Soooooo what'cha playing?

[MisterIceTeaPeach]

I have to admit FFVII is enjoyable so far, way more than the beginning of VI.

Sure, random enocounters still suck, but the dark and action-packed story has caught my interest. 

Also the characters seem to be more memorable for me, Cloud, Barret and Tifa are cool so far. 

PS: I have to get used to the battle system since I am pretty much not acknowledged with this series at all, but making the attacks based on the character's speed is a nice mechanic. 

Edited June 19, 2019 by Rosalina

[DragonFlames]

14 hours ago, Armagon said:

Yeah, it's stupid. There's also RNG stuff like finding items, which is good. But then if you're going through certain places, like a desert or tropical islands, then the RNG might be like "oh no, the weather's too hot. Totori lost 5 HP". It's dumb, i don't get it.

Megadimension Neptunia also has a level select world map with random encounters (which can be turned off in NG+) and it's also annoying there, though the battles actually flow better since there isn't really any character that dies in two hits and most deal reasonable damage so it's not as annoying as it is in Totori.

But like, if your JRPG is the kind where you initiate battles by touching the enemy, why are you putting random encounters?

I wouldn't blame you. Even as someone who doesn't mind time-management, the time-limit in Totori isn't that good, even though it worked amazingly in Rorona. Remove the time-limit from Totori and literally the entire game becomes better. Had there been no time-limit, i actually would've taken the time i needed to prepare for that certain boss.

Honestly, the worst part of all this is that i'm playing the DX versions. So there's literally no reason for Totori to be lacking the QoL that both Rorona and Meruru have. This is the second enhanced port of the Arland trilogy. C'mon Gust.

Again, Totori isn't a bad game but i have a feeling i'll be ranking it at the bottom of the Arland series.

Sad to hear. I hope Meruru has the QoL from Rorona and some more. Would be a shame if those two games ruined the fun you had with the series so far.

On a different note, Neptunia Rebirth might actually have my favorite combat system in a JRPG so far. It neatly combines turn-based battles with action combat, though you still have time to decide what your next move should be. Hope they keep this in future games, too. It's awesome.

I also reached Chapter 7, and fought what I consider to be my favorite boss fight in the game so far: the one against the Fake Purple Heart. It was tough; though she weirdly didn't do much damage to Neptune herself, MAGES. went down in a single Cross Combo, Falcom could live at least one, but she needed healing to be safe. Thankfully, FPH didn't use Neptune Break at all or else I'd have been screwed (while I myself spammed the heck out of that move in the battle). But what I truly liked about it was actually that Neptune basically has to fight herself while being unable to transform. It was a cool moment for her character.
I actually fought Fake Green Heart first and was probably underlevelled (Tekken joins at level 60 for that mission, while Neptune and the others were at level 55), so I think the intent was to have Fake Purple Heart first, then the others. Especially since FGH heals herself for a little over 10k HP every turn, so to keep up with that with characters that are at least five levels lower than recommended (indicated by Tekken's joining level), I had to resort to the usual Rush until Drive Gauge is full, then spam the heck out of EXE Drives to do enough damage to her. Tekken herself is great, by the way. I really like Falcom and Marvy, too.

On the other hand, Iffy lost some sympathy points with me for being outright hostile to Neptune, to the point where she got excited at slaughtering Fake Purple Heart to "relieve stress". Maybe I missed something, but it kind of seemed out of left field, since before that, she usually seemed fine with Neptune; even if she engaged in some friendly teasing, it was never to that level of hostility. Starting at around Chapter 5, IF seems to be the one that just can't seem to stay alive in battle, going down in as little as two hits, sometimes even a single hit depending on the enemy attack that hits her (so the game has to be renamed to "The Adventures of Neptune, Compa and Iffy('s corpse)"). So when she basically called Neptune "useless", I asked myself "and what the heck did you contribute besides wasting my revival items?".

Different, but semi-related: Did you hear that Neptunia RPG will have some of its CGs censored on the PS4 version?

[Shrimpica]

9 minutes ago, DragonFlames said:

It neatly combines turn-based battles with action combat, though you still have time to decide what your next move should be. Hope they keep this in future games, too. It's awesome.

They changed it in VIIR, but i don't think it was well received. Didn't try it myself to form an opinion on it, as i only played the original MegaNep, which has an upgraded System of the Re;Birth games.

But yeah, i love the Freedom this battle system gives you. To move around and do combos and stuff. 

12 minutes ago, DragonFlames said:

Iffy lost some sympathy points with me for being outright hostile to Neptune, to the point where she got excited at slaughtering Fake Purple Heart to "relieve stress". Maybe I missed something, but it kind of seemed out of left field, since before tha

I think it was suppossed to be more funny xD
But for someone as normal and no-nonsense type as IF, Nepko's Randomness can be hard to deal with

14 minutes ago, DragonFlames said:

IF seems to be the one that just can't seem to stay alive in battle, going down in as little as two hits, sometimes even a single hit depending on the enemy attack that hits her

Yeah, IF is really really frail. I do remember her dying 24/7 in my playthroughs as well. 

14 minutes ago, DragonFlames said:

Did you hear that Neptunia RPG will have some of its CGs censored on the PS4 version?

Yes. Sony doesn't like Fanservice. They've been censoring games left and right. Even DMC5 got hit.

[DragonFlames]

Just now, Shrimperor said:

They changed it in VIIR, but i don't think it was well received. Didn't try it myself to form an opinion on it, as i only played the original MegaNep, which has an upgraded System of the Re;Birth games.

If I remember correctly, VIIR is a remaster of MegaNep VII. I wonder if the changes are in the original as well.

1 minute ago, Shrimperor said:

I think it was suppossed to be more funny xD

But for someone as normal and no-nonsense type as IF, Nepko's Randomness can be hard to deal with.

I'll admit that the humor of that was kind of lost on me, since it seemed kind of out of character to how IF was presented up until that point. Maybe she's still salty about the whole "betrayal" thing Nep-Nep pulled when first meeting the Pervy Brothers. Though the fact that my biggest gripe with the game so far is such a minute detail says a lot about the game and the characters as a whole.

3 minutes ago, Shrimperor said:

Yes. Sony doesn't like Fanservice. They've been censoring games left and right. Even DMC5 got hit.

That sucks. Oh well, I've been thinking about getting Neptunia RPG on the Switch (and a Switch along with it, since I also wanna get FE Three Houses and SMTV later down the line), because my PS4's hard drive is starting to run low on space.

[Shrimpica]

4 minutes ago, DragonFlames said:

I wonder if the changes are in the original as well.

Nope. Original VII has the same battle system as R;B games, although upgraded. 

 

5 minutes ago, DragonFlames said:

and a Switch along with it, since I also wanna get FE Three Houses

 Same same. Dunno if i will be able to get a Switch on FE release tho. I will try my best however.

 

Also, do you know the True End requirements, or are you going for the normal end first?

[DragonFlames]

5 minutes ago, Shrimperor said:

Nope. Original VII has the same battle system as R;B games, although upgraded.

Sounds great!

5 minutes ago, Shrimperor said:

Also, do you know the True End requirements, or are you going for the normal end first?

There are multiple endings in this?
I had no clue, but if I had to guess, it has probably something to do with the Shares.

EDIT: To answer your question, I want to try for the True Ending if possible, but I wouldn't be mad if I got the normal ending first. I probably will replay the game again anyway.

Edited June 19, 2019 by DragonFlames

[Shrimpica]

2 minutes ago, DragonFlames said:

There are multiple endings in this?

Yup. Every Nep game has multipe endings, with R;B2 having the most (Pro Tip: when you play R;B2 get Conquest ending first 😉 )

 

3 minutes ago, DragonFlames said:

I had no clue, but if I had to guess, it has probably something to do with the Shares

yup

well, i'll put it in a spoiler in case you don't want to see it

Arfoire share at 0%, every Nation at 20%+

[Azure the Scale Tipper]

About to play some Dragon Quest. Starting with the first one, actually. The first 6 games and 8 are available on iOS.

[DragonFlames]

3 minutes ago, Shrimperor said:

yup

well, i'll put it in a spoiler in case you don't want to see it

  Reveal hidden contents

Arfoire share at 0%, every Nation at 20%+

 

Only at 20%+? I thought I had to get them to like 100% or something. I did quests until I got Lastation to 58% yesterday and wanted to start working on the other three... well, that certainly makes things easier, then. Thanks for the info!
I actually managed to get the "Others" Shares to 0% by the time I reached Chapter 4 due to pretty much only doing quests that lower "Others" Shares.

[Shrimpica]

3 minutes ago, DragonFlames said:

I thought I had to get them to like 100% or something

Well, The Total precentage of shares will be 100%, so... xD

3 minutes ago, DragonFlames said:

I did quests until I got Lastation to 58% yesterday

You can get Uni after Ch7 now that you have Lastation at 50%+. However you'll probably need to reduce the Lastation shares by quite a bit to get the True end xD

Edited June 19, 2019 by Shrimperor

[Armagon]

2 hours ago, DragonFlames said:

I hope Meruru has the QoL from Rorona and some more.

It indeed does. I synthesized something and it gave me the option to put it in my basket, so it's already better than Totori. The time-limit seems to be a mix of Rorona and Totori's, in which you have three years (three years huh, i wonder if that's tradition just like how having every protagonist's actual name be this long name but everyone just calls them by their nickname) but you also have more direct goals at the end of each year. I don't think those direct goals are hard deadlines like the main one is but it's a good guideline. The goals here are also more quest-oriented like in Rorona as opposed to just running around doing more vague things like in Totori.

Arls also appears to be smaller so i don't think i'll be spending 20 days getting from one place to the other. I think. I hope.

2 hours ago, DragonFlames said:

Starting at around Chapter 5, IF seems to be the one that just can't seem to stay alive in battle, going down in as little as two hits, sometimes even a single hit depending on the enemy attack that hits her

2 hours ago, Shrimperor said:

Yeah, IF is really really frail. I do remember her dying 24/7 in my playthroughs as well. 

Huh, that's weird. For me, IF never really died that often. If anything, i kept her around a lot because her EXE Drive is too good.

2 hours ago, DragonFlames said:

Different, but semi-related: Did you hear that Neptunia RPG will have some of its CGs censored on the PS4 version?

Yeah i did. It doesn't affect me at all because i'm getting the Switch version. 

I don't even have a PS4. The only reason i'd ever even get one is for Trails of Cold Steel 3 (and 4 when it inevitably gets localized) but even then, i expect those two to be ported to PC in the near future. I mean, i already watched subtitled playthroughs so i already know what happens but i'd still play them regardless.

2 hours ago, DragonFlames said:

If I remember correctly, VIIR is a remaster of MegaNep VII.

VIIR is less of a remaster and more of just "hey, it's on VR now". There are changes, the biggest of which is the addition of VR segments where you can actually hang out with the CPUs. I also know VIIR cutout the bad and normal ends so you can only get the true end but and it's like........ok? I don't get what the point of cutting out the other endings was.

This is my first time hearing about the battles being changed though.

2 hours ago, DragonFlames said:

(and a Switch along with it, since I also wanna get FE Three Houses and SMTV later down the line)

The joke is that SMT V is coming out at all

Switch is like the best console for JRPGs right now because of it's portability factor. It's JRPG library is less than the Vita's (because let's be honest, what else was there on the Vita besides JRPGs) but unlike the Vita, the Switch ain't dying anytime soon.

The only downside is that the internal storage space kinda sucks and you'd need a good micro SD card. Unless you don't really download games that have physical versions. But because of it's portable nature, it's actually better to have Switch games downloaded.

2 hours ago, DragonFlames said:

There are multiple endings in this?
I had no clue, but if I had to guess, it has probably something to do with the Shares.

Yes but no, it depends on the game. Every mainline Nep has multiple endings but all but Victory/ReBirth 3 rely on Shares for them.

Getting the true end in ReBirth 1 and Victory/ReBirth 3 is pretty straightforward, as Shrimperor has already explained for ReBirth 1. You gotta do a bit more work for it in Mk.2/ReBirth 2 and Megadimension. Mk.2/ReBirth 2 has the most endings: normal, bad, true and then character variants of the normal/true ending.

2 hours ago, Shrimperor said:

(Pro Tip: when you play R;B2 get Conquest ending first 😉 )

I-

 

[Shrimpica]

2 hours ago, Armagon said:

This is my first time hearing about the battles being changed though

They changed it into this weir AP based system.

MegaNep early Spoilers

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CeCrwmXOogg 

...

Why is there no video on youtube with jp va on youtube? They are so rare..

 

2 hours ago, Armagon said:

normal, bad, true and then character variants of the normal/true ending.

+ Holy Sword Ending, Human ending and most important of all Conquest.

Honestly, i only got Conquest and True, because the grind for endings in R;B2 is a bit stupid tbh. The lily rank requirement for true end alone was bleh.

2 hours ago, Armagon said:

I-

what?
It's an experience every Nep fan has to go through xD

+Imo it has the best boss battles in the Series, gameplay wise. Crazy tough boss battles that use the battle system to it's fullest.

[Armagon]

Made some more progress in Atelier Meruru. The best part: the main assignments auto-report themselves. You don't have to walk back to the castle to report them. It's just something that happens. You still have to walk back to the castle to build new facilities but i'm surprised and thankful that the main assignments auto-report. Don't know how to feel about facilities taking anywhere between a week and a month to build though.  Hopefully it's not a big enough issue.

I've noticed that actions on the field use up less time. Gathering and battles still use up time but not as much as in Totori, which is a good thing. Recipes are learned upon reaching certain alchemy levels which i think is a new feature? Or maybe it happened in Rorona and Totori and i just didn't notice because there wasn't a cute cutscene of Totori teaching Meruru new recipes.

30 minutes ago, Shrimperor said:

They changed it into this weir AP based system.

B-but why tho? Apparently the original Hyperdimension Neptunia also had an AP-based system and uh, well aside from the fact that that game had no budget, there's a reason why they ditched it.....until VIIR brought it back, i suppose. It's been a while since we've gotten a mainline Nep so hopefully they stick to Megadimension's battle system.

 

47 minutes ago, Shrimperor said:

+ Holy Sword Ending, Human ending and most important of all Conquest.

Right, those as well.

....is Conquest not the bad end?

33 minutes ago, Shrimperor said:

what?
It's an experience every Nep fan has to go through xD

Oh no, i agree. I just don't know if that's the first ending first time players should go for. 

 

[DragonFlames]

19 hours ago, Shrimperor said:

Well, The Total precentage of shares will be 100%, so... xD

You can get Uni after Ch7 now that you have Lastation at 50%+. However you'll probably need to reduce the Lastation shares by quite a bit to get the True end xD

Okay, that's true.

I got the plan to get Uni, but now I don't have Lastation at 50% anymore (it's sitting at around 35% at the moment). Getting that back would mean reducing the ones I got on the other lands who are barely past 20% right now, so I guess I'll skip the Candidates after all and leave that surprise open for Rebirth 2.
Is it just me, or are Planeptune and especially Lowee the hardest Shares to increase in this game?

17 hours ago, Armagon said:

It indeed does. I synthesized something and it gave me the option to put it in my basket, so it's already better than Totori. The time-limit seems to be a mix of Rorona and Totori's, in which you have three years (three years huh, i wonder if that's tradition just like how having every protagonist's actual name be this long name but everyone just calls them by their nickname) but you also have more direct goals at the end of each year. I don't think those direct goals are hard deadlines like the main one is but it's a good guideline. The goals here are also more quest-oriented like in Rorona as opposed to just running around doing more vague things like in Totori.

Arls also appears to be smaller so i don't think i'll be spending 20 days getting from one place to the other. I think. I hope.

Meruru sounds infinitely better than Totori already.

Bolded part: At least from Sophie, I can tell you that it isn't. Lulua plays this straight again: her real name is "Elmerulia" (how they got from "Elmerulia" to "Lulua" is anybody's guess). Maybe that's the case just for the Arland games?

17 hours ago, Armagon said:

The joke is that SMT V is coming out at all

XD

14 hours ago, Shrimperor said:

+ Holy Sword Ending, Human ending and most important of all Conquest.

Honestly, i only got Conquest and True, because the grind for endings in R;B2 is a bit stupid tbh. The lily rank requirement for true end alone was bleh.

what?
It's an experience every Nep fan has to go through xD

+Imo it has the best boss battles in the Series, gameplay wise. Crazy tough boss battles that use the battle system to it's fullest.

Now you've got me curious. I'll see soon enough, I guess, since I just now reached the Road to Celestia. Neptune getting her goddess powers back was an awesome moment, not gonna lie. Not having them for a while really showed me how much I relied on them during my playthrough (I pretty much used HDD every time a tough monster came up). I missed ya, Purple Heart, even though you were technically never really gone.

On the topic of Chapter 8, I don't think I'm ready to face the final boss yet. My group is in the early sixties in terms of levels, with Marvey still stuck at early 50 (she joined at 46). I think I'll do another grind session from here on out.

13 hours ago, Armagon said:

Made some more progress in Atelier Meruru. The best part: the main assignments auto-report themselves. You don't have to walk back to the castle to report them. It's just something that happens. You still have to walk back to the castle to build new facilities but i'm surprised and thankful that the main assignments auto-report. Don't know how to feel about facilities taking anywhere between a week and a month to build though.  Hopefully it's not a big enough issue.

I've noticed that actions on the field use up less time. Gathering and battles still use up time but not as much as in Totori, which is a good thing. Recipes are learned upon reaching certain alchemy levels which i think is a new feature? Or maybe it happened in Rorona and Totori and i just didn't notice because there wasn't a cute cutscene of Totori teaching Meruru new recipes.

Spoilers in case you don't want to know too much about how Lulua has you learn recipes. Of course, no story spoilers will be given:

Sophie and Lulua have you learn new recipes depending on what you do. They require you to synthesize items of a certain quality, using skills and/or items a certain number of times, fighting certain monsters, speaking to people, doing quests, reading purchaseable books and so on. Lulua ups the ante by having you learn new battle skills and discover new gathering areas the same way. Don't worry, the games give you hints as to what to do. They can get a little cryptic at times, but figuring out what you should be doing is half the fun of discovering a new recipe.

[Shrimpica]

11 minutes ago, DragonFlames said:

Is it just me, or are Planeptune and especially Lowee the hardest Shares to increase in this game?

I remember Lastation's being the easiest to get.

Thankfully, Colloseum is there to easily move shares around (and for strong gear!)

12 minutes ago, DragonFlames said:

My group is in the early sixties in terms of levels,

should be fine tbh. I was at the final boss in the late 60s/early 70s with fortify enemies on.

https://imgur.com/a/Xgz2ZOY my Party directly at the final boss

[DragonFlames]

4 minutes ago, Shrimperor said:

I remember Lastation's being the easiest to get.

Definitely. There are many quests that increase Lastation Shares. This is probably why I was able to get Lastation so high before any other land.

5 minutes ago, Shrimperor said:

Thankfully, Colloseum is there to easily move shares around (and for strong gear!)

I actually still need to unlock that one. I completely forgot it existed... whoops.

5 minutes ago, Shrimperor said:

should be fine tbh. I was at the final boss in the late 60s/early 70s with fortify enemies on.

https://imgur.com/a/Xgz2ZOY my Party directly at the final boss

Looking at it, I still need to grind a bit, especially for some strong gear. But thanks for showing me!

[Armagon]

Atelier Meruru: "Get 5000 people to live in the country by the end of the first year"

Me: "Haha already done and i still have a few months to spare."

Yeah, this is already a significantly less stressful game than Totori. God bless. You can even build a facility that is basically EXP Share where party members not active still get EXP.  I've noticed that the years in this game aren't exact. The first year did not end on 12/30. So it looks like one full year is the time it takes to get back to the first date of the game.

I've had Totori join and boy oh boy, she's the strongest in the group right now. She actually deals damage and doesn't die in two hits. Man, where was this power in the previous game? She can also do the duplicate thing @DragonFlames mentioned a while back. She actually has two variants of it, one that uses 50% of the original and another that does 33%. That seems redundant, having two versions of the same skill but one is weaker, so i most likely read the description wrong so know that i'm possibly wrong about this.

From a technical standpoint, this is probably the best looking Arland game. Or rather, was until Lulua took that title by an extremely significant margin (i've seen the screenshots). Makes sense, Arland released from 2009-2011 while Lulua came out this year.

Back to the technical standpoint, the UI is also clean as fuck. Looks like a more polished version of Rorona's UI. Totori's UI looked kinda dated, which doesn't make sense. I swear, i think Totori had a lesser budget despite technically looking better than Rorona.

Also, quests do not have time-limits hard deadlines. Instead, the longer you go without doing quests, the more Meruru's popularity drops. If her popularity reaches zero, it's an automatic game over. Thankfully, popularity is very generous.

9 hours ago, DragonFlames said:

Bolded part: At least from Sophie, I can tell you that it isn't. Lulua plays this straight again: her real name is "Elmerulia" (how they got from "Elmerulia" to "Lulua" is anybody's guess). Maybe that's the case just for the Arland games?

Perhaps. Though yeah, Elmerulia -> Lulua is quite a jump. All the others in Arland had more logical nicknames:

• Rorolina -> Rorona
• Totooria -> Totori
• Merurulince -> Meruru.

Personally, i would've gone something like "Elmerulia -> Rulia" since each of the nicknames is just the actual name but with some letters removed. 

9 hours ago, DragonFlames said:

Sophie and Lulua have you learn new recipes depending on what you do. They require you to synthesize items of a certain quality, using skills and/or items a certain number of times, fighting certain monsters, speaking to people, doing quests, reading purchaseable books and so on. Lulua ups the ante by having you learn new battle skills and discover new gathering areas the same way. Don't worry, the games give you hints as to what to do. They can get a little cryptic at times, but figuring out what you should be doing is half the fun of discovering a new recipe.

Bolded: that's how you would learn recipes in the Arland trilogy too. Well, at least Rorona and Totori. I have yet to find any purchasable recipe books in Meruru.

Edit: There are recipe books in Meruru. They're just at the bottom of the shopping lists for some reason.

Edited June 21, 2019 by Armagon

[Shrimpica]

Just got the Normal end in Death end Re;Quest...

That was honesty a pretty damn cool normal end.

(Major Spoiler!)

 

Basically, the Nomral End is Steins;Gate 0, telling the Story of all the Aratas who failed to save Shina. Now it's time to head to the True End to save Shina!

Bravo IF, Bravo

Edited June 21, 2019 by Shrimperor

[DragonFlames]

5 hours ago, Armagon said:

Perhaps. Though yeah, Elmerulia -> Lulua is quite a jump. All the others in Arland had more logical nicknames:

• Rorolina -> Rorona
• Totooria -> Totori
• Merurulince -> Meruru.

Personally, i would've gone something like "Elmerulia -> Rulia" since each of the nicknames is just the actual name but with some letters removed.

Indeed.
Maybe "Atelier Rulia" just doesn't roll off the tongue as well in the Japanese version.
"Rurua no Atorie"
"Ruria no Atorie"
Huh. Makes no difference, besides the second syllable having an "i" in it.

Maybe they though the name was too similar to "Julia" and that it would be weird to have a name that looks like "Julia" had the "J" switched with an "R", especially for western releases.
I'm majorly grasping at straws here, if you couldn't tell.

5 hours ago, Armagon said:

Edit: There are recipe books in Meruru. They're just at the bottom of the shopping lists for some reason.

That's weird. In Lulua and Sophie, they're right at the top of the shopping lists.

[Ice Dragon]

13 hours ago, Armagon said:

Perhaps. Though yeah, Elmerulia -> Lulua is quite a jump. All the others in Arland had more logical nicknames:

It's every other character starting with the second. You go from エルメルリア (erumeruria) to ルルア (rurua).

[DragonFlames]

EDIT: Nvm, someone thankfully ninja'd me.

So, I just finished Hyperdimension Neptunia Rebirth 1 with the True Ending and I wanted to give my full thoughts on the game while it is still fresh on my mind.
Let me preface it with the TL;DR: I absolutely LOVED my time with this game. If you want a score, it's a solid 9/10, and I wonder why I didn't give this series a try earlier.

Anyway, the story itself is pretty standard good vs. bad fare, but wrapped in a unique, very creative setting and premise. Reenacting the console wars with personified game consoles is a genius idea and some of the twists and turns the story took genuinely surprised me in a positive way. Especially for a parody of otaku and gaming culture in general, the story and characters were surprisingly deep and interesting, characters, while trope-y, especially so. One good example is Noire, otherwise known as Black Heart. She gets labelled a stereotypical Tsundere by the characters in the game and the game itself, but as I've written in another post, she's anything but. Sure, she has the twintails-zettai-ryoiki-combination down, her attitude has many shades of it, but the character itself more than just that and tends to warm up to others far earlier than most other Tsunderes across anime and games.
The humor in this game is on-point. Nearly every joke is well delivered, well timed and manages to be entertaining even despite the actual situation being quite serious at times, though that is why some of the jokes are so good, since they derail the mood in an absolutely ridiculous manner, which the characters will point out, making the derailing of the mood with jokes a joke in itself. 
I loved the music as well. The area themes are nice ambiance that admittedly are not well suited to be listened to in a vacuum, but work greatly to create the right atmosphere for the area you're currently in, and the battle themes are amazing. Dancing Girl and To Hell have taken their rightful places among my favorite boss battle themes of all time, at this point accompanied by other greats such as Serpent Eating the Ground (Bravely Default), Cygnus (Atelier Lulua), Girl of the Opera (Nights of Azure), Lucia (Nights of Azure 2), and Ignith of the Final Attack (7th Dragon III).
As far as the gameplay goes, this game has what I consider the best combat system in any JRPG I've ever played. It combines my favorite gameplay elements from the Trails of Cold Steel games, Final Fantasy X, and the modern Tales of games. Thus, even when I was just grinding for materials, quests or EXP, I never got bored once.
Though I will say they could have balanced things out a little bit more. Your normal combos are usually enough to dispatch normal enemies, but against bosses and tough monsters, especially the ones that self-heal at the beginning of their turn, they become borderline useless, with only the Rush combo having any kind of niche to keep your EXE Gauge up. Once I got access to the EXE Drives (over the top, awesome special attacks), my go-to strategy for every boss battle was this: use the trash mobs around the area to build the Gauge, challenge the boss, buff my characters, try to see if I can out-damage their healing and damage output against me, if yes, good, if no, start spamming EXE Drives until the boss is dead and pray that they go down in at least four consecutive EXE Drives (because that is the maximum number of EXE Drives you can use until a full gauge is completely depleted) - once I equipped Histy's Bookmark, that allows you break the damage limit of 9,999, on her, Noire started one-shotting tough monsters with hers towards the end, doing upwards of 125k damage, and that's not even talking about the game breaker, rightfully acknowledged as such in-universe, that is Neptune Break.
One other minor complaint is about the Maker characters joining from Chapter 5 onwards: once you have all four goddesses (Neptune, Noire, Vert, and Blanc) together, there isn't much reason to use them other than for their support skills to strengthen the CPUs. They also don't play as much of a role in the story as most of them only become playable at what is basically the end of the game. MarvelousAQL gets hit especially hard, basically coming out of nowhere, joining woefully underlevelled, and not having many lines of dialogue.
My party ended up being Neptune, Noire, and Blanc, with Falcom, Tekken, and MarvelousAQL respectively as supports. This party was enough to steamroll the entire latter half of the game, even if I had to stop to grind a bit after I finished Chapter 7. The only thing the CPUs were missing to make Makers completely obsolete (besides the fact that you don't always have them in your party) is that none of them have any healing skills to speak of and their AoE is lacking.
But those are just minor nitpicks that didn't dampen my overall enjoyment of the game one bit. I'm very much looking forward to playing Rebirth 2.

 

Edited June 21, 2019 by DragonFlames

[Shrimpica]

Glad you enjoyed R;B1 😄 Welcome to the Neps!

1 hour ago, DragonFlames said:

but against bosses and tough monsters, especially the ones that self-heal at the beginning of their turn, they become borderline useless

Break Combos were pretty good at taking out their Guard bar. Once it's down, you deal much much more damage. In my memory, without breaking the guard, even Exe-drives were useless and were outhealed pretty quickly (then again, i was playing with fortify enemies on). Rush was for exe drive building yup.

1 hour ago, DragonFlames said:

They also don't play as much of a role in the story

R;B1 is the game where the Makers have most Story importance until MegaNep. in R;B2 and 3 (especially 3), they get sidelined, hard.

I thought their Role was pretty important in R;B1 myself, and was kinda annoyed with how they were sidelined in R;B2 and 3.

 

1 hour ago, DragonFlames said:

I wonder why I didn't give this series a try earlier.

If i have to guess the reason, it will be the same as mine: because people who didn't play (or didn't like) the game look down on it and keep calling fanservice trash.

 

[Anacybele]

A few games, really.

Pokemon Diamond
Pokemon Ultra Sun
Xenoblade Chronicles 2
Yoshi's Crafted World

I also need to play my copies of Arms, Detective Pikachu, and Ever Oasis. They haven't been opened since I got them months ago. XD Too much stuff lined up in the meantime!

[Armagon]

3 hours ago, Ice Dragon said:

It's every other character starting with the second. You go from エルメルリア (erumeruria) to ルルア (rurua).

Ah, so it makes more sense in Japanese. Gotcha.

3 hours ago, DragonFlames said:

(because that is the maximum number of EXE Drives you can use until a full gauge is completely depleted)

Fun fact: this is not the case in ReBirth 3. EXE Gauge and SP are merged into one, and each bar has four segments. The amount of full segments you have determines which EXE Drives you can use (you need at least two to launch one EXE Drive). So in theory, you have four characters in a battle, each with a full EXE Gauge, so you could launch 14 EXE Drives. Add the girls in the backup line and that's a theoretical 28 EXE Drives you can pull off.

This isn't busted at all because the chances of you having that are very slim. You just win if you manage to get it but it's extremely theoretical.

2 hours ago, Shrimperor said:

R;B1 is the game where the Makers have most Story importance until MegaNep. in R;B2 and 3 (especially 3), they get sidelined, hard.

I thought their Role was pretty important in R;B1 myself, and was kinda annoyed with how they were sidelined in R;B2 and 3.

 

Yeah, it is kinda disappointed how sidelined they get in ReBirth 2 and 3. But they still have plenty of events so i'm not really that bummed out about it.

Now, in the spin-offs, the Makers do seem to have more story relevance there (mainly these Makers are usually exclusive to one specific spin-off, though some, like Famitsu and Degenki, get lucky and appear in more).

Basically, other than IF and Compa, there are two kinds of Makers: Mainline Makers and Spin-off Makers. That's how i choose to categorize them, at least.

[DragonFlames]

4 hours ago, Shrimperor said:

Glad you enjoyed R;B1 😄 Welcome to the Neps!

Break Combos were pretty good at taking out their Guard bar. Once it's down, you deal much much more damage. In my memory, without breaking the guard, even Exe-drives were useless and were outhealed pretty quickly (then again, i was playing with fortify enemies on). Rush was for exe drive building yup.

I had neither fortify nor weaken enemies active on my playthrough (when I didn't grind, anyway), so maybe that's the reason. I actually found Power combos to be overall the most useful, as they got rid of the normal enemies fairly quickly even without guard breaking them first, while Rush and Break left a few too many alive. I noticed this on Vert the most, as her Power set is pretty powerful while her other two are a bit lacking in damage output.
Another funny thing on Vert: I found her level 1 EX Finisher Venom Storm to be one of the most useful EX finishers in the game. It does decent amounts of damage, you only need to fill one EXE Gauge to use it, and it has a chance to poison enemies, even some tough ones. I clawed my way through many a tough enemy early on with this attack, because the damage from poison was usually enough to negate or at least weaken the heal enough so that I could out-damage it even without EXE Drives. Then Noire learned Gunblaze...

4 hours ago, Shrimperor said:

R;B1 is the game where the Makers have most Story importance until MegaNep. in R;B2 and 3 (especially 3), they get sidelined, hard.

I thought their Role was pretty important in R;B1 myself, and was kinda annoyed with how they were sidelined in R;B2 and 3.

If that's the case I wonder if they'll even have lines in RB2 and 3.
A bit of an exaggeration, of course, because while the later Makers do have some importance to the plot, they're not present for most of it, which I find a bit of a shame. You get one after the other in Chapter 7, have them for all of one boss fight against the fake CPUs before they leave your group to help make the Legendary Weapon, and permanently join at the end of the chapter and they get sidelined from there, as it is all about the backstories of the CPUs at that point, meaning the sidelining is justified. As I've said, poor Marvey got hit especially hard with this.
I dunno, I just wish for a few more scenes with them or that some would join a little bit earlier than they did to get to know them a little better than I feel like I have.
That didn't stop me from liking all of them (Falcom and Tekken especially), however.

2 hours ago, Armagon said:

Fun fact: this is not the case in ReBirth 3. EXE Gauge and SP are merged into one, and each bar has four segments. The amount of full segments you have determines which EXE Drives you can use (you need at least two to launch one EXE Drive). So in theory, you have four characters in a battle, each with a full EXE Gauge, so you could launch 14 EXE Drives. Add the girls in the backup line and that's a theoretical 28 EXE Drives you can pull off.

This isn't busted at all because the chances of you having that are very slim. You just win if you manage to get it but it's extremely theoretical.

Holy hell. I wonder if I'll manage to pull it off once when I get to RB3... Challenge accepted.
Even if I think most enemies will be dead after the fifth or sixth EXE Drive at most, if they retain their ridiculous power from RB1.

One thing I definitely want to do in Rebirth 2 and/or another playthrough of Rebirth 1 is play around with the SP skills a little bit more, as I feel like I've used them less times than I should have in certain situations. The offensive SP skills kind of fell out of use later on, as I focused my SP usage on buffs, debuffs (in Vert's case), and heals.