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chuckroYou are the Absolute Victory Unlosing Ranger! …a title you’ve held for about five minutes, since the previous one was hit by a car. But no matter! Darkdeath Evilman is going to kill the Super Baby and take over the world! You need to stop him! Except, y’know, that he can kill you in a single attack.
Upon your defeat, you’re transported to the Bizzaro World, a pseudo-afterlife, pseudo-alternate dimension where heroes are trained. In each chapter, you return to return to the real world to fight Darkdeath Evilman…and lose. Before this, in each chapter, the bizarro counterparts of people in the real world need to be saved (or killed) to affect their real-world counterparts and bring hope to the real world despite the Unlosing Ranger’s defeat.
In the continuing saga of “Nippon Ichi makes games other than their standard tactical genre” comes…a roguelike! Though in this case, though you are still expected to die a lot and lose all your levels and equipment when you do, it’s modeled more on the kinder, Mysterious Dungeon-style roguelikes to begin with (there’s a home base where you can store items and synth them together when you successfully bring them back, etc.) and you have a “Total Level” which influences your starting stats every time you return to level 1. I think the key here is that the gameplay is mimicking a roguelike, but the total game experience—including the character customization and general grind—is still the standard NIS SRPG model. There are a zillion ways to soup up your character and your equipment, and you can grind, grind, grind your way to victory if you want to sink the time in.
In that vein, you have to watch your HP in dungeons (it gradually restores over time), and also your EN (which functions as a hunger meter and also your MP, similar to the Izuna games). Getting the helmet that halves EN decreases helps a lot. Weapons wear out really, really quickly. A worn-out weapon loses its special abilities and is really only good for throwing (or repairing, if you can get it back to the base). The strategy revolves around the delayed-setup of special attacks (and their ability to stun monsters weak to them); and the limited range of monster aggro, which makes large rooms of monsters (like the first boss room) are much more tactical, ordered affairs.
The menus are similar to Disgaea, and the style of humor is their usual fourth-wall-shattering style. (The NIS America translators do a truly marvelous job.)
I think my issue is that, at least for me, all of this doesn’t add up into something I want to sink the time into. The cutscenes are very cute and there’s plenty of variety of setup and things to try to min/max, but the actual dungeons get very repetitive very quickly. They’re either too easy to blast through (if you’re strong enough) or nerve-wracking because a monster you don’t spot might kill you in a single special attack. Also, there’s a big reliance on random drops (as with any roguelike) that limits the customization all of the various options supposedly allow—unless you’re willing to grind the already-repetitive dungeons over and over. I really wasn’t interested in playing this for more than an hour at a time in any one shot because of that.
Overall: I’d love to read a Let’s Play of the cutscenes, and the game itself is fun for a few hours, but it turns out that adding the ability to grind your way to victory doesn’t really improve my opinion of the roguelike model. If you like the Mysterious Dungeon series or the Izuna games, though, you’d probably love this.
Upon your defeat, you’re transported to the Bizzaro World, a pseudo-afterlife, pseudo-alternate dimension where heroes are trained. In each chapter, you return to return to the real world to fight Darkdeath Evilman…and lose. Before this, in each chapter, the bizarro counterparts of people in the real world need to be saved (or killed) to affect their real-world counterparts and bring hope to the real world despite the Unlosing Ranger’s defeat.
In the continuing saga of “Nippon Ichi makes games other than their standard tactical genre” comes…a roguelike! Though in this case, though you are still expected to die a lot and lose all your levels and equipment when you do, it’s modeled more on the kinder, Mysterious Dungeon-style roguelikes to begin with (there’s a home base where you can store items and synth them together when you successfully bring them back, etc.) and you have a “Total Level” which influences your starting stats every time you return to level 1. I think the key here is that the gameplay is mimicking a roguelike, but the total game experience—including the character customization and general grind—is still the standard NIS SRPG model. There are a zillion ways to soup up your character and your equipment, and you can grind, grind, grind your way to victory if you want to sink the time in.
In that vein, you have to watch your HP in dungeons (it gradually restores over time), and also your EN (which functions as a hunger meter and also your MP, similar to the Izuna games). Getting the helmet that halves EN decreases helps a lot. Weapons wear out really, really quickly. A worn-out weapon loses its special abilities and is really only good for throwing (or repairing, if you can get it back to the base). The strategy revolves around the delayed-setup of special attacks (and their ability to stun monsters weak to them); and the limited range of monster aggro, which makes large rooms of monsters (like the first boss room) are much more tactical, ordered affairs.
The menus are similar to Disgaea, and the style of humor is their usual fourth-wall-shattering style. (The NIS America translators do a truly marvelous job.)
I think my issue is that, at least for me, all of this doesn’t add up into something I want to sink the time into. The cutscenes are very cute and there’s plenty of variety of setup and things to try to min/max, but the actual dungeons get very repetitive very quickly. They’re either too easy to blast through (if you’re strong enough) or nerve-wracking because a monster you don’t spot might kill you in a single special attack. Also, there’s a big reliance on random drops (as with any roguelike) that limits the customization all of the various options supposedly allow—unless you’re willing to grind the already-repetitive dungeons over and over. I really wasn’t interested in playing this for more than an hour at a time in any one shot because of that.
Overall: I’d love to read a Let’s Play of the cutscenes, and the game itself is fun for a few hours, but it turns out that adding the ability to grind your way to victory doesn’t really improve my opinion of the roguelike model. If you like the Mysterious Dungeon series or the Izuna games, though, you’d probably love this.
