Vampko's Game Review thread

[vampko]

This is where I'll put reviews for the games I've played. No point in making tons of threads, so I figured to just have it all be in one thread. Probably will have separate posts for the different reviews as this post gets too long or something. Not sure how it will be organized exactly, but I'll do my best to keep it clean.

[PSX]
[PS2]
[Wii]
[PSP]
[DS]
[PS3]

Spoiler:

- Ar tonelico Qoga: The Knell of Ar Ciel
Hyperdimension Neptunia Victory

[360]
[Vita]
[3DS]

[vampko]

First up,

Yes, it's the final swan song of the beloved Ar tonelico franchise. Does it live up to the name of the games which preceded it? By the end of this review, I hope you'll agree that it does~

Story -

Spoiler:

This is definitely one of the stronger points of the game. The story starts off pretty typical for a JRPG. Aoto, the main character, is whisked away from his hometown due to a strange girl he suddenly meets. Yet, there's much more to it, and it really gets more interesting as you get further in. I'm not sure if you can count the Dive sequences as story, but they are very in-depth, and lend a lot to the development of the characters, so I felt it important to put them in here as well. Now, the Cosmospheres do a very great job of fleshing out the heroines, and even Aoto at some points. They also are done in a way where you don't feel like it's 'busywork' to get through. Yet, even with all of that, the story still wouldn't be considered something as 'epic' as say Steins;Gate, but it still is a great story that should bring entertainment to any person who enjoys RPGs. Maybe even to those who don't enjoy RPGs.
6.5/10.0

Graphics -

Spoiler:

Arguably the weakest point of this game. While the previous games got away with being called 'graphical junk', the PS3 era brought in a mindset that things NEEDED to be 3D. As such, Gust tried their best. Sadly, as one of their first forays, it really doesn't hold up to what the system is capable of. The character models lack detail, and the areas are handdrawn 2D planes set up in a 3D manner. It doesn't mesh well at all, and generally looks like a mess. The only time when visually it's not a pain, is when you're looking at the 2D portraits. But, outside of that, it's just horrible from a technical standpoint.
1.5/10.0

Gameplay -

Spoiler:

This one is less easy to diagnose. The battle system has many nice concepts, and can be quite enjoyable, yet at the same time can become cumbersome when you're fighting weaker enemies. The purge system is a great way to try and add spice to the battles, but unless you're really devoted, you likely won't take advantage of the way using rhythm can help you get your purge ready much faster. I didn't really find this out until my 5th or so playthrough. Before then, I mostly just button mashed when the bars were higher. I also learned that the hyuuma you have equipped has a great deal of influence on how the bars work, because it changes the song. There's quite a bit of depth to be found, but at the same time it's unnecessary in the end is the problem. Outside of combat, you have the always helpful Ar tonelico encounter gauge.

This helps to alleviate the frustration of random battles. How it works, is you have a bar that starts out full. When you finish a battle, the bar depletes based on various things about the battle you just fought. When it's completely depleted, you can run around freely without any fear of being attacked by a random encounter. This is nice for collectors who are scratching their heads trying to find a treasure chest. Very useful, and I'm sure everyone's wishing that something like this would have been available in the RPG's of yore with random encounters. Last thing to talk about would probably be how exploration works out.

Exploration is one of two things: travelling on foot, or using the world map to QT between places. You can walk to any place on foot if you really want to, but there's still a quick travel function if you want to get somewhere quick and without worrying about random encounters. The QT system was also implemented well, because at certain points in the story when it would make no sense for you to actually go to some places you've been before, it won't let you go those places. Now, while exploring, you also can run across treasures, or talk topics. Talk topics are what are needed to be able to dive further in a reyvateil. Diving is basically how you get to know a reyvateil partner better, and a large part of the Ar tonelico experience. So, these talk topics are important to look for. And then there's the synthesis system, and I think that covers the gameplay in a nutshell. there's probably a lot more that could be said, but I've already dragged on this section long enough.
8.5/10.0

Sound -

Spoiler:

This is where Ar tonelico games really shine. From start to end, every track really fits what's going on. Whether it's an entrancing melody to fit the mystical things that are going on, or a fun loving song to help convey a comical situation. This game has you covered. The dub itself was also done quite well on both ends. There are less voiced scenes in the EN dub, but still what is voiced is done well, and doesn't get in the way of the story at all. But, there is one problem. When listening to the JP dub, there is one scene in a cosmosphere that is bugged quite horribly. During this scene, all of the lines will be behind the actual text box. This lasts for quite a while, and really hurts the experience. The EN dub did not have this problem. Though, in the original Japanese copy of the game, this problem did not exist either. There are a few other problems as well. But, for the most part, it was done very well and pretty much bug-free. The one area I can't give much good points to though would be the sound effects in battle. They're not very creative or interesting.
9.0/10.0

Replayability -

Spoiler:

The replayability of this game is QUITE high. There are about 8 endings that can be gotten, and 4 'routes' that you can take. And each 'route' you take really does offer a different experience. The endings are all done well, and it doesn't feel like things were just 'tacked on' so you feel like you want to see the other endings. Also, to help getting endings better, you have newgame+. This lets you carry over levels and other things which can greatly aid you in getting through battles faster. You can also change the difficulty system freely by the menu, and this will not affect story or anything at all. Now, for those who don't want to see the same story over again, there is a skip button. Unlike many skip buttons, this will only skip the scenes you've already seen. Well, most of the time. There are a few bugs here and there, but it works pretty solid. A very nice feature indeed. There's also DLC which can increase replayability. The Harvestasha personality DLC. These are all free, and change how a certain character in the game acts, and also changes the reactions of your characters to what that character says. They're just for fun, but can offer a very different and interesting experience (as well as some quite funny scenes!) depending on which you pick. Highly recommended to try these out after you've had one playthrough with the normal Harvestasha.
9.5/10

Personal categories (These are the ones that are more biased in nature)
Characters -

Spoiler:

I love the cast of characters! And there are SO MANY to choose from! Cocona is my personal favorite, but all of them are amazing ~ I even grew to like Saki a little by the time I had finished playing through the game. Aoto is surprisingly likable. He's like a typical JRPG protag but not really. It's a bit hard to explain, but that's the best I can put it. And I could probably gush on and on about the entire cast really. Who else could manage to make a VERY butch and muscle-bound woman to be sooooo adorable!? Course, she's adorable in other ways as well, but I liked her personality even before that was revealed. And, Cocona...~ I'm really happy that we got to learn so much more about her and see so much more of her this time around. I loved her in MoM, but she just didn't get much development. That all gets fixed in this game. And, Tyria, you're so lovable and dorky, and it's hard to describe you, but I really like you! Ar Ru...your biofield or whatever it was called was one of the most enjoyable moments in the game for me, even if it cost me IRL money to experience ~ really, I could go on and on, but I must stop here.
10/10

Visuals -

Spoiler:

The art on this game first turned me away, I do admit. But, as I played the game, it really grew on me, and I really wouldn't have it any other way! I just wish that we could have seen this art with the same quality of models that Ayesha is getting now. It would have been the most beautiful game I'm sure ~ So, while it may leave a bad first impression on you, give it a chance, and you may just find that it's quite the delectable visage!
10/10

Soundtrack -

Spoiler:

Gosh...the music in this game is just amazing! Other people I've read saying things like 'it wasn't until point x that I felt like I was playing an Ar tonelico game', but for me 'point x' was when I started the game! It really is a feast for the ears, as only Gust knows how to pull off~ Yet, for me, the soundtrack wasn't as enjoyable as say Ar tonelico 2, or a game like Atelier Totori. It was definitely amazing, but I just couldn't give it a 10 status.
9.5/10

Overall Personal Score:
8.1/10
Overall official Score - 7.6/10

A solid JRPG, with a slightly above average story, many technical flaws, and rich music. Any PS3 owner who enjoys RPGs should give this at least one whirl. And I highly recommend anime fans to give it a try. If you don't like RPGs, then it likely won't be your cup of tea, as games like this rely highly on character interactions to keep the player interested. As a piece of the Ar tonelico franchise I believe it fits quite nicely. It really does have all the traits that make Ar tonelico games so enjoyable~

Special categories (HIGHLY BASED ON MY OPINIONS!)
Ecchi level -

Spoiler:

There's a LOT of suggestive dialog in this (Girl A: Let's take off our clothes and rub our bodies together), and there are scenes which really get the imagination rolling, like when Aoto is messing with Finnel's crystal. Especially the sounds and movements that go on during that scene. But, it never actually crosses the line. Then there are the purge scenes, which can get pretty ecchi. You see underage looking girls in their underwear, and mature-looking women in their underwear. 'Underwear' being very relative to who is losing their clothes. At the same time, there's some service in their for the ladies as well, when you get to see a man in a....well I'm not sure what it's called at this moment, but it's like a speedo. And you also get to see Aoto clad only in shorts. It's not as much service as they're giving to their target male audience, but at least it's something.
7.5/10.0

Yuri factor -

Spoiler:

Oh man....there's a LOT of this going on. The two most prominent 'couples' that I saw were Finnel and Akane, and Cocona and Finnel. But, there are other possible pairings throughout. Those are just the two which have the most backing to. I think the latter's the strongest, because there are several scenes where it's Cocona who's helping Finnel, and there is lots of cute dialog between them. You even get to see the two of them sleeping in a bed together ~ Of course, this is all subtext, and none of it actually goes anywhere, but there's a lot of potential there. This is pretty common in Ar tonelico games actually. Having a yuri pairing here or there being hinted at.
5.5/10.0

[Beedlebud]

Really nice review Vampko! I've been on the fence about this game for awhile, but I think you've finally made me put it on the list of games I need to get! I do have one question though: Will I be lost if I play this without playing the other 2 Ar Tonelico games?

[vampko]

Really nice review Vampko! I've been on the fence about this game for awhile, but I think you've finally made me put it on the list of games I need to get! I do have one question though: Will I be lost if I play this without playing the other 2 Ar Tonelico games?

Well, one character does return from the previous game and has a major part in it, plus another character comes with that character and has a pretty big part as well, and there's terminology and stuff that you won't know right away, but there is an in-game encyclopedia which goes over the stuff in detail. You'll be okay, but your experience would be better if you managed to play the first two games. The second one especially.

[AsukaNeumaki]

Really nice review Vampko! I've been on the fence about this game for awhile, but I think you've finally made me put it on the list of games I need to get! I do have one question though: Will I be lost if I play this without playing the other 2 Ar Tonelico games?

I played this game with minimal knowledge of the first two since I couldn't ever find them anywhere besides the beautiful interwebs and it didn't hamper my experience.

[vampko]

Really nice review Vampko! I've been on the fence about this game for awhile, but I think you've finally made me put it on the list of games I need to get! I do have one question though: Will I be lost if I play this without playing the other 2 Ar Tonelico games?

I played this game with minimal knowledge of the first two since I couldn't ever find them anywhere besides the beautiful interwebs and it didn't hamper my experience.

Yeah, you can still enjoy it quite a bit, there's just extra enjoyment if you've played the previous games. But it's not required by any means.

[suttonmitchell]

I would like to get to trying this out as well! Nice review. I got a few other things to make sure I have the funds secured for, then I will probably pick this up.

[vampko]

-copypasting this from Victory squad (read only the very last paragraph if you're not up to reading it, as it's quite a long read)
Finally got the true end!
Time for my full impressions on the game (though I haven't got the good/normal ends yet. Not sure if I ever will. And I won't be talking about the dub/lack of dub just yet, as I have to go through all the cutscenes to find that out. I played the game through in Japanese first so that I'd get the most full experience on my playthrough. I was planning to possibly do a second playthrough, but the motivation's just not there anymore) Oh, and warning, this is going to be a HUGE Wall of text:

First, Neptune is such a conflicting character for me. At times I find her interesting, and other times I just really couldn't care less for her. At ALL times I find myself missing Gear as the main character. Plutia's another enigma. I tried really hard to keep on giving her the benefit of the doubt, and she's definitely not all that bad at times, but still, it's difficult to ignore the fact that she has a rather warped personality (yet it's hard not to like her!). These two really are the biggest problems with this game's story. And they're also basically the two most main characters.

Now, from start to finish this game does not take itself seriously except for short moments, wherein those moments get turned silly again/get ruined. I can't help but feel this is due to so many people thinking Mk2 was too serious (which I'll never get). The game feels at times like it's trying too hard to be silly too. I know this might sound weird coming from someone who watches stuff like Kill Me Baby and Ika Musume all the time, but the difference between those shows and this, is that when there's a serious moment, it's a serious moment. And people don't jump in and try and make it not serious.

Every moment that had a chance to have a semblance of something to it, just gets turned into a silly mess. You have to understand this before playing this game, and that should help your enjoyment of the game.

That out of the way, the story of the game was pretty good. Lots of interesting concepts, and the Seven Sages were far more interesting than ASIC. The 'big bad' of the game was really fleshed out well. In fact, it really did end up where the antagonists got more characterization than the protagonists. Mostly because the protags were always screwing around or some other such thing. The main problem I have with the story though is just how it was executed most of the time. Which I already talked about before. If this had been taken more seriously and was not focused so hard on 'LOL derp', it could have managed to be a really well done JRPG plot. As it was though, it really fell short. The concepts and ideas were great though! I'm trying to keep this short, since 1: I want this to be spoiler-free as possible, and 2: I could probably discuss for beyond the post size limit about the story xD

Onto the gameplay then-!
First, the combat system, while more 'streamlined', still ends up getting really repetitive. In the end, you're only going to be using certain moves over and over again, and the skip button will be your friend. They really had a lot of good ideas for the battle system, but it doesn't really pan out how it should. There's just not enough variety there really. And they make things the obvious choice.

I know a lot of people didn't like the AP system of Mk2, but I find the AP system to be better than this one-turn system. How it works in this game is that you get one turn. Once you attack an enemy, even if you kill it on the first hit, your turn is over. That makes things rather tedious at times when it could have been better if you could move/attack someone else once you killed something. I think the SP system and transforming system is probably a good thing though. It's nice to be able to use skills often and all that. And being transformed not slowly draining away your SP is nice, though I don't think it was all that big a deal in Mk2. The combos themselves just feel pretty limited. Though, it's not really until you're further in the game. So, for a while you'll feel like there's a reason to have different moves and whatnot. Though, the EX attacks...there's just too few. They really should have put some effort in having characters learn more than one, and not have all the rest be coupling/formation attacks. It also takes FOREVER to learn the first EX attack. When you see the tutorial about them, it's acting like you have some, but you have none. Unless you've grinded like mad. I actually did some quest grinding before I got that tut, and was seriously overpowered at the time, and I STILL had no EXE attacks...

As for positioning and the like, I was happy they did much more with having weapons having different ranges/areas of attack. A problem with this game's battle system is a problem that so many JRPGs share: Status ailments on bosses are often useless. Which, the real problem, is this tends to apply to normal enemies too. Making status ailments nearly useless, moreso than in Mk2. There's a rare boss that can be paralyzed, but it really doesn't happen very often at all. Another problem with bosses is their darned regen effect. It's just a cheap way to make fights drag out. Slightly related, but guard-breaking has become less useful this time around. Like in Mk2, once they're guard broken they get hurt a bunch more. And similar to Mk2, on their turn the gauge begins going up. BUT, unlike Mk2, their gauge is not recharging, it is literally healing, and you have to break down their guard YET AGAIN. This applies to all enemies, but can be particularly frustrating with bosses, because some heal more of their guard gauge than normal enemies. Add this to the regen, and it can get really annoying.

The EXE gauge itself is a bit of a real pain. There are discs you can equip to supposedly make it go up faster, but I barely noticed a difference even having a level 5 booster equipped. Anyway, I really feel like they should have allowed items that can charge the EXE gauge to be made and bought for an incredibly expensive price. Possibly even just found really rarely. Either way, it gets really repetetive and annoying to raise the EXE gauge. Which you'll pretty much always want to have fairly high if not maxed out before fighting any boss or tough/risky monster. Which makes quest grinding a serious pain (which I'll go more into depth further down). At the very least they could have made it so the level 5 chips actually had a strong effect on it. That, and when it says 'on your turn gradually raises the EXE gauge' actually mean that >_< Instead of how it just means you get a little more from the attacks you perform. Course, that could be a localization issue. As for the EXE attacks themselves, generally they're pretty powerful, but way too many are stuck in the one enemy range. And some like Blanc's only get very few hits, and thus suffer being weaker than many of the others (until you get damage break stuff). That's probably enough about the combat.

On discs and chips, I find the 'godly discs' the ones where you have them set up in a certain way to to get bonuses, the bonuses aren't really all that great. But, that's not that big a deal. One thing I really didn't like was how you couldn't rename discs once you've named them. Making it so you had to make a whole nother disc if you screwed up the name (or load your save), since chips get destroyed once you write onto a disc again. The worst part is that you can't play around with possible effects without erasing the disc first too. And of course, most of the disc's effects barely seem noticeable. Even at level 5, which is the maximum, the differences are so minor, you wonder what even was the point at making these discs such a pain to acquire. And, my gosh, the drop rates in this game serve to make that an EVER bigger pain.

Which brings me onto quests. Quests aren't terribly bad at the beginning, but some quests will be impossible until you get further in the game even though they're supposedly an 'E' rank quest. Thus making it so your review score is screwed on your frist playthrough pretty much, and forcing a newgame+ to get any semblance of a good score. This is more troublesome because of how the scores don't net you anything unless you at least make a 30. I'm sure that's some sort of nod to how Famitsu rates games, but it's not cool when a reference causes you grief within the game. The main problem is that there are 4 categories, worth 10 points each. So, even if you do perfect on three categories, one category can really bring you down. And, quite frankly, you will need to grind like mad to hope to get a good score in any of the reviews. The monster killing score is about the only one which is fairly easy to pull off regardless of grinding. The Scout one is a pain and requires you to go in and out of dungeons continuously. The shares one is basically just a weaker extension of the quest one until you open up the colliseum. The worst part is when you get a 'bad' score, they rag on you for 'not enjoying the game', and keep on acting like you're a bad person for it. Again, probaly a reference to how Famitsu does things, and this one is admittedly much less worse than how rigid the scoring system is. But, I can attest, quest grinding is not very enjoyable.This is primarily because of two things combined: The Scout system and the drop rates.

The scout system is really annoying and horribly randomized, but you'll have to utilize it if you want to complete quests, find blank discs and other things, and it's even needed for the True End path. How it works, is you pay a scout some money to go search a dungeon which takes a certain amount of time. This time is noted (by days) in every dungeon, and going into and out dungeons is how you make time progress with the Scout system. A level 1 scout only allows you to spend 100 credits on them, but as a scout goes up in levels (and scouts that are gotten with higher levels) you can give them more money to find something. When a scout finds something, they get experience (that you cannot view or keep track of really) and eventually they will level. Anyway, they can find an item, money, a lost ruins, a new dungeon, a new way to gather, more enemies, a way to increase enemies' drops, a way to increase experience, a way to get more money, and new scouts. Items, money, new dungeons, and scouts don't require any decisions, but everything else requires you to trust or distrust them. Distrusting them will only have an effect if it's a lost ruins they found, which the items you get from finding them will differ depending on what you choose. Otherwise, it'll just skip over the effect. Now, if you choose to try and trust a 'strong enemy', or a 'gather spot' it will give you what it says. The rest of them, trusting can decrease or increase what it says it found. One very important thing to note, is that these effects cannot stack. This is one of the major woes of the scout system. The other one has to do with the auto-function that you can set them on.

Using the auto-function will have a scout automatically go and gather in a place without you having to choose for it. IT seems like this would save some time, but it's set up a little cumbersomely. See, first, the scouts will not report results to you unless you check your menu. This really doesn't make much sense, because you can utilize the scout system anywhere except during a cutscene or fight. But they will not report results back to you unless you go into the menu to check the results, even if they're on auto. Still, the auto-function definitely saves time. Yet, there's another problem with the auto-function. It's a bit hard to describe but, let's say I had a scout on Auto right? And then I checked its results. I didn't take it off auto. And I went into a dungeon and out three times (keep in mind this dungeon had more days than the dungeon my scout was searching), and went to check my results, only to see that the scout was still searching. I found this odd, and experimented some, and learned that if they're on auto, they will only be able to finish their search if you go into the scout menu after they're done resting. Or the game won't seem to recognize it. But, aside from these problems, I really did find the scout system quite nice. The randomness was sort of annoying, and made it a real problem to find the dungeons for the True End path, but you can always save-scum your way through that. Because the results are nowhere near set in stone. If you save before checking results, then if you don't get the results you wanted, you can just load your game and check again, and there will be a brand new set of results. So that does help things.

Now, the problem with quests and the scout system, is that many quests require you to kill a risky/tough enemy. And these can only be gotten by having a scout report back an 'enemy change'. Also, the risky enemy is on a flag down, while the tough enemy is on a flag up. Flags are flags that you find in dungeons that you can break or stand. Once you've done that, the next time you go into the dungeon the effect of whether the flag is standing or broken will be noticeable. A flag down allows risky enemies to be gotten with an enemy change, and makes it so boss materials can be gathered (the chance of finding these materials is greatly boosted by a 'gather change' result from a scout), while a flag up allows a tough enemy to be gotten with an 'enemy change', and chips can be gathered (again, boosted by a 'gather change' result). Nothing else changes about dungeons outside that. You will need to utilize these for quests and blanc discs.

Anyway, Risky/Tough enemies generally have what you need for quests once you get past the E Rank quests (and a few E ranks require it), and drop rates on this game are HORRENDOUS. For example, I've killed a Risky Enemy 10 times and only gotten a drop once. The story doesn't change a whole lot with other drops. You can get lucky sometimes, but generally it's a serious pain. So, to try and get a quest finished, you end up boss grinding pretty much. And because of various things that just make these enemies extremely resilient, it can take a lot of time, unless you utilize EXE attacks. But, once you've defeated a boss with those attacks, you have to go and grind on some enemies for a while to get your gauge back up. You can save scum to try and alleviate this process, but then you'll be missing out on XP/Lily rank points. So it's kind of not that advised to save scum unless you are using something like Superior Angels which takes up all 4 of the EXE gauge, and really don't want to go and charge up the gauge again...

Ah, the EXE gauge by the way, is a gauge that goes up by the amount of hits you perform on an enemy, and if you hit multiple enemies at once it raises it further. Using rush attacks increases it more, and I suspect the time the move takes to perform also increases it a bit more (though that's nothing I have anything concrete on). So, it gets to be very annoying to charge up this gauge when you're boss grinding.

Anyway, combining the horrible drop rates with the need to always raise up that EXE gauge, quest grinding becomes a serious pain. It helps if you have a save point nearby, but there are cases where there's not one near the risky/tough enemy you have to fight, or, worst case scenario, there is NO save point. Meaning if you have to stop playing, you have to exit the dungeon, and send out scouts to set up the 'enemy change' yet again. If you're not going to have a 'save anywhere' option, then at least make sure to have a save point in every dungeon >_<

So, yeah, quest grinding gets really tedious. But you can get neat stuff from them, and it helps with challenges.

Challenges are a neat concept, get bonuses for menial tasks and things that you'll do regardless in the game. The problem is that, except a very few of them, the challenges will NEVER get completed unless you purposefully 'grind' the various challenges/make use of a turbo controller. And the bonuses are pretty miniscule until you actually get the max level. Now, the main problem is that the numbers required for the next level jump like crazy a lot of the times. Like for the Jumping one, it starts off at a relatively small number, but each time it doubles, and you end up with 5000 jumps needed for the final level. I've gone through countless levels and just hit the jump button as I traveled around and I still did not acheive the maximum challenge level. This is much much easier if you make use of a turbo controller, and do things like leave your game running overnight. I didn't have a turbo controller, and did not want to leave my console on overnight. So I was stuck trying to accomplish these by doing things like jumping everywhere and stuff like that. Still, it always does feel great when you see that screen and hear that sound that tells you something leveled up~ It's better even than getting a trophy! Surprisingly (and quite thankfully) none of the trophies are related to the Challenge system. Though they are related to the lily ranking system which is pretty horrendous to rank up if you're going for the trophy. Even with a harem chip which is the biggest booster of lily ranks, it's still 10 battles for one rank. The colliseum can make this easier, but it's still quite tedious.

The colliseum itself is pretty simplistic, and a great tool for grinding challenges, grinding lily ranks, and share allocation. Shares in this game are definitely much much simpler and better implemented than in Mk2 and any of the Nep games. Shares literally only influence the stats of the different Goddesses. That is it. They have nothing to do with endings or anything. Just the power of Goddesses. And with the colliseum it's rather easy to redistribute shares how you want. Quite a nice feature.

I think that covers the majority of the gameplay. Some neat misc features are the ability to view cutscenes already seen, the nepstations (which sadly have no trophies linked to them ) , and the sound test. I guess the bonus voices are okay? I'm not all that into them, but there are a lot of people who are.

Now, for a section solely about the candidates (this one should be short I hope! Also, if you don't care about the Candidates, feel free to skip. I'll actually spoiler tag this one, and it probably will contain some spoilers):

Spoiler:

First, there's Gear. She has been treated pretty badly throughout this game. And for the reason that for some odd reason, fans of the Nep series felt she was too 'flat' or 'lacked personality'. So, Compile Heart took that and implemented it into the game. If I didn't find Gear to be a really great character, I might have found this funny, but I was one of those who never got the accusations in the first place. I was definitely glad to see more about her machination fetish, but it really sucked how much they ragged on her throughout the game and how badly she was treated. At least though, she did get to be a big part of the game's story. Unlike the other Candidates whom only appeared for the very final chapter, which literally involves one single stage, and had about 2 more appearances outside that, but they didn't even get full-portraits like everyone else did. Even the characters from the future gamindustri got full-portraits. But all the Candidates (sans Gear) got a tiny little box down at the bottom. Anyway, Gear was given weird affinities to make fun of certain things she had done. also, she got ignored a lot in the game's story. And she was one of the few non seven sages to get violated by Plutia. It's a rather depressing situation for someone whom worked so hard to save her sister and her friend's sisters in the previous game. She didn't have a big head or anything. There was no 'ego' that needed to be quashed. It was just a response to fans' complaints about her character.

Well, outside of the story, there are actual gameplay reasons that the Candidates are further treated badly. Gear is the only Candidate that gets more than one set of Processor parts to work with. Gear is the only Candidate that gets more than like 5 weapons to work with. The Candidates also have stats that are comparably lower compared to all the other characters, and none of them get the 'combo link' skill. Peashy doesn't get this either, but for some reason Plutia does. Rom and Ram have a very copy-paste sort of feel to their movesets. But, one nice thing about the Candidates is that their moves are more 'flashy'. A lot of spells that normally would warrant nothing but a simple 'cast' animation, for the Candidates they get actual little mini-scenes to go with those spells. And, of course, the Candidates get Superior Angels. This lvl 4 EXE attack is horrendously powerful and took out the final boss of the True End in one shot (with Damage break equips all around of course). So, that's one thing about them that is particularly awesome~ Also, Rom/Ram/Uni get the most range on their attacks. Which can be quite helpful.

I really enjoyed playing as them, but was very sad that I only got to use them for such a short time in the game...

Okay, with that out of the way, I'll go over V versus Mk2 selves (basically a short comparison between the V version of a character, and the Mk2 version):
First up is Noire. V Noire I find to be better than Mk2 Noire. She's still very much a tsundere, but all the same, she seems to really have a much more quited ego than Mk2's Noire, and when in HDD form she's a lot different as well. Much more assertive. Though I still do prefer the outfit of the very first Noire overall really.

V Blanc is easier to deal with. She still does get angry, but she just seems more calm than the Mk2 Blanc. So I do like her more than the Mk2 Blanc. Though I prefer the Mk2 Blanc's look overall.

V Vert is not nearly as interesting as Mk2 Vert in my opinion. V Vert seems more interested in breast size, and doesn't feel like as big of a gamer. She is a ninja though, so that gets her points. I EASILY prefer the Mk2 Vert's look. I really don't like V Vert's look at all....

I think that's pretty much everything?

I hope you don't come out of this (if you were insane enough to read it all xD) thinking that V is a bad game. Because it IS a lot of fun, there just are a lot of problems with its game design. And the lack of Candidates really brought me down throughout it. Nep's way of dealing with things just isn't for me. But, the gameplay has improved in a lot of ways, but this is Compile heart, so of course it also took a step back in other ways xD I think with a game with a stronger focus on the Candidates/makers (Lack of Maker presence really hurt this game too), maybe even one with Gear as the MC again, with some improvements on the Scout system, and better rewards throughout the Challenge levels, would be a really amazing game that would easily surpass Mk2 for me. But, as it is, I still find Mk2 my favorite of the Nep series. Still, Victory is a great game that I'd highly recommend to any fan of the previous two Nep games!

[leinaud]

Wall?!? More like a waterfall!

Good read though, thanks for the insight.

[vampko]

Wall?!? More like a waterfall!

Good read though, thanks for the insight.

No prob. It would have probably been longer, but i was nearing the time where I had to leave for class, and I just wanted to get it done rather than try and work on it after class.

And I tried to make the review very informative since reviews are meant to help a person see whether a game is for you. I normally don't go in-depth on game systems like I did, but I've realized that it's pretty important. Especially considering that's pretty much what I'm looking for in a review myself.

Of course, my opinion was still in there, I just, hopefully, managed to not superimpose my opinion on others and gave them a fair look at the game itself.