This franchise is known for going onto almost Kojima-level off-tangents. Without spoilers, here are some themes the previous two games dealt with within their stories - copyright infringement, bullying, class division, ACAB, colonialism, child soldiers, human trafficking, illegal human experimentation, effectiveness of propaganda, long-term effects of psychological trauma, political coups, civil wars, ethnic cleansing, religious fascism, world wars, genocide, existential nihilism, Asimov's laws of robotics, fermi paradox. So far, game's grind is just about finding and crafting outfits for the styling battles (with Sovereigns basically being pokemon gym leaders), which is barely connected to most of the content overall.
I enjoyed the game quite a bit and have beaten the current main story without spending any money with very little friction. I did spend five bucks or so on an outfit (not from the gacha mechanic). Exploring and taking vacation pictures everywhere is genuinely fun. The dialogue while sometimes funny (the story goes some weird places) can be incredibly longwinded unfortunately, and the styling competitions are terrible. There is no thought involved, you just need to select your highest value outfits without taking any other stat into account, so all you can do is grinding for upgrade materials. And you spend way too much time navigating menus to cash in you various awards (there are so many things to click to get rewards, all the time). The game also does a terrible job explaining the systems - I found new rewards systems literally dozens of hours in. And now after 40 hours I'm at a point where I need 3 pieces to finish a gacha outfit and the last 30 attempts have netted nothing. I get NO satisfaction from that nonsense, so I won't be playing more before there is a major update. But in the end I had 30+ hours of genuine fun without feeling any pressure to spend real money to progress, so I can't complain too much. However, you should NOT allow your kids to get anywhere close to the gacha system. It's not needed to progress, but they make it very easy for you to waste ridiculous amounts of cash, and there should be a child safety mode that disables that nonsense. If you can ignore all the gacha/paid battle pass stuff, it's a pretty relaxing game if you enjoy the exploration, dressing up Nikki in pretty outfits and sharing screenshots.
My attention wandered for a second and I heard Rob say "Im going to stream one handed" and I suddenly feared that Nikki had taken a turn to THAT kind of anime game
This franchise is known for going onto almost Kojima-level off-tangents. Without spoilers, here are some themes the previous two games dealt with within their stories - copyright infringement, bullying, class division, ACAB, colonialism, child soldiers, human trafficking, illegal human experimentation, effectiveness of propaganda, long-term effects of psychological trauma, political coups, civil wars, ethnic cleansing, religious fascism, world wars, genocide, existential nihilism, Asimov's laws of robotics, fermi paradox.
So far, game's grind is just about finding and crafting outfits for the styling battles (with Sovereigns basically being pokemon gym leaders), which is barely connected to most of the content overall.
I enjoyed the game quite a bit and have beaten the current main story without spending any money with very little friction. I did spend five bucks or so on an outfit (not from the gacha mechanic). Exploring and taking vacation pictures everywhere is genuinely fun. The dialogue while sometimes funny (the story goes some weird places) can be incredibly longwinded unfortunately, and the styling competitions are terrible. There is no thought involved, you just need to select your highest value outfits without taking any other stat into account, so all you can do is grinding for upgrade materials.
And you spend way too much time navigating menus to cash in you various awards (there are so many things to click to get rewards, all the time). The game also does a terrible job explaining the systems - I found new rewards systems literally dozens of hours in.
And now after 40 hours I'm at a point where I need 3 pieces to finish a gacha outfit and the last 30 attempts have netted nothing. I get NO satisfaction from that nonsense, so I won't be playing more before there is a major update.
But in the end I had 30+ hours of genuine fun without feeling any pressure to spend real money to progress, so I can't complain too much. However, you should NOT allow your kids to get anywhere close to the gacha system. It's not needed to progress, but they make it very easy for you to waste ridiculous amounts of cash, and there should be a child safety mode that disables that nonsense.
If you can ignore all the gacha/paid battle pass stuff, it's a pretty relaxing game if you enjoy the exploration, dressing up Nikki in pretty outfits and sharing screenshots.
My attention wandered for a second and I heard Rob say "Im going to stream one handed" and I suddenly feared that Nikki had taken a turn to THAT kind of anime game