Hyperdevotion Noire: Goddess Black Heart Review

Title: Hyperdevotion Noire: Goddess Black Heart
Genre: Strategy RPG
Publisher: Idea Factory International
Developer: Compile Heart (Idea Factory)
System: Vita
Release Date: 24-02-2015 (NA), 29-05-2014 (JP)

Noire won one of the earlier popularity polls in Japan, so she became the main character of a spin-off game of the Neptunia series. Hyperdevotion Noire is a strategy RPG developed by Sting under Compile Heart, bringing forth a different kind of game with familiar characters.

Hyperdimension Neptunia is a series of turn-based RPGs based on the console wars in the game industry with personifications of the various major console makers and game companies. This spin-off takes place in Gamarket, which can be seen as a different universe with a different setting from the norm, but with some familiar characters. The story starts off with Noire standing strong in the console wars, winning against the others and close to uniting Gamarket. However, she gets tricked by a shady character named Eno, causing the world to fall into chaos and each nation’s shares to plummet. Amid the chaos she encounters a guy who she ends up hiring as a secretary, whose faith gives her just enough power to transform and get the other CPUs to join forces. Together they decide to look for Eno and fix the world, but not before convincing the generals of each city to lend them a hand as well.

Unlike the other Neptunia games that only features girls, this game gives the player a self insert stand-in in Noire’s new secretary. What’s funny is, even though he is supposed to be “you”, you don’t get to name him! You can name the game discs (custom made accessories that can be equipped) you make, but not yourself. The secretary also has no defined looks or features, and straddles the line between “practically not there” and being prominent just enough to be annoying should you not like him. The game also tries to push a romance between Noire and the secretary, which doesn’t feel all that natural or in-character for the Noire in the Gameindustri universe, but can be handwaved because this is technically a different universe. Fans who prefer the yuri subtext that normally happens might be disappointed at this. Eno, the bad guy, is also easily recognizable as the main series’ villain Arfoire.

The story is fine and dandy when it’s light-hearted and comedic, but becomes anywhere between boringly cliched and terrible when it tries to be serious. Everyone takes the idiot ball at least once, and usually more than once. The translation job is also very liberal, which is par for the course in the series, but will bug anyone who listens to and understands the Japanese spoken dialog. There are also several scenes where Noire feels out of character from her established personality in the main games. Otherwise the story is fun with loads of characters, better video game references, and also provides more frequent CGs and fanservice.

The four main CPUs Noire, Neptune, Blanc and Vert play major roles in the story, but the little sisters and game company mascots are missing. Instead, Hyperdevotion Noire gives us representatives of well-known video game series, with characters representing Metal Gear Solid, Street Fighter, Dragon Quest, Final Fantasy, Tokimeki Memorial, and more. There are a total of 18 these ‘generals’, all playable by the end. Not only do they play more important roles in the story than the game company mascots do in the main games, but their respective references are also better integrated into the plot. Rather than the main four CPUs, the game becomes more enjoyable if you’re looking forward to the new characters–including not-Chun Li, Solid Snake with tits, and a Dragon Quest hero at odds with an edgy Final Fantasy-esque character.

The main games were turn-based RPGs that allowed for free movement and several other gimmicks that made it less typical, but Hyperdevotion Noire is a full-on SRPG with tile-based movement. It’s developed by Sting, who is famous for their unique and complex games like Knights in the Nightmare. However, if you tell them to be more normal, they can definitely make a by-the-books game that neatly fits into one genre. You have tile-based movement with direction and height modifiers when attacking, and each character gets a total of five skills. Despite there being over 20 playable characters, most of them feel different enough to not get completely outclassed by someone else (except for the CPUs). The four main CPUs can transform into their HDD forms, where they get a stat boost and are also able to fly (and therefore avoid floor traps and ignore height limits). However, this form only lasts for 3 turns and can only be used once per battle. Noire, being the main character, is also super overpowered by getting to move twice per turn in HDD form.

Unique to the game is the Lily system, where having an ally unit stand next to another when using a skill increases its power and also gains Lily Points. Lily Points are global and go from 0 to 100 each battle, and are required for the four main CPUs to transform into HDD mode, and for anyone to unleash their special attack. The more allies the user is surrounded by, the more LP is gained from her using a skill. Being surrounded by allies also results in an SP or LP cost reduction when using a skill or a special, and can make a world of difference in a pinch. However, despite it being wise for allies to stick together to gain LP, it also leaves you more vulnerable to deadly enemy AoE attacks.

Another notable element in the game is the design of the individual maps. Many of the maps have various traps that serve to hinder you but don’t affect the enemy even though they should by all forms of physical logic. There are basic floor traps that will not only damage a unit who passes by it, but also stops her in her tracks right there and ends her turn without letting her attack. Some of the boss maps have electric fences that damage you and also stop your turn if you run into them, paired with enemies that like to use knock-back attacks. Some of the maps are split in two and you can only reach the other side using a train that only fits 3 units at a time and requires activation via attacking a switch, and many maps have objects that you can lift and throw to create stairs when the boss or a treasure chest is at an unreachable height. There are also a few maps that push for the use of warp points, and one where you have to cross moving logs to get to the other side but half of the crossing points have cannons ready to shoot you at the other side and the logs move every turn. Often the victory conditions are to defeat all enemies or defeat just the boss, but there are a few where you have to destroy all the items on a map as well or get through to the other side without losing any ally. There is lots of variety with the map designs, requiring you to pay careful attention if you want to make the most out of your turn.

There are several design flaws that hold the game back and make it more annoying to play. The floor is littered with traps but you can’t freely control your character’s movement path like you can in Fire Emblem. You can change the orientation, which in turn changes the path a bit, but they still take the shortest path when walking towards where you want them to, and you can’t just make them walk around the trap completely without using up an additional turn. The traps wouldn’t be nearly as frustrating to navigate through if you were allowed to freely walk around them in the same turn or if they affected the enemy too. The user interface also needs work, as the character status page is buried 3 screens deep and you can’t even see what buffs you have on each character without going there.

The game is also very unbalanced, with anyone other than an HDD form CPU (+buffs) dealing pathetic damage to most bosses. The CPUs have much higher stats, and part of it is because the store only sells their weapons. The shop updates every chapter, so while the four CPUs get new weapons each chapter, everyone else has to stick with their starting weapon until you craft their next weapon. Oh, and did I mention that each general only gets two weapon upgrades, and some of the first upgrades require items that are only dropped by enemies in the second-last chapter, or can only be acquired from a treasure chest on a very specific map? There is also no in-game way to check what’s in each treasure chest, and although the enemy list in the game tells you what enemy drops which item, you can’t see which map has which enemies until you actually accept the mission and start the battle preparation! This is remedied by letting you retreat from free battles without penalties (and you keep the items and levels you gained in the battle), but you’ll want to bust out a walkthrough wiki sooner or later.

The game has three difficulty modes in Easy, Normal, and Hard. My clear time on Hard was around 30 hours for the first playthrough, so give or take depending on the difficulty and amount of grinding you want to do. When you lose a battle and restart, you keep the EXP gained before you game over’d, so sometimes the best leveling spot for that stage you can’t beat is the stage itself. There’s also an option to make the battle easier on restart, which decreases the enemy’s ATK, INT and HP to 0.8x. According to a Japanese walkthrough wiki, this can actually be done an infinite amount of times to end up with everyone having 1 STR, 1 INT and 1 HP, so it’s technically impossible to actually get stuck in the game even when you overwrite your save file in the middle of a series of consecutive battles. The base difficulty is fair most of the time, and the game introduces its mechanics to you one by one so you’ll never feel too overwhelmed. The battles in the last two chapters ramp up in difficulty, but otherwise the game steadily increases its challenge instead of throwing uneven walls at you like in the main Neptunia games.

Music is uninspired and obnoxious to listen to, and the graphics are brought down to use super deformed 3D models during gameplay. The size makes them easier to manage on the grid-based map compared to if they were the regular models, but they just don’t look as good. For super-deformed models, their proportions are kind of awkward and could have benefited from actually being closer to Nendoroids, but I guess they’re pretty cute once you get used to them. There are no alternate costumes or anything. The 3D environments don’t look that great, but they’re serviceable.

Overall, I probably enjoyed the gameplay in Hyperdevotion Noire more than the main games, to be honest. Even if it’s a very normal SRPG by Sting standards, it’s still fun and requires you to think more carefully than the main series. I suppose I tend to find average SRPGs more engaging than average turn-based RPGs, so if you’re the opposite then the opposite will hold true. The story is not very good, but the individual events with the generals are fun and I enjoyed seeing all the references with them. Making mascots based off of individual game series rather than companies is a good idea, and I definitely hope to see more things in the series be done in this game’s fashion. The downside is that the characterization of the main characters aside from Neptune are kind of inconsistent, like the production team just got handed a list of each character’s basic traits and were told to write them based off of that before getting a good grasp of each character. The self-insert secretary was also unnecessary outside a couple of scenes in the beginning.