I thought I should at least give this game a try before forgetting about it until a more understandable version arrives...and I really need a quick translations on controls and menus because I haven't figured out how to heal my characters.
The game starts in media res, with the White Heart, Black Heart and Green Heart (humanized home console, respectively Wii, PS3 and X360) making boob jokes while battling Neptune, apparently a normal human girl sucked in into a world of videogames.
Neptune loses the battle and then Histoire, a talking book, pops up, probably breaks the 4th wall and rewinds the story to the beginning, where Compa (humanized avatar of Compile Heart, the makers of this game) tends to a seemingly unwounded Netpune by stripping her naked and applying bandages.
And when a game makes boob jokes and shows scantly clad ladies within the first ten minutes, you know it's gonna be a Great game.
And so Compa and Neptune go off to the tutorial dungeon, where the game explains the battle system.
There's a maximum of three player-controlled characters active per battle, and battles are turn based. Turns are shown on the upper right hand side of the screen with the left portion showing selected enemy's health and guard points. Breaking down the guard allows to score more damaging hits.
Actions are controlled by the four face buttons: triangle and circle are for light and heavy physical attacks while X is for long-range attacks. L1 and R1 swap between elemental bullets for the gun. Square is used to push the escape button (an actual item), to pass turn or to end a combo and switch enemies.
All attacks consume action points, which are fully replenished at each turn. Player controlled characters attack in four hits combos which can be repeated as long as characters have action points.
Enemies have one attack per turn icon present on the right progression bar.
Combat is strictly by the book, a close-range attack has the enemy jumping right in front of the enemy to deliver damage and the rhythm is very slow. There aren't many options either and attacks look limited to three face buttons; items play a very limited role in battle, with probably a lot of emphasis on equipment.
Defeating enemies bring the usual load of XPs and money. Items are rare, almost entirely limited to key objects; all defeated enemy parties drop however green bottles that are used in battle to automatically heal characters.
From what I've gathered, players can set at how many hit points their party members will heal, and such action will automatically take place after an enemy attack that didn't kill a playing character. Healing consumes said green bottles but not action points.
It works great in theory, but it removes some depth to the combat system, as characters are always able to attack without sacrificing a turn for healing purposes. Also this action is limited to self healing in battle...I know it' my lack of knowledge in the fine language of Japan, but I still need to figure out how to heal characters when I feel like in and outside battles: Compa is at 1 HP and gets killed at every battle during the first turn because the healing action is triggered by a non-lethal attack. Auto-healing threshold can be changed during battles by accessing the main menu, so this feature feels more like a chore than anything else.
It's great the first few times it's triggered, but then to save up green bottles you need to access the main menu, navigate to a character's healing sub-menu, set the threshold and exit.
Crawling around dungeons is nothing to speak of, textures are bland and repetitive, corridors and rooms are large but there's almost no decoration and elements repeat themselves way too often. Interactions are limited to rare treasure chests and even rarer hammer times with Neptune.
Compa can summon monsters to turn off encounters for a short time while If-chan (from Idea Factory) points toward the nearest hidden item, which, as you can imagine, are rare indeed.
Characters can be swapped on the fly by pressing L2 and the d-pad; loading times are almost instantaneous but equipped accessories disappear before the main model does, like guns do in battle: let's say that Neptune fires and the gun she's holding disappears before the attack animation ends, leaving Neptune menacingly swinging an air gun.
There's a sharp contrast between character and enemy models.
Standard enemies are forgettable; some of them pay homage to videogame staples like Slimes from Dragon Quest and Space Invaders, but most are from the usual bestiary you would expect from a fantasy-ish JRPG.
Even big bosses aren't particularly inspired.
Characters on the other hand are nice, greatly modeled and with good textures that forsake detail for a more cel-shaded look. They essentially have a style on their own, as everything else tries to go for a more "realistic" look.
All animations are kept to a minimum, with no transition between them.
Music is meh. The tutorial dungeon goes for a 8-bit tone style but everything else just plays a forgettable 30 seconds loop.
Dubbing is nice but expect a lot of high-pitches voices and lines delivered during battles are as limited as animations.
Hard to say if it's a total wreck, but first impressions confirm that it's mostly a game based on moe ladies and a lot of hype.
Menus hint at a somewhat good degree of customization, (combos, equipment, emblems created from images found on the PS3 HDD) but it just doesn't feel like a solid game. The lack of proper presentation aside from good 3D models and illustrations further lowers the quality of the game...I'd wish Sega and the other companies lending their characters stepped in for a more substantial help rather than leaving everything in Compile Heart's hands.
And if someone with a bit of Japanese knowledge can help me out in figuring how to heal outside battles...
The game starts in media res, with the White Heart, Black Heart and Green Heart (humanized home console, respectively Wii, PS3 and X360) making boob jokes while battling Neptune, apparently a normal human girl sucked in into a world of videogames.
Neptune loses the battle and then Histoire, a talking book, pops up, probably breaks the 4th wall and rewinds the story to the beginning, where Compa (humanized avatar of Compile Heart, the makers of this game) tends to a seemingly unwounded Netpune by stripping her naked and applying bandages.
And when a game makes boob jokes and shows scantly clad ladies within the first ten minutes, you know it's gonna be a Great game.
And so Compa and Neptune go off to the tutorial dungeon, where the game explains the battle system.
There's a maximum of three player-controlled characters active per battle, and battles are turn based. Turns are shown on the upper right hand side of the screen with the left portion showing selected enemy's health and guard points. Breaking down the guard allows to score more damaging hits.
Actions are controlled by the four face buttons: triangle and circle are for light and heavy physical attacks while X is for long-range attacks. L1 and R1 swap between elemental bullets for the gun. Square is used to push the escape button (an actual item), to pass turn or to end a combo and switch enemies.
All attacks consume action points, which are fully replenished at each turn. Player controlled characters attack in four hits combos which can be repeated as long as characters have action points.
Enemies have one attack per turn icon present on the right progression bar.
Combat is strictly by the book, a close-range attack has the enemy jumping right in front of the enemy to deliver damage and the rhythm is very slow. There aren't many options either and attacks look limited to three face buttons; items play a very limited role in battle, with probably a lot of emphasis on equipment.
Defeating enemies bring the usual load of XPs and money. Items are rare, almost entirely limited to key objects; all defeated enemy parties drop however green bottles that are used in battle to automatically heal characters.
From what I've gathered, players can set at how many hit points their party members will heal, and such action will automatically take place after an enemy attack that didn't kill a playing character. Healing consumes said green bottles but not action points.
It works great in theory, but it removes some depth to the combat system, as characters are always able to attack without sacrificing a turn for healing purposes. Also this action is limited to self healing in battle...I know it' my lack of knowledge in the fine language of Japan, but I still need to figure out how to heal characters when I feel like in and outside battles: Compa is at 1 HP and gets killed at every battle during the first turn because the healing action is triggered by a non-lethal attack. Auto-healing threshold can be changed during battles by accessing the main menu, so this feature feels more like a chore than anything else.
It's great the first few times it's triggered, but then to save up green bottles you need to access the main menu, navigate to a character's healing sub-menu, set the threshold and exit.
Crawling around dungeons is nothing to speak of, textures are bland and repetitive, corridors and rooms are large but there's almost no decoration and elements repeat themselves way too often. Interactions are limited to rare treasure chests and even rarer hammer times with Neptune.
Compa can summon monsters to turn off encounters for a short time while If-chan (from Idea Factory) points toward the nearest hidden item, which, as you can imagine, are rare indeed.
Characters can be swapped on the fly by pressing L2 and the d-pad; loading times are almost instantaneous but equipped accessories disappear before the main model does, like guns do in battle: let's say that Neptune fires and the gun she's holding disappears before the attack animation ends, leaving Neptune menacingly swinging an air gun.
There's a sharp contrast between character and enemy models.
Standard enemies are forgettable; some of them pay homage to videogame staples like Slimes from Dragon Quest and Space Invaders, but most are from the usual bestiary you would expect from a fantasy-ish JRPG.
Even big bosses aren't particularly inspired.
Characters on the other hand are nice, greatly modeled and with good textures that forsake detail for a more cel-shaded look. They essentially have a style on their own, as everything else tries to go for a more "realistic" look.
All animations are kept to a minimum, with no transition between them.
Music is meh. The tutorial dungeon goes for a 8-bit tone style but everything else just plays a forgettable 30 seconds loop.
Dubbing is nice but expect a lot of high-pitches voices and lines delivered during battles are as limited as animations.
Hard to say if it's a total wreck, but first impressions confirm that it's mostly a game based on moe ladies and a lot of hype.
Menus hint at a somewhat good degree of customization, (combos, equipment, emblems created from images found on the PS3 HDD) but it just doesn't feel like a solid game. The lack of proper presentation aside from good 3D models and illustrations further lowers the quality of the game...I'd wish Sega and the other companies lending their characters stepped in for a more substantial help rather than leaving everything in Compile Heart's hands.
And if someone with a bit of Japanese knowledge can help me out in figuring how to heal outside battles...
), but since continents float, it can only be done when two are close to each other; alternatively it's possible to wait for a continent to approach and this will skip game time forward...not that I noticed any change in waiting for a continent approaching.
off of you for ?15! Will pm.
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