It's a good thing this is a "Noire game" and not a "Nep game", otherwise this might damage the good reputation of the Neptunia franchise! Ha, haha, haaaaaaaaaa...
I know someone who enjoyed this game because "it's a strategy game, you can't make them bad".
Are you sure about that?
I'd have to say this game's biggest flaw is the fact that it's built like a typical Neptunia RPG. Health and attack values are way larger than necessary, maps and enemy types are constantly reused. The game's big gimmick is lowering the exorbitant SP costs on your skills by keeping other units adjacent to you, represented by a yuri kiss on the cheek. This is counter-intuitive because grouping everyone together makes it absurdly easy for an enemy to stroll over and use an attack that targets your entire cluster of chibis. Sometimes you don't even need to be grouped together, some enemies just have attacks that hit like a truck and cover half the damn map. On top of that, your units can be afflicted with status effects, of which there are WAY too many to keep track of. I don't even know what half of them do!
The game is also just constantly wasting your time (and not just because I'm spending mine playing a Neptunia game, har har). Even once you cave in and turn off all attack animations and whatnot in the settings menu, it still feels like it's dragging its feet. Stop showing me that enemies aren't taking any actions, it adds up when eight or so of them aren't necessarily doing anything as I slowly approach them. So many of this game's maps revolve around shitty gimmicks, like tediously lifting and tossing wooden boxes to gradually create staircases, or avoiding floor panels that damage you and instantly end your turn, or waiting a turn for a moving platform to come back, just so you can board it and wait another turn to have it take you to your destination, and THEN you can depart it on the turn after that. Maps are reused ad nauseam, so you'll grow accustomed to groaning at the mere sight of certain locales.
The writing just rubs me the wrong way, moreso than usual for a game of this pedigree. Most of Noire's friendships just result in her getting sexually harassed in extra scenes, with the accompanying CGs having the Bad kind of voyeuristic feeling. And then there's the self-insert, with probably one of the worst examples of this trope I've ever experienced. A true self-insert comes with a certain amount of agency from the player, but you don't get any choices here. Secretary-san is effectively his own character, one you're expected to project yourself onto. Sorry Noire, our relationship fell through years ago. I've personally been sizing up Vert quite a bit lately...
The true ending of this game is locked behind Noire having a lily rank of at least 70 with every other unit by the end of the game. This mandates an endgame grind that's a total snog-I mean slogfest. I unironically think this game is on the same level of enjoyment I had with the original HDN on PS3, and that is a very low bar to cross. You are missing nothing by ignoring this, even if you're a Nep freak like me.
I know someone who enjoyed this game because "it's a strategy game, you can't make them bad".
Are you sure about that?
I'd have to say this game's biggest flaw is the fact that it's built like a typical Neptunia RPG. Health and attack values are way larger than necessary, maps and enemy types are constantly reused. The game's big gimmick is lowering the exorbitant SP costs on your skills by keeping other units adjacent to you, represented by a yuri kiss on the cheek. This is counter-intuitive because grouping everyone together makes it absurdly easy for an enemy to stroll over and use an attack that targets your entire cluster of chibis. Sometimes you don't even need to be grouped together, some enemies just have attacks that hit like a truck and cover half the damn map. On top of that, your units can be afflicted with status effects, of which there are WAY too many to keep track of. I don't even know what half of them do!
The game is also just constantly wasting your time (and not just because I'm spending mine playing a Neptunia game, har har). Even once you cave in and turn off all attack animations and whatnot in the settings menu, it still feels like it's dragging its feet. Stop showing me that enemies aren't taking any actions, it adds up when eight or so of them aren't necessarily doing anything as I slowly approach them. So many of this game's maps revolve around shitty gimmicks, like tediously lifting and tossing wooden boxes to gradually create staircases, or avoiding floor panels that damage you and instantly end your turn, or waiting a turn for a moving platform to come back, just so you can board it and wait another turn to have it take you to your destination, and THEN you can depart it on the turn after that. Maps are reused ad nauseam, so you'll grow accustomed to groaning at the mere sight of certain locales.
The writing just rubs me the wrong way, moreso than usual for a game of this pedigree. Most of Noire's friendships just result in her getting sexually harassed in extra scenes, with the accompanying CGs having the Bad kind of voyeuristic feeling. And then there's the self-insert, with probably one of the worst examples of this trope I've ever experienced. A true self-insert comes with a certain amount of agency from the player, but you don't get any choices here. Secretary-san is effectively his own character, one you're expected to project yourself onto. Sorry Noire, our relationship fell through years ago. I've personally been sizing up Vert quite a bit lately...
The true ending of this game is locked behind Noire having a lily rank of at least 70 with every other unit by the end of the game. This mandates an endgame grind that's a total snog-I mean slogfest. I unironically think this game is on the same level of enjoyment I had with the original HDN on PS3, and that is a very low bar to cross. You are missing nothing by ignoring this, even if you're a Nep freak like me.