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Nanoha A's The Gears of Destiny

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    Nanoha A's The Gears of Destiny

    Second Nanoha game, this time gathering characters from the first two TV series, Vivid and Force plus two new characters.
    Haven't figured out much of the story but the two new characters, Amity and Kyrie are after U-D (Unlimited Darkness) and the Material girls (absurd name but they are the three "evil" Nanoha, Fate and Hayate "clones" from the first game, Battle of Aces) to help her or something similar; in perfect Nanoha tradition helping means spamming as many Starlight Breakers and other nuke-grade magic right on the bad dude's face.
    I guess that I alwasy liked Nanoha because instead of using love like other magical girls, she uses superior firepower to solve problems.

    Not much has changed from the first game: it's essentially a 1v1 beat'em up with two attack buttons (square and triangle), one throw button (circle) and one dash button (x), plus guard (R) and Full Drive mode (L) to increase power of normal attacks and if needed, start a character's final attack.
    Battles always begin at short range, with the two characters inside a red circle and when far away enough from each other, battle enters long-range mode; the nature of all attacks change between the two modes and differ from character to character, though most keep the two attack/one throw button combination, although the throw button is replacd by a bind that stops the enemy for a short while if the attack connects.
    Due to this range mechanic characters can be categorized based on their proficiency in either range or being jack of all trades and masters of none.
    The major change to the fighting system comes from the guard gauge, that now incorporates long-range attacks, dashes and blocks. As Battle of Aces to recharge the guard gauge a character must engage the other in close-range combat or being unable to dash or perform long-range attacks when the gauge is depleted; guarding with a depleted gauge causes a guard break that leaves the broken character stunned for a while.

    Just like the first game, overall the system is not particularly deep and most characters only have two or three combo strings, but it's not shallow enough to be immediately tossed aside; some characters tend to be much mroe devastating than others (hello Nanoha), though outside story mode it's possible to equip up to three special skills to limit weaknesses or increase strenghts.

    Out of the box the game comes with story mode, training and VS Com as the only modes available, with survival and arcade modes unlocked after completing the story.
    The story mode itself is pretty long and fleshed out: it's composed by 10 sequences (plus a special one) and each sequence is composed by a certain number of battles; most sequences feature branching paths that, though won't change the story anyhow, they unlock characters for use in other modes and allow the player to met specific conditions for hidden story battles and other extras.
    Battles start out pretty easy, but once the story hits the halfway the CPU becomes harder and harder, sometimes bordering frustration due to matchups or perfect counters the AI particularly likes to perform.
    Sequence 10 is the zenith of this,

    with U-D being a perfect SNK boss: to damage her you have to go through her guard gauge once while she spams attacks with huge invincibility windows and huge damages; she's weak to throws (direct hit on her health) but missing a throw means being open to a combo or even worse to a counter with following long-range bombardment. Immediately the fun goes away and the PSP fears of being thrown out of the window in frustration.
    It's not impossible, but it requires more luck on connecting throws than actual skills in combos...also, U-D seem to be able to counter any combo exactly when she wants.



    The game also features a CG and character model viewer, plus some nice extra costumes from Namco games. Rein can be outfitted as KOS-MOS or T-Elos, Vita as the Prince Katamari and Fate as Klonoa, for example. Most characters also have swimsuits though others only have a single color variantion of their standard outfit.

    The game is fully voiced by the original cast and BGMs come from the TV series, but after a while certain voice samples start getting tedious and when girls scream after being knocked back by a powerful attack seem to be completely unaware of the volume settings; sometimes BGMs also cover the most soft-voiced characters (Stern comes to mind).
    Graphics are largely unchanged, probably textures are just a bit sharper than before but backgrounds are very plain and smoke clouds are pixelated and with less than a handful of animation frames.

    Except for the start of sequence 10, the game is fun, but I speak as a fan of the series. It's not the best licensed game out there and some rough edges could have easily been rounded to make the game more enjoyable, but it's not terrible either. The first game, while on the same level system-wise, felt more of a quick cash-in for the then-upcoming first movie; Gears of Destiny instead feels like a well fleshed game that fits well into the Nanoha continuity (though I don't think it will be considered canon) and makes a better use of existing material.

    And it also came with a ridicolously rich limited edition that granted access to even more downloadable extras.

    Thanks to kryss for the help.

    #2
    Great summary and video! Might by this edition myself to the honest. Your English is excellent! Where are ya from?
    Last edited by Nico87; 03-02-2012, 23:52.

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      #3
      Thanks, I'm Italian. And there's also a videoreview up.

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        #4
        Already seen it, thanks

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