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Nikke: A More In-depth Rambling
3 years ago
disclaimer: I had intended to get this finished and posted a few weeks ago, but I got distracted with Pokemon. XD
A few days ago I shared my initial thoughts on this new gacha. Now that I've delved a bit deeper into it, I'd like to go into a little more detail about my experience, and what I think of it. If you're looking for more info about it, to help you decide to get or not get it, perhaps keep reading. If you're not interested in my ramblings, you know what to do. :)
Nikke: Goddess of Victory (pronounced nee-kay) is a gacha game not unlike most others. It has girls, story, some form of gameplay, and, of course, the all important "how many copies of this not-common character will I get, today?" system. Let's break it down.
The Setting:
Humans seem to have been all but entirely wiped out. The last vestiges of mankind are now holed up in a great big underground city called The Ark, while machines known as The Raptures roam around on the surface. You, the player, are one of many Commanders that periodically head up to the surface with "weapons" known as Nikkes. Said Nikkes are "modeled in the ideal form of mankind" (i.e. sexy ladies) and are... robots? Cyborgs? Honestly, it's not entirely clear exactly what a Nikke is, but they're stronger, faster, have unique, super human abilities, and can be rebuilt as long as you bring their head back intact.
Characters/Nikkes:
There are numerous characters in the game, not just the girls you "add to your harem". Obviously, there's you, the Commander that leads a group of Nikke in battle against the Raptures, and is apparently more useless than Aqua. You're a rookie that just graduated from the Academy, which apparently teaches you jack shit, that remembers virtually nothing, and has been thrust into this role by circumstance. Your superior is an ass. The lady from the Training simulation room is slightly less of an ass. And then you have your staple anime "I'm part of the Big Three so I can do anything I want" because apparently ignoring human rights and blackmail is just OK for the CEO of a major company. Oh, wait...
The Nikkes themselves are... thiccc. Thicc, and juicy, and bouncy. Very, very bouncy. Seriously, they stand perfectly still and their boobs still float around like they're in space. Or under water. There's a decent selection of girls to choose from, in the R, SR, and SSR pools. The R girls typically sport full body armour, complete with helmets and belts of ammo slung over their shoulder, while the SR and SSR girls are usually a bit more casual, showing generous amount of thigh and cleavage in their tank tops, and blazers, and short skirts, and what not. But, surprisingly, they're still rather conservatively designed, at least compared to other gacha games, like Azur Lane or Genshin Impact. However, there's not a big variety in body shapes as most of the girls are quite curvy and have a considerable bust. Go far enough into the game and you'll even notice there is a distinct presence of dom & sub aesthetics, with the black leather, and whips, and excessive belt straps, and even interactions between more than a couple of characters. Either I'm projecting, or the specific interests of the devs leaked its way into the game's design a bit more than it should've. It's almost like playing the PG version of a bad hentai game.
Despite being treated as practically slaves and/or nothing more than tools, by most other Commanders and residents of the Ark, the Nikkes each have their own personalities, feelings, and... quirks. One Nikke has an obsession for Strawberry Candies, while another seems to see firepower as some kind of religious aspect. Yeah... I'm not sure what to think about that one, either. Actually, there's quite a grab bag of weird traits when it comes to these girls, and, honestly, I'm starting to think Rapi and Anis (the two "main" Nikkes you interact with) are the only normal people in this entire game. Some of these other characters are just plain starting to give me the irates, and others just make me want to facepalm.
Gameplay:
The core of Nikke is its combat. You take a squad of five girls and view combat from a 3rd person perspective while the girls fire ahead of you, in a "down range" fashion as enemies spawn in. In the basest sense, it's a fun and enjoyable view; you got barely clad booties and thighs (depending on the attire of the girls you selected) to ogle while guns to ratatat and machines go boom. But, that's where the fun stops...
The field of view is locked to a portrait perspective, while the actual arena is about 2-3 times wider, meaning the screen needs to scroll in order to see what's at the far sides. This wouldn't be a big deal if not for the fact that there is absolutely zero indication that an enemy is off screen. During combat, your five girls are lines up and crouching behind cover, and you can directly control one at any given time, but, you can only see from that one's perspective; the other four are off screen, to the sides. At the bottom of the screen are five portraits, representing each of your assigned Nikkes; tapping one of these portraits allows you to swap between them to take direct control. When not being directly controlled, the other Nikkes will automatically fire their weapons at any enemies they deem so worthy of their attention, before promptly slipping back behind cover to reload when their ammo runs out. When directly controlling a Nikke, you can control where she fires her weapon by sliding your thumb around on the screen, to move the reticle. By lifting your thumb or finger off the screen, your controlled Nikke will duck back behind cover and reload her weapon.
Sounds simple enough, right? Well, there's a bit more to it than that. Each Nikke not only has a specific weapon type, from Assault Rifle to Shotgun, to Rocket Launcher and Sniper Rifle, but they each come in one of three classes, Attacker, Defender, and Support. There is also a RPS (rock -paper-scissors) style element system, giving weaknesses and strengths to enemies and Nikke respectively. Each Nikke also has a Burst Ability that they can use during combat, from launching a barrage of destruction upon the field, to healing her teammates, or temporarily boosting their capabilities. Additionally, each Burst Ability has what I'll simply refer to as a "tier", although they can hardly be considered as tiered in any real sense of the word. During combat, Burst Abilities are used in a chain. Each ability's "tier" determines where in the chain it can be used. A tier 2 ability, for example, can only be used after a tier 1, and a tier 3 can only be used after a tier 2. Upon successfully using a chain of three Burst Abilities, Burst Mode is initiated, in which all currently surviving Nikkes have their abilities temporarily enhanced. While this Burst Ability chain concept is cool, it's also a bit flawed as it is heavily reliant on timing and your Nikkes surviving. If the wrong Nikke dies during a firefight, or is stunned by an enemy, your Burst Chain can completely fall apart and become absolutely useless, making that all important and much needed healing Burst Ability nothing more than a pipe dream.
On top of that, actually manually controlling your Nikke can be a trial in patience, itself, as the reticle can sometimes be as much of an enemy as the killer machines. Firstly, you need to move it all the way across the screen in order to pan your view, or quite a ways upward in order to aim at higher skyward enemies. This can be especially troublesome if you happen to have small hands, and thus, short thumbs. Fortunately, there is a setting in the game which allows you to adjust the sensitivity of the reticle movement, allowing you to move it further while moving your thumb or finger over a shorter distance. There is also an alignment setting just below that which, despite its misleading description, allows you to set where the reticle will snap to when you return your Nikke to cover. Unfortunately, these options do little to alleviate the minor frustration of the reticle becoming "sticky" and sometimes not moving the distance it should, especially when the device has grown hot and your thumb/finger struggles to slide smoothly across the screen. Additionally, the perspective likes to shift, often, usually when an enemy of note spawns in, forcing you to realign your reticle before you can continue shooting.
The combat itself is fast paced and somewhat hectic. You'll quickly find yourself with dozens of enemies on screen at once, exploding, charging abilities of their own, and firing barrages at you. All in all, the game screen often becomes quite cluttered making it hard at times to tell what is going on, and when you need to tell your entire team to take cover. This is further compounded by the fact that you're essentially fighting with tunnel vision. In fact, I found it vastly easier, most of the time, to simply over level my girls and let them auto-fight while occasionally giving the command to use their Burst Abilities. There appears to be no benefit or drawback to what position your Nikkes are in, on their defensive line, and there's almost no tactical aspect to the fighting itself, outside of occasionally needing to take direct control to aim at specific targets, because the AI is too dumb to prioritize vital targets itself.
But wait, there's more! Your initial few firefights are filled with tutorial notes. That's a good thing, right? Unfortunately, if you accidentally skip the tutorial text, or just plain want to go back and review the tutorial's information, you can't. There appears to be no way to replay past battles, and thus no way to review the tutorials that tell you what that shiny red glow means, or how to tell all your girls to duck behind cover at once, or how to survive that hail of missiles now coming your way. Additionally, there are some things the game simply doesn't tell you. For example, each Nikke's portrait has a blue and a white bar above it; the white bar is their health, and the blue bar is the cover they are crouched behind, which does not regenerate during a fight. So far I have encountered three different types of combat, the typical "kill everything" type, the defense type, and the "king of the hill" type. When first encountering these types of battles, the instructions actually disappeared before I was able to read them completely, so I didn't know what to do. Fortunately, when you select an enemy to fight on the "world map", you're shown an overview of what to expect during the firefight. Unfortunately, the game gives no indication that almost every icon on that overview can be tapped for further details, so, unless you are one of those gamers with the mindset of INTERACT. WITH. EVERYTHING. you may never know that the little header on that overview, telling you what type the battle you're about to begin is, will also give you the instructions of how to win it, and the others.
Outside of the main campaign, there's a few different things you can do. You've got your typical "Tower Ascension" mode, in which you fight your way through progressively harder fights; there's the "Training Simulation", which allows your to fight through... progressively harder fights, but with a couple of additional twists. This mode allows you to acquire buffs after each fight, and each buff has a little icon assigned to it. Collect several buffs with matching icons and all of those buffs become stronger. Of course, these buffs are only applied to Nikkes fighting in this mode, and the mode resets each day. So, why participate? Because the Training Simulation is a source of vital materials needed to level up your Nikkes' abilities. Keep in mind, however, that you can't endlessly grind these materials as you can only get so many per day. There's also a mode in which you can test your mettle against bosses. A good way to practice, I guess? I didn't give this too much of a try because the boss currently available kept wrecking me. But, as I understand it, the bosses available to fight swap out at regular intervals. It should be noted that each of these different modes do not remember the team assignments of other modes. If you have a favourite team of Nikke you like to use, you need to manually assign them to a team for each mode. Also, when assigning Nikkes to a team, you cannot shuffle their position around; if you wish to move your shot gunner to another slot in the lineup, you need to unassign her, and the girl in the other slot, and reassign them both. While their position doesn't appear to have any actual baring on combat, keeping a standard order can help you quickly swap to the girl you want during a firefight without having to pause for a moment to check where your Sniper or Machine gunner is.
Of course, the campaign isn't the only source of character interaction. On the main hub screen you'll find a messenger app; through it, Nikke and other characters will often talk to you via text message format. Some will simply wish to say hello, while others will seek your aid in... some rather odd and frankly dubious endeavours. Apparently you're every random person's fix-it guy, as well.
And that brings us to the "dating sim" part of this game. That's right, you get to woo these girls, and doing so makes them stronger! A short way into the game, you get sent to The Outpost "because reasons" where you get to literally build your own town, complete with police station, library, and seedy cafe. While there, you can meet and get to know the various Nikke you've recruited. Doing so will allow you to delve into some surprisingly deep lore about this game's world, along with getting to know more about the interests and daily lives of each "living weapon" currently hanging out in your own, personal har- I mean, town. You can simply chat with them, or give them gifts, which in turn boosts their Bond with you, which increases their stats. I don't yet know what happens if you max out a bond, but, I've not seen any Promise Rings in the shop. Yet. On top of chatting to the girls directly, each building in your town has a chance to spawn an "event" which is essentially more lore cutscenes, however, initiating these requires stamina, which regenerate once a week. Initially, you start with two stamina, but I believe you can increase that. The town also requires defending. I expected there to be some manner of assignment and management to this, but alas, it's just a passive buildup of exp materials and currency which you need to periodically collect, lest the overflow go to waste.
The buildings themselves are easy and quick to build, requiring little more than a specific item which can be found on the over world maps of the campaign. However, if your eyesight is poor, you might have a hard time finding them because the tiny little sparkle that indicates an item is on the ground is extremely difficult to see, and sometimes entirely hidden behind the environment. Once built, however, the building can easily and freely be moved to a new location on the town's map. You don't even have to deconstruct anything as the buildings will simply swap locations if there is another where you want the first. So far, most of the buildings don't seem to actually provide anything, outside of a chance to spawn one of those lore events.
The Gacha and Other Items:
At first glance, this game's gacha doesn't seem very forgiving. The rates on the SSR's are low and it looks to run you around a whopping $70 for a 10-pull. That's AU, by the way, assuming the game is showing prices in my local currency. This game's in-game currency is called Gems, and you need 3000 of them for a 10-pull on the Special Recruit banner. The cash shop sells 1500 of these Gems for $34.99, alone (with double the amount gained for a first time purchase). 2300 sells for $51.99 and 4200 sells for a staggering $91.99. Yeah, fuck that. You can also buy the usual "monthly" thingy, which will give you 100 gems per day, for 30 days, at $8.49.
Fortunately, there's "free" Gems and "paid" Gems. Paid Gems are, obviously, bought with real money, while the free variant, you can get from various sources as rewards and seems to build up at a not terrible rate. I've been playing this game for around a week and I've already accumulated enough for three 10-pulls using free Gems. Although, I expect that rate will slow down as these resources are almost always given out in greater number early on in the game. But, that's not the only way to recruit new Nikkes. You can also get Recruit Vouchers as rewards, which you can use on the Normal Recruit banner. And then there's Social Points. Believe it or not, but you can send your friends points each day (and vice verse), and use those points on the Social Recruit banner. Additionally, you'll find in your inventory two items called Molds, which look like different coloured versions of the game's Gems. The Mid-quality Mold is purple, and the High-quality Mold is gold, matching the SR and SSR rarity of Nikkes, respectively. You gain more of these Molds as rewards and once you've accumulated enough, you can use them to recruit a single Nikke. Both items state that the recruited Nikke can be SR or SSR rarity, but as yet, I've only gotten Nikkes of the rarity corresponding to the Mold used. I don't know if I was just lucky, or the game's description is misleading and each Mold has a chance to pull from either pool. On top of that, there are “Mileage Vouchers” of the silver and gold variety, which you gain when making pulls. Accumulate enough of these and you can use them in one of the many shops to buy copies of your higher tier “weapons”, meaning you don't need to rely on RNG in order to fully Limit Break your best gals.
All in all, the gacha mechanic is actually not too bad, in my personal opinion. With its various options to try your luck, and a Wishlist which improves the chances of gaining selected Nikkes when you make a pull, I dare say it's somewhat Free-to-Play friendly. One just needs to be patient while accumulating the required resources to make their desired pulls.
Co-op:
You read that right; co-op. This one actually caught me off guard, and while it seemed to only be an event, I rather hope it'll be a common one, or a more permanent edition will be unlocked/added at a later date.
This gacha's unique style of gameplay affords the ability to form a team with four other players, allowing you to work together as a team to take on a boss, kind of like a raid. Each person selects a Nikke before the mission (and can see what their teammates are selecting), and then directly controls their chosen gun gal, and only their chosen gun gal, alongside the other four human players. While I could only control my own Nikke, being in a team with four other people, working to take down a beast of a machine, was surprisingly a lot of fun. The most fun I've had with this entire application.
Summary:
Nikke: Goddess of Victory, is by no account what I, personally, would consider a good game, even for a free-to-play gacha. It has issues that really shouldn't exist. Many of the characters are walking cliches. And, if you care to delve into the lore by interacting with them, you spend more time reading than actually playing. Honestly, at times it feels more like a school dorm full of 12-14 year olds than a military operation standing between mankind and total extinction.
But, the character designs are nice, and despite their... quirks, they're decently written and come off as natural. Most of the time. There's a distinct “living” air around the girls, if you care to take the time to interact with them, and once I get past the more irritating ones, I find myself genuinely intrigued about the deeper lore of the world itself.
Initially, I gave this game a 2 out of 5. But, now that I've gotten further into it, I'd like to upgrade that to a 3 out of 5.
A few days ago I shared my initial thoughts on this new gacha. Now that I've delved a bit deeper into it, I'd like to go into a little more detail about my experience, and what I think of it. If you're looking for more info about it, to help you decide to get or not get it, perhaps keep reading. If you're not interested in my ramblings, you know what to do. :)
Nikke: Goddess of Victory (pronounced nee-kay) is a gacha game not unlike most others. It has girls, story, some form of gameplay, and, of course, the all important "how many copies of this not-common character will I get, today?" system. Let's break it down.
The Setting:
Humans seem to have been all but entirely wiped out. The last vestiges of mankind are now holed up in a great big underground city called The Ark, while machines known as The Raptures roam around on the surface. You, the player, are one of many Commanders that periodically head up to the surface with "weapons" known as Nikkes. Said Nikkes are "modeled in the ideal form of mankind" (i.e. sexy ladies) and are... robots? Cyborgs? Honestly, it's not entirely clear exactly what a Nikke is, but they're stronger, faster, have unique, super human abilities, and can be rebuilt as long as you bring their head back intact.
Characters/Nikkes:
There are numerous characters in the game, not just the girls you "add to your harem". Obviously, there's you, the Commander that leads a group of Nikke in battle against the Raptures, and is apparently more useless than Aqua. You're a rookie that just graduated from the Academy, which apparently teaches you jack shit, that remembers virtually nothing, and has been thrust into this role by circumstance. Your superior is an ass. The lady from the Training simulation room is slightly less of an ass. And then you have your staple anime "I'm part of the Big Three so I can do anything I want" because apparently ignoring human rights and blackmail is just OK for the CEO of a major company. Oh, wait...
The Nikkes themselves are... thiccc. Thicc, and juicy, and bouncy. Very, very bouncy. Seriously, they stand perfectly still and their boobs still float around like they're in space. Or under water. There's a decent selection of girls to choose from, in the R, SR, and SSR pools. The R girls typically sport full body armour, complete with helmets and belts of ammo slung over their shoulder, while the SR and SSR girls are usually a bit more casual, showing generous amount of thigh and cleavage in their tank tops, and blazers, and short skirts, and what not. But, surprisingly, they're still rather conservatively designed, at least compared to other gacha games, like Azur Lane or Genshin Impact. However, there's not a big variety in body shapes as most of the girls are quite curvy and have a considerable bust. Go far enough into the game and you'll even notice there is a distinct presence of dom & sub aesthetics, with the black leather, and whips, and excessive belt straps, and even interactions between more than a couple of characters. Either I'm projecting, or the specific interests of the devs leaked its way into the game's design a bit more than it should've. It's almost like playing the PG version of a bad hentai game.
Despite being treated as practically slaves and/or nothing more than tools, by most other Commanders and residents of the Ark, the Nikkes each have their own personalities, feelings, and... quirks. One Nikke has an obsession for Strawberry Candies, while another seems to see firepower as some kind of religious aspect. Yeah... I'm not sure what to think about that one, either. Actually, there's quite a grab bag of weird traits when it comes to these girls, and, honestly, I'm starting to think Rapi and Anis (the two "main" Nikkes you interact with) are the only normal people in this entire game. Some of these other characters are just plain starting to give me the irates, and others just make me want to facepalm.
Gameplay:
The core of Nikke is its combat. You take a squad of five girls and view combat from a 3rd person perspective while the girls fire ahead of you, in a "down range" fashion as enemies spawn in. In the basest sense, it's a fun and enjoyable view; you got barely clad booties and thighs (depending on the attire of the girls you selected) to ogle while guns to ratatat and machines go boom. But, that's where the fun stops...
The field of view is locked to a portrait perspective, while the actual arena is about 2-3 times wider, meaning the screen needs to scroll in order to see what's at the far sides. This wouldn't be a big deal if not for the fact that there is absolutely zero indication that an enemy is off screen. During combat, your five girls are lines up and crouching behind cover, and you can directly control one at any given time, but, you can only see from that one's perspective; the other four are off screen, to the sides. At the bottom of the screen are five portraits, representing each of your assigned Nikkes; tapping one of these portraits allows you to swap between them to take direct control. When not being directly controlled, the other Nikkes will automatically fire their weapons at any enemies they deem so worthy of their attention, before promptly slipping back behind cover to reload when their ammo runs out. When directly controlling a Nikke, you can control where she fires her weapon by sliding your thumb around on the screen, to move the reticle. By lifting your thumb or finger off the screen, your controlled Nikke will duck back behind cover and reload her weapon.
Sounds simple enough, right? Well, there's a bit more to it than that. Each Nikke not only has a specific weapon type, from Assault Rifle to Shotgun, to Rocket Launcher and Sniper Rifle, but they each come in one of three classes, Attacker, Defender, and Support. There is also a RPS (rock -paper-scissors) style element system, giving weaknesses and strengths to enemies and Nikke respectively. Each Nikke also has a Burst Ability that they can use during combat, from launching a barrage of destruction upon the field, to healing her teammates, or temporarily boosting their capabilities. Additionally, each Burst Ability has what I'll simply refer to as a "tier", although they can hardly be considered as tiered in any real sense of the word. During combat, Burst Abilities are used in a chain. Each ability's "tier" determines where in the chain it can be used. A tier 2 ability, for example, can only be used after a tier 1, and a tier 3 can only be used after a tier 2. Upon successfully using a chain of three Burst Abilities, Burst Mode is initiated, in which all currently surviving Nikkes have their abilities temporarily enhanced. While this Burst Ability chain concept is cool, it's also a bit flawed as it is heavily reliant on timing and your Nikkes surviving. If the wrong Nikke dies during a firefight, or is stunned by an enemy, your Burst Chain can completely fall apart and become absolutely useless, making that all important and much needed healing Burst Ability nothing more than a pipe dream.
On top of that, actually manually controlling your Nikke can be a trial in patience, itself, as the reticle can sometimes be as much of an enemy as the killer machines. Firstly, you need to move it all the way across the screen in order to pan your view, or quite a ways upward in order to aim at higher skyward enemies. This can be especially troublesome if you happen to have small hands, and thus, short thumbs. Fortunately, there is a setting in the game which allows you to adjust the sensitivity of the reticle movement, allowing you to move it further while moving your thumb or finger over a shorter distance. There is also an alignment setting just below that which, despite its misleading description, allows you to set where the reticle will snap to when you return your Nikke to cover. Unfortunately, these options do little to alleviate the minor frustration of the reticle becoming "sticky" and sometimes not moving the distance it should, especially when the device has grown hot and your thumb/finger struggles to slide smoothly across the screen. Additionally, the perspective likes to shift, often, usually when an enemy of note spawns in, forcing you to realign your reticle before you can continue shooting.
The combat itself is fast paced and somewhat hectic. You'll quickly find yourself with dozens of enemies on screen at once, exploding, charging abilities of their own, and firing barrages at you. All in all, the game screen often becomes quite cluttered making it hard at times to tell what is going on, and when you need to tell your entire team to take cover. This is further compounded by the fact that you're essentially fighting with tunnel vision. In fact, I found it vastly easier, most of the time, to simply over level my girls and let them auto-fight while occasionally giving the command to use their Burst Abilities. There appears to be no benefit or drawback to what position your Nikkes are in, on their defensive line, and there's almost no tactical aspect to the fighting itself, outside of occasionally needing to take direct control to aim at specific targets, because the AI is too dumb to prioritize vital targets itself.
But wait, there's more! Your initial few firefights are filled with tutorial notes. That's a good thing, right? Unfortunately, if you accidentally skip the tutorial text, or just plain want to go back and review the tutorial's information, you can't. There appears to be no way to replay past battles, and thus no way to review the tutorials that tell you what that shiny red glow means, or how to tell all your girls to duck behind cover at once, or how to survive that hail of missiles now coming your way. Additionally, there are some things the game simply doesn't tell you. For example, each Nikke's portrait has a blue and a white bar above it; the white bar is their health, and the blue bar is the cover they are crouched behind, which does not regenerate during a fight. So far I have encountered three different types of combat, the typical "kill everything" type, the defense type, and the "king of the hill" type. When first encountering these types of battles, the instructions actually disappeared before I was able to read them completely, so I didn't know what to do. Fortunately, when you select an enemy to fight on the "world map", you're shown an overview of what to expect during the firefight. Unfortunately, the game gives no indication that almost every icon on that overview can be tapped for further details, so, unless you are one of those gamers with the mindset of INTERACT. WITH. EVERYTHING. you may never know that the little header on that overview, telling you what type the battle you're about to begin is, will also give you the instructions of how to win it, and the others.
Outside of the main campaign, there's a few different things you can do. You've got your typical "Tower Ascension" mode, in which you fight your way through progressively harder fights; there's the "Training Simulation", which allows your to fight through... progressively harder fights, but with a couple of additional twists. This mode allows you to acquire buffs after each fight, and each buff has a little icon assigned to it. Collect several buffs with matching icons and all of those buffs become stronger. Of course, these buffs are only applied to Nikkes fighting in this mode, and the mode resets each day. So, why participate? Because the Training Simulation is a source of vital materials needed to level up your Nikkes' abilities. Keep in mind, however, that you can't endlessly grind these materials as you can only get so many per day. There's also a mode in which you can test your mettle against bosses. A good way to practice, I guess? I didn't give this too much of a try because the boss currently available kept wrecking me. But, as I understand it, the bosses available to fight swap out at regular intervals. It should be noted that each of these different modes do not remember the team assignments of other modes. If you have a favourite team of Nikke you like to use, you need to manually assign them to a team for each mode. Also, when assigning Nikkes to a team, you cannot shuffle their position around; if you wish to move your shot gunner to another slot in the lineup, you need to unassign her, and the girl in the other slot, and reassign them both. While their position doesn't appear to have any actual baring on combat, keeping a standard order can help you quickly swap to the girl you want during a firefight without having to pause for a moment to check where your Sniper or Machine gunner is.
Of course, the campaign isn't the only source of character interaction. On the main hub screen you'll find a messenger app; through it, Nikke and other characters will often talk to you via text message format. Some will simply wish to say hello, while others will seek your aid in... some rather odd and frankly dubious endeavours. Apparently you're every random person's fix-it guy, as well.
And that brings us to the "dating sim" part of this game. That's right, you get to woo these girls, and doing so makes them stronger! A short way into the game, you get sent to The Outpost "because reasons" where you get to literally build your own town, complete with police station, library, and seedy cafe. While there, you can meet and get to know the various Nikke you've recruited. Doing so will allow you to delve into some surprisingly deep lore about this game's world, along with getting to know more about the interests and daily lives of each "living weapon" currently hanging out in your own, personal har- I mean, town. You can simply chat with them, or give them gifts, which in turn boosts their Bond with you, which increases their stats. I don't yet know what happens if you max out a bond, but, I've not seen any Promise Rings in the shop. Yet. On top of chatting to the girls directly, each building in your town has a chance to spawn an "event" which is essentially more lore cutscenes, however, initiating these requires stamina, which regenerate once a week. Initially, you start with two stamina, but I believe you can increase that. The town also requires defending. I expected there to be some manner of assignment and management to this, but alas, it's just a passive buildup of exp materials and currency which you need to periodically collect, lest the overflow go to waste.
The buildings themselves are easy and quick to build, requiring little more than a specific item which can be found on the over world maps of the campaign. However, if your eyesight is poor, you might have a hard time finding them because the tiny little sparkle that indicates an item is on the ground is extremely difficult to see, and sometimes entirely hidden behind the environment. Once built, however, the building can easily and freely be moved to a new location on the town's map. You don't even have to deconstruct anything as the buildings will simply swap locations if there is another where you want the first. So far, most of the buildings don't seem to actually provide anything, outside of a chance to spawn one of those lore events.
The Gacha and Other Items:
At first glance, this game's gacha doesn't seem very forgiving. The rates on the SSR's are low and it looks to run you around a whopping $70 for a 10-pull. That's AU, by the way, assuming the game is showing prices in my local currency. This game's in-game currency is called Gems, and you need 3000 of them for a 10-pull on the Special Recruit banner. The cash shop sells 1500 of these Gems for $34.99, alone (with double the amount gained for a first time purchase). 2300 sells for $51.99 and 4200 sells for a staggering $91.99. Yeah, fuck that. You can also buy the usual "monthly" thingy, which will give you 100 gems per day, for 30 days, at $8.49.
Fortunately, there's "free" Gems and "paid" Gems. Paid Gems are, obviously, bought with real money, while the free variant, you can get from various sources as rewards and seems to build up at a not terrible rate. I've been playing this game for around a week and I've already accumulated enough for three 10-pulls using free Gems. Although, I expect that rate will slow down as these resources are almost always given out in greater number early on in the game. But, that's not the only way to recruit new Nikkes. You can also get Recruit Vouchers as rewards, which you can use on the Normal Recruit banner. And then there's Social Points. Believe it or not, but you can send your friends points each day (and vice verse), and use those points on the Social Recruit banner. Additionally, you'll find in your inventory two items called Molds, which look like different coloured versions of the game's Gems. The Mid-quality Mold is purple, and the High-quality Mold is gold, matching the SR and SSR rarity of Nikkes, respectively. You gain more of these Molds as rewards and once you've accumulated enough, you can use them to recruit a single Nikke. Both items state that the recruited Nikke can be SR or SSR rarity, but as yet, I've only gotten Nikkes of the rarity corresponding to the Mold used. I don't know if I was just lucky, or the game's description is misleading and each Mold has a chance to pull from either pool. On top of that, there are “Mileage Vouchers” of the silver and gold variety, which you gain when making pulls. Accumulate enough of these and you can use them in one of the many shops to buy copies of your higher tier “weapons”, meaning you don't need to rely on RNG in order to fully Limit Break your best gals.
All in all, the gacha mechanic is actually not too bad, in my personal opinion. With its various options to try your luck, and a Wishlist which improves the chances of gaining selected Nikkes when you make a pull, I dare say it's somewhat Free-to-Play friendly. One just needs to be patient while accumulating the required resources to make their desired pulls.
Co-op:
You read that right; co-op. This one actually caught me off guard, and while it seemed to only be an event, I rather hope it'll be a common one, or a more permanent edition will be unlocked/added at a later date.
This gacha's unique style of gameplay affords the ability to form a team with four other players, allowing you to work together as a team to take on a boss, kind of like a raid. Each person selects a Nikke before the mission (and can see what their teammates are selecting), and then directly controls their chosen gun gal, and only their chosen gun gal, alongside the other four human players. While I could only control my own Nikke, being in a team with four other people, working to take down a beast of a machine, was surprisingly a lot of fun. The most fun I've had with this entire application.
Summary:
Nikke: Goddess of Victory, is by no account what I, personally, would consider a good game, even for a free-to-play gacha. It has issues that really shouldn't exist. Many of the characters are walking cliches. And, if you care to delve into the lore by interacting with them, you spend more time reading than actually playing. Honestly, at times it feels more like a school dorm full of 12-14 year olds than a military operation standing between mankind and total extinction.
But, the character designs are nice, and despite their... quirks, they're decently written and come off as natural. Most of the time. There's a distinct “living” air around the girls, if you care to take the time to interact with them, and once I get past the more irritating ones, I find myself genuinely intrigued about the deeper lore of the world itself.
Initially, I gave this game a 2 out of 5. But, now that I've gotten further into it, I'd like to upgrade that to a 3 out of 5.
