Watch Googleshng play HORRIBLE HORRIBLE THINGS!

A- That is just a wonderful analogy.

B- About the 9 minute mark of the second video there is where most people have to stop and make an effort to avoid vomiting, yes. For what it's worth, that IS the game's lowest point from what I've seen so far.

Also, check this out! So I thought, at first, when I finally picked up the key fragment on the PS3 continent that I actually had to fight this unique boss which, well, challenging is too strong a word, but it actually did enough damage to kill people with their starting equipment using only the wimpiest heal skills and not blocking (equipping the second wimpiest heal skills naturally made it a cakewalk). Presumably, each continent has it's own unique key fragment guarding boss, representing an equal challenge, because non-linearity and all, right? HAHAHAHA NO! This is frelling Neptunia we're talking about!

There is in fact, just one boss that guards key fragments. You've actually all seen it already. Remember the stupid knight/spider thing I had to fight after killing that sandworm for the second time? Yeah, you have to fight that when you're done with every continent. Just with more HP and dealing more damage every time you fight it. I mean, if you go in the assumed order of 360, Wii, PS3, which the game kinda sorta vaguely hints you should do based on providing "harder" dungeons as you get towards the end of each. I mean, it'd be the easiest thing in the world to pull a harder version each time, but no, they're fixed by location. So... I basically rushed to what may very well be the second-to-last boss in the entire game at half the level I should be with starting equipment and all I had to do to beat it was go "oh, use hi-potions instead of potions."

Also, guh. At least PS3-land sorta made a half-assed attempt to give it context! It was kinda shoe-horned in as like, the secret weapon of the evil corporation in the little PS3-land plot thread that goes nowhere. The Wii version just kinda unceremoniously shows up in a dungeon which has no setup at all, dies, and there isn't even any sort of discussion afterwards. Currently working my way up to fighting this same boss for a 4th time in 360land, where... OK seriously, it's going to die before it gets a turn, probably to just my first character.

And after that I think I actually will be able to just go to the final dungeon or something. Might have to do a teensy bit more on every continent, but I really seem to be mostly finished.

One thing I've been wondering: am I supposed to confuse "Lastation" with "Lactation"?

I wouldn't say NIS was ever 100% respectable, with its "does she or doesn't she" character design for Prier (not to mention her name) in La Pucelle, but they at least had some mildly moving story bits in their PS2 games. Now it's S&M punishment mechanics in Disgaea. And stuff like Criminal Girls... about which the less said the better, look it up if you care/dare... and Prinny Operation Panties Dood. It doesn't make any sense.

I can see PS3 games catering to a well-heeled, niche-to-put-it-kindly audience. But in Japan at least, making inexpensive, universally friendly PSP games could have been a sharper strategy than pandering to the w-nker/shut-ins.

Aaaaaaaaugh watched the first two videos. I have to stop and take a breather or I'll run out of sanity points and start attacking my party members.

I don't think so? That'd be more appropriate for 360 land anyway.

Apparently they have all the money somehow! I still need someone to explain that to me though. You'd think they'd have none of the money, what with never going outside to earn it.

Also, these are getting localized. That's the real scary bit.

Your reference brings a brief glimmer of amusement in these darkest of times.


Also, HOLY @#$%! I am going to have to reload an old save and show you all this one.

So... I FINALLY finish this initial "get a macguffin from each continent" fetch quest and move on to, you know, the second actual plot point in the whole game that doesn't show up until like... 90% of the way through? (Officially, 67% or so, but that's counting optional/postgame stuff). Now I have to go collect the magic weapons hidden on each one as a backup set of MacGuffins. So you'd think I'd have to go wade through a similar amount of garbage, but no, despite the plot saying "they're hidden and nobody knows where, you'll have to search around!" you find these things immediately. The first one though... wow, the first one.

So you go to this cave, right? And there's an (actually unique for once!) boss you kill before it can blink, and get just 1/3 of this here magic sword. So, you have to go other places to get the other two bits. Oh hey, that'll stretch things out respectably, right?

Hahahaha! Nope! Without so much as an optional quest to tide you over, a new event opens up. You watch a little cutscene, then someone hands you the second sword piece, which they just had lying around. Then you go back to the explore menu again and... again, trigger a cutscene where someone just gives you the last piece, no playing an RPG between any of this.

THIS GAME IS SO UNFINISHED IT'S DISGUSTING.

Someone split the cost with me on the sequel. I want to make this man suffer even further.

No. What are you - some kind of monster?

Hey now! I'm perfectly willing to subject myself to the sequel for your amusement, but there's a few things to keep in mind:

- No matter what, I am taking a break between each HORRIBLE HORRIBLE THING and the next to play a good game. Sanity and all.

- This one really did come with an included bribe I'd like to maintain that standard if people are going to make me play stuff this awful.

- I have a serious ethical issue with anyone spending money on Neptunia 2. You'd better be considering buying a used copy off someone with deep regrets if you're going through with that.

I tried watching it again, but yeah, the audio has to be too loud in order for your voice to be intelligible.

So... huh. Guess I've got some editing to do tomorrow. A wandering Pathfinder session distracted me, but I was fighting the last form of the last boss tonight.

So, here's the whole flow of the game, ignoring optional stuff:

- Go through tutorial.
- Slog through a boring irrelevant side plot on each of 3 contients, then just get a MacGuffin in a totally unrelated incident, fighting the tutorial boss again for each, and having to fight each optional character an average of 3 times each (4 for PS3, just 1 for 360 oddly).
- Get one slight plot dump.
-Revisit each continent to collect all 4 pieces of an ancient weapon (which you can't equip) on each, all of which are just handed to you except the first bit of each (and like 2 others total).
- Proceed directly to final dungeon. Which is a hallway it takes about a minute to traverse, filled with monsters you've seen before.
- Win.

These aren't the major points here. These are the ONLY points. The rest of the game is, dead serious here, irrelevant jokey conversations and optional dungeons. There's like... maybe 5 hours of plot-relevant dialog, and oh... 20 bite sized mandatory dungeons, none of which have bosses except for like... 15? And they all have the SAME bosses.

So! As anyone who ever bothered doing the whole PS3 friend thing in my general direction can confirm, the answer to the question of whether going right ahead and ignoring the last 20-25% of the game, not passing go, not collecting $200, and winning with only half a full party, all of them severely underlevelled, will leave me woefully unprepared to win is a resounding "hahaha no."

I mean... the last form of the last boss only got 2 turns... and I think it spent at least one of them using one of those big overblown last boss deals that leaves everyone at like 3% of their max HP for dramatic purposes which... you know, the way healing works in this game? That's just... that's not even a thing.

And if you guessed the ending was sitting around through even more inane dialog for about 10 minutes while looking at the same creepy breathing standees, yes. Yes it was.

I suppose I should do a video dump update before I slog through the GRINDY AS HELL process of recruiting the 3 optional super characters you'd really think were mandatory what with that being the whole point of the game and all, and getting the other... I think 2 endings? Yeah, I'm totally gutting this puppy. For science. And to see how this switch mechanic I've had the whole game and been unable to use works.

OK! This batch is finally done uploading.

CHAPTER 4- Rushing to the Credits!
Part 1- Dear gods does the 360 skeeve me out!
Part 2- The name on the save finally changes!
Part 3- OH JUST SHUT THE HELL UP ALREADY!
Part 4- Collecting the uh... "lost" weapons.
Part 5- Screw you last quarter of the game, the final dungeon's open!
Part 6- Multiple forms kinda lose their impact when you can go back to town between them.
Part 7- I honestly wasn't even looking at the screen for the final boss fight.

Part 4 here really just kinda left my jaw on the floor. Was anyone in charge of overseeing the whole game, or what?

This game had such a good concept going for it. What went wrong?

Well, aside from all the things I've pointed out in all these posts and videos... it doesn't actually have that good concept. Other than a couple almost-jokes about 360-tan scratching discs when bumped and overheating, they make literally no effort of any kind at any point to actually do anything metaphorical involving videogame systems. It's just a totally generic fantasy RPG whose most interesting feature is that it isn't actually assembled into something recognizable as an RPG. Just, separate piles of cutscenes and mini-dungeons.

But they could have done so much with the console concept!

Trophy: made a full-course meal and ate it during a single cut scene.

It's a little too late to be telling you this, but just in case you do decide to pursue any post-game, you can press "start" to make the cut scenes go forward on their own without a press of X.

Additionally, you can make the little character that pops up in the top right-hand corner move around with the left stick. It's those little details that make this a magnificently horrifying game.

I knew about the cutscene hypermode bit (haven't been doing it since I have to keep scanning for anything that actually advances the plot or reaches new heights of wrongness), but I didn't know you could move the little N around while you watch stuff fly by. That probably would have helped out a lot while fighting PS3-tan here just today.

Believe it or not gang, I totally got stuck on a boss! A lot of it was me messing around and trying this regen thing to conserve how much I'd have to sit through healing animations. That was a huge mistake. See, you get your regen tick BEFORE it checks your HP, so it'll carry you juuust out of activation range. Or something. Honestly, none of the healing skills seem to work right if you have more than one set at a time. If you have something that can actually do a variable amount of damage (really exceedingly rare, just these optional post-game boss fights really), you either have to constantly micromanage things, switching which one and only one heal you have equipped round to round, or you can do what I finally did here: Boost your max HP through the roof with equipment until nothing is even capable of doing enough damage for the first tier cheapo heal not to more than keep up with. Then it's just long boring repetitive combat where you're constantly button mashing to skip animations!

Oh, and since I watched the last half-dozen of your videos all in a row, it's been even easier to get an idea of how unrelenting the two or three tunes they play during cut scenes are (synth horn goes up five notes! <tweet!> synth horn goes down five notes! <tweet!>).

They seem to switch up the boss music for each goddess battle, though?

Yeah, they each have their own track. I mean, they still aren't very good but they are AMAZING breaths of fresh air after hearing the same 3 pieces of awful, awful music constantly restarting for hours on end.

Also it turns out there's no back to PS3-tans skirt so if you have her as your active exploration character or are in combat you're stuck staring at her garter belts. So much for the lack of skanky imagery during normal gameplay!