Megadimension Neptunia VII Review: Maybe Someone Should Push The "Off" Switch Already

At this point, nothing I say will probably sway you on games from Compile Heart and Idea Factory. Seriously, they're pretty much the same roleplaying games at this point. Anyone who's played one of their games (with the exception perhaps of maybe Agarest) knows what they're in for. If you've enjoyed them before, great. If you're new to the world, then perhaps pick up Fairy Fencer F, still a high water mark for the company and a good introduction to their odd hybrid of visual novel and roleplaying game. 

But that said, as far as Neptunia games go, and considering Hyperdevotion Noire was a sack of doorknobs to the sternum as far as enjoyment went, Megadimension Neptunia VII (pronounced V-2) is one of the better entries in the series. IF seems to have fine-tuned their formula to an exact science, the graphics are top-notch, and the characters have enough style and humor added to them that it makes playing the game less of a slog than it might have been normally. 

Megadimension Neptunia finds its hero, Neptune, Goddess of the Purple Heart, educating and messing about with her younger "sister" Nepgear, who will eventually take control of her region of Gamindustri. The two of them get a strange message from a broken console, drawing them into a post-apocalyptic future where the world has been torn apart by "the giants," which are clearly massive, destructive versions of the Goddesses from regular Neptunia continuity. Fighting against the goddesses is Uzume Tennoboshi, a mysterious woman who has the power to transform into the goddess Orange Heart. Together, the three set out to heal the broken world.

Neptunia's gameplay sets it up as kind of a dungeon crawler. You move from place to place on an overworld map, entering dungeons to clear them of enemies and gain levels, money, items, and equipment. In the dungeon levels, you traverse through platforming-style levels and hope to catch your enemies unawares to gain a better position in battles. Battles are carried out in a turn-based style with combo attack system. As you learn better attacks, you can swap the weaker attacks out for the stronger ones and create better synergies. You can also break down enemies into smaller parts, fight massive boss battles, and use combo attacks to lay waste to your enemies and save the broken world. 

But this JRPG, in spite of all its trappings, falls into the same trap as a lot of JRPGs: Grind. It is important to grind like crazy to get up to the point where you can progress, it's important for you to constantly fling yourself at enemies to gain new powers and go up a bunch of levels, and it's important for you to check your XP and unlock all your abilities along the way. While this is true to life, that one must push themselves through a series of repetitive and boring tasks to be able to survive in the modern environment, in a game that is not similarly bound by the laws of society, it's tedious; and in this case, kind of like padding. 

Repetition seems to be the name of the game. While I don't mind hearing the character's voices, hearing Neptune constantly shout "LIKE A KANGAROO!" every time she jumps is annoying. Having to trudge across the map to Mount Doom and back every time the story requires a little more time for a cutscene is annoying. Having to battle things until finally I get to the point where I can one-hit kill entire maps of creatures to fight a boss that's only slightly more of a challenge? Also annoying. Just in general, the amount of repetition and the number of things I had to grind were annoying. 

Which is a shame. The game isn't bad. It just gets annoying after a while, and seems to have a fairly low replay value. Nep and friends have great senses of humor, and the voice acting is fantastic, the graphics are above par, and the controls aren't too confusing, though use of a controller is recommended. There's some depth to this, and I do like the depth that is there, between stat raises, mechanical rewards for achievement unlocking, and the combo system. It's all great. But the grind and the lack of much new from IF and CH means that, well...

There's just not a lot of meat here.

Final score: 3/5. It's average, but it could be more. And grind...well, that's a different article.

The reviewer received a copy of this game in exchange for a review.

Cross of the Dutchman Review

Maybe I'm just spoiled. Maybe that's it. I've been going over and over in my head exactly what it is about Cross of the Dutchman that makes it so unsatisfying to play. It's not a bad game. It's definitely not like Chariot Wars or The Weaponographist, where I was able to pinpoint (violently) what I disliked about it. I don't dislike anything about Cross of the Dutchman, it's a perfectly okay small game about a folk hero and his attempt to drive the Saxons from his homelands. Violently. With his fists. The art style is pretty terrific, the controls aren't too bad, and it's a nice little hack-and-slasher. 

But the game just falls a little short. Maybe not in what it is...it's a hack-and-slash actioner and that's really all I expected from it after a few minutes of play. But definitely in what it could be.  I just felt like after playing it, I hadn't experienced anything that I would really take time out of my day otherwise to do. And I suppose that's the real issue.

Cross of the Dutchman retells the story of Big Pier, or Pier Gerlofs Donia. A big man, fed up with what the occupying Saxons were doing to his people and his lands, Pier Donia decided to take the fight to them. First by beating the everloving crap out of every Saxon he could find, and then by rounding up a band of vigilantes and making targeted strikes on the Saxon forces, stealing supplies, and the like. The player takes the role of Pier, who starts out just trying to get through his day in the village. At first, the player only has a pair of fists and some basic moves, but as the story progresses, they gain companions, a sword, and even a plow at one point as they drive the hordes of vile Saxons from their land. The game alternates between regular hack-and-slash gameplay and stealth sections as you sneak around Saxons during night raids and hold your own against onslaught after onslaught of enemies. 

But here's where it breaks down a little. There's not much to do other than that. There's also not much in the way of tactics or anything other than "Run around, avoid getting hit, power up attack, release attack, repeat." The stealth sections contain moments where, if you go too far off the rails, the game penalizes you by having you caught by people who don't even appear onscreen. In fact, the game as a whole is pretty railsy, which is normally all right (not every game has to be an open-world extravaganza), but chafes when one of the things the game has you do is explore the wide-open levels looking for treasure chests, shortcuts, and alternate routes. 

Captured! By the forces of absolutely no one!

What you can do within those rules isn't really all that great, either. Pacing and progress in the game are slow. It makes sense for the narrative to have Pier not immediately get a sword and go to town on everyone, but spending that much time using his fists before getting the option of a sword just doesn't make that much sense game design-wise. The longer you keep players from progress, the more the players get frustrated with the game. In telling the story of how the legend becomes who he is, the fundamental satisfaction of being the legend is actually lost. Also, the aforementioned rails kind of left me feeling confined. 

All of this is a shame, because the game has some great points, too. The cutscenes are all illustrations, as if they came out of a rather cartoony stained glass window or illuminated manuscript, what voice acting there is isn't terrible, and the two-second sequence where I got to mow down people with a plow was good.

But for every decent sequence, there are six or seven problems with it. Combat doesn't flow, even with the sword. Sometimes you'll be able to hold down the mouse button and cleave through your enemies, sometimes you'll be unable to do anything of the kind, and Pier will stand there and get beat on. Most of the basic moves in combat are irrelevant anyway, as you will find yourself relying more and more on the obscene and unbalanced one-hit kill move that, conveniently enough, also works as an AOE and recharges with relative quickness. This turns the battles into a pattern of running around the map to recharge the super, taking out a cloud of Saxons, and then running around the map to recharge again. 

The tutorial sequences delving into parody doesn't exactly help either. It worked in Fairy Fencer F because it was just that kind of game. But Cross of the Dutchman is very much not that kind of game, and so when Pier's wife constantly talks about minimaps and the like, it just rings hollow.

In the end, I wouldn't recommend Cross of the Dutchman. It's not a great game, and what is there isn't enough to keep me interested. If I hadn't gotten this review copy, I wouldn't be giving it a second look, and I'm not sure anyone should.

2/5

Full disclosure: Reviewer received a free review copy of this game on Steam​

Fairy Fencer F Review

I had a lot of fun with this one.

Fairy Fencer F is kind of a unique experience among JRPGs. It throws a tremendous amount of stuff at the wall, and most of it actually winds up sticking pretty well. It's a game where you can release an ancient evil god for special powers, accumulate sword spirits like crazy, have to pay an info broker repeatedly to progress in the story, and where the hero really doesn't want to do anything he doesn't have to. 

And it is brilliant. More, as always, below. 

Fairy Fencer F begins with it's hero locked in a dungeon and asleep. From this noblest of beginnings, the player is introduced to Fang. Fang wants nothing more than to eat and sleep and not much else. Accompanying Fang, however, is a fairy named Eryn, the spirit of his sword. Fang pulled Eryn out of a tree, and from that point on he is tasked with finding the "Furies" locked within swords so he can unseal the Goddess and she can once again preside over the land. Fang is warned, however, that other "fencers" are out looking for powerful furies, and he'll have lots of competition if he wants to unseal the Goddess and bring the world back to its rightful place. 

Eryn, tutorialing it up

What this entails is a staggering series of subsystems, from boosting your stats to giving your characters new abilities, to giving the characters bonus powers. On top of all of this, is a system that awards you stat boosts and various power-ups for doing things as simple as jumping up and down a hundred times. While the game doesn't feel very big at first, and the simple map/town interactions don't do a lot to dissuade that notion, it's what happens when you get into the interlocking systems that really makes the game pop. Something as simple as grinding your jumping ability, for instance, immediately moves you up in the initiative order. You use your spirits to gain new lands to explore, giving you stat bonuses and resistances based on the fury's power. And it keeps going up from there. 

The one issue with the game is that it takes a lot of grinding to do things. Something as simple as leveling up a combat power can sometimes take killing every single enemy in a level. There's a whole ton of systems, but each one requires a ton of points and money. There is a lot to see and do, and the amount of grinding you have to do is kind of tremendous to get anywhere. Combined with the game's lack of an auto-save or save anywhere feature, suddenly the difficulty curve gets a lot more difficult than it usually would be. 

The game is well worth it, though, as it has a sense of humor about itself (and other JRPGs). The characters lean on the fourth wall just enough while still committing to the premise that it's really funny, and having the bosses comment on their place in the story is hilarious. Similarly, Fang's reactions, which range from "No, please, no." to "What the hell did I just do?!" help keep the tone fairly light. 

In the end, if you're looking for a good, innovative JRPG with a surprising amount of depth and some interesting plot turns within its "Get the plot coupons" plot, then I would go with this one. While it might be prudent to wait for a sale, you should definitely pick this one up.

5/5

Full Disclosure: Reviewer received a Steam review copy of this game