This was supposed to have released last summer. But it was quietly released this May. Very quietly.
It was June when I scrolled past it in the store. Thought about making a thread for it then. Now I see it on sale.

I'm going to regret it. I KNOW it's going to be bad. But I'm morbidly curious to know just how bad it can be.

I've seen 1 review saying that knowledge of the first 2 games is required.

>>3805365 (OP)
I'm still waiting for the steam release, but I'm not sure why you'd automatically assume it's bad or why you'd play it if you did.

>>3805376
>but I'm not sure why you'd automatically assume it's bad or why you'd play it if you did
well it's because it's a compile heart/idea factory game so
when a company's made nothing but dogshit for what, 20 years now? you kind of have to assume the next one isn't gonna be any different

>>3805365 (OP)
Certified slop

I started playing fairy fencer f few days ago. The gameplay is bad but the dialogue and writing is funny.

>>3805376
Genre shift. Delayed release. 0 marketing. The game size is like 45% smaller than the previous 2 games.
>>3805378 (not me), but compile heart/idea factory do have that reputation. Although this is their Galapagos RPG Evolve brand, Fairy Fencer F wasn't that bad.

Maybe roguelikes is what they should have been doing all along? I'm not very far into it yet. Just the tutorial and some city cutscenes.

I heard it's one of those games where I'm supposed to die on purpose to unlock stuff.

Apparently it released in Japan last September. But you can check out the patch log on the website. It was full of bugs.

>>3805378
>>3805452
I know they have a reputation for slop or whatever buzzword you want to choose, but personally I don't agree with that. You can call many of them jank for sure, but they're basically one of the very few companies left who even tries to innovate or branch out with their gameplay or settings at all. Let alone doing that while still having that old anime style. Ironically the same is true of Kemco, who have a reputation for shovelware despite not being shovelware at all.

Also you didn't answer why you guys would play it if you automatically assume it's dogshit not worth playing before trying it.

>>3805623
Redpill me on the devs that work with kemco. I only know about rideon from their srpg's

I'm up to chapter 3. No game breaking bugs from what I can tell.
Although I found a system message that wasn't translated.

>>3805674
I'm not a Kemco expert, I'm just saying that reputation for Compile Heart/Idea Factory is really overblown. I haven't played them so maybe Neptunia games specifically are horrible, but the others aren't notably bad.

As for Kemco games they aren't going to be the next final fantasy 7, but the ones people typically refer to as Kemco games are generally unique approaches to the genres for a low price. Like Isekai Rondo for example gives all of your party members individual battle + menu mechanics, and every member has essentially their own achievement list that gives passives when you complete them. It's not like they cheap out on other details either, they have a lot of QoL compared to most rpgs and weapons/accessories actually change your sprites. They're just average games for a fair price, complete opposite of shovelware.

>>3805376
Mystery Dungeon spinoffs are almost always bad, it's an extraordinarily lazy genre saved only by its commitment to balance and resource management, but most titles not called Shiren strip all that out

I played it on Switch with the translation patch, load times were excruciating. Maybe not a problem on other platforms. The standard Death Ends reuse CGs a lot. Character-specific ones are unique but dying on purpose 20+ floors in was too much trouble for me to do repeatedly.
As far as gameplay was concerned there was nothing remarkably good or bad. A generic MD clone without any particularly unique gimmick. They should've tried to adapt the pinball mechanics from the mainline games.

Chapter 5.
I did a bunch of Death Ends and maxed out my strength bonuses. I'm reluctant to do anything else, because I'm worried it'll make it harder to die on purpose. It's a weird gimmick.

Also, I don't know how some of the Death Ends are supposed to work. It takes a while to get to the Heroine Rescue part. And then "die in front of them". I tried that, but I got a different Death End. So that was a huge waste of time.

>>3806501
there might be some priority issues depending on how you die but I thought for the heroine ones you're supposed to let them die

>>3805623
I'd just consider their games to show their budget in bad ways.
I still like them though.

Chapter 6, hitting the gameplay slump.
Chapter 5 was a 25F dungeon, but thankfully it unlocks a "mid-point" so I can skip to the rescue part after the boss battle.

I'm not sure how many more chapters there will be. The save file shows 3 more heroines.

The sanity "0" death ends are going to be a pain to get. There are traps that can reduce sainty. The trouble is that your character can hurt themselves before a monster finishes you off.

I have no idea how to die "together" with a heroine.

Ah, I found a snail monster. Usually I go for the DeathEnd as soon as I find a new monster. But this thing only does 1 point of damage and then warps away. "hmmm, something tells me this is going to be a rare monster I'll probably never see again."

I just looked it up. Yep, it's a 1% spawn. But at least I killed it and got an Atk Up upgrade.

Up to chapter 7 now.
I've unlocked maybe 34% of the death ends, which might be more than enough to finish the remaining chapters on easy mode. Unless there's some ridiculous difficulty spike at the end.

>>3807969
don't forget the extra chapter after loading a clear save

Do I need to know anything about 2 before playing Z?

Z is on sale for $15 until the end of the month?

A little, since the characters appear in it for a few chapters but they aren't particularly relevant.

The final dungeon in Chapter 9 has 40 floors.
I've completed it twice for good and bad endings. But I've probably played through up to the floor 30-something 6 different times. The problem is the bug girl in this dungeon has an instant-kill strike. So you want to bring along a handful of confusion items. She has really high defense and tanks 20 or more hits, so the confusions can wear off in that time.

The stats in this game are kind of dumb. Like "Sleep" and "Paralysis" are virtually the same thing, except for monsters with a range attack, like the bug girls (which it doesn't work on anyways)
There's also a "Stop" status trap, but I've never see an item version of it to use on enemies. But again, it's virtually the same thing.

There's an item "Refresh Code" that "restores physical condition". I doesn't remove status effects. Instead, your character actually has a "physical condition" stat in the menu. I have NO idea what it does or how it goes down. I don't think it levels up or anything. I think it was 8/8 the whole game.

Weapons have a level up mechanic. You max them out at lv8; all it does is increase how many Atk/Def "patches" you can equip to it. But these items are super rare. At least, on Easy Mode. Maybe their distribution is different on another difficulty. I went through the whole game and probably found less than 20 of the them. They might randomly appear in the shop. So I grab them when I see them.
The item decription says the might give +3 bonus when mixed with "sagely power" - whatever that means. Did they mean Vanquish Form? It didn't work for me.

I've seen a patch item drop a few times from a monster. But even drop items themselves are rare. Not that it matters because this game has limited inventory space anyways.

>>3809517
would you say it's worth the $15 or wait to see if it gets lower?

>>3809947
I don't think it can get any lower than that. There's some dungeon crawlers with under 10 bucks, but they don't have any production value.

Quality assurance and recycled assets aside. The visual novel portion is at least worth the same as paperback novel.

>>3809499
The real question is: do you need to play Code Z before playing 3?

>>3809944
for Refresh Codes you can get "sick" or something based on traps or receiving damage, not sure exactly
using patches in the dungeon sometimes grants +3, no idea if going deeper makes it more likely, kind of a pointless mechanic
important to back up your weapons at the store if you're playing on a real difficulty because that data gets wiped on defeat

>>3805365 (OP)
What makes you think that it's going to be bad?
I liked the first 10 hours of the first game (had to stop because keyboard controls were ass).

>>3809499
>>3809517
On second thought, yeah, you definitely need to play the other games. Code Z has almost no character development beyond establishing basic personality traits.
Towards the end they have a lot of scenes pairing up certain characters based on events from the first game. But those events are never explaining in Code Z.