Soul Nomad & the World Eaters - PC Review

Soul Nomad & the World Eaters developed by Nippon Ichi Software, codeglue and published by  NIS America Inc.—PC review by Richard with a copy provided by the publisher.

 Estimated reading time: 11 minutes

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Soul Nomad and the World Eaters is a classic NIS title that really hits home to my nostalgia. One of the NIS titles that shows a bit of a darker foray into the storytelling zone, and a title I put 80+ hours into back in the day. Now no longer only a PS2 title released back in 2007, Soul Nomad is now available for PC. Has it held up well, or have the ravages of time crushed what was a really intriguing title? It's time to find out.

First thing first before we get into the gameplay, at the time of writing this review there are some…technical issues with the title on PC. Some people have an issue where the screen shows black on start-up, but you can still interact with the game, see the cursor, and hear the audio. There are workarounds available on the Steam discussion page, so hopefully those work for most people. Unfortunately, apparently I don't fall into this category. It took about 6 hours, and me having to get a friend to log into my account, boot up the game, change the config options to a working resolution, and then my friend had to send me the config file.

So what about the game itself? Well, in Soul Nomad we delve into a world ravaged by giant monsters called "World Eaters", led by a man named Gig, the Master of Death. After a great battle, Gig is defeated, but the World Eaters remain, albeit in a dormant state. After 200 years, the protagonist is adopted into a hidden village, and tasked with being a protector. The leader of the village elects the protagonist to finish the job of their forefathers, and defeat the World Eaters so that the world will know peace once again. And so the protagonist is forced into a contract with the Master of Death himself, Gig, in a bid to try and use his powers to eliminate the World Eaters without succumbing to his influence.

If you've played a grid based tactic title before, you'll have a good basis for how Soul Nomad works. You have a world map that travel around, and you visit key locations of interest to progress the story and get into fights. In fights you have the power to summon units at the cost of "Gig points", and command them following a turn order on a grid. The grid has different tiles that will affect your units, perhaps increasing evasion or defense. If you get close enough to an enemy unit and attack, your whole squad goes in with you.

That's right, you get a whole squad. Each "unit" actually comprises multiple individuals in a "room" that can provide different bonuses. These squads act together when in combat and will all take their actions together. After taking action, the opponent has an opportunity to counter attack. Each squad will have a leader that inherits a portion of the stats of the other members as well, although if a leader is defeated, the squad will be considered defeated as well.

In addition to basic combat, squads also have a stamina bar that will decrease when performing actions such as moving or attacking. If the stamina gauge is is below 80% you can use special moves based on the units in your squad. But be careful, because as your stamina decreases, so do your stats. You also have the option to use "tactics" or "Gig Edicts" on the battle field map, which are skills and items respectively. Skills will replace taking an action, such as attacking, but can give a buff, a debuff, or cast a spell at an enemy, as examples. These tactics gain exp when used, and can level up, but have a limited amount of uses per battle.

So how do you set up a squad? Well, first thing is you need a room for them. Rooms can be swapped out, or locked in place to keep the rooms you want from changing, but are pretty random in terms of what you get. Each room consists of a 3x3 grid, with a front, middle, and rear setting. Not all of these positions may be available though, as you could get a room with only two middle and two rear positions, or you could get a room with a lot more open slots. Once you have a room you like, you can then purchase and assign units to that room. The abilities and moves a unit can perform are based on their location in the room. As an example, putting a swordsman in the front will have a melee combo, but putting them in the middle will have them shoot out a shockwave. As you progress through the game, you will also learn about décor items that come with the rooms, and how you can upgrade them.

Room inspection is Soul Nomad's version of the item world from Disgaea, where you can jump into a room, and fight your way through levels in order to upgrade the effects and the room. While in a room inspection, summoning squads doesn't cost points, and clearing floors will improve your room. Now, the game mentions this as a sort of throw away line, but is pretty much the only way you're going to be able to grind exp and points, so think about popping in once every so often, even if it's in a room you aren't using, just to get some exp.

Now, one of the major reasons I liked Soul Nomad as a kid was because of the Demon Path, which is an alternate "evil" side to the story you can unlock after clearing the game. It was also the first time I had seen the trope for "even evil has standards", and hoo boy, was that an experience. There are a bunch of different dialogue options presented to you throughout the game, and answering differently may lead to alternate endings, which is a pretty fun facet.

Now, while the music is still quite good, let's be honest about the graphics: they're dated. Apart from a little text refurbishing, everything is just as it was back in the day, for better or for worse. Unfortunately this means you still get the old PS2 early days graphics, just stretched to fit your monitor, if it happens to be larger than your TV was back in the day. Thankfully, while the graphics may have aged like a miscellany of cheese, the gameplay has aged like wine.

There's a lot going on in Soul Nomad, from the squad match-up bonuses, to the stat distribution, to some really weird units that have some pretty funky attacks. Tactics that change based on squad composition, combo moves available between units of specific types, and janky squad builds that work surprisingly well, there's a lot more depth to Soul Nomad than it lets on. While you don't need to know, or remember, a lot of these functions, as I cleared the game with minimal delving into the mechanics the first time I played, doing so will add a whole new level of gameplay. Couple this with the fact you can beat up random citizens for stuff, and Soul Nomad was certainly ambitious in all the right ways.

Summary

Overall, I have to say I still love Soul Nomad and the World Eaters, even more than ten years later. The gameplay is still really fun, the storyline is great, and I love all the little aspects that come together to make Soul Nomad what it is. That being said, there is no graphical update, and the "black screen of death" that you may experience on start-up may put newer players off. As with most retro titles, Soul Nomad doesn't pull its punches either. It's tough, and it isn't afraid to let you know it. All-in-all, a patch to solve the blackscreen issue would do wonders, and while I wish there were an update to the graphics, everything about this title I loved is still there.

Score: 7.5 / 10

 

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Disgaea 6: Defiance of Destiny - Switch Review

Disgaea 6: Defiance of Destiny by developer Nippon Ichi Software (NIS) and publisher Nippon Ichi Software America (NISA)—Nintendo Switch review written by Pierre-Yves with a copy provided by the publisher.

Estimated reading time: 9 minutes

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If you say Nippon Ichi Software, or their North American localization and publishing group Nippon Ichi Software America (NISA or NIS America for short) I'm going to think one of two things. The first, is turned based strategy RPGs that have been their bread and butter for decades now. The other? Is a solid turn based strategy titles and the latest entry into the Makai Senki universe, Disgaea 6: Defiance of Destiny, is no exception.

Note: Please be aware that this review contains some spoilers either in the text or in the screenshots taken during gameplay.

Having recently released a demo in order to see how much damage one could deal to an enemy within the first chapter and three quarters, the intro was enough to show the direction of the latest title without spoiling the rest down the line. Solid base mechanics? Quirky character design? Smart and sassy dialog? The latest has it all but there's one thing I feel that D6 has over D5 and that was the magic of the originals which were more about the characters than it was about the Netherworlds that they could be found in.

As a fan of the series it's an honor to be able to review something that you hold in such high regard. At the same time, reviewing something that you hold dear can sometimes be a bit complicated as you're not only sitting down to potentially and hopefully enjoy, but you're also sitting down to analyze and critique what has been put in front of you. In that regard, while having only ever upped their game with each new entry into the Disgaea series I felt that the new systems in place were both several steps forward and maybe one back.

Straight up, from the gameplay mechanics into the story, Disgaea 6 is solid. The writing is on point for the series with a blend of nonsensical and dark humour. The voice acting only ever does the characters justice and helps to further bring them and their trails to life as our protagonist Zed recounts the story to Overlord Ivar and his Darkest Assembly just how exactly he took out the most powerful God of Destruction in written history.

Split as it's always been, each chapter of the adventure has multiple sub stages each with their own challenges ranging from awkward layouts making you have to think through your approach, or die. Really there's no inbetween. In these stages you'll also be facing off against a variety of foes in a variety of numbers. The less you see the more you should be prepared for a fight as like the laws of the ninja, the less you see the more powerful they are.

What's changed this time around though is that there are a lot of other systems in place to help boost you through these challenges. I had poked at them in the demo but they didn't really shine until I was six or eight chapters in and almost religiously using them to get ahead. The Juice Bar, Squads, Skill Upgrades, the Rozen Queen Store and the Darkest Assembly. Some of these have been around forever while others I could only gawk at times at their sheer brilliance.

Starting off with the new, Zed and company will now have access to what is known as the Juice Bar that allows for the infusion of experience points, mana and any other extract such as attack, intelligence or hit. All of these can be banked over time as you trounce countless enemies that stand in your way. Each of these values costs money, as money does make the world go round, but when you leverage that out against another new feature, Super Reincarnation, it's totally worth it.

Unlike normal reincarnation, Super Reincarnation comes with Karma that not only makes your units more powerful, but also allows you to increase their stat values as you see fit. Want to make sure that a spell caster takes a hit? Add more defense or hit points. Want your tank to withstand a magical attack? Increase their resistance. If you've got the karma to do it, the Netherworld is your oyster! Compared to the previous version where you just made your units more powerful, now you REALLY make them powerful with careful, or carless I won’t judge, allocation of new stats.

Making returns are the skill shop that allow you to learn new evilities and to power up skills whether it’s to throw more power behind the hits or increase the range of your spells. Side to that the Dark(est) Assembly is back again in order to pass Netherworld rules such as being able to create new unit types, increased experience earned in the next stage, steal all of the mana for just one character, and once you’re done the main story, open up the end game for some real brutal turned based tactics fun!

Now there were two things in the demo that I wanted to hold reservations on until the full release. The first, was the autobattling system as I wondered firstly how well it would really work and secondly if it wouldn't pull the player away from the experience. In order? Works really well and to a degree, takes the player away from the experience. The reason that it works well is that the autobattle system isn't just "rush in and destroy", you can set parameters to it. Use skills, heal teammates, target specific enemies like the toughest. A bit convoluted at first, there's at least decent tutorial to teach you how to set up your if-then structures. The premades are pretty decent but you’ll find them a bit limited over time especially when it comes to healing status effects such as poison that can destroy your team in seconds.

Still on the subject of the auto-battle, is that as much as I loved being able to use it as speeding everything up and disabling animations made fighting go faster, in an automatic fashion it was even faster as you’re not moving each individual member on your own, the system is moving them all at the same time. It was perfect to grind for experience and mana in order to level up skills and Super Reincarnate, BUT, I felt that it took you out of the experience. This long running series as well as the others such as Phantom Brave, Makai Kingdom, Soul Nomad, each of these is so hands on that you’re in it, and you’re in it to win it. With the auto-battle, you’re around, but you’re only really checking in to make sure parameters are up and running or if it’s a new stage, make sure to toss your units up and over to another location to continue the fight.

The other reason that I found myself a bit more disconnected and more and more as time went on using the auto battling system other than to throw a few prinnies around here and there, is that there's been an adjustment to the base values. Now, instead of starting off with 10HP and moving over into the hundreds and then thousands, you start with thousands, you deal thousands and by the final chapters you’re grumbling if you don’t see at least 500K to 1M popping up against your enemies. The numbers get so high so fast that you almost want the system to handle the math especially when you can gain hundreds of levels per stage which works with the new max level, but at the same time, removes some of that finesse that used to be present.

The second of the two after the auto battle is unfortunately the graphics. The move to 3D is great. The characters look alive and it really brings the world a bit more forward then the 2D based 3D models have over the years. Where it doesn’t work is that it’s just not optimized for the Nintendo Switch. Performance, Balanced or Graphics, none of the three really ever make it pop and stand out. Instead, Performance makes things work but looks like so many textures are missing so it’s a very pixelated experience. Balanced is ok but then it’s a bit fuzzy around the edges and from time to time there are hiccups in the animations where you can see the screen freeze. Finally, Graphics if you stayed still were fine but the frame rates would tank even moving around your base. I’m not sure if these issues would exist in the PS4 version that launched in Japan, but for right now, as fun as it is, it doesn’t look as good as it could.

So on a final note, I really do want to highlight the story. For the past few entries, and for as much as I love the Fuka and Desco Show to poor FenFen’s attempt to get Valvatorez to drink blood and get back to being a supreme badass, the stories have been more about what’s going on in a particular Netherworld more than it’s been about the characters. Even Mao and Almza, it was about their adventure through the school in order to defeat Mao’s father. Going back just a bit further, Adel and Rozalin (who I was so happy to have as up front DLC party members to wreak havoc) theirs was a story more about them just as Laharl, Etna and Flonne’s was about Laharl becoming the overlord. Returning back to that point where this story was all about Zed, Cerberus, Beiko, and their party members from a Human King to a ten thousand year old magical school girl, it was refreshing and it brought back that comfort of a more simple story as Zed fights again and again against a God of Destruction.

Summary

Overall, Disgaea 6: Defiance of Destiny is a solid entry into the Disgaea Series. Fun characters, great dialog, amazing voice overs, it hits all of the notes. While there are some issues on the performance side on the Nintendo Switch, it’s never enough to completely remove you from the experience and with plenty of new additions such as an auto-battling system to do your Netherworld grinding for you, you may not even notice as you gawk seeing the millions of hit points disappearing per turn!

Score: 8 / 10

 

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Disgaea 6: Defiance of Destiny - Switch Preview

Disgaea 6: Defiance of Destiny by developer Nippon Ichi Software (NIS) and publisher Nippon Ichi Software America (NISA)—Nintendo Switch review written by Pierre-Yves from an eShop Demo.

Estimated reading time: 5 minutes

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While there are plenty of great strategy RPGs out there, Nippon Ichi Software (NIS) may pretty much be king of the field in damage dealing alone! Slated for North American release later this month, Nippon Ichi Software America (NISA) have recently dropped a demo on the Nintendo Switch for Disgaea 6: Defiance of Destiny and the netherworld may never again be the same.

While only going as far as the first two chapters, with how much the series has stayed the same in terms of core mechanics, it feels different enough but not so much that it's not like coming back to a warm hug. The main reason is that unlike the rest of the Netherworlds, Disgaea 6 has moved away from faux 3D sprites into actual ones making the world that much deeper looking. Everything is still recognizable from the Warriors chiseled pecs to the prinnies' satchels, but the detail will make you wait to keep the animations on for a bit just to see it all in action.

Otherwise, following the tried and true formula of the overall series, Disgaea 6 starts off with a ridiculous chapter and keeps on going from there. Following a zombie that has no right to be as powerful as he is, our story follows Zed on his quest to defeat the current God of Destruction. Accompanied by his faithful zombie pooch Cerberus, the zombie and undead jokes are heavily laid upon but at least in the first chapters they haven't grown old. Get it... they are undead... I'll see myself out. In all seriousness though, I'm not sure how it'll come across later down the line but for now? Even the expected jokes or flat retorts had me chuckling or laughing as a good NIS title does.

In regards to the gameplay Disgaea 6 follows on all the improvements done over the years. Perhaps one of the biggest improvements that I could see is that you can now actually undo a throw which is revolutionary. Also new to me as I haven't played Disgaea 1 Complete yet was an auto battle system. While I only poked at the system in order to see how well it worked, I can definitely see it having massive uses later down the line in order to grind for experience. With some customizations on how your characters can act, I can definitely see the usage while prepping up to go against Baal who will at some point make an appearance.

For the rest though and potential new fans to the Netherworlds, the Disgaea series is a turned based Strategy RPG in which you move about your pre characters alongside a cast of potential minion types from Humanoid over to your Monster types. Each class type has their own uses though the more requirements and red tape in order to unlock them, the better they tend to be.

Split into a combination of combat and almost visual novel esque voiced over narrative, there's a flow to everything that just works. Enter a stage, have a bit of dialog, fight through those that stand before you, more dialog, rinse, repeat, chapter complete. But it never feels like a chore with how it's designed. Want to fight more battles? There's always an Item World that opens up which allows you to level up items in a dungeon crawling fashion. Otherwise, there's nothing stopping you from replaying a stage over and over and over again in order to grind out experience. Every entry has one of those stages so why not make the most of it!

Finally there are a few systems making a return and some others that can be interesting going forward but I want to know more on those before really making a decision on them. If I were to have one potentially major worry now though it would be that North America is only going to receive the Nintendo Switch version. The reason for this worry is that I found myself continuously having to switch between either balanced or performance in order to have a smooth enough experience as switching over to Graphics everything just lagged which is unfortunate because this is one of the best looking Disgaeas yet.

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Disgaea 6: Defiance of Destiny: Demo Contest

It's time to show us what you're made of, dood!

Head to Nintendo eShop to download the free demo for Disgaea 6: Defiance of Destiny, then enter our "A HL of a Lot of Damage Demo Contest" for a chance to win big by sending us your biggest damage numbers. While you're at it, preorder the Limited Edition and check out exclusive merch at our Online Store!

Summary

So overall I'm excited for this newest entry into the series. From seeing how the cast interacts with each other to seeing all of the elements in full instead of just a demo format, Disgaea 6 looks like it could easily top several other entries. Now it'll be to see how some of my favorites look in 3D such as Adell and Valvatorez but I'm sad that Almaz or Overlord Prier aren't on the list.

 

Side Note: LaPucelle would make an incredible addition to a NIS Classics package with Makai Kingdom.

Score: N/A

 

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Poison Control - PS4 Review

Poison Control by developer Nippon Ichi Software and publisher NIS America Inc.—Sony Playstation 4 review written by Richard with a copy provided by the publisher.

Estimated reading time: 7 minutes

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Have you ever felt mired in doubt or delusion? Have your worries and fears ever felt like poison gnawing away at your soul? Well find out how a soul gets cleansed of this murk, as you delve into Hell in Poison Control in order to cleanse the mind, and spirit.

In this new release title from NIS, we are introduced to a nameless main character, who gets predated upon by a horned demon called a Klesha. The Klesha, however, bonds with the main character, allowing the Klesha to regain its sanity and inhabit the body of the main character, leaving nothing but a skeleton behind. This doesn't mean the end for the main character though, as they are now sharing the body with the Klesha turned “poison girl”, who our MC has taken to calling “Poisonette”.

Turns out that these Klesha are the results of delusions and negative emotions brought about by girls who have fallen into Hell, whether they have actually died or are just “slated” for Hell upon death in their current state. You and Poisonette must go and cleanse the poison mires created from these girls negative emotions in order to let them rest in peace. You aren't exactly being altruistic here though, as cleansing a girls soul will reward you with a sticker. Collect enough and you are allowed into Heaven along with a single wish.

So how does one go about purifying the poison mires of one's heart? With a Megaman style arm blaster of course! After bonding with Poisonette, the MC gets an arm blaster, which you can outfit with different shot types. Couple this with Poisonette's ability to cleanse the mires by walking over them, and you have a recipe for success! Cleansing a soul is pretty basic in principle: you select a soul, roam around an area shooting enemies and cleansing poison, and then either talk to the soul or collect a “soul remnant” or item that is intricately associated with what caused the poison to take root, and there you go.

All this is done in a 3D third person view action style, where you run and gun. While shooting, you have a number of different shot types, such as laser, bomb, or rapid. You only have a set number of bullets, but depleting your ammo causes the bullets to slowly refill. You also have a dodge roll that will give you a period of invincibility and a powerful area shock move that requires charging by purifying the mires. If you run out of health while trying to cleanse a soul, there is a gauge in the bottom right with butterflies in it. Each butterfly will revive you upon death, and can be refilled by purifying a bunch of poison.

During purify mode, you send Poisonette out to clean up the poison. This is performed by walking over it. If you complete a loop, anything within the area you walked around will also be purified, including doing damage to enemies if they are caught within. Be careful though, as Poisonette can take damage, and so can your skeleton while Poisonette is out. Additionally, there's a time limit on how long Poisonette can remain out, and the closer to the time limit you get, the slower she moves. Sometimes it's better to just make a straight path, and sometimes it's better to enclose an area.

While trying to purify a soul, you may come across a number of gold chests. These chests either contain the key item related to the poison behind the soul, or are one of three tokens per soul. If you collect all three tokens in a soul area, you gain that soul to use as a Toxicant, Antidote, or Catalyst, depending on the soul. These are basically just equipables, where the Toxicants are your weapons/shot types, Antidotes and Catalysts provide different support effects. There is also another type of equipable, Deliriants, which are picked up in stages. The other equipable souls can be upgraded in exchange for money, but Deliriants are limited ammo weapons that you can't upgrade.

Occasionally during or after a stage you will have a chance to chat with Poisonette, and you are allowed to make a choice in response. These choices will affect a stat, namely something like “Toxicity”, “Empathy”, or “Trust”. Each of these stats will affect a parameter, such as shot recharge speed, or damage dealt. You can't max all of them out during a single playthrough, so choose wisely. You can return to stages to get more cash however, so at least that isn't too worrisome, although the response you give for the repeated in-area conversation won't affect your stats.

I'll be perfectly honest when I say that Poison Control is rather simple, and the stages do start to get a little repetitive after a while. That being said, each soul has their own uniques personality and circumstance, making it interesting to learn about them. Some souls are older, some are younger. Some souls have been burning their bad homework marks and it may start to escalate, some souls murder people because they can. Not everyone is redeemable, but that isn't your job, you just need to purify the poison.

The areas themselves have a decent amount of variety, but tend to be really large with tons of blocked off areas. It would have been a lot better to just not have the section that are blocked off actually existing. Enemies are usually reasonable once you figure out how they function, but some of the late game enemies can get really annoying. Also, your shots have a sort of critical distance that you want to be in, otherwise you'll either be to close to hit where you're aiming, or too far away and your shot falls off. There's also a timer while you're in a stage, which is your time limit before getting a “Game Over”, but it gives you so much time I don't believe I ever had it go below half.

The visuals are kind of cute, but nothing to get too excited about, but are quite colourful, especially the different coloured mires with different damage rates. The character interactions are where it's really at though, as you really get a sense of personality out of the souls you interact with in Hell. As a whole, the game isn't too long, which is good since there isn't really a great deal of enemy variety or boss variety, and is pretty much the same steps every soul you go to cleanse.

The game runs pretty smoothly for the most part, although there were the occasional blank text boxes, missing dialogue, or dead enemies that don't disappear for some reason. On the plus side, the localization team did a stellar job translating this title. There were a bunch of phrases I heard during the dialogue that are usually poorly translated due to English not having an equivalent phrase, but the localization team managed to nail down really well. I also really liked the “Higan Radio”, which acts as an introduction to each stage, and will generally give a brief description of the soul that has made its way into Hell.

Summary

Overall, I had quite a lot of fun with Poison Control. The ARPG aspect was pretty fun, the characters were interesting, and the poison cleansing was actually fun to balance against attacking enemies. While Poison Control does get a little repetitive after awhile, but thanks to the smaller instance size for cleansing the souls, it is fairly easy to pick up for a mission or two, and then put down for a bit.

The writing was well done, and the localization team did a really good job translating, which is also nice to see. Poison Control definitely won't be for everybody, but that doesn't mean it's specifically niche in its gameplay either. If you're okay with the anime stylized art style and an abundance of female characters, I'd say take a look at Poison Control to see if it interests you.

Score: 7.5 / 10

 

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