1855: Redemption

Having Platinumed Akiba’s Trip — and a lot of fun it was, too, thanks very much — I started on my next non-Final Fantasy XIV game, Criminal Girls.

Criminal Girls drew some attention when it was first announced due to some seriously lewd scenes in which the player character “motivates” the titular girls through some touchscreen-based S&M play. It then drew some further attention when it was revealed that the localisation would seemingly obscure these scenes with pink fog and cut out the somewhat… suggestive voice acting. (As it happens, the voice acting is indeed gone, but as you progress the pink fog does fade away, revealing what’s underneath.)

As so often tends to be the case with games that draw attention for their pervier elements, however, Criminal Girls has plenty of interesting stuff going on that doesn’t involve spanking. It’s a 2D, retro-style RPG of the 16/32-bit mould, and thus far — I’m only an hour or two in so far — it seems to be most intriguing.

At the game’s outset, you, as the participant narrator-protagonist, find yourself newly employed by the forces of Hell and presented with a selection of young female “delinquents” who have the opportunity to be redeemed and resurrected if they can successfully pass the “four trials” and climb the tower in which they’re incarcerated. It’s your job to escort them on this journey and see where things go from there. Along the way, you’ll fight monsters, solve puzzles and, as previously mentioned, indulge in a bit of naughtiness in the name of “motivation”.

So far so Japanese. Thus far it’s an intriguing setup, with the four initial girls not immediately revealing why they have been incarcerated or what their “delinquency” involved. There’s also a suggestion early on that things are not quite going as expected in Hell, with the “convict” monsters showing up in places where they’re not supposed to. Doubtless all will be revealed — in narrative terms, pervert — as the story progresses, and I’m interested to see how it goes.

What’s probably the most interesting thing about Criminal Girls is its combat system. While nothing particularly fancy presentation-wise — in fact, it’s one of the most visually bland combat systems I’ve seen, although the chibi representations of the girls are cute — the execution is the intriguing thing here. Unlike most RPGs, where you have the opportunity to micromanage what every party member is doing, in Criminal Girls you only have four options each turn, and that determines what the whole party will be doing. The available options are determined by which abilities the girls have learned through “motivation” sessions, and simply what they feel like doing on any given turn. Initially, the girls will simply refuse to do anything, but as they’re motivated they’ll unlock more and more abilities, and each turn it’s simply a case of deciding which of the four suggestions the girls offer you is the most appropriate: do you go for an all-out attack with multiple members, or do you allow an individual to do something a little more special? So far it’s simple, but I anticipate it becoming a very interesting system as the game progresses and more abilities open up.

I can’t say a lot more about it yet as I’ve only played the opening section. I’m looking forward to discovering more about it, though; perviness aside (which I have absolutely no problem with, as you know) it’s shaping up to be one of the more unconventional takes on the RPG genre I’ve played for quite some time.

1846: Akiba’s Tripped

Finished Akiba’s Trip: Undead and Undressed this evening. Planning on posting some more detailed thoughts over at MoeGamer at some point in the coming week, but I thought I’d post some immediate impressions here while it’s fresh in my mind — I literally beat it not five minutes ago. Well, one of its routes, anyway.

Akiba’s Trip is quite an unusual game, although perhaps not by Japanese standards. Combining elements of dating sims, visual novels, RPGs, brawlers and open-world action adventures, it all adds up to a curiously satisfying experience that, while relatively brief compared to some other games — my first playthrough took me about 20 hours, and that was with doing pretty much all of the available sidequests as well as a bit of fiddling around trying to level my skills up and collect some collectable things — proved to be highly enjoyable.

A highlight, as with many Japanese games, is the care and attention which has been poured into characterisation, both visually and in terms of writing. The localisation team at Xseed has to take some of the credit for the amount of personality the game has, too; as translations go, this is absolutely exemplary, remaining (so far as I can make out with my limited knowledge of Japanese) reasonably true to the original script while simultaneously incorporating plenty of cultural elements that will be familiar to Westerners.

A particular highlight is the main character, who is handled somewhat like the player’s character in the Persona series, in that he doesn’t speak out loud all that much — although he does have a couple of lines here and there, they’re mostly confined to inner monologue — but the player is frequently given the option of how to respond to a particular situation. In many cases, the options given all lead to the same outcome, but the available choices are frequently hilarious; there are some real crackers towards the end of the game in particular, with my favourites being “It’s dangerous to go alone! Take thi– I mean me!” and “I’m going to turn his dark utopia into a dark u-nope-ia!”. (You kind of have to be there.)

These dialogue options do occasionally have a purpose, however, and that’s the choice of route and subsequent ending that you get. Partway through the game, the story splits in a few different directions according to the various different heroines you encounter. I haven’t seen how different these routes are yet — and I’m disappointed that there isn’t a route for Kati Raikonnen, an incredibly endearing member of the main cast who, being “foreign”, has a tendency to speak in what is represented as “Engrish” by the translation — but I’m keen to find out. It appears that this will be a painless process, too, since after clearing the game once you can turn on the option to specifically mark the dialogue options that will change affection levels between you and the heroines. Not only that, but there’s no real need to do sidequests after your first runthrough — indeed, there’s no real need to do sidequests at all if you don’t care about trophies, though the money they get you is nice — and so you can zip through subsequent playthroughs pretty quickly, especially if you’ve taken the time to upgrade your weapons and clothing and carry them over into your New Game Plus.

I really wasn’t sure what to expect when I booted up Akiba’s Trip. I think I was expecting some sort of fairly straightforward brawler set in Akihabara, but what I actually got was far more akin to something like Yakuza. A surprising amount of depth, in other words, and an extremely well-realised setting that makes a great backdrop for the various stories within.

I hope we get the opportunity to revisit Akihabara at some point in the future; given that this version is actually the second game to bear the Akiba’s Trip title — the first never made it out of Japan — that’s not beyond the realm of possibility. I’ll be there if and when it happens!

1840: Further Tales from Akihabara

When I’ve not been playing Final Fantasy XIV or Final Fantasy II, my game of choice has been Final Fant– no, wait, Akiba’s Trip: Undead and Undressed. I talked a little about this game a few days ago and, after a few more hours with it, I can confirm that I really, really like it a lot.

It’s a very peculiar game by modern standards. Not quite RPG, not quite adventure, not quite dating sim, not quite open-world sandbox game, Akiba’s Trip is a thoroughly interesting experience that seems to get more rewarding the longer I continue playing it.

One thing that sprang to mind while I was playing it the other day is something I also felt when playing games that are spiritually somewhat similar: Shenmue and Yakuza being the two that I think of immediately. The thing I thought about was how nice it is to have a game world that is small, but dense. Akiba’s Trip unfolds in a single district of Tokyo, split (in the Vita version, anyway) into maybe ten or so different areas, all of which are interlinked in various ways. Yakuza was the same, unfolding in a single district, and Shenmue saw you progressing through just a few different areas of a town. (Shenmue II got a little more ambitious, but still split its story into several distinct “chapters”, each of which unfolded in a relatively small geographic area.)

If you take this approach and do it well, it gives an extremely strong sense of place to the setting. The setting almost becomes a character in its own right, as you start to recognise distinctive landmarks in each area, and know that if you want [x] you need to go to [y]. It also encourages the player to wander round, explore and drink in the atmosphere: although Akiba’s Trip features a fast-travel system, for example, I’ve found myself deliberately walking from one end of the map to the other just so I can get a stronger feel of this lovingly modelled setting.

Okay, Akiba’s Trip in particular has some technical limitations holding it back — the poor old Vita can’t cope with all that many people wandering down the streets at the same time as you, for example, and the shops that you can go “in” tend to amount to a simple buy/sell menu rather than a further environment you can explore — but the combination of visuals, sound and personality that the game boasts makes it an experience where it’s fun to just wander around and see what you can see — particularly when unexpected things happen.

This isn’t even getting into the meat of the game, though: there’s a strong and interesting story surrounding the man-made vampire-like “Synthister” creatures; there’s plenty of mystery surrounding several of the central characters; there’s an entertaining series of sidequests involving the main character and his hikikomori (shut-in) little sister; and even the non-plot-related sidequests help to flesh out the world by bringing you into contact with a diverse and fun array of incidental, supporting characters.

Plus, why on Earth wouldn’t you want to play a game where you defeat enemies by pulling off their trousers? 🙂

1837: A Trip to Akihabara

I’ve had a copy of Akiba’s Trip: Undead and Undressed loitering in my backlog pretty much ever since it released over here, but I’ve never gotten around to playing it until recently. I’m not sure what convinced me to give it a go, but I decided that it was time, so I booted it up the other day.

Akiba’s Trip is a game that proved to be notorious for two reasons: one, that supposedly, it was a game about beating up girls and pulling their clothes off; and two, it features the transphobic slur “trap” used for its intended purpose, i.e. to insult a transgender person.

Both of these things are accurate; however, as is usually the case with this sort of thing, the fact that they were focused on by loudmouthed critics almost to the exclusion of everything else about the game obscured the fact that the other 99% of Akiba’s Trip is a very interesting, ambitious experience indeed, and a game very much worth playing. Not to mention the fact that both of the heavily criticised elements can be fully justified through the game’s narrative context.

In Akiba’s Trip, you play you, assuming you’re a floppy-haired male anime protagonist. (After clearing the game once, you unlock the ability to play as other character models, so from that point onwards you can play as a lady if you so desire; canonically, however, the hero is male.) After answering a seriously sketchy-sounding job ad about taking part in a drug test in exchange for as many rare anime figures and other merchandise as you can handle, you find yourself turned into a Synthister, a man-made vampire with superhuman strength and the ability to absorb “life energy” from people around you. While Synthisters aren’t vulnerable to crosses and garlic like “real” vampires, they are still extremely sensitive to sunlight, however, with something of a propensity for exploding into a cloud of dust if too much of their bare skin is exposed to the elements.

I’m sure you see where this is going.

In short order, you’re rescued from your precarious situation by another Synthister called Shizuku, and you make your way back to your group of plucky gamer buddies who hang out in a cool bar run by an old dude everyone calls “Pops”. From here, you’re tasked with investigating the Synthister threat as well as helping out the locals of Akihabara, primarily by either finding things in the district or by beating up people until you can pull their trousers off: the game’s combat system is primarily about damaging clothing until it’s in a state where you can whip it off, rather than whittling down a more conventional health bar. In order to defeat most enemies, you need to remove their headgear along with their top and bottom clothing. Interestingly, in contrast to something like Senran Kagura, a game which also has a heavy emphasis on clothing damage, the “strip” mechanic in Akiba’s Trip is unsexualised; it’s simply part of combat, and is, frankly, hilarious. (Not only that, but you’ll find yourself stripping men as well as women; I believe my session earlier is the first time ever in gaming that I have defeated a man in full motorcycle leathers by diving head-first into his crotch, grabbing his helmet and flinging it away, then whipping his trousers off and tearing his jacket from his chest.)

Stripping aside, the big hook in Akiba’s Trip is that it features a lovingly detailed rendition of the real-world Akihabara district of Tokyo in Japan — a Mecca for otaku of all descriptions for sure. Featuring recreations of real-life shops, some excellently authentic-sounding ambient sound and a pleasingly diverse array of random people wandering the streets, it’s an enormously atmospheric game that it’s a pleasure to just wander around and explore — particularly when you start to notice interesting things happening without any intervention from you.

I was searching for some street thugs with Shizuku at one point, for example, and I decided to try and ask a suspicious-looking man in the street for directions. He responded that he “wasn’t into dudes” and refused to talk to me. As I pondered what to do next, he then started to hit on Shizuku, who stood there patiently while he said his piece and then, marvellously, wound up one hell of a punch and socked him right in the face, flattening him. He then ran away crying. It was a beautiful moment that just happened to occur due to me being in the right place at the right time.

If there’s one game that Akiba’s Trip reminds me of so far, it’s Yakuza. The lovingly crafted real-world environment; the blend of JRPG-style mechanics with action game brawling; the fact the game acknowledges the more unpleasant, seedier side of humanity without judgement. (The aforementioned “trap” comment, for example, comes in the context of a forum thread you read on your phone; said forum thread was clearly localised by someone who has spent a lot of time on real-world forums, since the text-based “dialogue” is some of the most convincing and realistic I’ve seen in an English localisation for a very long time — right down to the use, or lack thereof, of punctuation, and the way that anonymous people online are quite frequently complete shitheads to one another.) That and the endless stream of sidequests to complete that have nothing to do with the main story but provide a pleasing sense of “place” and “context” to the overall setting; the NPCs who are delighted to relieve you of your money through various scams; the strong characterisation.

I’ve only played a couple of hours so far, but already I like it a lot. I’m playing the Vita version, which has a few technological limitations, but is proving enjoyable regardless; I can imagine that the PlayStation 4 version would be a most enjoyable experience indeed, particularly with its additional features and enhancements.

1794: Oppai Fightin’

Alongside Senran Kagura Bon Appetit, which I talked about a bit yesterday, I’ve also been playing some Senran Kagura Shinovi Versus. I haven’t delved into it particularly deeply so far, having only played through three of the Hanzo girls’ short mini-arcs (effectively an “arcade mode” of sorts, challenging you to complete five stages of gradually increasing difficulty in succession while working through an eminently silly side story) and spent far more time than I’d care to admit gambling in-game currency on the “Lingerie Lottery”, but I’ve enjoyed what I’ve played so far.

The thing I liked about Senran Kagura Burst on 3DS is that it was a thoroughly modern take on Streets of Rage-style brawlers — you know the kind: walk from left to right punching things in the face and trying not to get punched in the face yourself. I was a little worried about Shinovi Versus, to be honest; I liked the simple but satisfying button-mashy gameplay of Burst so much that I was concerned the shift to 3D wouldn’t be quite as enjoyable to play, what with those pesky extra degrees of freedom to worry about.

Turns out I needn’t have been too worried. While the 3D gameplay does have its own idiosyncrasies — the camera can be a pain on occasion — at heart, it still feels very much like Senran Kagura. That means obscenely huge… combos (it’s not at all unusual to see combo counts numbering into the hundreds or thousands — though with the more sprawling nature of most stages now, it’s significantly more challenging to chain one long string of connecting attacks together without a break), single characters wading into swarms of enemies and punching them into orbit, special moves that range from the faintly plausible to the utterly ridiculous and, of course, ninja girls fighting until each others’ clothes fall off.

Senran Kagura Burst felt a tad button-mashy at times, with the Hanzo girls in particular suffering a little from the “hammer the light attack button” syndrome. To be fair, as the girls levelled up, new combos became available that often required you to carefully time your use of the heavy attack button as well as the light attack, but for the most part you could get through a lot of the game with a single button.

Shinovi Versus initially feels a little like this, but try a few different characters and their differences start to become apparent. Poster girl Asuka is very much of the “hammer the light attack button” mould and consequently is suggested as a beginners’ character, for example, while Hanzo’s resident adorable character Hibari serves up an array of difficult-to-use but effective close-range slap and kick attacks, plus the strange little quirk that it’s actually quite tricky to get her out of the air and back onto solid ground once she’s up there, thanks to the fact that her aerial light attack appears to cause her to trampoline up and down on whoever happens to be unfortunate enough to be underneath her.

Your opponents are more than simple damage sponges, too. They block, they parry, they counterattack and you need varying approaches to even get near them in some cases. Unlike Burst, there’s not really one simple strategy that will serve you well for the whole game; instead, you’ll have to assess the situation on the fly and determine whether you’re best off charging head-on, trying to get behind them, attacking them from above or waiting to counter them when they approach you. It makes for some enjoyable and thrilling battles that are a lot of fun to take part in.

I haven’t got far in the story yet but the early chapters of the Hanzo girls’ narrative appear to pick up nicely where Burst left off, with the group’s now well-established character traits now more evident than ever before. The rather quiet Yagyuu’s obsession with Hibari is kind of adorable to see, particularly as Hibari is a complete contrast to her in almost every way: Yagyuu is reserved and uncomfortable with expressing her emotions, even as it’s clear she genuinely loves Hibari, while Hibari is very loud, emotional and open with her affections. I can see there being some potential for interesting situations between the two of them as the story progresses, and I’m looking forward to seeing it.

So far it seems to be a worthy successor to a game I ended up enjoying a lot more than I expected — a game whose appeal goes far deeper than the fanservice and smut it’s primarily known for. It’s a fine addition to the Vita library, and a great example of how to use a recurring ensemble cast very effectively. I feel it’s going to keep me busy for a good few hours yet.

1793: Oppai Cookin’

Been playing a bit of Senran Kagura Bon Appetit! over the last couple of days as a precursor to delving properly into Senran Kagura Shinovi Versus. And I’ve been pleasantly impressed.

For those unfamiliar with the series as a whole, here’s a breakdown: Senran Kagura Burst on Nintendo 3DS was the first game in the series released in the West, encompassing what were two separate releases in Japan: Senran Kagura: Skirting Shadows, and Senran Kagura Burst, which incorporated the story of Skirting Shadows and another full story with the five “antagonist” characters from the original. The two stories run in sort-of parallel — there are a few differences in terms of the events which occur, but they end up in the same place and conclude with the same events from different perspectives. The game itself is a modern-day take on brawlers like Streets of Rage and its ilk: you run from one end of a level to the other, beating up groups of enemies in order to proceed, occasionally squaring off against bosses.

Vita installment Senran Kagura Shinovi Versus is regarded as a “spinoff” — the numbered sequel Senran Kagura 2 is a 3DS title — but it follows on from the events of Burst and introduces numerous new characters as well as following the stories of the original cast further. It’s still structured like an old-school brawler, but this time gameplay is in full 3D, lending the gameplay a feel somewhere between Streets of Rage, Dynasty Warriors and Power Stone.

Bon Appetit, meanwhile, is a “true” spinoff in the sense that it’s not intended to be “canonical” to the main storylines of the other games, which are all fairly serious affairs about what it means to be a ninja, and how difficult it can be to grow up with all manner of difficult responsibilities and expectations thrust upon you. Bon Appetit, conversely, is about cooking, boobs and arses. Pairs of girls from the previous games pair off and engage in a cooking battle against one another, represented as a rhythm action music game played over the course of three rounds, with the loser of each round suffering the indignity of damage to their clothing — the iconic feature of the series as a whole is clothing destruction — and a comprehensive drubbing resulting in being stripped completely naked, covered in tactfully-placed whipped cream and chocolate sauce in order to pose provocatively atop the world’s largest cake.

Bon Appetit has absolutely no shame whatsoever, and it’s immensely enjoyable as a result. It’s lewd and it’s rude, but it’s also a lot of fun to play, feeling very much like PS1-era rhythm games such as Parappa the Rapper and its ilk. There’s a decent selection of catchy tracks — all originals, once again calling to mind PS1-era music games, particularly those with “character songs” such as Bust-a-Groove — and these vary from the fairly straightforward to the extremely challenging, with the two-lane note charts often being composed in such a way as to deliberately confuse you, a process made significantly easier by the backdrop occasionally being filled with giant gyrating bottoms and titties, particularly if you hit the single “heart” note in the song correctly.

In many ways, Bon Appetit is absolutely indefensible. It’s pretty much fanservice in its purest form — in fact, it’s striking a double fanservice whammy by being a particularly fanservicey game in a series already notorious for its fanservice — but in being this way it’s doing exactly what it sets out to do: to provide a fun, silly and enjoyable opportunity to play with a cast of characters who are genuinely beloved by many in a context significantly far removed from their normal situations. The game states up front that it’s not intended to be taken seriously, but manages to provide the player with an addictive and strangely compelling experience in the process, even once the initial appeal of “life and hometown” wears off.

So whatever you may find yourself thinking of it after what I’ve written above, I’m having an absolute blast. And you know what? I think I’m going to go and play a bit more right now.

1783: Nurse Nep-Nep

I’ve been off work ill for the last three days, and not the fun kind of ill where you can just lie in bed and have people bring you food and drink without really having to “suffer” very much. No, I’ve had a rather unpleasant stomach bug of the — if you’ll pardon the graphic detail for a moment — “I need to go to the toilet roughly every half an hour and now my arse is burning with the fury of a thousand angry suns” variety. And it doesn’t seem to have shifted itself just yet, which means I’m probably in for another rough night if the noises my stomach is currently making are anything to go by.

But I digress somewhat; taking the time off to recover has allowed me to catch up on some handheld gaming, because we all know handheld gaming is the best gaming when you’re ill, because it’s easily portable for those circumstances like, say, when you need to urgently rush to the toilet to fire off another salvo of acidic excrement that would probably make a pretty solid special move in combat were it not for the searing pain it temporarily inflicted on the origin point.

Um. Anyway. Yes. Handheld gaming. Specifically, I took the opportunity to try and beat Hyperdimension Neptunia Re;Birth1, which I’ve been playing for a while now. Like most Neptunia games, I found myself not really wanting it to end, but I also eventually reached a point where I was running out of things that it was possible to do in a single playthrough, and so I powered on to the ending, beat the final boss, saw the credits (which, in typical Neptunia tradition, are accompanied by a glorious, lovingly rendered pixel-art, game-style synopsis of what you’ve just played) and promptly started a New Game + with a mind to cleaning up the last few Trophies I hadn’t quite finished off. Specifically, I had four characters to recruit — Nepgear, Uni, Rom and Ram, the four “CPU Candidates” who were originally introduced in Hyperdimension Neptunia mk2 — and 100 million Credits to acquire via some means, but I decided to take a momentary detour to the game’s optional “Colosseum” mode to fight some tough battles with the promise of various characters’ ultimate weapons as a reward.

And hoo boy. Ultimate is the word. Rather than the gradual creeping up of stats that most weapons provided over the course of the normal game, the various characters’ ultimate weapons boost their stats by a ridiculous degree, making even the toughest bosses melt like butter beneath your relentless onslaught. Couple this with the Celestia Bangle armour that you get for beating the game with the True ending — only one, sadly; if you want more you need to beat it multiple times — and you have a nigh-unstoppable fighting force.

Or so you’d think, anyway; pleasingly, even when geared up with this array of “best in slot” equipment, there are still plenty of stiff challenges throughout the game — challenges that were simply insurmountable when tackled with regular equipment, but which merely become quite difficult when equipped to the max in this manner. In the meantime, it becomes possible to hack and slash through the main story in a couple of hours (assuming you’re skipping dialogue sequences) rather than the 55 hours or so it took me to beat it the first time — with story bosses that once proved a roadblock to progression falling after just one or two attacks in most cases. Eminently satisfying.

This is something that developer Compile Heart is good at, in my experience; while the difficulty curve throughout the game may be more of a pit of spikes of varying height on your first playthrough, breaking through the initial barrier and coming around for a second pass gives you a glorious feeling of power and supremacy over almost everything in the world — though there’s still the odd enemy here and there that is more than willing to knock that cocky smile off your face if you’re getting a bit too confident.

So far my post-game cleanup is going well; I’ve just unlocked Nepgear and almost have enough MB left to unlock either Uni or Rom and Ram (they come as a pair) by the end of this second playthrough. Then the only thing left is a whole lot of fighting one of the toughest foes in the game in the hope of acquiring 100 million credits. After that, I’ll be happy to add Re;Birth1 to my list of “100% completed” (or at least Platinum trophied) games — a sure sign that I’ve had a blast with it.

Bring on Re;Birth2, then, I’m almost ready!

1724: Remake Rebirth

You may recall a short while back that I’d picked up a copy of Hyperdimension Neptunia Re;Birth1 for Vita and that I’d played it a tiny bit. Well, I’ve played it a bit more now, and can comfortably say with some confidence that it is probably the best Neptunia game yet — and also a fine entry point into the series as a whole.

The original Hyperdimension Neptunia was something of a tough sell. While its story and characterisation was a hell of a lot of fun — it’s what won me over and made me such a fan of the series in the first place — the gameplay was repetitive as hell and, while inventive with some of its mechanics, was highly flawed. I wouldn’t have judged anyone who put it down after a few hours, in other words, as I know that not everyone can overlook mechanical and technical issues purely by virtue of there being an adorable main cast doing a variety of silly things.

The two follow-ups — the confused timeline and alternate universes of Neptunia mean that they’re not “sequels” as such — completely overhauled the game systems to make them much better and more fun to play while maintaining the distinctive character that the first game had set in place. Until now, Hyperdimension Neptunia Victory had provided the definitive Neptunia experience — not perfect, by any means, but by far the most solid installment to date.

Hyperdimension Neptunia Re;Birth1 builds on the solid foundation of Victory’s mechanics and retcons them into the story of the original game. Only the story and characterisation have been revamped too. And the game frequently pokes fun at itself for being a remake.

In other words, far from being a simple makeover of the first game, Re;Birth1 is very much a new Neptunia game well worth playing in its own right.

And you can tell that the Neptunia team has had quite some time to refine their craft by now. Many of the series’ trademark quirks are still present — the dungeon designs are still somewhat repetitive (many, if not all, seem to be copy-pasted from mk2 and Victory) and there are some characters, enemies and abilities that just appear to be flat-out unbalanced (possibly deliberately so, I might add) — but numerous nips and tucks have been made here and there to make it overall a very positive experience.

Victory’s heavily random number generator-based Scout system is out the window, for example. This was the main means through which you unlocked “hidden” dungeons, enemies and items in Victory, and it could be a right old pain in the backside. Instead, Re;Birth1 replaces much of its functionality with the “Remake” system, in which you can craft various Plans in order to put new items in the shops, unlock new dungeons, add new enemies and add new gatherable items. There’s still a slight element of RNG in play in that you need enemies to actually drop items you need to craft these plans, but it doesn’t encourage save-scumming in the same way that Victory did.

Outside of gameplay, the writers (and localisers) have been honing their wit to a sharp point, too. Neptunia has always been a superb, on-the-nose satire and parody of both the games industry and modern anime, and Re;Birth1 is no exception. The original game, while amusing, featured a few jokes that felt a bit “forced” along the way; Re;Birth1’s script, by contrast, flows much more nicely while still containing plenty of amusing references for those who know what to spot.

The biggest highlight for me, so far, though, has been how the relationships between the characters are depicted. There’s a much stronger feeling that, after several games now, the writers have a strong feeling of who these characters really are and how they relate to one another. The banter between them is natural and enjoyable to witness, and those who have been fans since the beginning will doubtless enjoy certain friendships and rivalries explored in much greater detail than ever before.

I’ve still got a long way to go in the game yet, but I’m having a real blast; as with mk2 and Victory before it, I’m having a lot of fun just wandering around, getting into fights with the variety of silly enemies (many of which are themselves game references) and grinding for experience and abilities. It’s a game that’s fun to take at your own pace — you could charge straight through the story if you see fit, but there’s a lot of fun to be had on the side, too, and I intend to enjoy every minute of it.

So I think that’s what I might go and do before I drop off to sleep. Nepu-Nepu!

1690: One Lunchtime with Velocity 2X

As promised, here are some thoughts about FuturLab’s new release Velocity 2X, one of my most anticipated Vita games.

Note that I am no longer a professional games reviewer, nor is this a review, and as such I am going to be thoroughly unprofessional and you are just going to have to deal with it.

Let’s begin.

Squeeeeeeeeeee.

Ahem. Sorry. But I feel it’s somewhat justified, because it’s pretty much the noise my brain made when I started playing Velocity 2X for the first time last night, and continued over lunch at work today. It is immediately striking in many ways — the delicious, sharp-edged, flat-shaded vector graphic-style artwork; the rock-solid 60fps frame rate (it really does make a difference in a game like this); the gloriously colourful lighting effects; the thumping, catchy soundtrack; the subtle little effects like parallax effects “in front of” the main play area; the lovely animation on Kai when she gets out of her ship.

This beautiful presentation is married up to a beautifully designed game, too. Much like its predecessor, Velocity 2X starts very simple and gradually grows in complexity as you progress, layering mechanic on top of mechanic until you have a level 50 that is virtually unrecognisable from level 1.

It’s not just the gradual growth that makes Velocity 2X a delight to play, though — it’s the sheer fluidity of it all. This is something carried over from the original game, in which skilled players could seamlessly chain together short-range teleports, bomb-flinging, shooting, avoiding bullets and collecting shinies to make it look utterly effortless. It’s entirely possible to do this in 2X, but the addition of the new mechanics makes it even more impressive when you can pull it off — particularly in the new side-scrolling segments.

And speaking of the side-scrolling segments, they’re a lot of fun. They require a certain shift in your thinking from the top-down, vertically scrolling nature of the in-ship gameplay, but they’re recognisably consistent, too. Kai’s “Teledash” move is an absolute joy to use, and before long you’ll be firing yourself through walls, flinging yourself high into the air and spraying bullets in a deadly arc around you without breaking a sweat. And, if the previous game is anything to go by, you’ll need the skills you pick up in the deceptively simple early levels much later in the game — only there, you’ll need to combine things together.

The pursuit of perfection is also present and correct in 2X. While it was easy enough to make it through the original Velocity without too much difficulty, scoring a “Perfect” rating on every level by collecting all the collectibles, scoring the maximum possible number of points and doing so was a lot more difficult. And indeed this seems to be the case in 2X as well — with the added twist that there’s a fourth category of things to collect — the “Rekenium Shards” Kai collects while on foot — to add to the mix. It’s challenging and addictive, and it makes you want to punch the air when you pull it off.

The whole thing is wrapped up in a much stronger story than the original game. The first Velocity did have a story, but it was very subtly told and a little too easy to ignore. When it’s possible to go through a whole game and not realise the main character is female, that’s perhaps a sign that you should pay slightly closer attention to the non-gameplay aspects. (Although fans of Metroid might disagree.)

2X strikes a good balance, though. The first time you challenge a level, you get a short bit of dialogue that helps to advance the plot and develop Kai’s character. On subsequent occasions, however, you’re straight into the action — no frustrating skipping over dialogue you’ve already seen. The story is quick, pacy and enjoyable, and supported by a considerable amount of “further reading” background material in the in-game Codex, unlocked through collectibles in the game.

So far I’ve had a great deal of fun with Velocity 2X, but I still have a long way to go. I’ve Perfected the first ten levels so far, and am looking forward to seeing how the game continues to develop. Perhaps most importantly, however, it seems like a great game to play at lunchtime, so you can count on my Vita being a fixture in my work bag for quite some time yet.

1485: Trigger Happy Havoc

I’ve been refraining from talking about it until I put my review up, but now that’s safely filed, I feel I should enthuse somewhat about Danganronpa: Trigger Happy Havoc.

For the uninitiated — and all the people who constantly claim they have no idea what Danganronpa is — allow me to explain.

It’s a visual novel-cum-adventure game from Spike Chunsoft, the developers who brought us the Zero Escape series that consists of 999 and Virtue’s Last Reward. Its concept is something of a cross between Corpse Party and Zero Escape: a disparate group of individuals are kidnapped, trapped in an enclosed environment (in this case, a twisted, not-quite-right version of a school, hence the Corpse Party comparisons) against their will, and then presented with a series of challenges between them and their final escape. In Zero Escape’s case, this was a matter of solving puzzles and choosing the correct path to the end; in Danganronpa’s case, meanwhile, it’s a little more complex.

The game’s Zero-equivalent Monokuma — a far more in-your-face and sinister antagonist than the largely hands-off Zeroes — challenges the game’s cast to a “killing game” in which anyone who successfully gets away with murder graduates from the twisted school and gets to escape; meanwhile, everyone else gets “punished” by, well, being killed. Conversely, should the “Blackened” murderer be found out, they get punished, but the remaining students don’t get to escape — they just have to continue their school life.

The game unfolds over a series of chapters, each of which involves the surviving members of the cast investigating the mysterious school, trying to get to the bottom of what is going on and then, subsequently, investigating a murder that happens. This is then followed by a “class trial” in which everyone argues and yells at each other and, if you’ve done your job correctly, the culprit is identified and punished. In between these phases, you get short periods of “Free Time” in which you can hang out with the remaining characters to build up your relationships, which subsequently unlocks “skills” for use in the trial segments.

Ooh, I know, I know. It's... [SPOILERS] — Ooh, I know, I know. It’s… [SPOILERS]

The trials themselves are a far cry from Ace Attorney territory. The majority of them revolve around a mechanic called “Non-Stop Debate” in which the characters continue speaking their lines whether or not you’re ready to continue, and you have to shoot down “weak points” in their arguments with the “truth bullets” you gathered over the course of your investigation. On the default difficulty, for the majority of the game you’ll only have to identify which statement to shoot down with a single truth bullet; on harder difficulty levels (and at certain, critical moments on normal difficulty) you’ll also have to choose the correct truth bullets to refute the statements you think are false. This then gets even more complicated as the game progresses as people start shouting over the top of each other, represented by irrelevant “noise” statements floating across the screen and getting in the way of the things you actually want to shoot down.

This Hangman game has a lot more at stake than a stickman's life. — This Hangman game has a lot more at stake than a stickman’s life.

These arguments are supplemented by Hangman-like sequences in which you have to recall specific pieces of information by spelling them out, rhythm action sequences in which you struggle to make yourself heard over someone’s constant objections and, at the end of each “case,” a Trauma Team-style summing up of exactly what happened by assembling a comic strip depicting the events leading up to the murder, and what happened after that.

It’s a fascinating game; perhaps not as “clever” as 999 and Virtue’s Last Reward, but that’s no bad thing — while 999 and Virtue’s Last Reward specialise in bending your brain around complicated narratives with peculiar structures, Danganronpa’s relatively straight line to the finish still manages to have plenty of surprises, twists and turns along the way, and has no qualms whatsoever about killing off its main cast with alarming rapidity.

In short, my review has hopefully already made this abundantly clear, but if you have a PlayStation Vita and the slightest interest in intriguing, compelling murder mysteries, you should abso-posilutely pick up a copy of Danganronpa this week. No, I don’t care if you’re already playing Bravely Default. No, I don’t care if you’re getting stuck into Lightning Returns. Danganronpa is fantastic, and I don’t mind admitting that I want as many people as possible to play it so we continue to see more and more games like this in the West.