Its very hard for me to recommend this game, but I wouldn't necessarily say its a bad game so I don't want to give it a negative review, another example of a game I wish I can give a middle of the road, mixed, whatever kind of review because just a simple positive or negative doesn't speak fully of my opinion. This is a game that only certain people will enjoy. I didn't mean to write a large review here but I guess I just had THAT much to say after my first playthrough.
[h3] So here's the TLDR: [/h3]
[b] The gameplay I think is actually pretty fun, the story is the worst part of the game for me and part of it is due to the writing, pacing, and ridiculous use of violence. [/b]
Firstly, the main reason I got this was because I adore Compile Heart games, so if you like Neptunia or Fairy Fencer F, you'll feel at home here.
That's a far as I can recommend it though, as the story, violence, and patterns left me bored, cringed, and annoyed. I have some positives to say but first, here's what bugged me.
The story has a promising premise. You play as a developer for this cancelled, very buggy MMO, one of your co-workers goes missing and you find her trapped in the game world. This leads into a bunch of mysteries about the game company kidnapping people to train an advanced AI. So the game has RPG sections where you're playing as the girl trying to get to the end of the game while you occasionally switch to the game dev perspective to solve more of the mystery. Again, fine enough premise. The problem is that, as you get deeper into the game, the more convoluted and busy it becomes with too much going on and not enough time to properly explain things. For example (very heavy spoilers) [spoiler] the game dev character finds out that one of his other co-workers is actually an angel that's been secretly helping you solve the mystery all this time, also she can freeze time, also she gives you the power to control the world as if it was a game via coding, and then she dies because she broke a rule of the world or something?? And this is all happening while the game world is fusing with the real world. [/spoiler] And that's just one example of many times I just completely clocked out emotionally.
The game has dialogue scenes with overly violent things going on in it, Higurashi levels more or less. It very rarely shows what that violence is, rather it would describe what's happening in the scene and that was enough for me to be entirely put off by it. For example, this is very late in the game, but there's a scene where a girl is [spoiler] stripped half naked, covered in blood, her finger nails peeled off, while being threated to pull her teeth out, among other things [/spoiler] again, this scene is not shown, it is described to you via a voiced character which is just as disgusting to hear. So if you're not into detailed violent scenes at the expense of characters you're supposed to like, then maybe don't play this.
The game falls into a very predictable pattern, the pattern changes in the later half but it mostly boils down to you exploring a dungeon, finding a mystery object, then going into the real world, sitting through maybe 15 minutes of dialogue, then you go back into the game world to continue dungeon exploring, maybe find another mystery object or two, until you fight a boss and repeat the process for the next dungeon. This pattern changes into a more annoying plot related pattern where you go BACK to previously explored dungeons, find a new plot important item, party members lose control of themselves and you have to fight them, this happens for nearly every character and the reason, the outcome, and the pay off is just annoying, the latter half of the story is the lowest part for me, just not enjoyable.
While I mentioned earlier that you switch from RPG to VN some times to solve the mystery, what I actually meant was that you just sit there and watch as the characters figure out the mystery because there's no actually input when it comes to the characters doing detective work. No, the only times you have different dialogue options is when its a life or death situation for the most part, and choosing the wrong option just straight up gives you a game over, and when that happens, you HAVE to reload your last save, so you need to save VERY OFTEN because you don't know when the next death option will come. Even when you think there's an obvious choice to make, sometimes that choice is the death option. Thankfully, the game lets you save during dialogue (sometimes, I don't know why it blocks it for some scenes).
My last issue I will put out there with the game is that the difficulty jumps a lot from dungeon to dungeon, and I don't think grinding levels will help you if you're struggling in a particular fight, why do I say this? Because I ended my first playthrough with my characters over level 100 with some stats maxing out to 999 and I was STILL STRUGGLING. You might take this as a challenge and see it as a positive, which is fine, not my personal cup of tea but if you want the challenge by all means, go for it.
Now I know I just gave a lot of my issues with the game but I do have some good things to say about it. The combat itself can be fun, again if you like Neptunia or Fairy Fencer F, this isn't far from your comfort zone. The only difference is that characters have knockback on some attacks and that launches the enemies back, making them bounce around the arena, dealing extra damage each time they hit a wall, another party member (in which it extends the knockback) or an enemy. I would describe it as "Pool Combat" because that's kind of what you're doing and its nice to get that extra damage off.
The game also has a unique combat ability where the game dev character can insert new code during combat. This can affect your characters stats, you can summon previous bosses as familiars to help in battle, or the main selling point of the game: "Changing game genre". If you change the game's genre, the current character you're controlling will have you play the combat differently. For example, if you pick Shooter, you go into first person and use SP as bullets to hit enemies. Or if you pick Action, you control the character freely in the arena as you bounce on enemies heads for extra damage. There's a few of these and some are definitely better than others but they're all fun to use every once a while.
This game's version of HDD forms are "Glitch Forms", which can only happen when a characters corruption stat is above 80%, in which they will automatically enter Glitch Mode. During this state, the character deals a lot more damage and gains access to their most overpowered skill as a final attack. But how do you raise corruption? Every time combat starts, you'll see a random assortment of objects throughout the arena, if you run into these objects, they'll break, deal damage, and raise that characters corruption stat as well as inflict other effects, such as a stat buff / debuff / or status effect. I see it as a neat way to give yourself an overpowered option at a risky cost, you can also knock enemies into these objects and deal extra damage for each one they run into.
A lot of my positive points towards this game is when I'm actually playing it, when I have to sit through the dialogue and story, that's when the game loses me. So I guess in that sense, I'm giving this a positive for the actual gameplay, but anything to do with the plot or story is not for me, and personally speaking, I cannot see anyone of my friends enjoying it either, mainly because of its ridiculous use of violence.
