Mugen Souls – Review

For those who may have missed the recent announcement, Nippon Ichi Software America have recently announced that they have acquired the rights to this title, and will be releasing the game with an English localization and some questionable content removed in the coming Fall gaming season. It was my intention to review Hyperdimension Neptunia Mk.2 this evening, however given the recent announcement I felt it more fitting to do a review of my Japanese copy of the game, making this one of the first, if not the first review of the game on an English gaming website.

As with my previous Japanese game reviews for titles including Tales of Xillia and The Idolm@ster 2 (PS3), these reviews are a little bit different. As I am not competent enough in Japanese to accurately translate all dialogue and information contained in the game, I will not be grading or putting a heavy focus on the titles storyline. As well, these reviews are valid only until the English localization of the game is released, in which I will do a full game review encompassing all elements including the storyline, content additions/removals and English voice acting to name a few. Either way, I hope you enjoy reading this review and getting an idea of just what Mugen Souls is about.

Storyline

I make an effort to purchase a couple of Japanese titles a year, and while I am not perfectly fluent in the language anymore (It has been over three years since I graduated High School and there has been only limited opportunities to hone my proficiency), most games have a plot and gameplay which are easy to pick up. I went in thinking the same thing with Mugen Souls and it turned out to be one of the more text-heavy and complicated games to properly grasp. But that being said, it retains some of the comical and fanservice charm their previous games (Neptunia, Trinity Universe) have delivered while also setting itself apart from them in terms of ideas.

The series focuses around the main character ChouChou who as the plot above describes, has decided to wage war against the seven worlds in the galaxy on her flying ship. Each of these worlds are based on a day of the week (Seemingly in the English localization, colours), each of which hold monsters to destroy and characters to recruit to your party. The interesting feature to ChouChou is that she is not one person, but instead has a set of seven personifications, each of which represent a personality type (Egocentric, Sadism, Tsundere, Natural, Vigour, Masochistic, Beauty and Cool) and can be switched too and from in battle. The main Chouchou (Egocentric) holds precedence over a majority of the story however the other six forms do have spoken dialogue in the game and play their own role to the storyline.

As with most of Compile Heart’s RPG’s, by the end of the game you are inundated with characters which can join your party (Well over a dozen) leaving you with a number of characters you will unfortunately never get around to using even if they each have different abilities, preferred weapon proficiencies and stats attached to them. They do all however have their role in at least their respective world – or in the case of Chouchou, Artis and Lute (The three characters you start out with), more or less the entire game. Interestingly, despite these numbers they also chose  to give gamers the option of adding their own customisable avatar to the mix – which while not contributing to the games story, was a welcome addition that was unfortunately drowned out by the sheer number of better storyline characters to include in battle. The avatars themselves get more and more customisable as the game progresses and can be of one of the games several classes (Fighter, Swordsman, Mage, Gunner, Maid etc) so when playing through the game, you will either enjoy the feature or forget about it.

Design

On the topic of avatar designs, I would like to take the opportunity to discuss the games design with you. In their previous release of Hyperdimension Neptunia Mk.2, it seemed like they were primarily going to ditch the anime-style character portraits and instead use 3D character models instead – a feature that only somewhat worked. Fortunately, they have returned to the style used in Trinity Universe and gone with the lip-synced, breathing and moving anime character portraits and did a pretty good job of them. The character portraits themselves are colourful and well detailed and the “visual novel” style system they have used for many a game still works like a charm. While in the artwork, only a few characters maintain a chibified appearance, they have chosen for character models to chibify all the games characters. Watching the companies games progress from rather so-so character models in Trinity Universe to some strong “to-scale” models in Neptunia Mk.2, I think going the more smaller designs still worked just as well, were just as detailed and complemented the developed world well.

The game consists of a number of worlds, each of which has its own theme – which is primarily based on the day of the week (or element if you would prefer that description) that it is named after. So for example, the third world is based on Fire – so the world has a volcano motif to it while the world based on Wood is more similar to that of a forest. Most interestingly designed however is the airship castle which the main character reside on, which is designed more like a fun “hot springs” theme park area which acts as an interesting and enjoyable hub world (A first for a Compile Heart RPG that is to / has been localized). In previous games, the levels have been more simpler in design and gave off the impression that their sole purpose was to facilitate monsters and the odd event sequence or game device at the end of them – these levels felt a bit more thought out and purposeful.

The game also has a number of CG artworks and animated cutscenes, all of which are pretty well detailed. This brings us to the point of what most likely is the key component to be removed in the English localized version. The Japanese version of the game allows you to enhance your female characters stats through a Hot Springs “Bathing” system, which allows you to scrub them with everything from a paw of the games mascot to what looks to be a skewer with oden on them. While the girls do supposedly have swimsuits on and there is no full-nudity (Correctly positioned Smoke and Steam world be another thing….), I wouldn’t go getting my hopes up for the system – which actually proved quite time-wasting in the first place.

In battle, it was noticable after the first few hours that the normal attack combo animations were limited in number, however the sheer variety of skills did slightly make up for this flaw. While the battle and world animations were of a decent quality, the load times for performing these actions were excessively long – even taking into account the games optional data install. This should be an issue that is patch-able at a later date, but selecting a simple skill could take several sections, and lag when navigating a menu also proved excessive when in a battle with more than a couple of enemies.

Music / Voice Acting

For those who are not big fans of J-POP, you may be unhappy to know what the game has a number of tracks in this genre, even if you were not to take into account the opening sequence. The opening theme entitled Power of Light by Mineko Yamamoto is an enjoyable song with solid accompanying animation that makes use of the games character models and portrait art… and yes, plenty of the games mascot character Shanpuru (Akin to the Prinny Squad in Disgaea) to go around. The rest of the games soundtrack is a mixed bag however as mentioned above, does contain lyrical tracks and leans more towards the upbeat style of beats.

For those who have read my previous character biographies on the many characters of this game, you will recall that voice actresses usually dealt with more than one character. Unfortunately this is noticeable in several occasions. However (and taking into account I don’t have as great a recall of Japanese voice talent as I do English voice talent), I think the dub quality is of a solid standard, but eagerly await seeing what NIS America throws into the mix with their English dub. I can currently invision Laura Bailey (Raspberyl – Disgaea 3) as Chouchou and Michelle Ruff as two potential other Chou’s.

Gameplay

In terms of the games battle systems, the trailers always seemed to heavily promote massive numbers of damage, with trophies for dealing them well into the millions and billions of hit-points. The good news is that if you dedicate your time to the game it is possible to achieve them, but the sort of disappointing thing for those who were expecting insane levels of damage from the get go – you will deal combos with lots of hits, however for the first few chapters at least these might only deal single digit damage for each hit. Moving on though, the battle system is similar to that presented in Hyperdimension Neptunia Mk.2 where you can have up to four party members out on the battle field at one time and are able to move around and attack enemies within a set circular range from where you are standing. The game allows you to use a variety of weapons from the common sword and staff, to dual-blades and guns, so this is another factor that frequently needs to be taken into account – as unlike previous games having an imbalanced weapon does not always mean instant victory without the correct strategy (From my experience with the games DLC weaponary at least).

Another change from the Neptunia Mk.2 system is instead of having three types of attack, you attack and use skills using a menu with a single normal attack type and a multitude of skills. Each character has their own set of skills however Chouchou can share them between her different forms, with each form having skills more suited to them and different stats – making the choice dependent on what weapon and skills you want to use. Normal attacks quite frequently result in combo attacks with other party members, resulting in greater damage and numbers of hits while skill use need to be weighed upon SP use, Attack Damage (In comparison to normal attack damage) and range. As well, depending on the enemies “weaknesses”, you can use a Moe Kill in order to enslave them, turn them into items or at the very least weaken/kill them depending on the Chou form you use. There are other little features such as destroying crystals littering the field in order to unlock Hyper Mode (With included lyrical track) which make the battle system a little bit more fun.

Travelling the worlds are not just about getting from A to B, but instead to unlock the next area of the world to visit you have got to fulfill a number of requirements that you find along your path in the world. Upon completing the events required for the section of the world, areas of the map will be marked with symbols which require you to do things from using the different Chou’s Cutie Conquer, giving money or meeting certain milestones in order to increase your “Servant Level” and unlock the next area. It is a simple system, but deters you from just running through the level without defeating monsters (Especially since not meeting the aforementioned requirements forces you into a battle). Each area you visit are usually filled with at least a couple of events marked by infinite symbols. These events range from boss battles, character dialogue or other types of events, so even attempting to skip enemy fights the first time around doesn’t mean you don’t have other things to do – a solution to a problem I experienced in Neptunia Mk.2 in the latter half of the game.

Navigating the different worlds is only half the fun in this game, fun can also be had in the games many other systems. A feature I don’t feel was ever given enough attention in the games promotions were the airship battles, battles between Chou’s ship and another which (seemingly being dependent on the Shanpuru you have in your possession), allows you to battle it out, leaving one ship exploded and another one still flying. The game throws in the occasional battle and doesn’t use this feature to its full potential however it is visually impressive and despite the usually high HP and SP on your part, can be pretty challenging as well.

The games hub, known as the G-Castle provides you with the amenities that you would expect from any RPG Game (Wea, however offers a few new things of interest. As I mentioned before, the game offers you a fairly detailed avatar creation system which allows you to create yourself, a friend or another else real or fiction in the game and include them in the action. The game allows you to both find costumes throughout the worlds and purchase them through the in-game store which can be used to dress up both your avatar and main characters, offering some degree of customisability and progressively unlocks over time. Another feature I alluded to before was the “Hot Springs” feature which allows you to bathe your characters with shampoo, soap and sponges you can find lying around the world or in stores to astronomically boost their stats, but of course how much of this actually remains unhampered when the game is released in English is debatable. The final main game mode you can access is what I am going to call the Mugen Shop, a store which is accessible after battling through progressively more challenging battle floors (Which actually boosts your level up astronomically at times) and can be used to increase level caps, obtaining and leveling special abilities and unlocking extra character classes for your custom avatars to name a few services on offer.

As you may expect, the whole world does not rely on just plain gold – but instead depending on the service will determine what you will use as currency, each of which is obtained in increments through treasure spheres and battle outcomes. There is Gold, which you can use to purchase items from stores and then there are Mugen Points, more sparingly dropped in battle but used in the Mugen Store for almost all its character improvement and unlockables as well as the Avatar Creation system. The last element that needs to be discussed about the G Castle is the Bulletin Board, an almost staple inclusion for RPG’s which allows you to view a bestiary, gallery and game stats.

There was one issue with the game that affected it in certain clusters of the game and detracted from the overall challenge of it. Through accessing the Mugen Store, I found that the preluding battles were perhaps a bit too easy and yielded high EXP boosts which in turn boosted my character well above the level I should be at that point in the game. Even in the middle of Chapter 2/3 I found myself at least twenty levels higher thanks to a ship battle that netted me massive amounts of EXP. Fortunately the game does eventually pick up, perhaps even requiring battles like this to progress through the game, but the balance in regards to this I found was slightly off.

Overall in terms of gameplay, while this is perhaps not a perfect RPG, upon concluding my play-through I was left pleased with what it provided and thought drawing away from game character crossovers and game company references and instead bringing it to a more gameplay-oriented storyline really did help make it a little bit more enjoyable than previous RPG’s of theirs I have played.

This is a game I would personally suggest waiting out on until NIS America bring out their English localized version, as it is more text heavy than I was expecting, and will no doubt come with a cheaper limited edition with lots of goodies. I personally purchased the standard edition of this game, and for those who are interested it actually did come with a soft-cover, full-colour artbook similar to that I would expect NIS America to release. It was not as flimsy as I was first expecting and came filled with character profiles, artwork for both the characters and the game itself along with several pages of concept art, totaling 42 pages. The games limited edition, which given exchange rates comes in at over $120 (and now seemingly limited in number) comes with Petit Nendoroid Figures and a DVD. Keep an eye out either on this site or NIS America’s site for more information on their (presumed) premium edition contents.

Mugen Souls is an ambitious game that sets itself apart from its predecessors, bringing with it a cast of entirely new characters, what should hopefully be another enjoyable storyline, fun upbeat music and most importantly – solid gameplay that provided you have enjoyed similar releases by NIS America, should not be lightly passed up when released by the company this Fall gaming season in North America and PAL Regions.

Final Score
Storyline/Character Development: N/A
Design: A-
Music/Voice Acting: A-
Gameplay: B+
Replayability: B
Personal Opinion: A-
Overall Score: B+