Tuesday, October 4, 2011

Review: Black ★ Rock Shooter The Game


And here's a random feedback

Warning: The said review contains major spoilers!

Well, basically the game overall isn't really that amazing both gameplay AND storywise. First I'll start with bits of the story and again, spoilers here.

Basically to summarize the game events here are the key plot points:
- Last humans on Earth awakens BRS.
- BRS sees a poster of Sing-Love, a famous idol on the time of the invasion.
- BRS beats Mi and Mazuma with the humans.
- The Aliens are shown to be consuming/"eating" one another as Mazuma gets eaten by Kali.
- Human race becomes extinct as the humans die by Apostle, Nafe,'s attacks.
- BRS beats Shizu and Kari.
- BRS blacks out in the snowstorm while grieving the loss of her companions.
- BRS meets Nana Gray.
- BRS's name is revealed to be Stella.
- Stella is referred to as White, a perfect clone.
- Nana gets jealous that Givson gave BRS a name and states that Nana was a name she came up with and that Givson didn't do so on the Grays, the not successful yet not failed clones.
- Stella and Nana travels to a forest.
- Stella beats Lilio, and Nana shoots Stella leaving her with the intent of leaving Stella out of her own goal.
- Stella follows Nana to Tokyo and Nana gets captured by Nafe; Stella does her best to rescue Nana while Nana also tries to shoo away Stella.
- Stella beats Nafe and goes to the Moon.
- Stella encounters Zaha, the strongest Apostle, just as she managed to reach Nana but Stella beats him anyway since Zaha interferes with her.
- Stella fails to convince Nana not to give up and Nana likely dies as well.
- Stella meets the one last alien at the terrace of the moon palace, the original of all clones, Sing-Love or WRS.
- Sing-Love considers it all to be just a game and have been waiting for the arrival of White to end her game.
- Stella managed to beat her and Sing-Love states that it was her desired game and later on dies while sitting on her chair.
- Bad Ending, BRS alone survives and is the last being on Earth. This lets you alter Stella's decision from stage 1.
- Time leap back to stage 1 and save the human that died from the robot and this will chain up to building events that eventually reveals that Nana was indeed a name given to Nana by Givson as well as names for the other 6 Grays.
- Reaching Nana at the moon will trigger a new cutscene that will change her decision and will have her shoot the bot carrying her and thus, decides to survive with Stella, where as Stella just needs to beat Sing-Love all over again and you get the ending that the two of them survives along with some polar bears running along in Moscow by the end.



So basically, the story focused more on Stella AND Nana's story but unfortunately I couldn't understand it fully to share it, so the enemies were pretty much wasted. And I was really disappointed that Sing-Love's identity wasn't revealed to us in anyway, all we knew about her is that she was an idol, she is the original of Stella AND the 7 Grays. Nothing more than that, sadly. So, pretty much it's another flat story and it's pretty familiar to the OVA actually in a sense especially the Jelly Nana (lol Yomi anyone? And they both were voiced by Sawashiro). So overall, it's not some story that you might really enjoy as it's not even worth calling a good story for me, and I personally want to know more about WRS and the other Grays.

Now, to the gameplay, the gameplay is pretty dull but I must admit that I enjoyed playing it though. XD Basically, BRS cannot move at all, just dash, and dashing is only used to avoid enemy attacks, the d-pad controls her crosshair for targeting and you basically shoot enemies while managing to avoid overheats. Once BRS overheats, you can't do anything until it's gone down to 0%, so you'll actually avoid getting overheats throughout the battle. The game starts very easy and later on gets harder BUT in case you're a record farmer like me, you'll find the hard parts to be a joke once you get the proper skills.


Game balancing is obviously one thing that BRS The Game needed, BRS had too many broken skills to start off especially if you get to the extra missions part. There are initial combos such as Stun Snipe + Blade kill (later on going to be upgraded to G1 Snipe + IXA Blade) and this is one of the most broken combo in the whole game, imagine fighting an Apostle and use it once, you instantly reduced your boss's hp to half with the help of using Skill Burst before Blade Kill/IXA Blade.

Also, BRS later on gets this passive skill that if you block at a right time, you'll recover a ridiculous amount of HP which also almost negates the use of healing items in the more powerful bosses of the game.

Lastly, WRS is the hardest boss on the game, basically she has an attack called Dead End in her scythe mode, and you can only block it. Receiving it full on will render you either dead or almost dead while at max level, blocking reduces about half of BRS's max hp, this skill is supposed to be scary but... unfortunately, there's this skill called Absolute 0 and later on gets upgraded to Absolute Zero, which for a short while nullifies all damage that BRS will take, so at right timing, you won't even need to be afraid of Dead End. Now, WRS fight is divided into two, while the 2nd battle where she's using her Rock Cannon is supposedly harder to fight, JRPG like intended to make it end easily by giving the ex mode a MUCH MUCH shorter HP which you can completely chip off as the fight begins. :/ The only real way to make a challenge out of it is that if you only bring support skills with you and just shoot bosses to death.



The graphics is by no means great but I do love that Makise-based costume of Stella :> Anyway, that's about it, had JRPG improved the gameplay and fixed up the broken skills, then, BRS the Game could've been something that probably people would've enjoyed but then I honestly enjoyed it though :p So overall, the game isn't something that can be called a "must play" game. The whole story itself can be finished in 1 sitting and it's only the extra missions that take your time as it's only in the extra missions that have around 2 missions that's proved to be ridiculously hard for me in the entire game. The bike stages are fun though but again very simple in structure even in the said mini-game; though getting no damage in these bike stages might prove to be a fun challenge XD

Anyway, that's it for this review XD

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