Recent reviews by vgm

Thoroughly enjoyed my time with this game. Most of my time was spent preparing as much as I possibly could. 999 quality, the best traits I could get at any moment, and when farming opened up, same there too. Unfortunately, on VHard, playing like this made the game's difficulty an absolute comedy-fest: frequently taking 1 damage from enemies and then proceeding to obliterate them in 1 hit. I didn't use healing items. Let it be known: party level barely matters. Your equipment is far more important. I was underleveled the entire game.

It wasn't until the last quarter of the game that I downloaded a system save online and swapped my difficulty to Legendary. A welcome surprise when the next boss I fought proceeded to wipe me off of the map.

I've seen a number of complaints about the aura gimmick, and I'll be honest, auras were shattering left and right for me early on, so much so that the gimmick basically shouldn't have existed. It wasn't until later on where enemies started resisting statuses that the auras became a bit of a challenge (though then there were other solutions).

The story hit home more than it should've tbh. I found myself almost crying at the end.

That said, this game is an anime JRPG from Gust, and for those that are unaware, that comes with a fair amount of jank. Don't run the game above 120fps and things should generally be OK, though you may find your jumps to occasionally rocket forward due to deltatime shenanigans.

If this was released a few years earlier it would've been an RPGMaker classic. Exploring the house is so surreal with a lot of neat puzzles everywhere. The True Ending is a bit obscure, but if you really check everything and pay a lot of attention, it's still doable.

Through the course of the game, I established certain opinions of the characters throughout (and learned some real life lore as well, funny how that works), and by the DLC came around... my opinions could NOT have flipped harder on the cast. The DLC has far more obscure puzzles, but dang. I'm so glad I played this.

yooooo it's here!

thanks so much

Now that all of the content is more or less released, gotta say this game is pretty fun. It's unfortunate that there are so many negative reviews about the endings: particularly complaining about a specific moment that's foreshadowed the entire game. It's a bit unfortunate the endings are being changed, because I kinda liked the current events (just maybe the true end needed to be a bit more fleshed out).

The higher difficulties are such a roller coaster: the first attempt is hype, then I spend like 2-3 hours raging and then I get a super clutch attempt at it's the most hype thing ever. All of the bosses have gimmicks that you need to exploit on the hardest mode especially, which could be a turn off for some, but I imagine others will love it (especially if you like getting destroyed).

Something that isn't talked about is the SOUNDTRACK. OH MY GOD IT'S SO GOOD!!!! Soundtrack DLC when?????? Please?

The platforming in this game also just feels so nice. Nyaruru has a dash right from the start, and she goes vrooming. Her abilities only improve from there leading to you flying all over the screen when you try to go fast, and it just feels great.

I kinda hope the current events don't get changed too much, just fleshed out a bit more, but if they must be changed then it's fine. Regardless of community perception of the endings, I hope that you're happy with the game, because you did great. I look forward to speedrunning it.

UPDATE 5/29/2023: I TAKE IT ALL BACK THE NEW ENDINGS ARE HYPE

SvS is a very interesting step forward in the development of this franchise. In some ways it goes back to its roots, with the AP system returning but this time in an action format: requiring careful management of resources to get off long combos. When managed properly this isn't an issue, and the game even discourages spamming the same attack by scaling your damage from mixing up attacks (attack dependent behavior, the game tells you so don't worry). If you ever run out of AP and have to wait, its almost 100% of the time due to a combination of mistakes you made. Party members that aren't you are also controlled by an AI, though it isn't an issue here usually. The game *tries* to implement a tactics system here as well akin to Persona, but I could never find a difference. I tried back on JP PS4 and again here, and there's still no difference.

The disc system also makes a return here, and this time it's far more central to the plot. Due to this adjustment, making discs is heavily encouraged by the game and for good reason. Your tutorial makers at the start of the game are all you need to make amazing disc effects, and more discs effects are out there for anyone looking to do some quests.

Another returning system is the Lily System, this time giving increased Lily Effects based on character level and not based on fights with specific members: a welcome change in my opinion. And this time, lily effects aren't messing around either, these effects are HUGE. I often found party members that I really loved accidentally invalidating themselves to make others even better than them, and then this other party member would invalidate herself to make someone else stronger as well. Team building is very interesting this time around because of this, and gets more and more complicated the further into the game you get.

And something REALLY interesting for this series is the story. Neptunia games don't usually pride themselves on stories, being mostly filled with fanservice and a few story beats here and there, but SvS goes in a different direction here. The fanservice is pretty much nonexistent: natural fanservice through HDD in battles is all you're going to get here. The story starts slowly to bond you further with the characters and kicks into overdrive in the 2nd half, reminiscent of mk2. If you're here to see cute girls do cute things with some serious plot, you might enjoy this one. If you're here for booba, then you'll be massively disappointed.

It's worth mentioning the dub situation here as well. The English Dub this time around is... lacking. No dungeon dialogue is voiced this time around despite being plot relevant, and battle dialogue is only voiced in very specific plot moments early on and is far more frequent towards the end of the game. It's also not the best performance for any of these characters unfortunately, and one of the new cast members is in SERIOUS need of audio balancing or possibly a reshoot: the microphone sounds way too hot and their volume range fluctuates in extremes to the point of making me jump out of my seat when first hearing it during boss dialogue.

The soundtrack is also worth a mention here. The OST has 9 tracks on it, 6 being unique tracks of their own composed by Yuki Sugiura, and 3 remixed tracks by Kenji Kaneko. The unique tracks are all really good, especially towards the end.

Unfortunately this release isn't without bugs, and I say release because this isn't PC-specific issues we're talking about. The ENG release as a whole made some weird changes and mistakes leading to bugs that aren't present in the Japanese PS4/PS5 versions, and bugs that WERE present in JP weren't fixed for the ENG release. They made changes to the movement to be 0 or 100 at all times, no leadup to sprinting in this version. They also made weird changes to how models are stored apparently, and sometimes cutscene maps will refuse to go away and will stay loaded forever until you restart the game, leading to some comedic effects and in some cases some outright broken-looking videos/screenshots. To top it off, the PC release also uses a lot of resources to run, making resource usage a slight concern at 1080p120fps even for people with RTX 3090s (myself), and the game was consistently using over 20% of my CPU with a Ryzen 9 5950x. The game doesn't have any framerate options, and instead relies on vsync to do the job, which can be a serious concern if your monitor refresh rate is anything above 60 (or for whatever reason you want vsync off). You also need to restart the game for quality options to fully update, something the game should probably warn you about but doesn't. If you aren't running higher than 60fps, issues that have been in since JP PS4/PS5 crop up that can cause the game to softlock in cutscenes in specific scenarios.

Hopefully the franchise continues going in this direction. If they give us unique dungeons through the entire game and not re-using aesthetics the entire time, and the dungeon designers go on a training arc in the mountains, we might get some serious quality out of the next game. They just need to iron out some technical issues first.

Played up to the 3rd island on Switch so far. Dunno how they've done it, but the bosses are actually amazing. Every boss is like a final boss.

Also the first fight is cinematic af. Inject that ♥♥♥♥ into my veins.

This game is 20% watching Judge Man get beat up, 60% watching Judge Man realize he was once a lawyer, and 20% exploding through a sign in a stealth section because the physics chose violence. That last 20% is where the fun and hilarity is. Who needs strategy when you can YEET.

You can also plow through every object on the street and parkour over moving cars. The cutscenes are fully aware of this. 10/10.

This game is a weird one. On one hand, I want to say to avoid this as much as possible, but on the other, I want to say that you have to experience this at least once.

The gameplay is about what you'd expect of a streamer management sim, except with a few quirks. High stats isn't always good, and neither is low stats. You need to keep a careful balance of everything in order to keep playing, while ensuring that your follower count steadily increases. However: the quickest way to fame isn't always the easiest, and can quickly skew your stats out of your control.

On my first playthrough, I managed to avoid all of the YIKES parts of this game. I don't want to say that you have to try to get them, but it sure felt like it at times. I had the most fun during this because of how chaotic it was: being forced to micromanage all of the stats to keep Ame as stable as possible was honestly thrilling. After my first playthrough, I went through with the intention to cause chaos, and oh god, this game gets ♥♥♥♥♥♥. And unfortunately a lot less fun.

During my initial playthrough, I entirely avoided the Medication mechanic of the game, and after engaging with it on subsequent playthroughs, I think avoiding it was for the best. Reason being: this game doesn't handle its depictions of serious topics very well. It portrays them in an almost satirical way, yet I can't tell if I'm meant to take its depictions seriously. It's almost offensive, actually. The game's way of commenting on these subjects almost seems to be shaming what it's depicting instead of saying anything possibly meaningful.

As for the gameplay... it doesn't hold up much after the 1st runthrough. On the 2nd runthrough I quickly came to realize that moderating chat does literally nothing (neither does super chat), and there's no reason to even watch the regular streams that come up (AKA 90% of the gameplay). At this point I'd be playing more of the game just to tick off boxes on an ending list when I could simply just watch them on YouTube for the exact same effect.

I cannot in good faith recommend this game when my recommendation would be "just avoid most of the game", especially for the asking price.

If I could leave a Mixed review on Steam, I would. Might as well say this is LAiX1 but with a lot of design clutter and better graphics. I'm leaving this one as positive because I'm not feeling particular negative today.

One of the most obvious things you’ll probably notice out of the gate, and maybe noticed in the previews as well, is that Copen has 1 dash that won’t be given back to you until you land. A lot of the aerial combat in this game is completely stripped away, until…

Overdrive. It’s back again except you’re HEAVILY incentivized to use it. Remember that thing about 1 dash? When in Overdrive, your dash is on a meter instead, effectively locking your movement options behind it. You’re officially playing the game once in OD, now it’s time for you to not lose it.

Right. There are two things that can reset kudos in this game (on Normal Mode). Using an SP skill (which 90% of the time is healing), and touching a checkpoint. Yeah, OD was so important that they removed kudos dropping on taking damage. A crying shame that they also tell you that your healing skill has no drawbacks right at the start.

This game also has melee combat, allegedly. 3-hit combo that locks you in place when you use it. There’s not really any reason for you to use this except in one situation. Most of the bosses are designed with LAiX1 combat/movement in mind, meaning you’ll be right at home with them using OD. Unfortunately, they changed this at the very end and designed the final boss around LAiX2’s combat/movement. A real shame, since that means that 90% of the bosses don’t want you using your melee combos on them, while the final one EXPECTS it. And oh dear lord does it expect it.

You want to have a much easier time (and more fun, might I add) with this game? Avoid checkpoints and never heal. Invest in OD Auto-Recover and OD Defense Up ASAP.

I'd highly recommend this for the story alone. Great cast, great pacing, it's all there. The gameplay was a bit funny though.

There's several sections where the game just wants you to stop what you're doing and grind for money, no questions asked. It completely ruins the flow when it happens, and just turns the game into a test of patience. Speaking of which...

For most of the game, enemies refused to put up a decent fight. 80% of the way through the game, however, the levels of enemies spike by 20 out of nowhere but their HP actually DROPS, making them even easier to kill. Then, one room later, the game fully kicks into high gear and screams "LMFAO git gud" and has you fight multiple bosses at the same time with the randomly spiked levels. A challenge, and a welcome one at that, but I'm extremely disappointed at the lack of buildup to it.

After the memes, the difficulty drops off of the face of the earth never to be seen again, especially considering I was 12 levels under what I should've been ever since the aforementioned spike. After that the level curve of enemies just flattens. It's equivalent to walking through an open field for a leisurely stroll only to have to climb a random mountain to continue, but said mountain is lopsided.

If you're into a decent story, and can tolerate the above, this is a must have.