Perhaps the biggest issue I have with the game is with the writing. The game’s message is about valuing connections you have and making friends, which is a fine one. However, the execution is quite poor. The game’s story follows a formula of finding various rebelling generals, fighting them and them joining your party. These events are followed by short scenes of Noire and them…….. bonding? And most of these are excuses for good ol’ fanservice.
For disclaimer, I am largely indifferent towards fanservice. Just like many things in media, it is something that can be done well or poorly, and is ultimately subjective. However, I genuinely think the fanservice in [b]Hyperdevotion Noire: Goddess Black Heart[/b] hurts the game. Some of these events make me wonder why these people would be on the same team. The worst example of this is with Generia G, who kidnaps Noire and strips her and shackles her, because she wants to turn her into a mecha. Thankfully, the light goes out, but then Generia G simply ditches Noire in the dark room. Is this supposed to be funny? Maybe arousing to some people, but I don’t see this pair becoming friends. Noire should place a restraining order on her. Or her getting sexually assaulted a few times. Noire herself isn’t much better, with her embarrassing some of them, like challenging Lee Fi to a beauty contest involving bikinis, or challenging the “pure” idol Ai Musujima to some kind of competition… in swimsuits of course. Sure hope it doesn’t slip off!
The ONLY event that felt genuine was with Little Rain, the last general you recruit. At this point I was shaking in anticipation, what kind of fetish are they gonna try next? They were going to shop for clothing, so, skimpy outfits? Then it started raining, now what? Transparent outfits? But… no! Little Rain and Noire have a heartfelt conversation when hiding from the rain. I was genuinely shocked, it felt like these two could actually become friends. This shows that the writers COULD write genuine interactions like these, but chose not to, and I think the game would’ve been much better if it was honest about its messaging.
Even outside of these events, I found the writing to be generally quite boring. There’s a lot of yapping and not a lot of good humor, not to mention how formulaic it becomes with generals, like I get it, no peaceful resolution, FIGHT! I did find occasional events at the CPU Hotel to be much more enjoyable and they generally portray bonding much better than the majority of the main story.
I could’ve forgiven the game for its writing, I would’ve still criticized it, but at least you can skip the cutscenes, as long as the gameplay is good. Unfortunately, there are many problems. One of the biggest ones is the act of movement. It’s very rigid, your characters will generally only turn once, and you have to manually rotate the character because they will always start moving forward if not obstructed. This is a problem, because one of the game’s mechanics is various tiles that hurt you or waste your turn when you step on them. Since you can’t move the cursor in a way that dictates how your characters move, you’ll have to spend several turns walking around these obstructions, which turns some maps into a slog. The “best” part about these tiles however is that the enemies completely ignore them. That’s right, they won’t get hurt or stunned or anything, this is straight up unfair. The only reason I could think of why they didn’t implement that is because they didn’t have the time/didn’t want to code more complex AI. The game actually tutorializes moves that knock enemies backwards, with electrical fences that do damage, and when you try to knock them into these bad tiles, nothing happens which is very frustrating – there aren’t that many levels where you can knock enemies into electric fences.
The game doesn’t make it easy to actually strategize. You can’t for instance press a button when hovering over one enemy to see their attributes and skills. You have to open the menu, then go check all units, then switch from your units to theirs, and then choose the one you want to check, it’s a mess. There’s an affinity wheel like in most of these kinds of games, and I kept forgetting what beats what, it would’ve been nice to have it always be present on-screen during battle. There are WAY too many status ailments, whopping 18 to keep track of, and they are imbalanced. Also, I wish more games took note from [b]Fire Emblem: Awakening[/b] and included an ability to pin enemy movements.
There’s a height aspect to the game, where some characters can jump and fall from higher heights than others, and it’s more of a hindrance than anything. Some of the levels are designed in a way that has you carrying crates around, and it’s not very fun, because you usually can’t do anything until you create a makeshift staircase.
This PC port is quite poor. The game breaks when tabbing out, but in windowed mode, trying to take screenshots leaves a large black area, as if it tries to match full resolution. The sound engineering is messed up, I noticed that the audio would occasionally stutter, and it’s clear the music doesn’t loop properly, the tracks simply start over. Some tracks are a bit better at attempting to “loop” seamlessly, others not so much, like the victory theme, which loops a few times, and then just restarts in the middle of one.
As a palette cleanser, let me tell you about things that I liked. I like the lily bond system. By having characters near each other, you can receive a smooch from adjacent units that reduces SP and lily point cost, and makes the skills more powerful, which can be pretty useful, this introduces a nice risk vs reward system, where you can leave yourself vulnerable to big attacks that hit multiple units, but the benefits are also great. You acquire lily points with smooches, which can be used for very powerful skills, which are satisfying to use. This also has benefits in the longterm, the more smooches characters receive, the more their bond strengthens, giving greater benefits.
I appreciate the amount of playable units, there are whopping 22 in the base game, they feel balanced enough, with unique character designs, animations and quirks. I also like how each character has a set of Character Challenges. They are all the same, but they reward you for various stuff, even something as basic as simply walking a set of tiles grants permanent stat boosts, this reminds me of [b]Rune Factory[/b] games, particularly later entries where you also get better simply by walking, pretty neat.
I would lie if I said I didn’t have [i]some[/i] fun with the game. When the gameplay works, it’s a pretty chill experience, and there are ideas I like. But I can’t in good conscience recommend this game. The writing is pretty bad for the most part, and while you can skip the story, you can’t skip the gameplay, and there are many problems. It messes up something as basic as an act of movement. The game is clunky when it comes to actually strategizing. Some of the mechanics hurt the game more than enhance it. There’s actually more problems that I didn’t describe, like some terrible level design and poor AI. Noire doesn’t deserve this game, and neither do you.
