I might have to brace for impact on this one.. but this game really did not do it for me as much as it did for everybody else... I'm gonna go duck and cover for a bit I think.
@@kenzonhundredpower I see you have about 5 comments in my spam folder just calling people cunts and shit. That's gonna be a "yikes" from me. Since you spent so much time here responding to everybody in such a manner, I think I'll leave your comments in spam, unapproved. Have a good one!
Also, the plot is done very well and the entire game has a progressively metatextual theme that strikes home hard by the end. It's never very subtle about it but it's actually good writing -- for a thoroughly convoluted cyber-ghost-mystery plot. That it would've benefited from a more narrow focus (like the .hack games have an overall central focus that doesn't stray too far) is true. It's not bad but it's definitely not what one expects from the creator of Corpse Party, a VERY centrally focused ghost mystery
It’s a real shame this game wasn’t up to scratch... the aesthetic looks like a huge step up over the Neptunia games and Fairy Fencer F... I love how much “bigger” (in terms of scale) and softer everything looks... but I guess they put a bunch of effort into one or two environments and completely forgot about the rest. It also means nothing if the gameplay isn’t fun, so your criticisms seemed totally valid to me. I still have Mary Skelter and Megadimension VIIR to get through, so luckily I’m in no rush to get this one anyway lol
I guess for the most part, I agree with your general take away...kinda. To start, as someone who has played most of their games, this is probably the most ambitious Compile Heart has felt in a quite the while. I really liked the aesthetic and presentation. They took the theme of glitches/bugs in a video game and really went with it. From parts of the world randomly flickering on your screen, how the unnatural portions of the characters are filled with static and glitch out in their portraits, enemy designs sometimes partially missing textures or bulge with masses of polygons, etc. In some ways, it impressed me. Not to forget the artwork by Kei Nanameda, the same person who did "Mary Skelter" and "Trillion", is just nice in general as usual, if not a tad overdesigned here or there. Can't say I was a fan of the glitched forms for example, which felt very out of place in how they were designed. The story was also rather interesting, being this kind of supernatural mystery. Easily the darkest game CH have developed up to now if nothing else. But that said, it's definitely not without it's issues, of which there are numerous. While the in-game and real world segments blend together well enough story-wise, the in-game parts felt rather lacking with the real world parts completely outshining them. But even then, the story overall kind of just falls apart by the end, feeling like a combination of being incomplete and rushed, which was a real shame. So that's why I feel inclined to disagree with what you say at 2:50. Personally, I felt like the game was too short. That it needed more story events to ease in everything that was going on together and actually properly develop some things. One of the main selling points were the Bad Ends but I don't think they were executed well at all. While a couple offered more intrigue and hints, most of them are just nonsensical, occur from contrived actions, and offered nothing of value. And then there's the gameplay which I really didn't think was that good either. It starts out fine enough but battles quickly became tedious due to not really evolving and from poor balancing. Most of the gimmick mechanics were just kind of janky to use or completely worthless. I even managed to find an easily accessible exploit early on. I played most of the game on Normal but by around the end of Chapter 8, I set the game to Easy. Not because the game was hard, which it remotely wasn't, but so that I can progress more quickly. In the end, the game was a better Visual Novel than it was an RPG. A nice effort that didn't quite hit most of the marks.
I got the limited edition. I preordered it from iffy's website store and got it a day early before actual release date. it's one of my favorite games so far by idea factory and compile heart along with mary skelter nightmares for the ps vita
Been anticipating your review as I saw you playing through this at the same time as me. I think you nailed the review. I really wanted to love this game and the first several hours I enjoyed quite a bit. But it really started to drag for me towards the middle of the game. The 2nd trip to the castle was near rage inducing for me, what a mess. I was also disappointed where the story ended up, I think it just went a bit off the rails the last quarter of the game. Overall I felt like it was a decent jrpg but nowhere near what I had hoped. On a different note, I'm curious as to your thoughts on the neptunia series?
I'm about 15 hours into the game and I'm feeling like the ratio of visual novel to traditional JRPG is like 3 to 1. The dungeon crawling definitely feels like the worst part. One time I got lost in a dungeon because I wasn't clear that I was supposed to leave the dungeon. As for the battle system, there's too many abilities, and they aren't different enough. The voice acting though it's pretty good I think, and the story thus far has been interesting.
Honestly there was so much visual novel i had to put it down. I heard so much good stuff but I should've heeded the vn warning because it really is endless and relentless at times.i love classic jrpgs and I will try almost anything with those kind of mechanics but this just didn't work for me. Which is a shame because I bought 1 and 2. Maybe ill revisit them if I land in a major gaming drought.
I did not beat the game yet but I agree. Also the usual satyrical writing we all love about Compile is really not as strong here (if there's any at all): IF normally puts a smile on my face.. not this time around! This is perhaps the most low budget experiment IF ever put together... and it shows. Writing is also not bad (as usual with IF) and it kept me moderately hooked.. as a fan tho I expected the "new Neptunia" and this ain't it! well, let's see the end of it before Sekiro comes out...
Have to agree on the negative sentiment. Just finished the game and found it very meh in total for its ambitions. 5/10. It went worse the longer i played. The story developments are just, like you said, random. The supernatural stuff is just 'there' but has no real impact outside of "uhhh spooky, okay, now lets get back to the story". The VN parts are often a slog. The ending is an attempt at 4th wall break for the finale that i grow tired of since Nier;Automata and even Danganronpa have done way better jobs at it. Then it is just a giant deus ex machina with unsatisfying conclusions. The battles were nice until chapter 6 were enemies became hp sponges and the "counter" mechanic became really annoying. The areas are okay-ish for a compile heart game as you could go quickly through them, but the heartis palace was bad with the locked doors etc. The only real fun was when i had to find out skill combos to get new skills. One of the times were i was ready to be positively suprised but was even more disappointed than i expected. My biggest gripe is how lazy the bad ends were visualized for how it is the main advertised "gimmick" of the game. Most of them are just black screen and 1-3 pages of text. How about some CGs at least?
Pretty good review, I am actually interested in playing this game, though my copy haven't arrived yet, sadly. My main interests in this game is the Bad Ends, which are very rare in Japanese games because gory stuff are not their cup of tea. After watching your review, I probably will play at easy, but there is a question I want to ask. Is the difficulty selection different or worded different between the Japanese and the western version? For example, the game is easy in western, but normal in Japanese. Or Hard in Japanese, but normal in the western version.
Your opinion was what I was waiting for about getting this game. And it looks like maybe I did good not buying this day 1, maybe when it goes on discount. I still want to play it, but I see it has a lot of problems so think I'll wait and hope it gets ported to PC.
I appreciate this review, I just got my Limited Run switch copy and look forward to playing but now with a more level head going in. 🤙 Subscribed for sure!
This is such a great review, I just finished the game yesterday and I mostly agree with everything you had to say about the game. I even get the Nier reference about that specific piece of music, I though the same thing. Like you I was looking forward to this game after seeing the key artwork but unfortunately I was sorely disappointed this time. Hopefully the second one will be a better game. Subscribed.
personally i'm really liking it. yes the areas are repetitive, especially that castle area. but i love the battle system, it's really engaging, the music is pretty good to me, and the plotline has me in it's grips, honestly. this is a low budget game for sure, so folks should definitely keep that in mind. but for a budget game, there's a lot to love.
I think you can just say It's a IF/Compile Hearts game = a lot of reused assets / never worth full price. (doesn't mean I don't love them but I always wait until they're on massive sale)
I can't believe it! It's PORTALLIS - the game with a thousand locked doors!!! Isaac must be proud in Heaven as he plays this game from high above... XD
Was about to get this game with impressions of its interesting ideas but with this review good thing I didnt. Cons is just enough to warrant avoiding. Thanks for the great breakdown and review.
Any idea on how to fix fps on this game? Can only get 5-8 fps when I’m 4k. However, I cant even get more than 18 fps even when I have the lowest graphics settings. But have no problem running the second game on 4k.
Great video sir! Oh by the way, Arjen Lucanssen(ayreon) is an extremely nice man. He encouraged me a lot to start my own musical career back in the day 😊
Thats awesome! I actually got to have a couple very brief conversations with him a few years back just over facebook (Back when I had a personal facebook account) and the dude is so humble and down to earth. Truly an inspiration and an icon. So glad to see how much his career has exploded over the last 5-10 years. When I found ayreon I felt like it was this little awesome thing that nobody knew about. Now he actually has some videos with 1 million views or more! Super proud of him.
I haven't finished the game yet, but I enjoy it this far, I did hate that Forest place with the portals lol, I do agree with the enemies feeling like a drag eventually, but idk I like the mystery of the story, it's a little more of a tension kind of thing, that and the art is what interested me in the first place. I like the game but you made a good review my friend.
I love Hyperdimension Neptunia and I was unaware of Mary Skelter: Nightmares, I have all 3 Vita, Switch, and Steam, so thanks for th eheads up on that, it seems there's a Mary Skelter 2 for the Switch hmm
Man, it kinda messed up when thinking about it. Neptunia casts? They are goddess right? While most DeRQ casts is just a mortals who happens to be nearly corrupted by a bug's.. so I wonder what happen if they meet an immortal being.. kinda messed up
I don't think that they will ever do a crossover between Neptunia and death request the two of them are just so far different InDesign story and plot that it would just not mesh well at all and let me ask you this would you want to see the CPUs and CPU candidates getting murdered in the most brutal way possible and having an image scarred into your mind have your favorite character from Hyperdimension having her entrails yanked out or her head bit off and her body flung through the air and seen nothing more than a headless corpse bleeding out on the ground or seeing her being stabbed to death by one of the villains because that's the type of shit you're going to see with a crossover like that death request is horror movie type shit from slasher flicks two straight up monster horror movie I've already seen what happens to Lily in death request 1 and Jesus Christ it was straight up gruesome and horrific the bad ends in the game are ridiculously dark and gruesome and if you are not mentally prepared it will psychologically scar you just the dialogue of Lily screaming in agony as she was being brutally murdered sent chills down my spine and then it showed the image of what they did to her it was utterly fucked up if you do try to question what I've seen in this game look up the videos for this game of death request and search for all of the Bad Endings you will see what I mean that there should be no collaboration between the two games it would not mix well
You'd have to redo the end a few tines though yeah? There's a few different character endings I believe but I'm not 100% sure how they decide which one you get. I never got all of them.
Kind of. I'm noticing a bit of a recurring theme in some JRPGs where the male characters are always aiding battle from the sidelines and that's about it.
I'm in the sky capital and enjoying the game greatly yea some of the systems are repetitive but I dont think that a pitfall any game can avoid cause even nicer automata gameplay gets repetitive but its still enjoyable and the occult sections are very interesting to me so the game has flaws but I think it's worth the play and I hope death end request 2 can maybe have more variety in its enemy and dungeon designs
And that is why I've subscribed to you because you get me LOL I was just about to buy this title as well and it seems as though you save me money once again
I hate that I'm always interested in IF CH games. I've owned all 3 Agarest War games for years, haven't bothered getting past Gen 2 in game 1. I've tried to get into the Neptunia series a few times. Cross Edge has Ar Tonelico characters, one of my favorite PS2 JRPG's of all time, but I can not get into the battle system. I really wanted to like Trillion, but I've stopped playing at around the 3rd overlord. Every single IF CH game has amazing ideas, which are held back by really bad item/skill management that takes 90% of the game, and strange quirky gameplay that seems like you'd need to invest 100+ hours in just to begin to understand them. I have a wide array of interest in games, and just don't have the kind of time to invest into learning the systems in CH games anymore, especially when I have stupidly high quality alternatives such as Trails of Cold Steel, Super Robot Wars T, Valkyria Chronicles 4, Persona 5, etc to play. After playing an absolute masterpiece like Trails of Cold Steel, it's so hard to try and play a mediocre at best game like any of the CH games. Those top tier waifu's always trying to claw at me to spend more money on games I'll never finish though.
How dare u insult kingand hards, i sent lawyer 2 u Seriously though, i clicked cuz i wanted to knoe what this game is and youve told me in a very nice way. Thank you.
I only started playing this game, I think it is ok for what it is, but yeah I can see what you mean about it taking itself seriously like how KH usually does (though the story is not really so complicated like KH, it is more of an isekai story). The battle system is sort of similar to Mugen Souls, but without alot of secrets from what I can tell. It actually is sort of like playing a VN, though I don't think it is that bad.
Thanks for the review! Saw it discounted on Steam but like any game that is primarily marketed with 2D anime art, I was wary of whether it would contain substance. On a sidenote, does anyone know the music at 3:55? I love the gothic style melody there,
I saw the gameplay and instantly knew this is from the team that does those HyperDimensionNeptunia games. They play em' for the waifus, thats literally it_
Speaking of Nier, I think the idea of combining different combat systems can definitely work well just like Automata. It just needs good implementation, where it seems this game failed at.
I did quite enjoy this game in both design and story I did feel something could have been done better but the premise while in line with shows like .hack and sao I felt it did a better job with portraying the risk and I loved the Ludens and Alice in wonderland motif they had
The game is coming to steam soon and watched some videos on it so Im probably still gonna get it. Just hope it works unlike the game trillion on steam for some reason I couldnt get that to work and there was no solutions online. So I just refunded that. However other idea factory ganes atleast the ones Ive played which isnt many have worked kinda offtopic.
It's a big "Maybe." I was offered a review code for one of the last ones but turned it down as I have too much catching up to do to comfortably jump into the new games. I'm working on picking up physical copies of the whole series (I only have the first 3 on ps3) for some hopeful future plans, but god knows what/when that plan will be.
@@TarksGauntlet To be entirely honest, I'm kind of hoping you never do. Between just not even being that great overall and the terrible stagnation it's been in for a while now, I legitimately fear for any newcomers jumping into the series nowadays. To this day, I still don't understand how it managed to get as renown and popular(?) as it did, even though I am a big fan of it regardless. Though admittedly, I'm probably just being a big baby as the series has long since become a real sore topic for me.
Thank you for this review, man. I was interested in this one as well and, though it has some cool ideas and i love the art, I don't think it's worth it at full price.
Just to let anyone know who has not played this game before this game is actually m-rated and is extremely graphic and dark as hell it's like watching a horror movie in anime form the opening story cutscene of the opening prologue is extremely graphic and dark and straight-up gruesome and like I said before this game was rated T for teen but it's actually a m rated game whoever rated this game T for teen should have been fired
Where tf are you supposed to get the disc copy of this game and it's sequel. Amazon doesn't have any new copies and the used ones are just too much for a used copy.
I think I will disagree This was one of the best stories you can ever find on the Anime industry, and yeah, I have seen quite out of anime in my life. When I completed the game, I felt so fucking good just because the story had me surprising me so bad I Shouted like a crazy person when a certain scene was in the game...
See I can see some people feeling that way, but for me it just felt like it was trying way too hard to have surprises and they never felt earned or like they fit in well with the narrative. But to each their own.
The game is so-so, it has a few stupid difficulty spikes, elemental advantage isn't really much useful and the dungeons are way too bigger than necessary, there is a genre-shift mechanic, not very equilibrated but still pretty fun and creative, definetively a plus, the small billars gimmick also makes the battles a little more interessing I recomend if you care more about the plot of the game, is mysterious and very good, it may get you hooked until the end. Basically, a so-so gameplay with a marvelous plot.
I have been playing it and I'm enjoying it quite a lot. Thanks for the review but I completely disagree with you this game is fun in my opinion. The story is my favorite part of this game.
No worries at all dude! It just really wasn't clicking for me, but I believe I am in the minority on this one at least. It seemed to review mostly well, even if I can't fully see why myself.
I always appreciate how hard they try, but I feel they'd make a better game if they dialed some aspects back and narrowed their focus on just doing a couple things really well, rather than a lot in a lack-luster manner. It worked for Mary Skelter after all. But then again, this is what they built their empire on, and those neptunia games (And merch) are sure raking in some cash.
Devoid of life and creativity? I'm pretty sure that's intentional to represent what's happening to the game (it's slowly falling apart and being destroyed). Compile Heart has always done visual representations of their games via level design. They always do. Have you played any other Compile Heart JRPGs? If you have, then which one was your favorite?
"It doesn't tell you when you have to switch over to Mizunashi's side to progress the story" You mean how there's a cutscene or dialogue cue suggesting exactly that almost every single time you find a "clue" in the gameplay portion? Or how the game lets you switch on-the-fly and in-tutorial encourages you to check back frequently? The game has flaws (mainly with level design) but come on
Almost every time =/= every time. Quite a few times they just leave you high and dry. It's pretty annoying when it happens. You might not like that I draw attention to this inconvenience, but it's part of reviewing a game honestly. I don't really have much choice.
My point is that, after the first few times of them all but outright stating "It's a dead end; time to switch over to the real world" it becomes a trained habit in the player to periodically switch over, especially if you find a locked door you can't open or a clue. It's not totally directionless, like Harmony of Dissonance can be, about what to do next since it becomes a regular thing at that point. What IS vague is the True End requirements. Now THAT is a bunch of high-and-dry jackassery that pretty much expects you to look it up on the net because there's just no way anyone would figure it out, let alone know how to get all the required death ends, on their own.
Aww man...Mary Skelter Nightmares is one of my favs by Compile Heart, and i'm saddened to see that Death End Re:quest doesn't match or exceed what Compile Heart has shown they are capable of producing. Guess we should REquest REfunds eh? Sorry; i couldn't help myself with that one lol. I enjoyed your review (as always). i "might" give the game a try if it's on Steam for a deep discount (if it's only on PS4 then that's a no-go til i get a PS4 in the far flung future) if only for the battle system itself.
Tarks Gauntlet cool moods can improve on some stuff lets say on the empty map. anywho grate review and thank you for your answere. i am waiting for this game even with all the cons you stated it still sound like a good game
I couldn't get into this game it has waaaaay too much dialouge about an hour and a half in I just stopped playing it, It was like watching a movie rather than playing it
Its like playing a text adventure game in some instances, I’m a bit of fan of text adventures and just laugh at the plot when the visual novel scene kicks in. I give a 8/10
Honestly, I didn't get far in this game. I really felt like the dialogue in each scene dragged on for much longer than necessary and had me wishing to skip scenes just to advance the plot. At this point, I am really tired of these copy paste issekai stories. The dual pro-tags was an interesting concept,but, honestly I could not deal with how empty and unpolished this game felt.
I skipped this as soon as I heard it was 90% VN and 10% gameplay despite me waiting for it anxiously.....kinda the same deal as Blazblue Chronophantasma and Central Fiction, once I saw that they were more VN than fighting unlike first 2 Blazblues, I just stopped despite loving the story as a whole.....
@@jackoblllllllll Oh I beat them both and enjoyed the story thankfully but it did take me longer. Izanami helped make CF more hype to keep going lol, my fav character
Why did you call the battle system innovative? Based on the footage you showed...Its litterally just a neptunia game. Oh look, its even made by the same Developer/Publisher as neptunia games. It's...It's an IF game, much like Fairy Fencer or the like 20 different neptunia games. Its nothing new, this battle system has been used by this developer since the PS3 era.
This is one of the JRPGs currently in consideration for being my next game after Ryza 2, the others are: Dragon Star Vanir, Caligula Effect Overdose, Tokyo Xanadu eX+ and Crystar. I don´t expect them to blow my mind that´s what the trails series is for, but I at least want them to be better then Tokyo Mirage Sessions FE which is probably the JRPG with the most boring story and uninteresting cast of characters I have ever played.
From that list Tokyo Xanadu is probably my top pick. I played the original version on vita, not the Ex+ version and wasn't "Blown away" by it, but it was alright. Since you already play the Trails games you'll see a familiar face or two in there as well which might be kind of nice. At the end of the day it's just a weird one-off experiment blending falcoms 2 flagship series (Ys and Trails) into 1 game.
Not a lot of it voice, by that u mean the English audio because the game has been fully voice for me for the 25 hours I play with Japanese audio so far, the cast full of new young Japanese actors did a really good job, I'm disappointed by the dead ends alot of them are lazy and weak compare to corpse party dead ends, the combat is enjoyable and the story was fun, not on the lvl of neptunia or fairy fencer but easily better than dark rose valkrie, dark rose valkrie was a disappointing mess to play through. Lily is best girl. Well dmc 5 right now is a blast to play and sekiro later this month will be a blast, than persona q2 and dragon ball heroes should be alot of fun early april, plenty of stuff to play
gotta be honest, as a person who hasn't played this game, im torn on this review. on the first hand, i'm hugely annoyed by wanabe writing experts who complain about "cliche anime tropes". but on the other hand, a lot of the issues you raise about the gameplay and level design are issues that i've seen in many other compile heart games. so i have no problem believing those particular points. i'll probably pass on this.
I'm honestly fine with tropes if they execute them well or they lead to something. It wasn't really the tropey characters that bothered me about the games narrative, more so it's random, out-of-nowhere plot direction changes. They felt forced. Un-earned. Like the game was trying to be bigger than it was. Had they kept on a smaller scale and just played into the tropes in more of a straight fashion I'd probably have enjoyed it more as a simple, light-hearted, JRPG romp.
The team that made the game is small. And their titles are niche. They dont make much of a profit. I researched the game before it game to the U.S. and knew it was going to be what it is. And i enjoyed it as such. A crazy unique japanese hot mess.
Why do JRPGS almost always have Shit level design. Like their level designers are shitty. I feel like its just a poor standard set in japan or by the JRPG genre. I know they have the tech now to make actual quality levels. Like the landscape always looks like how it did in JRPGS pre 2010. Like they just never left the past and said "good enough" Probably because a lot of JRPGS push out a new game every second. So it just saves them time, but smh. I feel like JRPGS are to over priced due to this. Sure the stories can be amazing but gameplay and game design always repeat across like all JRPGS.
I might have to brace for impact on this one.. but this game really did not do it for me as much as it did for everybody else... I'm gonna go duck and cover for a bit I think.
Honestly you can copy and paste this review for every compile heart game. Interesting game that isn't actually very good.
@@zempmasterz With few exceptions yeah. I still think mary skelter nightmares was really solid.
Trillion is pretty good too
@@kenzonhundredpower I see you have about 5 comments in my spam folder just calling people cunts and shit.
That's gonna be a "yikes" from me.
Since you spent so much time here responding to everybody in such a manner, I think I'll leave your comments in spam, unapproved. Have a good one!
@@kenzonhundredpower Idea Factor games are mediocre at best though..
2:50
Wait, you have a stat/skill called depression and you can upgrade it?
Consider me sold
Also, the plot is done very well and the entire game has a progressively metatextual theme that strikes home hard by the end. It's never very subtle about it but it's actually good writing -- for a thoroughly convoluted cyber-ghost-mystery plot. That it would've benefited from a more narrow focus (like the .hack games have an overall central focus that doesn't stray too far) is true. It's not bad but it's definitely not what one expects from the creator of Corpse Party, a VERY centrally focused ghost mystery
You are quickly becoming my fave RUclipsr. Keep up with the high quality content!!!
It’s a real shame this game wasn’t up to scratch... the aesthetic looks like a huge step up over the Neptunia games and Fairy Fencer F... I love how much “bigger” (in terms of scale) and softer everything looks... but I guess they put a bunch of effort into one or two environments and completely forgot about the rest. It also means nothing if the gameplay isn’t fun, so your criticisms seemed totally valid to me. I still have Mary Skelter and Megadimension VIIR to get through, so luckily I’m in no rush to get this one anyway lol
I guess for the most part, I agree with your general take away...kinda.
To start, as someone who has played most of their games, this is probably the most ambitious Compile Heart has felt in a quite the while.
I really liked the aesthetic and presentation. They took the theme of glitches/bugs in a video game and really went with it. From parts of the world randomly flickering on your screen, how the unnatural portions of the characters are filled with static and glitch out in their portraits, enemy designs sometimes partially missing textures or bulge with masses of polygons, etc. In some ways, it impressed me.
Not to forget the artwork by Kei Nanameda, the same person who did "Mary Skelter" and "Trillion", is just nice in general as usual, if not a tad overdesigned here or there. Can't say I was a fan of the glitched forms for example, which felt very out of place in how they were designed.
The story was also rather interesting, being this kind of supernatural mystery. Easily the darkest game CH have developed up to now if nothing else.
But that said, it's definitely not without it's issues, of which there are numerous. While the in-game and real world segments blend together well enough story-wise, the in-game parts felt rather lacking with the real world parts completely outshining them. But even then, the story overall kind of just falls apart by the end, feeling like a combination of being incomplete and rushed, which was a real shame.
So that's why I feel inclined to disagree with what you say at 2:50. Personally, I felt like the game was too short. That it needed more story events to ease in everything that was going on together and actually properly develop some things.
One of the main selling points were the Bad Ends but I don't think they were executed well at all. While a couple offered more intrigue and hints, most of them are just nonsensical, occur from contrived actions, and offered nothing of value.
And then there's the gameplay which I really didn't think was that good either. It starts out fine enough but battles quickly became tedious due to not really evolving and from poor balancing. Most of the gimmick mechanics were just kind of janky to use or completely worthless. I even managed to find an easily accessible exploit early on. I played most of the game on Normal but by around the end of Chapter 8, I set the game to Easy. Not because the game was hard, which it remotely wasn't, but so that I can progress more quickly.
In the end, the game was a better Visual Novel than it was an RPG. A nice effort that didn't quite hit most of the marks.
I got the limited edition. I preordered it from iffy's website store and got it a day early before actual release date. it's one of my favorite games so far by idea factory and compile heart along with mary skelter nightmares for the ps vita
Dude you are a good reviewer, the subscribers number does not do justice to this channel.
never heard of this game, but the art style looks cool. also good call on the ayreon shirt
Been anticipating your review as I saw you playing through this at the same time as me. I think you nailed the review. I really wanted to love this game and the first several hours I enjoyed quite a bit. But it really started to drag for me towards the middle of the game. The 2nd trip to the castle was near rage inducing for me, what a mess. I was also disappointed where the story ended up, I think it just went a bit off the rails the last quarter of the game. Overall I felt like it was a decent jrpg but nowhere near what I had hoped.
On a different note, I'm curious as to your thoughts on the neptunia series?
I'm about 15 hours into the game and I'm feeling like the ratio of visual novel to traditional JRPG is like 3 to 1. The dungeon crawling definitely feels like the worst part. One time I got lost in a dungeon because I wasn't clear that I was supposed to leave the dungeon. As for the battle system, there's too many abilities, and they aren't different enough. The voice acting though it's pretty good I think, and the story thus far has been interesting.
Honestly there was so much visual novel i had to put it down. I heard so much good stuff but I should've heeded the vn warning because it really is endless and relentless at times.i love classic jrpgs and I will try almost anything with those kind of mechanics but this just didn't work for me. Which is a shame because I bought 1 and 2. Maybe ill revisit them if I land in a major gaming drought.
I did not beat the game yet but I agree. Also the usual satyrical writing we all love about Compile is really not as strong here (if there's any at all): IF normally puts a smile on my face.. not this time around! This is perhaps the most low budget experiment IF ever put together... and it shows. Writing is also not bad (as usual with IF) and it kept me moderately hooked.. as a fan tho I expected the "new Neptunia" and this ain't it! well, let's see the end of it before Sekiro comes out...
Have to agree on the negative sentiment. Just finished the game and found it very meh in total for its ambitions. 5/10. It went worse the longer i played.
The story developments are just, like you said, random. The supernatural stuff is just 'there' but has no real impact outside of "uhhh spooky, okay, now lets get back to the story".
The VN parts are often a slog. The ending is an attempt at 4th wall break for the finale that i grow tired of since Nier;Automata and even Danganronpa have done way better jobs at it.
Then it is just a giant deus ex machina with unsatisfying conclusions. The battles were nice until chapter 6 were enemies became hp sponges and the "counter" mechanic became really annoying.
The areas are okay-ish for a compile heart game as you could go quickly through them, but the heartis palace was bad with the locked doors etc.
The only real fun was when i had to find out skill combos to get new skills.
One of the times were i was ready to be positively suprised but was even more disappointed than i expected.
My biggest gripe is how lazy the bad ends were visualized for how it is the main advertised "gimmick" of the game. Most of them are just black screen and 1-3 pages of text. How about some CGs at least?
I loved this game. And the sequel. I found both of them to be awesome and exactly what I was looking for in a game.
Pretty good review, I am actually interested in playing this game, though my copy haven't arrived yet, sadly. My main interests in this game is the Bad Ends, which are very rare in Japanese games because gory stuff are not their cup of tea. After watching your review, I probably will play at easy, but there is a question I want to ask. Is the difficulty selection different or worded different between the Japanese and the western version? For example, the game is easy in western, but normal in Japanese. Or Hard in Japanese, but normal in the western version.
Your opinion was what I was waiting for about getting this game. And it looks like maybe I did good not buying this day 1, maybe when it goes on discount.
I still want to play it, but I see it has a lot of problems so think I'll wait and hope it gets ported to PC.
Thanks for the heads up on having multiple save files. I would have been pissed the first few times, lol.
Shout out for the Ayreon shirt, those are some great albums.
One of my favourite musical projects. Arjen really knows how to put his scouted talents to use!
Compile heart games usually have a lot visual novel cut ins
I appreciate this review, I just got my Limited Run switch copy and look forward to playing but now with a more level head going in. 🤙 Subscribed for sure!
Thanks for saving me 20 bucks.
This was on sale today on a site I visit sometimes. Sure glad I looked at a review instead of just getting it lol.
This is such a great review, I just finished the game yesterday and I mostly agree with everything you had to say about the game. I even get the Nier reference about that specific piece of music, I though the same thing. Like you I was looking forward to this game after seeing the key artwork but unfortunately I was sorely disappointed this time. Hopefully the second one will be a better game. Subscribed.
personally i'm really liking it. yes the areas are repetitive, especially that castle area. but i love the battle system, it's really engaging, the music is pretty good to me, and the plotline has me in it's grips, honestly. this is a low budget game for sure, so folks should definitely keep that in mind. but for a budget game, there's a lot to love.
new around here
love your reviews man
very in depht but not too long perfect balance
keep it up
I think you can just say It's a IF/Compile Hearts game = a lot of reused assets / never worth full price. (doesn't mean I don't love them but I always wait until they're on massive sale)
I can't believe it! It's PORTALLIS - the game with a thousand locked doors!!! Isaac must be proud in Heaven as he plays this game from high above... XD
Was about to get this game with impressions of its interesting ideas but with this review good thing I didnt. Cons is just enough to warrant avoiding. Thanks for the great breakdown and review.
Any idea on how to fix fps on this game? Can only get 5-8 fps when I’m 4k. However, I cant even get more than 18 fps even when I have the lowest graphics settings. But have no problem running the second game on 4k.
compile heart magic
darn, I was hoping the game doesnt suck :(
Great video sir!
Oh by the way, Arjen Lucanssen(ayreon) is an extremely nice man. He encouraged me a lot to start my own musical career back in the day 😊
Thats awesome! I actually got to have a couple very brief conversations with him a few years back just over facebook (Back when I had a personal facebook account) and the dude is so humble and down to earth. Truly an inspiration and an icon. So glad to see how much his career has exploded over the last 5-10 years. When I found ayreon I felt like it was this little awesome thing that nobody knew about. Now he actually has some videos with 1 million views or more! Super proud of him.
@@TarksGauntlet Ayreon truly is a marvel :) I'll never forget hearing "Ride the Comet" as a 14 year old lad!
I have 3 compile heart /idea factory games I own and need to play. I'lk wait for a sale for this one. Thanks for the review.
I haven't finished the game yet, but I enjoy it this far, I did hate that Forest place with the portals lol, I do agree with the enemies feeling like a drag eventually, but idk I like the mystery of the story, it's a little more of a tension kind of thing, that and the art is what interested me in the first place.
I like the game but you made a good review my friend.
I think everyone will agree that Chapter 10-11 killed the entire game's story.
Why, what happens?
I love Hyperdimension Neptunia and I was unaware of Mary Skelter: Nightmares, I have all 3 Vita, Switch, and Steam, so thanks for th eheads up on that, it seems there's a Mary Skelter 2 for the Switch hmm
Will u be reviewing the sequel that came out a few weeks ago? Thanks.=)
If Neptunia and Death end re quest made a crossover between them
Man, it kinda messed up when thinking about it.
Neptunia casts? They are goddess right? While most DeRQ casts is just a mortals who happens to be nearly corrupted by a bug's.. so I wonder what happen if they meet an immortal being.. kinda messed up
I don't think that they will ever do a crossover between Neptunia and death request the two of them are just so far different InDesign story and plot that it would just not mesh well at all and let me ask you this would you want to see the CPUs and CPU candidates getting murdered in the most brutal way possible and having an image scarred into your mind have your favorite character from Hyperdimension having her entrails yanked out or her head bit off and her body flung through the air and seen nothing more than a headless corpse bleeding out on the ground or seeing her being stabbed to death by one of the villains because that's the type of shit you're going to see with a crossover like that death request is horror movie type shit from slasher flicks two straight up monster horror movie I've already seen what happens to Lily in death request 1 and Jesus Christ it was straight up gruesome and horrific the bad ends in the game are ridiculously dark and gruesome and if you are not mentally prepared it will psychologically scar you just the dialogue of Lily screaming in agony as she was being brutally murdered sent chills down my spine and then it showed the image of what they did to her it was utterly fucked up if you do try to question what I've seen in this game look up the videos for this game of death request and search for all of the Bad Endings you will see what I mean that there should be no collaboration between the two games it would not mix well
I was able to platinum this game in one playthrough and using a guide
You'd have to redo the end a few tines though yeah? There's a few different character endings I believe but I'm not 100% sure how they decide which one you get. I never got all of them.
8:31 so Arata Mizunashi is like Jack from Mary Skelter?
Kind of. I'm noticing a bit of a recurring theme in some JRPGs where the male characters are always aiding battle from the sidelines and that's about it.
I'm in the sky capital and enjoying the game greatly yea some of the systems are repetitive but I dont think that a pitfall any game can avoid cause even nicer automata gameplay gets repetitive but its still enjoyable and the occult sections are very interesting to me so the game has flaws but I think it's worth the play and I hope death end request 2 can maybe have more variety in its enemy and dungeon designs
And that is why I've subscribed to you because you get me LOL I was just about to buy this title as well and it seems as though you save me money once again
I hate that I'm always interested in IF CH games.
I've owned all 3 Agarest War games for years, haven't bothered getting past Gen 2 in game 1.
I've tried to get into the Neptunia series a few times.
Cross Edge has Ar Tonelico characters, one of my favorite PS2 JRPG's of all time, but I can not get into the battle system.
I really wanted to like Trillion, but I've stopped playing at around the 3rd overlord.
Every single IF CH game has amazing ideas, which are held back by really bad item/skill management that takes 90% of the game, and strange quirky gameplay that seems like you'd need to invest 100+ hours in just to begin to understand them. I have a wide array of interest in games, and just don't have the kind of time to invest into learning the systems in CH games anymore, especially when I have stupidly high quality alternatives such as Trails of Cold Steel, Super Robot Wars T, Valkyria Chronicles 4, Persona 5, etc to play. After playing an absolute masterpiece like Trails of Cold Steel, it's so hard to try and play a mediocre at best game like any of the CH games.
Those top tier waifu's always trying to claw at me to spend more money on games I'll never finish though.
How dare u insult kingand hards, i sent lawyer 2 u
Seriously though, i clicked cuz i wanted to knoe what this game is and youve told me in a very nice way. Thank you.
Good and I have it game and don’t worry my level 361
just seconds in & already knew this is compile heart game LOL
I only started playing this game, I think it is ok for what it is, but yeah I can see what you mean about it taking itself seriously like how KH usually does (though the story is not really so complicated like KH, it is more of an isekai story). The battle system is sort of similar to Mugen Souls, but without alot of secrets from what I can tell. It actually is sort of like playing a VN, though I don't think it is that bad.
Thanks for the review! Saw it discounted on Steam but like any game that is primarily marketed with 2D anime art, I was wary of whether it would contain substance.
On a sidenote, does anyone know the music at 3:55? I love the gothic style melody there,
Never mind my re;Quest - I found that it's track 13 on the game's OST.
I really enjoy your channel. Kinda new here. This game looks interesting to me..I'll probably wait until it's cheap to check it out.
I saw the gameplay and instantly knew this is from the team that does those HyperDimensionNeptunia games.
They play em' for the waifus, thats literally it_
obrigado pela analise,me ajudou muito
Speaking of Nier, I think the idea of combining different combat systems can definitely work well just like Automata. It just needs good implementation, where it seems this game failed at.
IF games are always lackluster. Not surprised.
I give it a 8/10, high quality IF shitpost
I like some of the mechanics here, but it's a shame they couldn't add up to a better overall game.
Gonna try this game out after I finish FF8!
thanks. good review, saved me $25.
I did quite enjoy this game in both design and story I did feel something could have been done better but the premise while in line with shows like .hack and sao I felt it did a better job with portraying the risk and I loved the Ludens and Alice in wonderland motif they had
...better than .hack?
I like the mechanics of this game overall and found them to be interesting at first, but for whatever reason, it didn't keep me hooked.
wow loved this very balanced review. thumbs up +1
looks like a neptunia re skin just like fairy fencer is a neptunia re skin
The game is coming to steam soon and watched some videos on it so Im probably still gonna get it. Just hope it works unlike the game trillion on steam for some reason I couldnt get that to work and there was no solutions online. So I just refunded that. However other idea factory ganes atleast the ones Ive played which isnt many have worked kinda offtopic.
Crystar will be better, keep the faith...
Hopefully crystar comes to the west.
Are you ever going to review any of the Neptunia games?
It's a big "Maybe."
I was offered a review code for one of the last ones but turned it down as I have too much catching up to do to comfortably jump into the new games. I'm working on picking up physical copies of the whole series (I only have the first 3 on ps3) for some hopeful future plans, but god knows what/when that plan will be.
@@TarksGauntlet
To be entirely honest, I'm kind of hoping you never do.
Between just not even being that great overall and the terrible stagnation it's been in for a while now, I legitimately fear for any newcomers jumping into the series nowadays. To this day, I still don't understand how it managed to get as renown and popular(?) as it did, even though I am a big fan of it regardless.
Though admittedly, I'm probably just being a big baby as the series has long since become a real sore topic for me.
Thank you for this review, man.
I was interested in this one as well and, though it has some cool ideas and i love the art, I don't think it's worth it at full price.
Just to let anyone know who has not played this game before this game is actually m-rated and is extremely graphic and dark as hell it's like watching a horror movie in anime form the opening story cutscene of the opening prologue is extremely graphic and dark and straight-up gruesome and like I said before this game was rated T for teen but it's actually a m rated game whoever rated this game T for teen should have been fired
Is it bad I was more excited for this review then playing the game lol.
I'd love to test this kind of games if they weren't so fucking expensive. In my contry I must pay additional tax in this buy so I can't buy it.
You play as Rem and your goal is to get Subaru
Where tf are you supposed to get the disc copy of this game and it's sequel. Amazon doesn't have any new copies and the used ones are just too much for a used copy.
Could check Idea Factories online store. They might still have some.
story wise this seems rather interesting!
I think I will disagree
This was one of the best stories you can ever find on the Anime industry, and yeah, I have seen quite out of anime in my life.
When I completed the game, I felt so fucking good just because the story had me surprising me so bad I Shouted like a crazy person when a certain scene was in the game...
See I can see some people feeling that way, but for me it just felt like it was trying way too hard to have surprises and they never felt earned or like they fit in well with the narrative. But to each their own.
I don't know if I should give this game a chance.
The game is so-so, it has a few stupid difficulty spikes, elemental advantage isn't really much useful and the dungeons are way too bigger than necessary, there is a genre-shift mechanic, not very equilibrated but still pretty fun and creative, definetively a plus, the small billars gimmick also makes the battles a little more interessing
I recomend if you care more about the plot of the game, is mysterious and very good, it may get you hooked until the end. Basically, a so-so gameplay with a marvelous plot.
I have been playing it and I'm enjoying it quite a lot. Thanks for the review but I completely disagree with you this game is fun in my opinion. The story is my favorite part of this game.
No worries at all dude! It just really wasn't clicking for me, but I believe I am in the minority on this one at least. It seemed to review mostly well, even if I can't fully see why myself.
@@TarksGauntlet Different strokes for different folks. 😁 I still love your reviews man cheers!
Dang, I was gonna get this but I have $10 left after buying FFX.
This is Compile Heart, your argument is invalid (jk
But seriously, CH's budget is small enough, this is basically at their limit.
I always appreciate how hard they try, but I feel they'd make a better game if they dialed some aspects back and narrowed their focus on just doing a couple things really well, rather than a lot in a lack-luster manner. It worked for Mary Skelter after all.
But then again, this is what they built their empire on, and those neptunia games (And merch) are sure raking in some cash.
Devoid of life and creativity?
I'm pretty sure that's intentional to represent what's happening to the game (it's slowly falling apart and being destroyed). Compile Heart has always done visual representations of their games via level design. They always do.
Have you played any other Compile Heart JRPGs? If you have, then which one was your favorite?
Favorite is easily Mary Skelter Nightmares
@@TarksGauntlet I haven't played that one yet. I'll have to look into it.
"It doesn't tell you when you have to switch over to Mizunashi's side to progress the story" You mean how there's a cutscene or dialogue cue suggesting exactly that almost every single time you find a "clue" in the gameplay portion? Or how the game lets you switch on-the-fly and in-tutorial encourages you to check back frequently? The game has flaws (mainly with level design) but come on
Almost every time =/= every time. Quite a few times they just leave you high and dry. It's pretty annoying when it happens. You might not like that I draw attention to this inconvenience, but it's part of reviewing a game honestly. I don't really have much choice.
My point is that, after the first few times of them all but outright stating "It's a dead end; time to switch over to the real world" it becomes a trained habit in the player to periodically switch over, especially if you find a locked door you can't open or a clue. It's not totally directionless, like Harmony of Dissonance can be, about what to do next since it becomes a regular thing at that point. What IS vague is the True End requirements. Now THAT is a bunch of high-and-dry jackassery that pretty much expects you to look it up on the net because there's just no way anyone would figure it out, let alone know how to get all the required death ends, on their own.
@@morenojames5868 Yeah, this studio has a recurring problem with it's true end requirements.
This looks like modern jrpgs the game.
Why can’t we go back to the snes/ps1 golden age?
DS and 3DS produced some good JRPGs, but the Vita/PS4 have been full of absolute junk tier soulless hyper-anime games.
Aww man...Mary Skelter Nightmares is one of my favs by Compile Heart, and i'm saddened to see that Death End Re:quest doesn't match or exceed what Compile Heart has shown they are capable of producing. Guess we should REquest REfunds eh? Sorry; i couldn't help myself with that one lol. I enjoyed your review (as always). i "might" give the game a try if it's on Steam for a deep discount (if it's only on PS4 then that's a no-go til i get a PS4 in the far flung future) if only for the battle system itself.
I still don't get how people are confused by KHs plot. If you didn't play all the games you shouldn't expect to understand everything lol
I mean this is idea factory. they reused assets throughout all of the neptunia games and even fairy fencer
really? i don't see that.
@@rjc523 you dont? rebirths 1 and 3 were practically the same game with a different story
is this game going to be realesd on pc?
Seems likely. Most compile heart games seem to go there now-a-days.
Tarks Gauntlet
cool
moods can improve on some stuff lets say on the empty map.
anywho grate review and thank you for your answere.
i am waiting for this game even with all the cons you stated it still sound like a good game
@@abattleborn it's announced for PC already. It'll be a bit, but it's coming.
@@TarksGauntlet
i highly appreciate you going out of your way to inform me,thank you
I couldn't get into this game it has waaaaay too much dialouge about an hour and a half in I just stopped playing it, It was like watching a movie rather than playing it
Its like playing a text adventure game in some instances, I’m a bit of fan of text adventures and just laugh at the plot when the visual novel scene kicks in. I give a 8/10
@@_____._..--_ I just wished that the dialogue was more paced out if it were I would've given it a chance
Is she a punk rocker?
Honestly, I didn't get far in this game. I really felt like the dialogue in each scene dragged on for much longer than necessary and had me wishing to skip scenes just to advance the plot. At this point, I am really tired of these copy paste issekai stories. The dual pro-tags was an interesting concept,but, honestly I could not deal with how empty and unpolished this game felt.
Hack. G.u. reboot
I skipped this as soon as I heard it was 90% VN and 10% gameplay despite me waiting for it anxiously.....kinda the same deal as Blazblue Chronophantasma and Central Fiction, once I saw that they were more VN than fighting unlike first 2 Blazblues, I just stopped despite loving the story as a whole.....
I have it exactly the opposite :) sad to hear you didnt enjoy the games though
@@jackoblllllllll Oh I beat them both and enjoyed the story thankfully but it did take me longer. Izanami helped make CF more hype to keep going lol, my fav character
Why did you call the battle system innovative? Based on the footage you showed...Its litterally just a neptunia game. Oh look, its even made by the same Developer/Publisher as neptunia games. It's...It's an IF game, much like Fairy Fencer or the like 20 different neptunia games. Its nothing new, this battle system has been used by this developer since the PS3 era.
So, you gonna ignore the Genre Shift huh?
When you copy .hack, but mess up.
This is one of the JRPGs currently in consideration for being my next game after Ryza 2, the others are: Dragon Star Vanir, Caligula Effect Overdose, Tokyo Xanadu eX+ and Crystar. I don´t expect them to blow my mind that´s what the trails series is for, but I at least want them to be better then Tokyo Mirage Sessions FE which is probably the JRPG with the most boring story and uninteresting cast of characters I have ever played.
From that list Tokyo Xanadu is probably my top pick. I played the original version on vita, not the Ex+ version and wasn't "Blown away" by it, but it was alright. Since you already play the Trails games you'll see a familiar face or two in there as well which might be kind of nice. At the end of the day it's just a weird one-off experiment blending falcoms 2 flagship series (Ys and Trails) into 1 game.
Not a lot of it voice, by that u mean the English audio because the game has been fully voice for me for the 25 hours I play with Japanese audio so far, the cast full of new young Japanese actors did a really good job, I'm disappointed by the dead ends alot of them are lazy and weak compare to corpse party dead ends, the combat is enjoyable and the story was fun, not on the lvl of neptunia or fairy fencer but easily better than dark rose valkrie, dark rose valkrie was a disappointing mess to play through. Lily is best girl. Well dmc 5 right now is a blast to play and sekiro later this month will be a blast, than persona q2 and dragon ball heroes should be alot of fun early april, plenty of stuff to play
Looks boring.i dont know how you manage to play this for 40 hrs
gotta be honest, as a person who hasn't played this game, im torn on this review. on the first hand, i'm hugely annoyed by wanabe writing experts who complain about "cliche anime tropes". but on the other hand, a lot of the issues you raise about the gameplay and level design are issues that i've seen in many other compile heart games. so i have no problem believing those particular points. i'll probably pass on this.
I'm honestly fine with tropes if they execute them well or they lead to something. It wasn't really the tropey characters that bothered me about the games narrative, more so it's random, out-of-nowhere plot direction changes. They felt forced. Un-earned. Like the game was trying to be bigger than it was. Had they kept on a smaller scale and just played into the tropes in more of a straight fashion I'd probably have enjoyed it more as a simple, light-hearted, JRPG romp.
The team that made the game is small. And their titles are niche. They dont make much of a profit. I researched the game before it game to the U.S. and knew it was going to be what it is. And i enjoyed it as such. A crazy unique japanese hot mess.
Compa Desu~
You miss good points, and bad points (counter action) but good review over all
I mention the counters when talking about knockback and knockback chains. I just don't spend much time on it.
Why do JRPGS almost always have Shit level design. Like their level designers are shitty. I feel like its just a poor standard set in japan or by the JRPG genre. I know they have the tech now to make actual quality levels. Like the landscape always looks like how it did in JRPGS pre 2010. Like they just never left the past and said "good enough" Probably because a lot of JRPGS push out a new game every second. So it just saves them time, but smh. I feel like JRPGS are to over priced due to this. Sure the stories can be amazing but gameplay and game design always repeat across like all JRPGS.
un commentaire
nep nep :D
thanks for having me saved 20 bucks on one of the worst jrpgs. wow