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Nike? Nickie? Nickleback?
3 years ago
Some of you have probably noticed that new gacha game that recently came out, called Nikke: Goddess of Victory (pronounced nee-kay). Despite my best efforts, curiosity got the best of me and I decided to give it a try. I'd now like to give my initial thoughts on it. If you're interested in hearing me break down what I like/don't like about the game, keep reading; if not, now would be a good time to find something more interesting to do with your time.
Disclaimer: I've only played the first few missions, so I'm far from an expert on this little app. But, having played a few different gachas, its safe to say that a couple of hours is all you really need to get to the core of the experience.
The story:
Pretty generic, really. Almost cliche, even. Setting is some post-apoc thing, there's nasty machines running amok, and everyone seems to be living in something called "the Ark", which I presume to be underground on account of numerous references being made to "going to the surface"; and you, the player, find yourself in commend of sexy robo-girls not more than a day after graduating from the academy, because "plot". Oh, yeah, and said sexy robo-girls have to obey your orders "no matter what", and apparently every other commander just views them as tools/weapons, cos apparently people are blind and dumb, cos these girls are thiccc and plucky. If not for the dialogue almost beating you over the head with hints that these girls are anything but human, you'd think they actually were human.
The girls:
As stated above, the girls are thicc. Thicc, juicy, and bouncy. Very, very bouncy. Seriously, their animations look like they're in space, or under water. Despite literally being the size of MELONS, some of those things float like gravity forgot how to exist. Obviously, since the game only just came out, there's not a massive selection of girls, but the designs are... respectable. Actually, considering some other gacha games, they're pretty conservative. Most of the "common" (Rare) characters are decked out in head-to-toe tactical gear, with thick armour and helmets, and massive chains of ammo (depending on their weapon class). But, predictably, as the rarity increases, the outfits get more... appealing, showing much more thigh and/or cleavage. Believe it or not, but there's actually voice acting in this gacha game and it's not half bad. It's... actually pretty good. And the personalities (that I've seen so far) seem pretty natural and believable.
The gameplay:
And now we get to the core of game. Some people will flatly refuse to play a game that doesn't have "high quality" graphics, and all the modern bells and whistles. While others will happily play a game that is simple and looks like it was made in the 50's, as long as the gameplay and/or story is good. I'm more of the latter, so having sexy girls in the game, while appealing, won't necessarily keep my attention if the gameplay and/or story is crap.
The gameplay in Nikke has you in a 3rd person view, shooting down-range at an onslaught of enemies. In theory, this is an interesting and different style to other gachas. Azur Lane has a side scrolling combat system, and Arknights has its tower defense thing. Other gachas are turn based with teams beating on each other until one side is wiped out. And Nikke does this. But... in my opinion, it doesn't do it very well, and here's why...
First and foremost, the combat is locked in a portrait view, while the combat field is about two-to-three times the width. This means that you will often have enemies off screen. You can control where your Nikkes shoot by sliding your thumb around on the screen to move the reticle, and will often have to aim past the sides in order to force your field of view to scroll left or right so you can see what is there. There are no indicators on screen to tell you there are enemies where you can't see them.
Second, you control a team of five Nikkes, which are all lined up behind cover, and you can swap between them during a firefight. When not being directly controlled, the other four Nikkes will shoot at things automatically. There are six weapon types, each with different effective ranges, so, you'd think building a nice balanced team with different weapons would be a good thing. But, once in actual combat, there doesn't seem to be a lot of point to directly controlling your thick thighed robo-girls. There's an almost constant flow of enemies dropping in, at all ranges, and directly controlling a Nikke doesn't appear to have any real advantage outside of controlling when one of five of your girls takes cover. Oh, yeah, they take cover and reload at the same time, when you stop firing, so near as I can tell, that essentially means the other four are almost always getting shot at because when they're not reloading, they're shooting, which means they're not in cover. Unless you tap on your currently selected girl to tell all five of them to take cover from a large volley.
On that note, the portraits of your Nikkes currently fighting are lined up along the bottom of your screen, which is most likely going to be half covered by your thumb most of the time (unless you have the combat set to auto and you're just watching the action), so a lot of the time you can't even see your Nikke's health bar, because that is on their portraits, on the bottom of the screen, under your thumb.
In short, the combat is very cluttered and very poorly implemented. But, there are a few positives. Each Nikke has an ability they can activate, from launching a volley of rockets, to buffing their team, and even creating a protective shield. Abilities come in three... uh, "types", for lack of a better description; some Nikkes have a 1, some have a 2, and some have a 3, and abilities can chain together, from 1, to 2, to 3, and completing the chain activates a "Burst Mode" where everyone focuses their fire and does extra damage. This forces you to think about what abilities each of your team members have, as well as what their weapon type is, and their class. Oh yeah, there's three classes, too, assault, defense, and support. Nikkes are leveled up via material, rather than exp gained through combat, and gear they can equip, to further boost their stats.
Just like every gacha out there, you can throw real money at it for extra stuff. But, I'd be hesitant to throw money at this game, even if it was the best thing I'd played, because a 10pull looks to run you about $35. That's AUD, assuming the currency is in local. But, still, that's somewhere between $20 and $25 USD. I don't yet know how generous the game is with handing out free in-game currencies, like Azur Lane is (seriously, AL is super FTP friendly), or what the drop rate is compared to other gachas.
Other items of note:
There doesn't appear to be any way to replay campaign missions, so if you forget what's happening in the story, or you wanna refresh your memory with the tutorial, you're shit outa luck.
There's a nice little "message" thingy, which has the player talk to some of the characters via text message. A cute little lore interaction.
If you happen to have small hands (like me), and have trouble reaching your thumb across the whole screen, you can adjust the sensitivity of the aiming reticle in the settings, along with its ability to recenter.
Currently there appears to be a bug (at least, I hope it's a bug. it is still new, after all) that requests you download files whenever you change your settings. If you opt out of downloading the files, your voices will get set to the Japanese setting, and you'll have to change them back (assuming you didn't already have them speaking in Japanese).
In summary:
It appears evident where the bulk of the focus was during the development of this game, and what they thought would sell it. It was even designed around playing it one-handed. Unfortunately, this means the rest of the game, the actual important stuff, has suffered. The girls are nice, and their acting/writing is decent, there's even fully anime cutscenes, but the gameplay itself is lacking. So far, the over arcing story doesn't seem all that special, but I've not gotten far enough in it to really judge it properly.
But, it's still new. Perhaps some of these issues will be addressed and improved upon. For now, I'd give this game a resounding "eh" and about a 2 out of 5. You might be better off just playing one of the many Sakura VNs.
Disclaimer: I've only played the first few missions, so I'm far from an expert on this little app. But, having played a few different gachas, its safe to say that a couple of hours is all you really need to get to the core of the experience.
The story:
Pretty generic, really. Almost cliche, even. Setting is some post-apoc thing, there's nasty machines running amok, and everyone seems to be living in something called "the Ark", which I presume to be underground on account of numerous references being made to "going to the surface"; and you, the player, find yourself in commend of sexy robo-girls not more than a day after graduating from the academy, because "plot". Oh, yeah, and said sexy robo-girls have to obey your orders "no matter what", and apparently every other commander just views them as tools/weapons, cos apparently people are blind and dumb, cos these girls are thiccc and plucky. If not for the dialogue almost beating you over the head with hints that these girls are anything but human, you'd think they actually were human.
The girls:
As stated above, the girls are thicc. Thicc, juicy, and bouncy. Very, very bouncy. Seriously, their animations look like they're in space, or under water. Despite literally being the size of MELONS, some of those things float like gravity forgot how to exist. Obviously, since the game only just came out, there's not a massive selection of girls, but the designs are... respectable. Actually, considering some other gacha games, they're pretty conservative. Most of the "common" (Rare) characters are decked out in head-to-toe tactical gear, with thick armour and helmets, and massive chains of ammo (depending on their weapon class). But, predictably, as the rarity increases, the outfits get more... appealing, showing much more thigh and/or cleavage. Believe it or not, but there's actually voice acting in this gacha game and it's not half bad. It's... actually pretty good. And the personalities (that I've seen so far) seem pretty natural and believable.
The gameplay:
And now we get to the core of game. Some people will flatly refuse to play a game that doesn't have "high quality" graphics, and all the modern bells and whistles. While others will happily play a game that is simple and looks like it was made in the 50's, as long as the gameplay and/or story is good. I'm more of the latter, so having sexy girls in the game, while appealing, won't necessarily keep my attention if the gameplay and/or story is crap.
The gameplay in Nikke has you in a 3rd person view, shooting down-range at an onslaught of enemies. In theory, this is an interesting and different style to other gachas. Azur Lane has a side scrolling combat system, and Arknights has its tower defense thing. Other gachas are turn based with teams beating on each other until one side is wiped out. And Nikke does this. But... in my opinion, it doesn't do it very well, and here's why...
First and foremost, the combat is locked in a portrait view, while the combat field is about two-to-three times the width. This means that you will often have enemies off screen. You can control where your Nikkes shoot by sliding your thumb around on the screen to move the reticle, and will often have to aim past the sides in order to force your field of view to scroll left or right so you can see what is there. There are no indicators on screen to tell you there are enemies where you can't see them.
Second, you control a team of five Nikkes, which are all lined up behind cover, and you can swap between them during a firefight. When not being directly controlled, the other four Nikkes will shoot at things automatically. There are six weapon types, each with different effective ranges, so, you'd think building a nice balanced team with different weapons would be a good thing. But, once in actual combat, there doesn't seem to be a lot of point to directly controlling your thick thighed robo-girls. There's an almost constant flow of enemies dropping in, at all ranges, and directly controlling a Nikke doesn't appear to have any real advantage outside of controlling when one of five of your girls takes cover. Oh, yeah, they take cover and reload at the same time, when you stop firing, so near as I can tell, that essentially means the other four are almost always getting shot at because when they're not reloading, they're shooting, which means they're not in cover. Unless you tap on your currently selected girl to tell all five of them to take cover from a large volley.
On that note, the portraits of your Nikkes currently fighting are lined up along the bottom of your screen, which is most likely going to be half covered by your thumb most of the time (unless you have the combat set to auto and you're just watching the action), so a lot of the time you can't even see your Nikke's health bar, because that is on their portraits, on the bottom of the screen, under your thumb.
In short, the combat is very cluttered and very poorly implemented. But, there are a few positives. Each Nikke has an ability they can activate, from launching a volley of rockets, to buffing their team, and even creating a protective shield. Abilities come in three... uh, "types", for lack of a better description; some Nikkes have a 1, some have a 2, and some have a 3, and abilities can chain together, from 1, to 2, to 3, and completing the chain activates a "Burst Mode" where everyone focuses their fire and does extra damage. This forces you to think about what abilities each of your team members have, as well as what their weapon type is, and their class. Oh yeah, there's three classes, too, assault, defense, and support. Nikkes are leveled up via material, rather than exp gained through combat, and gear they can equip, to further boost their stats.
Just like every gacha out there, you can throw real money at it for extra stuff. But, I'd be hesitant to throw money at this game, even if it was the best thing I'd played, because a 10pull looks to run you about $35. That's AUD, assuming the currency is in local. But, still, that's somewhere between $20 and $25 USD. I don't yet know how generous the game is with handing out free in-game currencies, like Azur Lane is (seriously, AL is super FTP friendly), or what the drop rate is compared to other gachas.
Other items of note:
There doesn't appear to be any way to replay campaign missions, so if you forget what's happening in the story, or you wanna refresh your memory with the tutorial, you're shit outa luck.
There's a nice little "message" thingy, which has the player talk to some of the characters via text message. A cute little lore interaction.
If you happen to have small hands (like me), and have trouble reaching your thumb across the whole screen, you can adjust the sensitivity of the aiming reticle in the settings, along with its ability to recenter.
Currently there appears to be a bug (at least, I hope it's a bug. it is still new, after all) that requests you download files whenever you change your settings. If you opt out of downloading the files, your voices will get set to the Japanese setting, and you'll have to change them back (assuming you didn't already have them speaking in Japanese).
In summary:
It appears evident where the bulk of the focus was during the development of this game, and what they thought would sell it. It was even designed around playing it one-handed. Unfortunately, this means the rest of the game, the actual important stuff, has suffered. The girls are nice, and their acting/writing is decent, there's even fully anime cutscenes, but the gameplay itself is lacking. So far, the over arcing story doesn't seem all that special, but I've not gotten far enough in it to really judge it properly.
But, it's still new. Perhaps some of these issues will be addressed and improved upon. For now, I'd give this game a resounding "eh" and about a 2 out of 5. You might be better off just playing one of the many Sakura VNs.
