Recent reviews by Vaver

I've spent the last several days whispering Hekki ALLMO before going to bed.

Gorgeous, engaging, engrossing. The art and visuals, the characters, the music, the world, the narrative, all will stay with me for a long while.

Easily the best 3D Sonic game in the last 15 years. Everything I've ever wanted.

It's amazing how such a simple looking game can actually be so deep and content-rich. The amount of possibilities this game offers is astounding.

Nominated for 2021 Steam awards.

Nominated for 2023 Steam awards.

Nominated for 2024 Steam awards.

Nominated for 2025 Steam awards.

I've been waiting for this game since it was first announced well over a year ago. I've been following development closely, played the demo when it first showed up, and played the special minigame [vnstudioelan.itch.io] a group of mischievous people inside the studio released around Halloween. I've been following Élan (no, I didn't copy-paste the accent, pros of it being part of my native language) since they first said they were branching off (?) Alienworks two years ago. Seeing it finally release is honestly incredible, and getting to play it in full was a delightful experience.

After finishing the game, playing through every single route and getting all the endings, I can happily say it was 100% worth the wait. I can't help but compare it to Highway Blossoms, what with it being some form of "spiritual succesor", and a certain reference in the Halloween special, and as much as I like HB, this one felt as though it took what they learned on that game and improved on a lot of aspects.

At first, much like with their previous game, I naively assumed it was going to be kinetic and just a good story to read through. You can imagine my surprised face when not only are there choices, there is more than just one, and they actually affect the outcome of the story. I was even more surprised when I realized that the choices weren't made by our originally-presented-as main character, rather by one of our "secondary characters". At one point during the early chapters, I started wondering what was going on behind the scenes, as in, when our main narrator wasn't with the rest of the group, so I was pleasantly surprised to see the narration jumping between the different characters, getting to hear the thoughts of all 4 girls throughout.

The music and art were really fitting. Both soundtracks stand out in their own way, and when paired with the stunning backgrounds and lively characters, they set an incredible atmosphere that sucks you in without issue. The ending theme is special to me, considering I've been following In Love With A Ghost for some years now, and few people would have been more fitting to make it for a myriad reasons; and the art remains as lovely as it's ever been. The characters are spunky, with vivid colors that contrast against the monotony of the world they explore.

If anything I feel that now I'm done, I want more, but ultimately, the fault is mine for eating through the game in less than a day. I grew to really like the characters despite the relatively short time I spent with them, and it's sort of saddening to see the end of a cycle that lasted for over 2 years. I hope that more people get to experience this visual novel and enjoy it like I did. And here's to hoping that down the line we get more content with them, regardless of the format it may come in.

I hope Tara doesn't read reviews, otherwise her ego will get bigger than the big gay they all suffer from. Maddie and Abby are absolute rays of sunshine and I hope they live as happily as they can possibly be. And kudos to Morgan for being one of the most patient people I've ever seen.

Pro/con list and TL;DR at the bottom.

When this game was first announced most people hyped it up to heaven, because it promised to be the game a lot of people wanted; the hack 'n' slash gameplay from the previous Tamsoft spin-offs but refined, and an MMORPG-esque setting that was mandatory for the series to dabble with at some point. After waiting for this game for about a year and a half, after the despair-inducing delay the PC version suffered last year (first advertised as simultaneous release with PS4, delayed 4.5 months), and after a more than bumpy release day on Steam (~4 hours delay, technical difficulties, dissapearing launch discount, non-existant deluxe bundle, delayed trading card release), I want to say the game delivered exactly what I expected it to be and more.

The hack 'n' slash gameplay really suited this game. The fact that it's supposed to be a parody of the Sword Art Online games was apparent, but for the better in my opinion. At the start, the main aspect was simply mashing one button endlessly until everything was dead. There aren't any heavy attacks or combos between different buttons; only one normal attack button, mash it a lot, done. That said, there are other mechanics that actually spice it up quite a lot: you can block attacks, and if timed correctly allow you to take 0 damage and deal a counter-attack, and the skills gave you much more freedom than the main games' turn based combat allowed them to. The MMORPG setting makes every character different. Whatever you remember from the characters' playstyle in the main games goes out the window. The hard-hitting, mace-wielding Blanc is now a Priest whose sole purpose is to heal your party. Rom and Ram both become Melee attackers, whereas Nepgear leaves her sword and becomes the Mage.

One of the biggest and most notorious differences between this title and previous ones is the fact that the graphics are wildly improved. The event dialogues are more or less the same, but the characters don't move their mouths nor breath, they're stiff, which is a shame, since it gave it more liveliness. However, the camera zooms in and out in the dialogue which makes it active and not as static. The dungeons are not just re-skins this time around, each of the dungeons has a unique layout, but the monsters suffer the same issue as always, you have a number of different monsters but later on you'll fight the same monster with a different color and name. Both the graphics and the huge change in gameplay are part of the change to Unreal 4, which helped this game an immense amount.

The upgrade system is decently good, getting the materials to upgrade weapons or armor is actually not too time-consuming, and the drop rate is definitely not as bad as previous entries. The change in gameplay meant that a lot of the stats from previous games dissapear completely. This time around you just focus on INT and STR and not have to worry about MVT or stuff like that. The character customisation for costumes is incredible. The same as in previous Tamsoft games, it allows you to place up to 5 accesories on each character and move them in whichever way you want. You can rotate them, resize them, and put them in places a normal game wouldn't allow you to even come close to.

Spoilers just in case:
As far as the story goes, this game has two main arcs. One arc is the story of the game the characters are playing, 4 Goddesses Online. It's as stereotypical as a fantasy MMORPG story can go, but that one wasn't the main story in the overall game. At some point, certain things start to happen to the game from the outside world and our heroines have to help the devs save their game from disaster. It doesn't really go incredibly deep but I felt that the main purpose of this story was a moral against cheating, which was fun to see, but ultimately won't affect anyone emotionally. A lot of characters from previous games make appearances as NPCs, and help you out at the shops in town. As mentioned earlier, this game being a parody of SAO, some of the new characters are obvious mirrors of SAO characters.

One of the main selling points of this game is the fact that it has an online 4 player coop mode. Unfortunately, this part of the game fell flat on its face. The mode suffers from horrendous netcode that makes rubberbanding a pain in the ass, and some other weird gameplay decisions. For example: if the party leader dies the entire party disbands, or if you die, you are kicked from the quest. This was a huge kick in the balls for a lot of people. But, the game gives zero incentive to play online other than for fun, which is technically not a great thing, but it also means that you can avoid the mode without missing anything for the singleplayer experience.

• Unreal Engine 4.
  
• Smooth gameplay.
  
• Graphics are great, massive improvement from previous games.
  
• Great character vanity customisation.
  
• Decent story, works well for the kind of game it is.
  
• Decent soundtrack, more or less what's expected.
  
• Not hard to 100%, if you are interested (single ending, so no replays needed).
  
• Signature fanservice is abundant ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)
  
• Free DLC for Senran Kagura: Peach Beach Splash.

• Absolutely horrible online multiplayer.
  
• Gameplay can get repetitive.

Great gameplay, great graphics, overall great game. If you can stand and/or overlook the problems with the online mode and limit yourself to single player, it's one of the most fun experiences the Neptunia series has offered yet.

What can I say? It's good, very good. It mixes two perfect things into an even more perfect thing. There's nothing more satisfying than blowing someone up and then scoring, only to watch their jaws drop at your acrobatics. I swear I have never been so addicted to something in my entire life.

(November 2016) Ayy, I got to nominate it for basically being the most addicting piece of software to ever exist.

(November 2017) Year 2, new Steam Awards selection, and again I have the chance to nominate this gem. Hoping to vote again next year.

(November 2018) 3 years and counting.