Tuesday, 30 December 2014

Highschool DxD New Fight



Another social game wonder of the year. I am a fan of the Highschool DxD franchise, I even read the light novels, from time to time, but social games were, as you know, something I didn’t like much.


First thing I though about the game – hey, what kind of Million Arthur clone is this? And it really seemed so. The same dungeon(Quest) system, same idea of battles. It seemed to have nothing of it’s own, until a certain moment.


The breaking moment was the Dress Break system, which would be the central concept of the series, as it is the ONLY magic that the original protagonist of the series, Hyodou Issei, managed to learn. And, as the name suggests, it literally…breaks the clothings of the opponent. Only used on females, tho. In HSDDNF(an abbreviation of the game’s name that I use, Marvelous, the developers and owners of the Vita game, abbreviate it as DDNF, indicated by the official site. Mobage is abbreviated as HSDD) the Dress Break is a touching mini-game that occurs after you beat a Story Boss(100%) or a Raid Boss(random encounter, around 40% chance for it to trigger), in which you must swiftly touch the magic circles on the screen with your finger(tongue, penis, breasts, whatever) and touch enough within the time limit(which can go bitch on ya, so be careful). After the TOUCHING phase is over, the  second phase goes. In that phase you must literally rub a singular magic circle.

After that, Issei snaps his fingers, and the line “Dress Break Success” appears, followed by the Dress Break CG of the girl. CGs are rather…lewd, hehe. Well, that’s what we came for.



Besides pretty awesome additions to basic gameplay idea taken from Kaku-san-sei Million Arthur, the game has pretty good story.
So, the protagonist, YOU, the player, is killed by a Fallen Angel, and gets resurrected by the good old Rias Gremory. Since the player character is inexistant, you do not get a rank, nor a place on the “chessboard”. Then again, how could you, considering storywise Rias is out of Evil Pieces.


Issei(original series protagonist) then explains a lot of crap, like how to do quests, beat bosses etc., and then suddenly you fight Rias, then Issei Dress Breaks her, netting you your first R card. The first Dress Break Chance cannot be failed, but further can.


Unlike most social card games, R(are) cards mean NOTHING here. They are lying on every corner you go to. The player will have to aim for higher rank cards like HR(High Rare), SR(Super Rare) and SSR(???)/UR(Ultra Rare). While an R card can be pretty strong, an HR will be better, cause it can go 10 levels higher than an R card.  Same comparison for HR and SR, SR and SSR.

Like in the mentioned Million Arthur, there are systems like Evolution and Combine. I do not remember Strenghten system in MA, so I’ll consider it something original.


Evolution, like always, is combining 2 of the same cards to get a higher rank card. Rx2=HR

HRx2=SR

SRx2=SSR

Or so the player might wish, but that doesn’t go so easy at all times. Cards can evolve to the same rarity as they were, so chains like R->R->HR->HR or HR->HR->SR->SR or HR->HR->SR->SSR or HR->SR->SR->SSR are possible too.

Each card has it’s own set limit of evolutions, with maximum being 4.

Evolving a card of a girl, you also get to make them “improve by Dress Breaking”, so ones with 4 evolutions are likely to change costume, pose etc.


Combine is the same good old Level Up system for the social games. You take one card, put a lot of other cards into it, and it levels up. The difference is that when you level up a card to the Maximum level, a line saying “Create Boost Item” appears, and you literally…Create a boost item.


Strenghtening

Boost items aren’t a waste of space(not that there is any kind of inventory space, only card amount is limited). They can be used to strenghten a card.

Each card has some Slots (0-5) for Boost items. By going into strenghtening menu, you can apply those to the card improving it’s stats greatly.

As far as I know, the maximum amount 1 Boost Item can give is 1000 Attack Power OR 1000 HP.

Helps a lot in high level dungeons with high level bosses.


As any Social game I know, HSDDNF has a Guide for helping(or annoying, at times) the player. Considering this is franchise related social game, it’s obviously that Guide Characters will be girls from the original series. Currently 8 girls are available as guide:


Rias Gremory(the main heroine of the series. King)


Himejima Akeno(Ultimate Do-S Queen)(the costume is a special one that was unlocked for participation in Pool event)


Toujou Koneko(Everyone’s cute school mascot. Rook)


Asia Argento(the loli-face nun. Bishop)


Zenovia(the always annoyingly wanting to copulate. Knight)


Shidou Irina(crawling near you, the self-proclaimed Angel and the follower of the Protestant Church)


Ravel Phoenix(the elegant pretty little lady of the Phoenix clan)


Amano Yuuma(yep, that girl)

But just touching them to see the reaction they can give out is boring right? So GP(Guide Point) system is introduced. Guide Points is one type of the in-game currency to use to buy something in game. GP are specifically used for buying things like Seasonal Welcome Voice Set, Advice Set or Costumes.
GP are gotten by completing quest locations(20 per location) or by winning a Rating game(5 per victory). By getting more and more of them, the affection of the heroine towards you will increase.
The affection is represented by Hearts in the Guide menu
The higher the heroine's affection is - the more lines she has to say when you're touching her.

The girls are pretty fun to interact with, and I enjoy seeing their reactions to me touching them, hehe. Still wondering if they'll ever introduce Shitori Souna, Shinra Tsubaki and/or other members of the Student Council as Guide characters.


All that summed, and you get a great game that is fun to spend time on.

Same as with LLSIF, the game can be completed(as in get Platinum trophy) for completely free. Yes, if you pay money that’ll be a bit easier,  but I prefer some CHALLENGE.

Also, it is pretty much the only social game I know that HAS a platinum trophy.

Marvelous, who owns this one, are constantly adding new things, like systems, story etc. Well, no wonder, but all of the cards they add are straight from the mobage, which has…a lot.

ハーレム王に!俺はなる!

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