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Megatagmension Blanc + Neptune vs Zombies PC review

By: David (@friendshipguy_)

• MegaTagmension Blanc + Neptune vs Zombies 
  
• Developer - Tamsoft/Compile Heart
  
• Publisher - Idea Factory
  
• PC (also on PlayStation Vita)
  
• Rating - T
  

Read our original review here

Editor’s Note: NepZom is the term we made up to shorten the title for this game.

My inception into the Neptunia universe was bound to happen sooner or later, what I know about the series already is that; it’s about personified versions of hardware or gaming consoles, and that they’ve built a small but loyal fanbase around their jRPGs. It’s gotten to the point that I feel that at least most people into jRPG’s, or are at least somewhat invested in the jRPG scene have heard of the Neptunia series. As a new comer to the series, you could imagine my surprise when I heard they’d made an action game, with a PC version no less. There’s already a review for the game up here on clickbliss, but that happens to be the Vita version, I was tasked with the PC/Steam copy of the game – from what I gather, it’s not that different of an experience.

I’m not keen on the other series that Tamsoft and Compile Heart have created, though I am aware of their center piece through most, if not all of the Neptunia games in the series: cute girls with bright hair are emblematic of current and retro gaming consoles with imagery iconic enough that even I was able to pick out which hardware was which. Given that it’s an action game, I had a rough notion of how it’d play out. NepZom was either going to be something akin to the Dynasty Warriors franchise, or closer to something along the lines of D3Publisher’s Onechanbara games – boy was I really hoping it wasn’t the latter. NepZom pits players with picking their favorite girl out of the group, and wielding their weapon of choice to demolish swathes of zombified enemies, in reality it’s more like one small group of enemies you take down.

The general gameplay loop gets a lot of things done, but that’s usually the most that ever happens. NepZom generally opens each act with a small visual-novel type cutscene that treats us to a drip feed of story – the general plot behind NepZom is that their school of Gamicademi is facing closure at the hands of lack of sign ups, so the girls scrounge up a film club to shoot a zombie movie to save the school in lieu of taking care of the very real zombie threat.

Each girl has their own play style with some being dedicated to strictly heavy attacks or area of effect, which is honestly a massive short coming. There’s a cast of fifteen with the actual roster being bumped up to thirty considering each character has a transformed version of themselves that offer different benefits in battle. Relogating each girl to a specific fighting style is what severely hampers gameplay. Usually in action games that follow the same formula, usually multiple weapons occupy the same space that you can easily swap out of – Bayonetta and its sequel offer you the ability to have two weapons and two sets you can swap out of in a blink. In NepZom you’re only allowed to pick two girls that you can swap out of during any given encounter, and they level up individually so if you want them to have any staying power, you’re going to have to do a lot of grinding. Not only that, each character has one single combo that they’re capable of with small variations in it, making for bland encounters. I tasked myself with picking out just a single duo of characters, though I relied more heavily on Tamsoft that wields an odachi that makes for sweeping, fast attacks because it seemed like the sensible thing to do.

Players are thrown into one of four arenas depending on where the scene takes place, and confronted by usually a single wave of enemies. Missions vary later on and bosses are sometimes thrown in, but these are just larger versions of previously seen enemies save for some cases. That’s it, there’s twelve scenes, averaging about five to six acts per scene. After completion, players are awarded money, items, and a letter grade denoting their skill; however, I never received anything lower than an SS which usually denotes high skill and fast completion times, but I got that on levels that I slogged through on purpose. Even worse is the minimap and the accompanying enemy counter underneath. Often times it’ll tell you is the remaining count, but the minimap won’t show you where they are. It’s a pain, doubly so because some of these maps are huge, and characters generally don’t run all too fast. I had to explore move cancelling a dash every once and awhile in an attempt to tread ground faster than one might usually.

Part of me wants to believe that Tamsoft and Compile Heart wanted to make a well-crafted, justified version of an action game with their cast, but there’s just so many loose threads left to dangle. There’s a shop where you can buy, sell, and synthesize items to boost your characters, but the most I ever purchased were upgraded versions of weapons. I hardly ever touched the patches or boosters you can apply to your weapons once I realized that they weren’t exactly necessary since there’s special moves that don’t really have any adverse impacts to using them besides a small cool down. There’s also a gallery, and extra costumes to unlock, but the criteria for unlocking any sort of unlockable is basically random at best. Every once and awhile items will drop from defeated enemies, and they sometimes have the chance at being a piece of a fictional console that you have to put together to be rewarded costumes for them. As far as I know in my hours spent with the game, they drop randomly.

In my honest opinion, I feel like a little retooling of the core systems in the game could probably make it a much more enjoyable experience – give characters more combos, or reward more experience per level to give players a wider swathe of things to upgrade rather than just one aspect per level. The system in place currently is absolutely atrocious, with each level you put into HP, power, defense, or technical ability severely limits character growth. Players are forced to take a handicap if they want more of something, and less of the others. I maxed out the technic line first, but most combos were nothing without power, forcing me to sacrifice hit points and defense in favor of faster clear times – I never touched either of the other abilities in the game, all the way through to completion.

There’s so much I want to enjoy about the game, because the writing, the music, and even the English voice acting is pretty superb. There’s a good cast here, with the actresses embodying their characters through their voice almost too well. It gets to uncanny valley levels of good acting that honestly, NepZom would probably make a better animated short a la Little Witch Academia if they had a budget and a studio to get for the cut. In its current state, I can’t really recommend it to anyone unless they’re diehard fans of the Neptunia series. It seems better suited for a side scrolling beat ‘em up at this point than anything else.