Hyperdimension Neptunia

[MrPopo]

K-ON! is the greatest show ever.

[CFFJR]

Well that picture scared the hell out of me. Bleh.

I went and looked up moe blob because of that fear (and to get a clearer explanation), so for dsheinem's sake, and anyone else like me who didn't have a clue what it is, here's what urban dictionary says about:

Moe-

The new meaning of 'moe' is entirely caught up in issues surrounding hobbies and taste. Specifically, 'moe' means be attracted to a specific character or its specific partial element and to have a favor feeling toward it. 'Moe' suggests the condition of being infatuated with one character or thing and implies an image of someone burning with desire.
The picture becomes clearer when we hear the frequent use of 'moe' referring to specific elements or characteristics, such as 'weak girl moe,' 'young lady moe,' and 'glasses moe.' The meaning of 'glasses moe' refers to a taste that is taken with a character who wears glasses; furthermore, this taste fetishizes the feature itself of glasses-wearing. In this case, glasses are the 'moe' element.

Moe blob -

A character who is moe to the point of lacking almost any other definable traits, physically or character-wise. Cuteness taken to an unappealing level.

Hm. That's really not for me.

[AppleQueso]

[ZenErik]

Finished Hyperdimension Neptunia mk2 just a little while ago. Unfortunately I only got the normal ending and not the true ending. Seems the requirements I was following for the true ending were wrong.

But this game does have a new game+ type feature. So perhaps sometime I'll go back and get the true ending. Still a very enjoyable but very easy game.

[noiseredux]

so I've been thinking about mk2 this week. And I got FFXIII-2 yesterday, which contrasts mk2 a lot. (And funnily enough, they both feature younger sisters of their first game's heroines). Anyway, I think slackur's review for YSG touched on a lot of things that I agreed with whole-heartedly -- or in short, that although mk2 improves on HN in many ways, it ultimately feels like a lesser game.

But why the hell should that be?

The more I thought about it, I came up with this: I think the real appeal to HN to me was almost that of outsider art. The game was so F'ing bad, that I found it intriguing. There are a great many of you here that I consider friends, and some of us have probably talked films/music/etc outside of the forums. If so you know that I tend to be drawn to terrible art. For whatever reason I find balls-out atroucious art to be vastly more interesting than so-called "good" art.

Having said that, everything that mk2 improves upon the original is purely mechanical. But that stuff didn't actually bother me in the first game. Meaning, yes the battle system in the first game was crap, but I put up with it because it was just such a mind-blowingly ridiculous game. It was a low budget, name-droppy, self-referential (of its creators), satirical, tongue-in-cheek mess that I couldn't help but want to see what was going to happen next.

But now it's been done. The train-wreck seems far less shocking the second time around I guess. I don't know, I might shelf it and come back to it fresh in a while, but I guess the bottom line is I loved Lil Wayne's "rock" album because it was a baffling embarrassing mess. But I don't need him to make another one.

[ZenErik]

I get what you're saying, but I was actually able to complete and fully enjoy mk2. I could not finish the original because it felt so tedious. I also don't find the art bad at all. It's very cute. Perhaps you haven't seen much anime. Although I guess a vast majority of cutesy anime isn't shown on TV over here. So you'd have to be more into anime to find it. Then again, most anime in Japan is shown from 11 PM to about 4 AM unless it's made for kids or is mainstream shonen action.

[noiseredux]

you are correct, I have not seen much anime. I'm actually not really a fan of anime -- which sounds funny as in games I prefer the visual look of JRPG's to WRPG's. And sure, I've seen a handful of the more well-known imports like Princess Mononoki (sp?), Akira, Devil Man, etc. But yeah. Just don't really care about anime in general. I mean, I'm open to watching some here and there, but I'm not what you'd call a fan or anything even if I like the visual style of it.

Anyway, I'm not saying the artwork in HN is bad. I think it's quite good actually, but it's obviously a smaller budget than FFXIII-2 (to keep the compare/contrast going). That's all I meant. It's a relatively low budget game/series compared to something like that.

But I agree with you. The first HN's battle system was terrible, and the sequel's is much better. But now that the ridiculousness of the story is familiar to me, the new battle system doesn't seem to be enough to carry the game. I guess it's just a big misstep in that if this battle system had been in the first game, it would have been a super weird and interesting one-off game. But the way it happened was instead a super weird and interesting game with poor mechanics followed by a less interesting game with good mechanics.

[Mephikun]

BUMP this up, Mk2 is out and V announced. Get out your PS3s (and wallets) everyone.

[ZenErik]

BUMP this up, Mk2 is out and V announced. Get out your PS3s (and wallets) everyone.

V?

[noiseredux]

BUMP this up, Mk2 is out and V announced. Get out your PS3s (and wallets) everyone.

V?

haha yeah the third game is called Hyperdimension Neptunia V. The second one still hasn't really pulled me in. But at the same time, calling the third game the fifth is exactly the kind of ridiculousness I like about the series.