A pig in lipstick is still a pig.
And a rogue-like in lipstick is still a rogue-like.
And I play rogue-likes not to finish them but to see how many times I die before I lose interest.
So I played Zettai Hero Project
End of report.
You: “That’s it?! I demand details!!”
I’d love to indulge you, but I don’t have much more to say. It’s been almost two months since I dropped the game unceremoniously, and I haven’t looked back. IIRC I made it to chapter 5 or 6, the part in the mine with Oldlama and some ghost or something.
It’s a normal rogue-like for the most part. The “lipstick” is just NIS going overboard with all kinds of beautification attempts and unnecessary additions that just messed up the clean, simple feel I like to get from my rogue-likes. Heh, look at me talking like some kind of expert when all I’ve ever played are the Shiren the Wanderer games. But I know what I like when I play it, and Zettai Hero Project wasn’t it.
Some of the unnecessary additions I’m talking about:
- A largely unwilling protagonist. Rogue-likes are brutal enough to play and watch even when your character wants to be there. When he doesn’t want to, and when on top of that other characters keep insulting and putting him down, well, just imagine how that makes me feel. The putdowns were more mean-spirited than funny to begin with, and they just got worse as the game progressed. This was about 90% of the reason I quit the game.
- Too much stuff to fiddle with, all with little discernible benefit. Too many items, too many facilities, too many options. The insurance office, the church, the item synthesis thing, the medical doctor and all those colored blocks. All of that. All unnecessary stress. Just give me somewhere to stash my items and a way to get home and then leave me alone. 9% of the reason I quit.
- Too many battles with Darkdeath Evilman. After the first 2 they should have cut out all the rest. We already know how they’re going to turn out.
- Too much moralization. Why must there be a moral in every chapter? I’m busy trying to survive here, I really don’t need to be preached at on top of my woes.
- Time-wasting character stories. I’m busy training to save your sorry asses. Stop dragging me into your stupid social dramas. The only ones worth keeping were those directly related to the story, like Superbaby’s mom.
- Some amusing scenes, but even more scenes that just fell flat in their weak attempts at humor. They even lapsed into vulgarity at times (his *bleep* is as big as a …what?)
- Unnecessary added stress with decaying armor/weapons. At least slow down the rate of decay.
- The dungeon music was annoying and distracting. I get the whole “sentai” theme thing, but there should have been an option to turn it off entirely.
- The slight stat boosts you got from failing were insulting. I felt patronized. Like, I know what I’m getting into when I play a rogue-like, okay? You don’t have to baby me or give me pity points for failing. How old do you think I am?
And so on and so forth. Oh it wasn’t all bad, since I played it for quite a while. I liked the art style, I liked the generally cheerful and silly mood, I’m glad they tried to be funny and I liked the general premise of the hero training for the battle against the final boss.
And it’s not like I was planning to finish in the first place. I would have stopped sooner or later anyway; the flaws just hastened the process. So when I’d had enough and wanted to quit, I quit.
The end. Seriously.
Unlosing Ranger is sort of a love/hate game, sometimes its great, sometimes its stupid and annoying, but for me but I feel I should comment on some of your complaints, espeically the first. It seems odd I defend the game like this, because I’ll admit thiers a fair bit wrong with it but their are some things I find admirable and I think are easy to overlook.
I agree with the too many battles against Evil Death thing.
A lot of the other stuff (the morals, music and odd humour) is a homage/parody to sentai and superheroes. Admttingly some stuff works better than others.
The weapons and armour thing is annoying, but oddly fits with sentai, forcing you to save your weapons and armour until your up against stronger monsters where you need them, you know like actual Sentai Heros who fight the mooks with their fists, then get their weapons and armour for the tough monsters.
The stat boosts and protaginiss? Their is one big moral built into the game, something that forms a core part of it, the path to being a hero is to get up after you fail, keep trying and bettering yourself after every failure until your good enough to achieve your games, and this is reflected in sooo much of the game, especially the protagonist. The stat boosts help quite a bit early on, but later on you’ll be getting a lot more boosts from your items and panels. Also many NI gamers like to grind, especially for the post game so it also works well with that.
As for your first complaint:
How far did you get?
Lets just say the “everyone is unfairly a dick to the protagonist” becomes a plot point that gets tackled in an interesting way (resulting in people realising they were wrong to do so, and the protagonist is a lot more awesome than he seems).
Or
*Spoilers* The reason the protagonist is superficially a loser and withdrawn is because his family were dicks to him, after being repetitively told he was a loser and being used as a scapegoat for all his families problems he started to believe it. The protagonist is in fact a badass determinator who saved his sister from a kidnapper mosnter as a kid, by willing taking blows until the police came, and once he gets people to acknowledge him hes actually pretty badass. Etranger is kind of a ***** at times, but then theirs two good reasons for that, 1) Theirs a very good reason why she lacks emotinal maturity, empathy and understanding of humanity that is covered in her chapther 2) She- well again thats covered in her chapther.
Shall I say? *More spoilers* SHE is super Baby, meaning that while she is incredibly intelligent for a child, she lacks an experience with humans. More so her mother treated her a s a means to fame, and kept going on about how shes the one who will save humanity, hence she doesn’t initially take the hero seriously. And with her mother treating her like an object and her dad abodning her, she hasn’t really had a chance to learn empathy. And yes that gets dealt with
Thanks for the story spoilers. I got to Chapter 6 in the mines, so I did do the bit about Super Baby and her mom. “Yes, she’s a bitch, but there’s a very good reason” doesn’t really change the fact that she’s a bitch. Though she does get a lot better after her story, and after the real trainer comes back.
I saw a few skits with the protagonist’s parents and little sister trashing him, but I never made it to the point where they redo their view of him.
It’s good to hear things work out for him in the end, but I have a feeling people their suddenly changing their tunes would just piss me off. Unless they like go down on their hands and knees and apologize profusely and repeatedly. You can’t just treat someone badly for ages and then say “Hey, sorry ’bout that” and expect everything to be cool.
– Unforgiving Gamer
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