MegaTagmension Blanc + Neptune VS Zombies Review
By: RJ (@rga_02)
- MegaTagmension Blanc + Neptune VS Zombies
- Developer - Tamsoft/Compile Heart
- Publisher - Idea Factory
- PlayStation Vita
- Rating - T
We (or I for the most part) here at clickbliss are usually at the forefront of Neptunia reviews. Like Compile Heart and their videogames, we pump out our Neptunia reviews in a timely fashion. MegaTagmension Blanc + Neptunie VS Zombies (we’ll call it NepZom for short) was a game released back in the States May of 2016. Why did I take so long to publish this review? Was the game just that good that I was so immersed in the world of NepZom that I couldn’t put my opinions into words?
From traditional jRPGs, idol management, sRPGs to musou-esque games, Neptunia seems poised to tackle every videogame genre out there. This time everyone’s favorite purpled haired heroine Neptune is staring alongside Blanc in a hack-and-slash game. However Nep and her crew aren’t fighting for peace and stability for their homeland, this time they are in high school setting – a film club to be more precise. The school is under threat of closing down by the end of the year so the crew decide to film a zombie movie in the hopes it attracts new students. The writing in this game has it all for the Neptunia fanbase. Silly innuendo? Check Self-aware humor? Check. References to the videogame industry? Check. But that’s where the fun stops.
I tend to be very forgiving towards the Neptunia series. Mostly because I smirk at the stupid jokes and I enjoy the combat system. NepZom however only manages to deliver with the former. The hack-and-slash mechanics manages to be the most repetitive system I have ever encountered in a videogame. At first I thought it was just parodying the bad hack-and-slash games out there but it sunk in fast that wasn’t simply the case. It was just truly monotonous and mind dumbing. Neptunia U at least had some sort of strategy with its slicing and dicing, but with NepZom? I can guarantee that you can probably beat this game without even looking at the screen and by just mashing buttons. As someone who enjoys a good hack-and-slash game, I was pretty disappointed. Of course one shouldn’t probably expect quality from a spinoff, but a small part of me was hoping for some silly humor mixed in with competent gameplay.
The mission structure in this game is laid out like what you would find in “hunting” game such as Freedom Wars or Soul Sacrifice. You select your mission (or Act) and complete your mission. This lays another sea of repetitiveness. Your task is just to plow down hoards of Zombie versions of past Neptunia characters. There’s no go to area X or do event Y, just kill zombies.
NepZom is the first in the series to include multiplayer. There are bosses and enemies featured here that you won’t see in the main story. If you don’t have any friends who are willing to play this game or just can’t find another suitable online partner, you can tackle this mode alone. It’s doable but you are in for a grind.. If you’ve been playing Neptunia games since the dawn of their inception, that shouldn’t bother you.
I felt like Tamsoft/Compile Heart could of have done more with this game. It has the personality to back it up. NepZom is only a game I can really recommend to Neptunia die-hards.
But to be quite frank, the biggest disappointment of this game is that my Nep homegirl IF was relegated to a support character.