makes a decent front-line fighter even if she’s not tanking, too, particularly with her stat-boosting Magical Change ability, AoE strikes and Circle skills that buff the whole party with Brave and/or Protect.

Maids: the backbone of your party

You’ll want a Maid in your party at all times. Whether it’s Conette or Ist is a matter of preference, though Ist does have a unique passive that gives her a bonus to all her Maid abilities, so once you get her she’s technically “better” in that role.

Why do you need a Maid? Well, because they’re an amazing support class, particularly when you develop them into their later evolutions. Even as a base Maid, though, they’re an essential part of your party due to their completely TP-free skills that heal HP and TP, as well as Generous Heart, arguably the most useful passive in the game, which restores party HP and TP after battle — whether battle was concluded by victory or escaping.

Once Maids develop into Bards, Dancers and their advanced-level counterparts, they become even more formidable, able to buff the party or debuff the enemies while continuing to provide their essential TP battery services. One thing worth noting is that song-based skills are treated as magic — they have a Chant time and are affected by Anti-Magic Zones — while dance skills are physical, and can consequently be used even if the user is Silenced. Freeze will stop a dance in its tracks, though.

Enchant, enchant, enchant

Make sure you step into a dungeon with a bulging coin purse — more on that in a moment — just in case you run into the blacksmith. If you do, be sure to enchant as much equipment as you can; note that you can otherwise defy the laws of the game during this process by using Sealbooks in your Guild storage to perform enchantments, and even bring equipment out of your Guild storage into your party’s inventory by enchanting it.

When you enchant a piece of equipment, its +x value increases by the “tens” digit of the level of the Sealbook used to enchant it. Thus a level 15 Sealbook will increase a piece of equipment by +1, while a level 35 Sealbook will increase it by +3. Try to enchant efficiently; you can only enchant each piece of equipment five times, so that could potentially be the difference between an increase of +5 and an increase of +20 or more depending on the levels of the Sealbooks you use.

The passives that get attached to the piece of equipment aren’t fixed, either; you’ll notice that most equipment is only able to hold two additional characteristics, with further enchantments potentially “overwriting” attributes that you previously attached. However, you can game the system somewhat by choosing a Sealbook, checking the preview of what the new equipment will look like, then cancelling out. When you choose the Sealbook again, there’s a decent chance you’ll get a different combination of attributes. Keep doing this until you get the combination of bonuses that you want.

Making money

Enemies don’t drop much gold and gold drops from treasure chests are fairly rare, too. Your main sources of income will likely be equipment drops and making Sealbooks. Be sure to identify equipment and check whether it’s an improvement on your party’s loadout before selling it on, and take a look at each Sealbook’s bonuses before tossing it. Also remember that Sealbooks can be used for enchanting, too, so it’s worth keeping those with particularly useful bonuses in your storage for later use. Those with crap attributes, though — or those that are too low-level to be particularly useful any more — are fair game for selling on. Take a trip to a dungeon where you can clear out enemies easily, rip through them with AoE attacks, make a bunch of Sealbooks, profit. Simple.

Also worth noting: the Treasure Hunter passive Negotiate works even if the Treasure Hunter in question isn’t in your party. If you’re not planning on taking a Treasure Hunter out and about with you, at least pump as many skill points as you can into this skill to get you significantly cheaper prices in both the Libra-Shop and the wandering merchants.

If you’re spamming Attack, you’re doing it wrong

Basic attacks will become more of a last resort later in the game, since with a well-levelled Maid in your group, your party will be considerably more self-sufficient than one without. Even without a Maid, though, most classes have a passive that allows them to regenerate TP to varying degrees, and it’s a very worthy investment. There are also a number of Sealbooks that include TP restoration as one of their bonuses, so either equip one or enchant the effect onto your equipment to make yourself even more self-sufficient.

Once you have a good flow of TP going in the party as a whole, you’ll want to forego the Attack command in favour of your characters’ more specialised abilities. They should play to their strengths, in other words: mages should cast, healers should heal, archers should pelt everything with arrows, tanks should protect themselves and the party. Don’t be shy with your skills; while you might find yourself short on TP in the early game, it doesn’t take long before your party can survive for much longer expeditions without getting exhausted. Once you reach this point, the only time you will probably use the Attack button is if your weapon has a particularly useful “on hit with basic attack” effect attached to it.

In most combats, you’ll want to debuff the enemy group as much as possible while putting yourself in an advantageous position. This doesn’t necessarily mean you need to buff yourself in every combat, but debuffing the enemy, preventing them from casting or using skills, is always useful, particularly if you recognise the foe as having unpleasant party-wide attacks. (Beware the Kraken in the Underground Waterway; their party-wide water attack is horrid.)

Gear is more important than levels

The golden rule of dungeon crawlers: equip your party effectively, and they’ll be able to fight effectively. If you’re struggling to overcome a particular challenge, don’t immediately assume you need to grind, particularly if you’re still playing the main story, which is paced quite well in terms of XP gain. Instead, take a look at your equipment and see if there’s anything obvious you can improve. Do each of your classes have optimised primary stats? Can you improve their DEF or resistances at all? Is there a Sealbook or enchantment that might help the situation?

With this in mind, if you have a character you think might be useful but you feel they’re underlevelled, don’t be afraid to bring them along on an expedition, probably in the back row and definitely in as good gear as you can find for them. They’ll get a decent amount more XP for being part of a kill on a monster that is higher level than them — assuming they don’t get knocked out, of course — so be sure to protect them and they’ll catch up with the rest of the party in no time.

2230: A Reminder that Dungeon Travelers 2 is Excellent

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I forget why I paused my playthrough of Dungeon Travelers 2 a while back, but it certainly wasn’t because I didn’t like it. On the contrary, I absolutely love it, and have been really enjoying getting back into it sporadically in the evenings over the last week or so.

For those who missed my previous enthusings on the subject of this game, allow me to explain.

Dungeon Travelers 2 is an old-school “gridder” dungeon crawler for PlayStation Vita, developed by Sting and published by Atlus. Absolutely no-one would have heard of it were it not for Polygon’s Phil Kollar writing an indignant article called “Atlus can do better than this creepy, porn-lite dungeon crawler” a while back, after which everyone who thought Kollar was being a shallow, judgemental douchebag promptly preordered the game and eagerly awaited its arrival. While a lot of this immediate backlash was simply to spite Kollar’s terrible article — which didn’t even make an effort to understand anything about the game beyond “it has somewhat suggestive images in it” — those in the know were quick to point out that developer Sting has an impeccable pedigree when it comes to mechanically solid and interesting role-playing games that are often just a little bit unusual, making them very memorable.

Structurally, Dungeon Travelers 2 is fairly business as usual for the gridder genre; it’s the moment to moment gameplay where it shines, and particularly the variety of ways in which it’s possible to play. Heavily based on party composition and character classes, the frequent combat in the game is not the sort of thing you can get through by mashing the “Attack” button — indeed, this is a game that will happily obliterate your entire party in the very first dungeon if you don’t take appropriate precautions and play cautiously, remembering that in dungeon crawlers, it is usually inadvisable to attempt to clear out an entire dungeon in one single expedition.

No, rather Dungeon Travelers 2‘s combat is based very much on making appropriate use of your party’s abilities, both active and passive. There’s a certain amount of MMO-style conceit in there, too; unlike many turn-based RPGs, it is absolutely possible to have a tank up front maintaining the attention of the enemies as much as possible, while the back row rains down death from a distance.

Timing is absolutely key, too, even though the game is strictly turn-based. Spells and certain abilities don’t cast immediately; they have a period of time during which the caster has to chant the spell or song, and it’s only after this that it activates. Spells can be interrupted by a significant amount of damage or being afflicted with a status effect such as Stun or Silence — see, told you it was MMO-ish.

A lot of the passive abilities are really interesting, too. There’s one of the Berserker tank abilities that afflicts enemies with some significant stat debuffs when they hit you, and others that counterattack with nasty status effects or even outright damage in return. Certain buffs and debuffs can make these procs (there I go with the MMO lingo again) more or less likely to trigger, so effective combat is a case of judging the situation and making your party handle it in the most efficient manner.

A good example comes from the Girimekhala boss I fought in my last play session. She had a bunch of really unpleasant abilities, including a heavy physical attack on a whole row of party members, another heavy physical attack on characters adjacent in the turn order, a dance that lowered party stats and inflicted damage every round, and an ability similar to the Berserker’s counter-debuff mentioned above.

The first couple of times I fought Girimekhala, I went all-out attack and was quickly obliterated; tanks can’t tank very well if their stats are shot to shit, and once they went down, the back line quickly followed.

What I ended up doing was have Alisia the Valkyrie (defense tank) use her Cover ability for a one-off (until recast) chance to take damage in place of a party member, her Parry ability to completely nullify damage from one physical attack, and her Material Barrier ability to shield the entire party against physical damage. I then activated Grishna’s Blood Rage ability to boost her maximum HP so she could soak up some damage, too; as a Berserker, her defence isn’t anywhere near as good as a Valkyrie, but she makes up for this with her auto-debuff ability and strong offensive abilities which, while not very useful in this battle as they would always be countered, are often a big help.

Meanwhile, the back row got to work. Melvy the Witch (one of the strongest caster classes) repeatedly cast heavy damage single-target spells on Girimekhala, and acted as the main DPS (or DPT if we’re being picky, I guess) of the group. Fiora the Priestess, meanwhile, simply acted as a healbot, throwing out Circle Heal every turn to cure any damage that had managed to get through Alisia’s monstrous physical resistance. And Conette the Diva (support class) sang a song that helped Melvy and Fiora to chant their spells more quickly as well as using her Cook ability from her base Maid class to keep everyone’s TP (needed to use abilities or cast spells) topped up.

Puzzling this out and putting the plan into action was extremely satisfying, and much more interesting than simply throwing attacks out and occasionally healing. This fight simply wasn’t possible to win with an all-out attack strategy; as you’ll see from my description above, only one out of my five party members was inflicting damage on the boss, with the others all simply supporting the group in various ways. Thankfully Melvy’s magic damage as a Witch is absolutely astronomical, so her burst damage more than made up for the relative infrequency of hits on the boss.

To cut a long story short, Phil Kollar could not have been more wrong about Dungeon Travelers 2. While it is filled with suggestive artwork and distinctly ecchi scenes both involving the main characters and when you defeat the monstergirl bosses, that’s certainly not a reason to write it off or wag your finger at publisher Atlus, telling them they “can do better”. In fact, it’s absolutely one of the best examples of the dungeon crawler genre I’ve had the pleasure of playing to date, although be ready for a seriously stiff challenge, particularly once you start getting into the optional dungeons and boss fights.

2194: Second Re;Birth

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Having beaten Hyperdimension Neptunia U Action Unleashed to my satisfaction by successfully attaining the Platinum trophy, I immediately started on Hyperdimension Neptunia Re;Birth2, the Vita-based remake of Hyperdimension Neptunia mk2, previously my favourite game in the series, if not mechanically then certainly in terms of story and characters.

Re;Birth2 is less of a drastic difference from its predecessor because mk2 was already using the initial, slightly unrefined version of the systems seen in Hyperdimension Neptunia Victory and beyond. Re;Birth2 is still worth playing if you’re already familiar with the original, however — not only has the battle system been updated to be in line with the solid, enjoyable mechanics of the later installments of the series, the game has also been updated with new scenes and new characters, including the welcome reappearance of RED, one of the best characters from the very first Hyperdimension Neptunia game, and one who was sadly absent from Re;Birth1. Not only that, but the presentation has been brought in line with the rest of the series, too — rather than mk2‘s somewhat muddy character models used in dialogue sequences, Re;Birth2 makes use of the beautiful Live2D incarnations of Tsunako’s art like the other games.

Also added to the base game is the Remake system previously seen in Re;Birth1. This is essentially a crafting component, but as well as crafting items — which you do to make them available in shops rather than adding them to your inventory — you can also craft new game mechanics and visual options. Re;Birth1 had a few interesting options in this regard, but Re;Birth2 takes the idea and really runs with it, going so far as to add everything from a whole real-time passive minigame called Stella’s Dungeon that you set running in the background while you play the rest of the game to the ability to make the girls’ eyebrows stand out more on their 3D models so they look more like the 2D artwork.

As is tradition for most of the Neptunia series, Re;Birth2 is a gradual evolution rather than a dramatic reinvention, but some of the new additions and changes are very welcome. One of the craftable Plans in the Remake system, for example, allows you to obtain items and experience points from enemies you “symbol attack” on the field screen. In the original mk2, if you attacked an enemy that was significantly lower level than you on the map, they’d simply die and you wouldn’t get anything. It was for clearing your way through a dungeon rather than grinding, but it actually wasn’t all that useful, since you often wanted to fight enemies in order to collect their drops for various purposes. Re;Birth1 added the option to turn this off via its Remake system, which was a start, but the ability to get rewards from this is new for Re;Birth2, and extremely welcome in the late game, where you’re likely to completely destroy most enemies as you grind out Lily Ranks and rare drops.

Coming to this game straight off the extremely light-hearted and silly Hyperdimension Neptunia U Action Unleashed was quite surprising: the overall tone of the whole experience is very different. It’s significantly darker, particularly in the opening sequence, and it features some of the best villains the series has seen, each of whom are complex and interesting characters. The use of the extremely girly Nepgear as protagonist was inspired in this instance, since the juxtaposition of her innate sweetness and naive nature with some of the nasty shit that goes on — particularly in the Conquest ending path — is very effective indeed.

I’m only in Chapter 2 of Re;Birth2 so far, but I’m already having a blast with it and reminding myself how and why I love this series — particularly its mainline games. It’s going to be a Nep-Nep-filled few months, I’m afraid, since there’s Hyperdimension Neptunia Re;Birth3 to go after this, by which point a lovely shiny copy of the actually-brand-new-and-not-a-remake Megadimension Neptunia V-II for PlayStation 4 will finally be in my grasp. Can’t wait.