Well well well, another Nippon Ichi game. One of the oldest, predating mostly everything else (including Disgaea), but not the Marl Kingdom games. Though interestingly enough the game takes place in the same setting as the Marl Kingdom, but some offshoot called Paprica. The game's gameplay is honestly okay, I know Nippon Ichi's other games have far superior tactical combat systems and they are worth the grinds for, but this one is fairly standard. Almost Shining Force-esque, except 3D, special abilities other than magic, and the ideas of portals to purify. I never bothered with Dark Energy Indexes, they are going up if you leave portals alone or kill your own characters, and while the idea of entering the Dark World is decent enough, you can still replay maps anytime, which sort of mitigates things. Maybe I just didn't want to have as much randomization as Soul Nomad's inspections or Phantom Brave's dungeons. And purifying monsters into recruits is...okay at best? Not entirely all that useful when you get quite a few storyline characters that are always better. Those Chocolat characters for instance, the small cats that are happy-go-lucky and all, make great support characters if properly leveled, as does Monyamonya who has a distinct advantage to only needing two uses of a skill to learn it. Papillon despite being level 1 and a squishy character also has some routinely nice stuff. Then the physical powerhouses of Prier, Homard, Croix, etc. all work out too. The shop mechanic and the survey help the balance of customization just a tad.
The plot is again a strong point, but I personally get tired of the whole romances involved. Prier falls for Croix and Croix ignores her most of the time, echoing the sentiment Squall gave to Rinoa. It's a little better here because Croix doesn't all of a sudden fall for Prier right off the bat. The Eclair/Homard relationship was just sort of there as a beta couple, but doesn't really hit any strides at all other than maybe a snark from Papillon or so. Culotte crushing on Alouette was even worse, especially when we find out who she really was and that Culotte wouldn't even have a chance. As for the main villain, Noir, he's alright. Another one of those "destroy all life" villains, because he is heavily conflicted, having lost his mother, creating a church with lots of publicity, and making sacrifices in humans and demons. Sometimes he's a Sephiroth kinda guy. Sometimes he isn't. And Prier, the main heroine, becomes a demon overlord some time in between this game and Disgaea where she makes multiple appearances in later titles. I'd love to know how (yes I know the re-release tells you all about it, but most people who like the game's company would likely have been confused on the whole thing).
I would say this is one of Nippon Ichi's weaker titles, along with Rhapsody. But then again, these games aren't necessarily weak compared to most others, they're just weak in the Nippon Ichi catalog. Rhapsody placed rather weakly in my overall rankings, and La Pucelle isn't as hot as others, but it's certainly not a terrible game. I'd say ever-so-slightly above average, really.
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