Going to try and write a review for Blanc Game this week, I still need to review Megadimension too...written reviews are still really new to me. I mostly just do quick look videos.
The Nep side games generally feel like Compile Heart have little to no input in them considering how the characters and world are always off. I gave PP and U a pass since they were seemingly cheap throwaway spinoffs, but from Noire being awful it's clear something is amiss with how the non-CH games are handled.
And I'm not surprised she's the worst if they just reused the same attacks as in U, her and Famitsu were the only two characters that didn't have broken invincible infinite loops.
The side games definitely need more teamwork. I felt Neptunia U had decent writing, for how little there was of it, but this one's definitely missing a lot of the humor (and has less paired-up quotes too which is a shame).
Nah, they have decent rebalancing and no one has infinite loops anymore (and loops matter less anyway, since big bosses don't have hitstun). Blanc is just REALLY slow and doesn't output enough damage to compensate that I can tell (TBH I've never even tried her against a big boss)
Uzume is unfortunately pretty slow too. The other newcomers seem alright, though they're given little screentime. (also, for once, Iris Heart only attacks bad guys--WHAT A NOVEL CONCEPT).
I do recommend that people try characters other than the main CPUs + Nepgear, I see very little diversity beyond those characters online in both Japanese and English (review) releases so far. Uni seems quite good, I'm trying to level my Uni now.
An annoyance is the game has a slow leveling curve and a ton of characters, so you basically lock yourself into a character when playing online or doom yourself to grinding. The game would be better if level 50 were the max IMO (and stat scaling adjusted to 50 levels instead of 99). You can reasonably hit 50 in a few days of play, 99 basically requires a couple hours of super boring grinding or many more hours of actual play.
You don't really NEED to be level 99, but it's frustrating to switch to a new character to have some fun and find they're massively underpowered.
This is a bizarre design choice. Maybe they couldn't secure more voice acting and there's always the discussion of scenes without dubbing that they decided to throw in the Japanese ones? I wouldn't say it's awful, just... jarring.
I was gonna get two versions of this game but I'm not sure it'll be worth £60 for a subpar story and to play multiplayer. How would you guys rate the SEGA game versus the rest of the spin offs? That one interests me the most.
There's only like 10 scenes and they're very hard to get on accident, leaving them silent wouldn't have hurt but honestly it couldn't have been that much of a budget-breaker to voice them IMO. It's just one of those annoying things that really drive home the lower budget (without seeming very reasonable) that makes the presentation look bad. IMO leaving the Eng VAs saying "SO NE!" is worse too, I dunno what the fuck is up with that.
Why two versions? I definitely think it's worth a play for the online (and I recommend playing that as soon as possible because online is increasingly hard to play for any game that's not an FPS as the release date slips away). But they clearly aren't taking the side games very seriously yet.
I just hope they're finally taking side games seriously by the time Vert gets one.
I would say the Sega Girls game is probably the best spin off but I have no concept of how good the writing is, other than the chrono trigger and Sonic Adventure vibes are nice. If it's story is as bland as Blanc's I dunno, there's no clear winner. SeHa has the same problem all the other side games have, some really great ideas and some very visible lack of polish that drags them down.
I really hope the main and "side game" teams collaborate much more for future entries, the Rebirths have a bunch of problems that really drag down what should be the definitive games to play and improvements one team makes don't end up in the others' games (V2's quality of life features are missing in rebirth, Rebirth 3's quest item finding thing is absent in V2). It'd be a real shame if Game 5 doesn't have Sega Hard Girls' extra mobility options, moving through stages is finally kinda fun.
