Recent reviews by Nugan

Good game, werewolf is friend, can be 100%'ed in just under 80 minutes.

So, there's a lot to go on about with this one. I never played the first game and started with this one, it took a particular interest and... feels kinda lackluster.

Most of the content in the game seems to be crammed into the first two chapters of the game.

These parts being Silver's League and The Second League (the first division that you fight, anyways)

It starts off very well with the management aspect:
Bending metal for the Mafia, (Gathering Strength and working at nights)
Punching slimes at a Fastfood Facility, (Gathering Stamina and working days)
and Making Noodles for the Yakuza. (Gathering Agility and working nights)

Buying food or meals to prep while your mother doses on sleeping candy.
Sleeping to advance time and or buying coffee to restore energy.
Eating food in order to train or sleep.
Participating in fights or drinking soda to manage happiness. (high happiness provides minimal but noticeable benefit to stat increases and work speed)
Health... is one of most unnoticed stats in the game, if it were removed as a stat then there would be no real noticeable change.
(and since the softlock was put in, you can just train forever while in the silver league without needing to buy anything)

GPP is the stat spent on unlocking abilities and skills used during fights, and there's a problem here. If you multi-track with skills, you won't be able to catch up or be as effective in fights. Elaborating on GPP further is kinda pointless: There are two main thresholds shown by the game, 2000 GPP, and 9000 GPP.

At 2000 GPP you can start working for the police, and at 9000 GPP, you reach chapter three-and-a-half.
You can also ask Little Bobo to hack a fight to gain a marginal amount of GPP from fighting
(+100 on fights against easier opponents, +200 against tougher opponents)

In order to even get started on working for the police, or getting started at the gym, you need to spend time grinding out preparatory functions just to unlock a new feature which has three different bars to keep track of, for both the gym and the police.
Total Progress bar, which unlocks new quests to go on.
Work Progress bar, which has quota thresholds for completion, extra cash, and GPP/OTH
and a Reputation bar, which I honestly haven't seen a noticable impact with.

Cash is either too difficult to retain while progressing quickly, or too hard to spend because there's nothing to spend it on. (excluding gym equipment)

Tonus is a new modifer to stats which is based off a maximum stat amount. 12 strength means a max of 12 tonus. Tonus is consumed by more advanced abilities and restored during training. Tonus is filled first before the main stat can get any further increases, it's a system that gets very little elaboration but it's also very lackluster.


Then comes the hospital visit. It's... not very engaging. Your mother goes to the hospital, and an enormous fee is placed on you and near immediately disappears. The game doesn't want you to pay it off personally, but to either side with the students that you're training at the gym, or work with the police to get insurance.
It really wasn't a hard choice, and the main problem comes after the fact.
You are FORCED to choose working as a Sensei at the Gym, or work as a detective at the police station. Not only that, but you are barred from working for the Mafia, the Junkyard, or the Slime Ranch from this point forward, which means less travelling and less freedom of choice.

This is also the point of no return if you're looking for 100% achievements (which is completely possible in a single playthrough)

That is how the game plays out for the first three chapters, at least, and it's mostly enjoyable.
You get 9000 GPP and then the game progresses to chapter 3.5, and a long process of following the memories of people a few decades back.

Chapter 3.5 though, is where I dreaded the game after the fact. The story takes a nosedive into the insane and drab, and it's another point of no return.
"The whole world outside of the city has become a wasteland",
"We created the actual actual Resistance Base out here in the wasteland, far away from the city",
"The Upper City is just a simulation,"
"Your father is trapped in the simulation by the cat, who became smart because of the magic medallion that your father had, and now the cat has a seething hatred for humanity",
"And now you have to go into virtual reality and shut down the Upper City Simulation"

Once Chapter 3.5 starts, the rest of the game becomes a linear 35-45 minutes until the ending cutscene.
First impressions would mean, right after you are brought to a Resistance Base, you would believe there's a fakeout and another league would take place so people could become stronger and maybe something happens with that as the resistance would retaliate against the corporation. (It would've been cool if it actually happened.) And maybe the story can continue from there, train faster than before and raise stats high enough to challenge the final boss.

None of this actually happens.

What actually happens is: You're brought to the Resistance Base, you're briefed on what has actually happened at the city, you're told that the Upper City is just a simulation, a dozen cat puns get thrown around, you're brought to the virtual reality room within the resistance base, told about a dolphin that is hinted at being an important character, and then you're forced to fight six fights in a row, fully restored between each one, and then that's the end of the game.

GPP, Health, Energy, Hunger, Happiness, Tonus, Time, Cash, and Buffs, these ingame mechanics all disappear during chapter 3.5.

Wow, that is disappointing.
There is so much detail and effort put into the first two chapters with unique quests and references, and it all falls off after chapter three. I want to say the game is good, and it is good for a short while, but then the game runs out of fresh content and puts the player into a(n incredibly linear) wild goose chase until the end of the game where it fails to provide new content.

crypt of the necrodancer meets devil may cryit's great you get to hit smart people with guitars

you can beat it under two hours and refund it if you want, but the gameplay is amazing

this game scales out of control faster than your life

The game is alright, a fantastic take on the "Reverse" Bullet-Hell genre, but where the enemies actually start firing back at you.
There's an option to adjust the opacity of all projectiles (both yours and enemy projectiles) while still leaving the attack outlines on the ground so you can have great visibility on where to move.

If there's a few critiques that I have, it would be the following:
Show the current duration of active buffs like Bloodlust and Might.
Tell us how much damage a summon does.
Give us a short in-game list of information like debuffs and ability rundowns, it would be really helpful in comparing abilities without having to do so in a run, and would also allow planning out a loadout before a run (including abilities that aren't normally available).

bad, abandoned

TL;DR, I hate this game,
It's tedious. There are multiple tiers of rebirths, world ascensions, and even area difficulty "rebirths".
It's a large waste of time, there are six characters with ten skills each, and their own personal levels on equipment. Then there are the town levels and the guild levels which take too long to actually level.
It's pay to win. The total cost of everything in the Epic Coin store costs 710,500, which costs $1,010 US Dollars. There are upgrades in the Epic Coin Store that should be available by default instead of being locked behind a paywall.
It's confusing. There are steam achievements for stages of progress that are actually unobtainable without third party tools, like Tier 4 Rebirths and Tier 2 World Ascensions.

This game really got me, I loved it.
Only thing that i wish the game had was slightly higher difficulty spikes at the end of each week for each contest, because putting a potion with a price higher than your opponent makes you miss out on the great music for each contest versus every unique competitor.

Every story has to start somewhere, and this game is almost a never-ending story with every surviving character becoming a legacy character that can show up again in another campaign.
To be fair, the one thing I'm going to nitpick is turning a character into something else takes a fair while.