DMD

Takes the standard geometry wars formula, and overcomplicates it to near breaking, mostly by reducing the effective size of the arena and adding obstacles. Arenas can be spherical, cubes, peanut-shaped, and more, but all feel extremely cramped given the volume of enemies coming at you. It feels like the devs realize how tough the game is, since you don't lose your score multiplier by dying, firepower boosts are only obtained through destroying a specific enemy set, and many challenges are unlimited life with a time limit. The classic game is included, and the core gameplay is still excellent, but this feels a bit more in the hardcore camp than usual.

This is an otome game, which is a visual novel with a romantic theme and starring a female protagonist. It's also heavily influenced by the anime Angel Beats, in which teens that have died tragically early deal with a bizarre afterlife patterned after a high school. The good apples are souls that try to obey the hellish rules of the school to graduate and move on, while the bad apples are rebels who try to defy this fate and seek to escape the school whole. What's nice about this game is that the love interests are split up between the good and bad sides, giving you a better look at the story than many otome games. You see all sides of NEVEAH academy, and in the routes I played, there is substantial additions to the story with the different interests. The art is striking too, very colorful and with great, lanky character designs. All are fashionable too, my favorite being the samurai-loving side character who is dressed in perfect 80s prep (which looks wonderful!) The plot is fun, and the characters are very lively. Unusual for a visual novel, there are a ton of well fleshed out side characters, much more than many otome games. The story despite being derivative was nice, too, and I enjoyed it much. So then why a 6? The problem is that it feels a bit slapdash and lacking in the presentation. There are minor characters who play a decent role in the plot, like the sleepy sounding girl Akki, but get no picture at all despite being fully voiced, and voiced well. The actual art assets beyond the stylish presentation are simple even by otomate standards, with only a few different poses, and not much in the way of cgi or effects. It feels a bit bare bones at times, compared to Code: Realize or Malice x Collar. Some people dislike the odd font they use for lettering in the game, but I didn't mind it. The biggest issue though, is the fault of the localizers. There's a mechanic where you touch your love interest in order to hear his inmost thoughts, which are **** in Japanese, with no subtitles! This has no effect on gameplay, but considering these moments happen at critical points in the storylines, it would be nice to know what they are saying. So on the whole, it's a decent Otome game with some nice points, but it really needed a little more work on the presentation to shine. It's comparable to Period: Cube, but falls short of the best otome games on the Vita.

Now that the game is older, and the price is much less, most of these reviews aren't all that valid. The game still has some serious issues, though. One issues is the touch controls. They are fine in general, with options to use the rear or front touch screen/pads, and feel ok to use. But the one problem which hurts is that all the pads are active at once; there's no way to shut off the rear pad, which means if you set the game down, or touch it in the wrong way you can fire a bird off at random. It can be frustrating when that happens, or when you double tap the bird by mistake while using the rear pad and activate its ability. Another is that the birds in general don't feel heavy or fast enough. This might be due to how huge the maps are (which leads to zooming out so much that even the Vita's nice screen doesn't help the game feel tiny), but trying to send a single bird to the back of the map seems almost pointless. Finally, they still kept the annoying F2P difficulty in a console release. There's an achievement for restarting a level 100 times; that's how bad it can be. You get a lot of one stars and few three stars unless you obsessively replay the level, when honestly there's so many levels that they could have dialed it down some and still have a fun, lengthy game. The game isn't all bad though. The graphics are nice on vita, there's a ton of levels, the birds abilities are fun, and the sound effects and music are spot on. It's just that there are some frustrating aspects to this game which dial the enjoyment down some.

I wonder if all the positive reviews played the same game I did. I don't deny it has its fun moments, and it has wonderful graphics and sound, but there are so many negatives that I only play the game now in short bursts. -Bow is underpowered, designed mostly to shoot down the middle-earth equivalent of exploding barrels. -Talion's default walk is very slow, so you're constantly holding X down to dash. If in stealth, r2 and X. -Pointless grinding for upgrades that aren't all that useful. -bad combat. hit o to stun, x x x x, hit triangle to counter. If there are more than two bosses, run away. -TOO MANY ENEMIES. 20-30 normal orcs, and up to 5 bosses weren't all that uncommon. You can sometimes use stealth to thin the odds, but that's only for some missions; in the open world, it felt like most of the time you'd race to kill the boss before more linked. There were more issues, but the game felt grindy and unfun. The cool little Gollum missions and moments like riding a catagor seemed few and far between, as opposed to walking from point a to point B trying to kill an endless supply of respawning orcs who taunt you if they kill you. And those boss orcs are either randomly easy (die to a single headshot, can be stealth killed) or resist everything (can't be stunned, can't be flipped over, invulnerable to ranged attacks...) It's a gorgeous game, but not one I can play in long spurts without getting annoyed at.

A slightly different take on the HyperDimension games. Noire is winning the console wars in GamIndustri. However, she's tricked into doing something that depowers all the goddesses, and she's has to fix what she's messed up. She does it with the help of the other goddesses, her generals, and you, her secretary. It's a decent strategy RPG, with some punishing difficulty. It gets hard early on, with bosses and even normal enemies that can hit you for 75% of your energy. You can strengthen yourself by sticking close together; this generates "love points" which can let you use special abilities, turn the goddesses into their CPU forms, or even summon reinforcements. It's a pity that doing so puts you in risk of aoe attacks. The game feels like it ought to be easier, because the story is light and fun; but the gameplay seems tuned to people who like harder SRPGs like Fire Emblem. Even on chapter two I started dying often enough to consider using the "make this fight easier" button. The story is typical Neptunia, and makes with the fan service often. It's probably the best of the Neptunia games gameplay-wise, but isn't a top-tier SRPG. There are some mild dating sim elements, but they are nowhere near as intensive as Producing Perfection, and trickle in slowly during each chapter. It's a must-buy if you like the series, and a decent SRPG otherwise.

Addictive, but loses its luster very quickly. A traitor killed your ancestor and is locked away in a room-randomizing castle. Your job is to go in and kill him. However, you'll die quite quickly and the next in your family line will continue on the quest. This is a roguelike 2-D sidescroller, where you go in, get as much money as you can, upgrade your family's stats, and maybe beat a boss if you feel good. You'll always die and repeat, until you get to the traitor. It has some addictive qualities, mostly from the need to grind gold to get that new class or upgrade. The graphics are okay sprite art, and the music is typical chip tunes. Why the low score? -control is too floaty, especially when you need to make precision jumps or attack an enemy on a different elevation than you. You will need to do both often. -the gold grind quickly becomes astronomical. The actual castle is very small, and you can reach a point where it's near impossible to earn the gold for an upgrade unless you run through the whole castle. Given that certain things only unlock when you buy prereqs, you plateau really fast. By the time I hit the traitor, I lost interest because I couldn't upgrade realistically, and my upgrades were too spread out to matter. -the "traits" are mostly useless, and some punish the player tremendously. Each generation gets a collection of traits which affect gameplay, some funny (irritable bowel syndrome, the one) some useful (OCD gives you a small amount of MP when you break stuff) and a couple OP (hypergonadism lets you knock enemies back far, PAD makes you not trigger spike traps). But there are lot that make the game annoying or even nigh-unplayable: Vertigo turns the screen up-side down, color-blindness makes it black and white, nostalgia makes it sepia, and you get a ton of other vision-impairing tricks that do nothing but punish you. They pop up a lot more often than you think, and you wind up avoiding your kids that have them. -classes are randomized, as are the spells your current character has. You find yourself suiciding sometimes because none of the characters you have are all that good. Some classes are ultimately useless (miner, lich.) -everything is cheap. You don't really feel satisfaction when you beat a boss, because sometimes you throw ten-twenty kids at it or more until you get sick of playing it, or find the right combo for that particular boss. Despite this, it really can addict you. It does have the "one more run" quality to it, but it's more out of frustration than anything. It's not a game I'll bother with a new game plus, though.