Developers: Comile Hearts, Idea Factory
Publisher: NIS America, Idea Factory
Platform: PS3
Mugen Souls Z – Review
Yet another crazy game has been released for the PS3 made by Compile Hearts. In Mugen Souls Z you’ll meet tons of crazy characters and you’ll be engulfed in the various craziness of both battle and story.
Story
The story of Mugen Souls Z acts as a direct sequel to the previous game, except that in this game you’ll be walking in the shoes of Syrma, an ultimate god who just woke up out of a coffin. Syrma, a rather ditzy looking girl, has forgotten about her goal of absorbing the powers of all the different ultimate gods present in the 12 worlds. Thanks to her encounter with the hero named Nao, she meets up with the various characters of the previous game,like Lady Chou-Chou and her peon Ryuuto. Through lots of chattering and fighting, Lady Chou-Chou accidentally fell into Syrma’s coffin which led to her losing all of her powers and shrinking to a small size. This let to forcing Syrma to help her in regaining her powers and conquering the 12 worlds in exchange for helping Syrma absorb the powers of the other ultimate gods.
When playing through the game, you’ll encounter lots of interesting characters (which is mostly the case with Compile Hearts games) and crazy, funny dialogues. The story is rather simple, but does fit the game nicely and the characters are so enjoyable and each have typical characteristics (bipolar, sadist, machosist, …) that you’ll most definitely have your fill of enjoyment.
Graphics
Graphics-wise the game adapts a typical anime-like look, each giving the characters unique designs, which also suggest the type of person those characters are. Dialogues are also nicely animated, which means that the sprites are not mere static images, but slight movements are visible. Sadly they should’ve made these animations a little more noticeable, since it is quite difficult to see. Frame-rate also drops when playing in the fields or in the base, but they don’t happen in other situations like battle or dialogue, so it isn’t too much of a bother.
Sound
The music in this game is pretty nice. The opening song is catchy and fun to listen to every time, and the background music gives a nice touch to different situations. The songs are catchy and will be stuck in your head when playing.
Gameplay
If you are familiar with Hyperdimensional Neptunia MKII, another game made by Compile Hearts, you’ll be familiar with the basic cores of Mugen Souls Z. When coursing through the story mode, you’ll travel to all kinds different world that you’ll need to conquer. When traveling to a world, you’ll be tossed in an open field where enemies roam around freely. When engaging an enemy you’ll have the opportunity of attacking them beforehand in order to give you an encounter attack. This gives you a huge advantage in battle, as you’ll get a free turn before your enemies can attack you. This makes the battles a lot easier and faster, which is ideal if you want to grind some levels.
In battle, you’ll have to move around in a medium sized field in order to hit an enemy. If you are too far off, you’ll be unable to land your attacks unless you use a ranged attack. Each special attack has a special attribute to it, which is quite different from your typical Japanese RPG. Instead of making use of elemental attacks, each skill has its own moe factor like sadism or masochism. You’ll need to figure out by yourself which is good against which.
Aside from that, the game still adapts a turn-based combat system. The main different factor in Mugen Souls Z however, is that instead of just killing enemies you can also turn them into your own peons, special items or enraging your enemies. This is done through a simple command button that you can only use once per turn and is exclusive to Syrma. Turning enemies into peons makes you get bonuses later on, while changing them into items can be beneficial to you. You’ll need to be aware of not enraging them, since they’ll just recover all their health back and give them stat bonuses. So unless you yourself are a true masochist, you’ll probably don’t want that.
When succeeding in ‘seducing’ your enemies, a pre-set command will also be used thanks to Syrma’s coffin. This will either attack your enemies or give you all kinds of benefits, like certain stat boosts for your party. You can increase your likeliness of seducing your enemies by changing Syrma to a appropriate moe factor. Each enemy has their own kind of fetish, so try to figure out what types of enemies like certain factors.
Once in a while you’ll also participate in a rock-paper-scissor like battle with certain bosses. When this happens, you’ll changing your space ship into a giant robot, fighting against the boss’ mother ship. Just like in rock-paper-scissor, you’ll need to figure out what your opponent will do, so that you can adapt a winning strategy.
Conclusion
Overall, while not bringing too much new things to the table of Japanese RPG’s and having slight frame-rate issues, the game does a very good job on getting you hooked. This is mostly done with the dialogue between the different characters in the game, since you’ll never get bored of it. Game play-wise the game has a good amount of variety and has its own unique elements. For those who like JRPG that are slightly over-the-top, this game is definitely something to keep an eye out for.
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