Posted March 02, 2024
Anime waifu lovers/gamers - get it.
JRPG fans - worth checking out on sale.
Everyone else - time better spent elsewhere.
--
[Story]
Simple story, easy to follow. Characters are based on different console makers - Sega Neptune, Sony PS3, Nintendo Wii, and MS Xbox 360; these 4 goddesses fight for market shares to be the strongest. During a battle, Neptune falls back down to earth and gets amnesia. So she goes on an adventure with Compa and IF to recover her memories and uncovers an evil conspiracy along the way.
While stories and conversations are mostly in visual novel format with dynamic sprites, the characters and their interactions are easily the best part of the game. I found the exchanges to be funny and how they play off each other. It gets wacky and silly when everyone gets in a room together. Since there are ~13 characters, not including DLC or unlockable bonus characters, there's always someone that you can like and relate to.
It's important to note that as of this review's date, Re;Birth1 is not canon to its sequels, Re;Birth2/3 and Megadimension. While this is a great introduction to the series, it's completely standalone in its own dimension called the 'Superdimension'. If you care about what's canon, you can watch a review/playthrough on Youtube on this game or a primer on the series before jumping straight into Re;Birth2.
[Gameplay]
There's no overworld. You move between towns and dungeons using menus.
Battles are turn-based in a battle arena. You move your character up to the enemy and attack with 3-4 move combo that you can customize. [Break] moves destroys the enemies' shields fastest. [Power] moves do the most normal damage. [Rush] moves helps fuel the Super EXE drive gauge - basically FF7 limit breaks. You can also partner each character up with a buddy that enables passive bonuses and active skills.
Only dungeons are explorable and they're pretty simple in design and layouts. Normal monsters will chase you if you get in their range. Dungeons are recycled so you can be playing the same environments 3+ different times. There are tons of monster palette swaps too so enemy variety isn't the best. You'll also get recycled bosses from sequels. It gets repetitive quickly.
As for gameplay balance, there's a huge difficulty spike early in the game that requires huge amounts of grinding and forces you to equip Stamina Rings. So make sure you get them if you can't beat that boss. At some point with enough experience with the game, there's a certain repetitive strategy that can use in every battle to bulldoze everything in the game.
There are 2 endings - normal and true ending. To get the latter, Other shares must be at 0% and the other 4 nations must be at 20%+. If you're planning on only one playthrough, just get the true ending. This game also has NG+ multiple playthroughs. You'll need 3 playthroughs to get enough memory capacity to unlock all the plans for dungeons, weapons, armour, costumes, accessories, and all 3 unlockable bonus characters. If you prioritize the unlockable bonus characters, however, I believe it's possible to unlock all 3 on a first playthrough.
I used an Xbox One controller and controls were smooth. You can press and hold [Q] or [LB] to skip character battle animations and cutscenes, which is a great timesaver.
[Graphics]
The graphics were nothing special, you can tell they're on a budget. I really liked the last dungeon, coincidentally the most unique out of most of them.
[Audio]
There's dual English and Japanese audio. I played in Japanese. They hired some of the best veteran talent for this from previous anime work. Very top-notch acting in how they bring the characters to life.
Music was ok, nothing special. My favourite ones were the vocals in the opening theme and ending themes.
[PC Requirements]
As long as you have a GPU with 2GB VRAM, you should run this pretty well.
[Bugs]
I had a few minor bugs:
1. I remember 1 or 2 of the textboxes where the text goes out of its boundaries.
2. There's a voice bug if you have the DLC Oracle characters enabled. Kei Jinguji's audio is extremely loud in her level up announcements during the victory screen. Unfortunately, this will be a problem until she hits level 999 even if you mute voice volumes.
3. When remapping my A and B buttons to other buttons, it was unintuitive to do since I needed to use my mouse to apply settings.
[Novelty]
Your CPU characters can transform into their goddess forms at the cost of some SP over time. These goddess forms have their own equipment.
You can dress up your characters in different costumes and headgear accessories. Although I'm not a fan with a couple of them granting bonus stats because it encourages you to equip them over the others - even if they are insignificant improvements.
[DLCs]
I played my first playthrough with DLC Pack 1. You can turn them off each DLC in the title menu. It comes with a lot of content, including increasing level caps to level 999 and many bonus dungeons.
All of the DLC Pack 1 characters are not integral to the story and make the early and midgame a breeze. Plutia and Peashy are bonus characters that will spoil Re;Birth3 events. So I'd turn all of these characters off if I could redo my experience again.
I haven't gotten DLC Pack 2 and don't think it's absolutely necessary even if you're going for postgame level 999. The value in that would be unlocking 3 DLC characters and their colsseum battles for most players. For completionists, it cuts down on Lily Rank grinding.
[Mods]
I used the Neptastic mod, which improves the graphics, shadows, and unlocks FPS. I recommend using it. However, if your game launches with poor resolution, you'll need to remove the mod from the installation location to get the game's resolution to work properly again (opengl32.dll and nep.ini).
[Price]
Anime waifu lovers/gamers - get it.
JRPG fans - worth checking out on sale.
Everyone else - time better spent elsewhere.
JRPG fans - worth checking out on sale.
Everyone else - time better spent elsewhere.
--
[Story]
Simple story, easy to follow. Characters are based on different console makers - Sega Neptune, Sony PS3, Nintendo Wii, and MS Xbox 360; these 4 goddesses fight for market shares to be the strongest. During a battle, Neptune falls back down to earth and gets amnesia. So she goes on an adventure with Compa and IF to recover her memories and uncovers an evil conspiracy along the way.
While stories and conversations are mostly in visual novel format with dynamic sprites, the characters and their interactions are easily the best part of the game. I found the exchanges to be funny and how they play off each other. It gets wacky and silly when everyone gets in a room together. Since there are ~13 characters, not including DLC or unlockable bonus characters, there's always someone that you can like and relate to.
It's important to note that as of this review's date, Re;Birth1 is not canon to its sequels, Re;Birth2/3 and Megadimension. While this is a great introduction to the series, it's completely standalone in its own dimension called the 'Superdimension'. If you care about what's canon, you can watch a review/playthrough on Youtube on this game or a primer on the series before jumping straight into Re;Birth2.
[Gameplay]
There's no overworld. You move between towns and dungeons using menus.
Battles are turn-based in a battle arena. You move your character up to the enemy and attack with 3-4 move combo that you can customize. [Break] moves destroys the enemies' shields fastest. [Power] moves do the most normal damage. [Rush] moves helps fuel the Super EXE drive gauge - basically FF7 limit breaks. You can also partner each character up with a buddy that enables passive bonuses and active skills.
Only dungeons are explorable and they're pretty simple in design and layouts. Normal monsters will chase you if you get in their range. Dungeons are recycled so you can be playing the same environments 3+ different times. There are tons of monster palette swaps too so enemy variety isn't the best. You'll also get recycled bosses from sequels. It gets repetitive quickly.
As for gameplay balance, there's a huge difficulty spike early in the game that requires huge amounts of grinding and forces you to equip Stamina Rings. So make sure you get them if you can't beat that boss. At some point with enough experience with the game, there's a certain repetitive strategy that can use in every battle to bulldoze everything in the game.
There are 2 endings - normal and true ending. To get the latter, Other shares must be at 0% and the other 4 nations must be at 20%+. If you're planning on only one playthrough, just get the true ending. This game also has NG+ multiple playthroughs. You'll need 3 playthroughs to get enough memory capacity to unlock all the plans for dungeons, weapons, armour, costumes, accessories, and all 3 unlockable bonus characters. If you prioritize the unlockable bonus characters, however, I believe it's possible to unlock all 3 on a first playthrough.
I used an Xbox One controller and controls were smooth. You can press and hold [Q] or [LB] to skip character battle animations and cutscenes, which is a great timesaver.
[Graphics]
The graphics were nothing special, you can tell they're on a budget. I really liked the last dungeon, coincidentally the most unique out of most of them.
[Audio]
There's dual English and Japanese audio. I played in Japanese. They hired some of the best veteran talent for this from previous anime work. Very top-notch acting in how they bring the characters to life.
Music was ok, nothing special. My favourite ones were the vocals in the opening theme and ending themes.
[PC Requirements]
As long as you have a GPU with 2GB VRAM, you should run this pretty well.
[Bugs]
I had a few minor bugs:
1. I remember 1 or 2 of the textboxes where the text goes out of its boundaries.
2. There's a voice bug if you have the DLC Oracle characters enabled. Kei Jinguji's audio is extremely loud in her level up announcements during the victory screen. Unfortunately, this will be a problem until she hits level 999 even if you mute voice volumes.
3. When remapping my A and B buttons to other buttons, it was unintuitive to do since I needed to use my mouse to apply settings.
[Novelty]
Your CPU characters can transform into their goddess forms at the cost of some SP over time. These goddess forms have their own equipment.
You can dress up your characters in different costumes and headgear accessories. Although I'm not a fan with a couple of them granting bonus stats because it encourages you to equip them over the others - even if they are insignificant improvements.
[DLCs]
I played my first playthrough with DLC Pack 1. You can turn them off each DLC in the title menu. It comes with a lot of content, including increasing level caps to level 999 and many bonus dungeons.
All of the DLC Pack 1 characters are not integral to the story and make the early and midgame a breeze. Plutia and Peashy are bonus characters that will spoil Re;Birth3 events. So I'd turn all of these characters off if I could redo my experience again.
I haven't gotten DLC Pack 2 and don't think it's absolutely necessary even if you're going for postgame level 999. The value in that would be unlocking 3 DLC characters and their colsseum battles for most players. For completionists, it cuts down on Lily Rank grinding.
[Mods]
I used the Neptastic mod, which improves the graphics, shadows, and unlocks FPS. I recommend using it. However, if your game launches with poor resolution, you'll need to remove the mod from the installation location to get the game's resolution to work properly again (opengl32.dll and nep.ini).
[Price]
Anime waifu lovers/gamers - get it.
JRPG fans - worth checking out on sale.
Everyone else - time better spent elsewhere.
Post edited March 27, 2024 by UnashamedWeeb