If I were to describe this game, it'll be akin to a very polished and beautiful jewel that unfortunately stuck on a ring wore by a morbidly obese, greedy ugly bastard.
(Updated as of 17/11/2022 - After event's Hard Mode release)
Positive:
1. Fabulous graphic
2. Fantastic character design and art.
3. Smooth and fun gameplay; difficulty is just right.
4. JP VAs are superb as usual
5. Great sound design.
6. Intuisive UI.
7. Many ways to get SSR; friend points roll has 2% chance of yielding an SSR.
8. Good writing and interesting plot; I've played half-way through chapter 6, and the story is just getting better.
Negative:
1. They lied about the 110 pulls. Those "110 pulls" are what you can get by playing THROUGHOUT the game, not launch event.
2. Extremely dilluted SSR pool; there are over 40 SSRs in this game, compared to less than 20 SR and Rs. Most of these "SSRs" should've not been SSR at all. If you're wondering, the real SSRs are the Pilgrims.
3. Horrendous launch rewards; No SSR selector, only 20 pulls, and no free SSR (Diesel is one of those SSR who should've been SR, and no, the tutorial pull doesn't count) are just horribly underwhelming.
4. No pity; yes, you got that right. It's almost 2023 and this game has no pity. The 200 pulls for mileage is just for Body Parts, YOU WON'T GET THE UNIT BUT THE DUPES.
(edit: there are two mileage currency; silver and golden mileage. Silver is for regular summon from the normal banner, while golden is from summoning from the rate-up banner. Regular summon ticket can't be used on the rate-up banner, so there's no use saving them. The rate-up banner has a seperate summon tickets which, fortunately, can be brought with free gems. Silver mileage can only be used for Body Parts, while golden is exclusive to the rate-up character. Also yes, the golden mileage carries over each banner, so there you go, we do have a pity system afterall.)
5. Downright predatory monetization; everything is expensive. I don't know, maybe I'm just poor, but I'm not spending $40 for an SSR. The $20 battlepass only gives you a "20% chance-SSR ticket", a "60% chance-SSR ticket", 20 pulls, and a skin. Oh, did I mentioned any paid packs other than the monthly pass and the usual top-up pack only gives you FREE gems? That's right, it doesn't count as a PAID gems.
6. Peanuts compensation for maintenance and bugs; It took 300 gems for a single pull, while they gives 100 gems for bugs and 300 for maintenance.
7. Breadcrumbs in-game rewards; A chapter clear gives you 50 gems, an outpost level-up gives 100, and player level-up is 30... clearing a sub quest ranges from 50 to 150, completing a character episode yields 50 gems...
8. No daily login rewards; you read that right, this game has NO permanent login rewards (daily, weekly, monthly).
9. Weekly mission is almost impossible to complete; we need 100 points to get the 300 gems (1 summon) from weekly, but the problem is the maximum point we can get from the mission is 120, of which 40 of those points are get by completing (a) 20 summon, and (b) limit break a nikke. Right now our gems income is NOWHERE near enough to warrant 20 summons a week, so we have to rely on the friend points summon, but the problem is if we get a maximum of 30 FP a day for a week, that's 210 FP which yields 21 summon.. yes, that is if all 30 of your friends are actively sending back points to you.. so you're forced to curate your friend list everyday... what kind of fked up system is this?!
10. Your team unit stats are reduced to 25% if you do not meet the required stage power; for example if a stage has power requirements of 1000 and your squad only has 999, you'll be getting your overall stats reduced by 25% up to a whooping 75% according to how much deficit your squad power has against the requirement, resulting in less outgoing damage and more incoming damage taken. Absolutely scummy and lazy "balancing".
11. The game's first ever event, "No Caller ID", is a circus designed for whales.
a) First red flag: Unlike the traditional "event currencies" in other gacha games that has guaranteed drop from the event stages, you need specific characters for a CHANCE to get said currency, PLUS the currency is limited to a maximum of 50/stage (the lowest item price in the event shop is 10.000 Credits which cost 40 event currency).
b) Second red flag: The entry for playing the event stage is limited to FIVE per-day. Additional entry can be bought with gems at the event shop.
c) Third red flag: Even if you're playing religiously, you still can't clear the event shop WITHOUT clearing the Hard Mode, so clearing the Hard Mode is MANDATORY because the event currency's income from the event stage is just THAT low. That's why you're relying on the Mission rewards, which needs you to clear the Hard Mode.
d) Fourth, and the biggest red flag: The event's Hard Mode can only be cleared by whales. Yes, the power requirement's jump is ridiculous. The last stage has a power requirement of 46.000 -which is absolutely unreachable by F2Ps with two-weeks of playing. I'm a D1 player, with some $ dropped which I absolutely regret doing so, account level 62 and a squad power of 33k. I know that the majority of D1 F2Ps right now are pushing through the 20k's, so the bell curve is clear as day where most people stand on the power curve. Yet they still made their first ever event completely unclearable by MOST of their playerbase. Event on Discord, whales are complaining that they're struggling with the event.
Who tf designed this event?? You want to see how a game dies? Because this is how you kill a game!
(edit: They nerfed the event's Hard Mode difficulty, now it's 27.900 for the last stage instead of 46.000. Alright, at least there's indication that they're listening to feedbacks, so there's still hope. Devs dodged a bullet right there)
Conclusion:
With the way they run things, this game would become irrelevant in a few months. It's not going to die, but it's not going to live either. I was prepared to spend a few hundred dollars on this game until I saw the cash shop. How disappointing.
The game is okay I really like the story and world building but unfortunately they do so many questionable thing to this game giving me terrible playing experience. The gameplay is simple just shot your enemy until it dead while under time limit or before your enemy kill you so you need to kill them fast so you need good Nikkes, Equipments, and elemental affinity this is where it goes bad.
To be able to get good Nikkes you need to roll for Gacha like any gacha game the problem is the line up, they have more SSR than SR & R, with how difficult to get SSR are in gacha those who are unlucky will stuck with SR & R. The next problem is those SSR didn't feel like SSR at all because from my experience (I don't know if it just me) my SR & R line up are more useful than SSR line up that I got making me feel frustrated that I have wasted my time and resources on them. Also there are no pity in this game.
The game loading is really slow it took me like 2 - 10 seconds when I switch to various thing like main menu, Main Campaign, Ark, etc. And the slowest of them all is the loading when you open the game, somehow it took me almost if not more than a minute to finally be able to login and the login it self took almost 20 second.
On this recent event you only get 5 energy per day making it pretty much making it impossible for majority of the players to finish this event. I didn't know what they thinking when whoever design this submit it and somehow got an ok from the higher-up despite it clear how bad idea this was.
You can feel the predatory scheme around the game. It's grindy af and the difficulty spikes up way to fast at the beginning while new players still get the feel of the Nikke and which nikke they want to invest in(trying to gacha and get the one they want).
There are WAY too many SSR compared to SR and some of those SSR are not worthy of the rarity and the pick up rate. AND they had the audacity to make the rate of pilgrim Nikkes(the units worthy of being called SSR) lower compared to other units in the SSR pool knowing they are the some of the best units in the game as of now.
Limit Break. The act of feeding duplicates to a Nikke. SR can limit break 2 times reaching lvl 160 while SSR can limit break 3 times reaching lvl 200. Good luck trying to limit break your SSR with that huge roster in the pool. You will probably be stuck limit breaking and leveling up SR units like me AND THEN synchronizing the SR lvl to the SSR so they can get past lvl 80(the lvl cap of SSR with no limit break), and that too is limited to 5 units to synchronize. They will give you 15 slots if you do the classroom grind. But if you want to synchronize more Nikke then tough luck! You have to pay 500 gems per slot.
BATTLEPASS. expensive af and not rewarding enough.
As other reviewers have mentioned, the weekly mission needs 100 points to fully complete and the max you can get is 120 points, 2 missions are worth 20 points while others 10 points. The problem is these 2 missions are not f2p/user friendly: 1 mission requires players to limit break a character(giving character a dupe) which is unrealistic since you have to pull dupes and you will eventually reach the limit. And the other mission is to do 20 PULLS worth 6000 gems while the weekly rewards are 300 gems and 1 recruit voucher which is worth 2 pulls total.
Edited at Nov 11: You can use friendship points to pull instead of gems, BUT that is another can of worms that another reviewer have explained.
Lastly the game is still plaqued by bugs. there are bugs at the character bonding screen where players that have unlocked the 2nd story or more have to replay the 1st one again and get error message only to be booted again on the home screen. Harmony cube screen also softlock players and the only way to fix it is to close the game.
Edited at Nov 11: after a few fix here and there they managed to fix some problem while creating another problem. The devs feel unprepared or incompetent. One step forward and two steps back.
Edited at Dec 8: they fixed the previous bug only to have stuttering and graphic problems. Either the devs are incompetent or this game has spaghetti code. Absolutely idiotic.
Check nikke reddit and nikke.gg for reference. F**king game man..
There are also suspicion of the devs messing with the pull rates, since there is a confirmed court case with Destiny Child, another game of theirs. They fixed the shop bug instantly but still haven't fixed MANY MANY bugs littered through the whole game. Scummy af.
tldr; Conclusion: feels like a overhyped and undercooked game with good graphics but simple/halfassed gameplay and predatory practices all over the game(not f2p friendly too). The devs are incompetent and the publisher is greedy af. At least the story, music, and JP voice acting are good. This game needed at least 1 more year before it released.
I warn you. DON'T PLAY this game. Difficult to handle and must stay focus everytime makes you get tired soon.
Last play this game I realized this is just for smart people who understand physics, especially on ass. I mean it's just like up and down so what the point on watching ass??
Smart , stay focus, and ability to play in one hand, is not our speciality!
Graphic: Superb & sexy. Great for horny players.
Sound: Japanese VAs are mostly famous (dunno with korean, etc). Music is good, with many action themes.
Gameplay: Immobile TPS type. With potrait orientation in smartphone, the sight is so limited, and the control which player must swipe first to initiate attack is kinda difficult.
(Wonder why it's not using gyrocontrol or direct tap).
Storyline: First thing that comes to my mind is Eighty Six anime, but android sexy girls vs rapture (legion).
Do you know, their anorganic body is more resilient than the organic one, so it's better for brutal....
And remember when commander says that rapi's head is heavy, it means that overall nikke is heavier than human, omg death by snusnu.
Value: The gacha has (unreliable) wishlist feature and no pity. Always check for daily shop. Without enough dupes, your team level will be stuck.
It's enjoyable despite all of the bugs & other problems.
I think the devs are trying to kill this game before Christmas... It's getting more issues by the minute instead of the opposite. Turns out EVERY character in Nikke is now majorly bugged. It started out as people finding a few major bugs here and there like a characters burst only dealing 1 damage for example. Now it's gone out of pocket. Issues:
- Buffs not stacking.
- Buffs straight up not working
- Every character with a charged basic attack applies the extra charge damage to their whole kit instead of their basic attack.
- Skill descriptions are at times completely wrong.
- Characters forcing enemies outside of the map.
- Characters that change ammo capacity just resetting the ammo count back to max after their buff ends, no reload needed.
- Characters that make temporary buffs permanent.
- Single shot nukes firing multiple times.
- Taunts just not working for some characters.
- Soline can teamkill with a bug that affects her burst. Your reticle disappears and she just smites a random teammate sometimes...just to mention a few. 😒 In conclusion, this game is not gonna see an anniversary if they don't fix it.
alright after 3 months they fix the game a bit but still buggy hell games compare able to cyberpunk 2077 disaster buggy release and event also getting better as well, no more stupid gamble bullshit dice game or other bullshit, please fired anyone give those idea from the office. still looking where this game will go " getting better or Worse in the future". also reminder this game extremely not F2p friendly with extremely low resource to get gems for gacha. chapter 13 story or above not give you any gems at all.
First things first: THIS IS AN IDLE GAME. Adjust your expectations accordingly before going in.
Graphics: worse than I thought. Even after you chose high quality (this game weirdly defaults to low quality no matter how good your phone is) the graphics are still bad. The character sprites are somehow still kind of blurry, and the environment still look pixelated somehow. Anyone who has watched trailers of the game will expect lots and lots of butt jiggle, but in reality, many of the girls' behind are covered by either a coat/jacket/shield/whatever OR by your thumb since the gameplay is press and drag.
Sound: I haven't played with sound enough to rate it. However, from what little I heard, the jp dub is good. From what I see in reddit, people at least praised the voice acting in multiple dubs, not only jp, and the BGMs are also allegedly good.
Gameplay: it's a rail shooter. Think house of the dead or time crisis, if you're familiar with arcade games. Whether you manual or auto it, both have advantages and disadvantages. Auto will aim at random enemy, even if the boss has already appeared. Meanwhile manual, you'll get bored fast since the girls' skills are so bland; it's either increase some stats, or just pure damage skill. Your skill activation speed is also inferior to auto, except in cases where you want to hold it. However, there are some contents where you have to manual, and from my experience in CBT, those will at least be more interesting since the difficulty is higher.
Story: it's good. It's not too edgy, yet it doesn't take itself too lightly either. There's a balance between serious time and the jokes. This is what makes it shine compared to other idle games since it actually has a good, coherent storyline.
Value: only the one time packs are worth it. You shouldn't ever buy crystals directly unless you're a whale. The battle pass is also overpriced in my opinion, not to mention the grind for it is also awful.
Additional notes:
1)the loading screens are atrocious. Initial loading after you boot up the game is very long, the game also asks you to choose a server everytime you log in even though you've already made an account. The in-game loadings, while not too long, are numerous. Main menu to stages? Loading. Go back? Load again. Go to the base? Yep. Enter a stage and exiting it? You guessed it. It is so irritating.
2) beginner gacha experience is horrible. Note the "beginner" word. First, you can't delete an account. Well, you can, but there's a 30-day wait period. Next, you can only access the gacha after clearing stage 1-4. ALL. MANUALLY. Fortunately you can skip the tutorial dialogue to speed it up a bit. THEN, when you finally got to the gacha section, your first 10-pull will always include an SSR. Nice, right? Nope. As of launch, NIKKE boasts 44 SSR characters, with performance ranging from broken to "why is she an SSR?" and there are a LOT who tilt to the latter. If you don't care about rerolling and only want the ass, you won't have to experience this hell, but others who care to get at least 1 good character, like me, will suffer. I rerolled 14 times and by that time I'm already sick of repeating the stages so I finally relented and just use what I got.
For account changing process, one thing that is good is that you can use salted emails, so you don't need to create a bunch of emails to reroll. One email is enough.
After you got through that, the launch gift is really underwhelming. 20 rolls in total for a dupe intensive idle game (which genre usually shower players with pulls) is very lackluster, especially compared to another game that I reviewed recently, Path to Nowhere, where you easily get around 30 or 40 pulls at the start.
Tl;dr it's an idle game. A very, very polished idle game, yes, but still an idle game. At least there are SOME actual gameplay here. The fan service is nice too, although it's held back by the aforementioned drawbacks. All in all if you like idle games, or if you've always wanted to try one, NIKKE is good to try.
60x Rolls + 10x Molds (TOWER/SSR/SR)
Keep grinding and keep saving but not receiving a GOOD ROLL FOR SSR (any)
4 or 2 percent is really hard to get.
Molds 50/61 percent for SSR is not real. It is the opposite.
Trust me.. I can't have the duplicate or the wishlist to improve my Characters.
Yeah the event is helpful to upgrade.
I got a new nemesis in the rankings. In 1-2 days, goodbye rank 1 in my 45-60k BP. Think of it that new player rise in 3 days from 30k to 57k BP. Loader or not, I don't know. All I can think of is leaving the top place since I cannot receive anymore Nikke in my grinds.
I GUESS F2P ARE NOT WELCOME TO COMPETE WHEN YOU REACH 40K+ BP.
F2P GOOD LUCK.
I better cut my hope of getting Pilgrim or Event Nikke since all my rolls/molds are waste of expectation. 400 recruitment, 37 Nikke (with SSR/SR/R).
Damn!..
At first I was skeptical to play the game because of the ads or how I seen that the game is more focused on horny people until the chainsaw man collaboration came out and I thought I should try it. The game is pretty grindy and it got all of the sudden pretty hard at some point but I do like the game mechanics or the combat system since I think its interesting but it will get boring in the future since there is not much too it. And the game gets hard if you dont have good characters other than that there is nothing much to it. I dont know what to say about the gacha system though since its been decent with me but the graphics and design of each character in the game seem high quality. I play in japanese but I listened to other audio languages and they seem pretty good too and the bg music and sound effects are pretty decent. Although I have nothing to say storyline wise since I have no interest. I think its a pretty good game.
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