Late to the Party: SNK Heroines: Tag Team Frenzy

ou all should know by now that we love a good fighting game here on Press Pause Radio and SNK is a mainstay that is responsible for some of our favorites over the years. Games like King of Fighters '98 (and its fantastic Dreamcast update, Dream Match 1999), Garou: Mark of the Wolves, Shin Samurai Spirits (Samurai Showdown II) and so many more. It’s hard to discount SNK after all of these years, and their work will always have a space on our shelf and hard drives with each new port in the future. So, when SNK announced a new fighting game for the Nintendo Switch featuring an all-female roster of fighters from across SNK's history, I knew I needed to check it out at some point.

 Developed by SNK (The Future is Now!) and published by NIS America, SNK Heroines: Tag Team Frenzy is a versus fighting game that, at first glance, seems to be a fan-service-y re-skin of the typical SNK fighting game formula. Players start the game with a primary attacker and a secondary supporting character. However, simply diving into the game with this expectation will only lead to confusion and frustrate the player, as there is actually a completely unique system under the hood that needs quite a bit more understanding if players want to make any kind of progress.

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QCF: Grand Kingdom

IS is back with another take on the SRPG formula with Grand Kingdom, a PS Vita and PS4 game that seemingly exists as an amalgamation of every major RPG convention known to the human race. “Awesome!” you might say, but could it real be as great as it sounds; in short, he answer is, “kinda.”

Grand Kingdom has players take on the role of a commander of a band of mercenaries that are fighting in a newly kingdomless land where other bands of fighters fight for wealth and fame. Players manage troops via a central base where quests can be initiated, training conducted, equipment procured and distributed, and so forth—think Dragon Force meets Ogre Battle meets Disgaea. New units can be hired to form up to six troops of up to six fighters each to deploy on various quests.

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QCF: Rodea: The Sky Soldier

ere we are. Finally, one of my most anticipated games of the year is finally available. Produced by Yuji Naka of Sonic Team fame, this purported smooth, blended mix of classic Sonic the Hedgehog and NiGHTS: Into Dreams had been in development for something along the lines of five years or so—that's longer than games like The Last of us, and that game was pretty sweet, from what everyone tells me.

But you know what's not sweet at all? Not even a little sugary; not even, like, an artificial sweet-n-low kind of sweet? If you guessed NIS America's Rodea: The Sky Soldier, then you did it, you won. Moreover, the whole ordeal almost breaks my heart.

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QCF: Hyperdevotion Noire: Goddess Black Heart

t’s truly startling to me; another Neptunia game so soon? This is getting pretty ridiculous, especially since, in the last six months, three games of nearly the exact same flow and design have been released by NIS America. One, ok, I can see that, but three? That’s just too many.

Thankfully however, Hyperdevotion Noire: Goddess Black Heart looks to shake up the formula considerably as a pure Strategy RPG featuring the girls of the Neptunia universe.

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QCF: Hyperdimension Neptunia Re;Birth 2

ot long ago, NIS America released Hyperdimenson Neptunia Re:Birth 1, a full-on remake of the original Hyperdimension Neptunia which saw release on the PlayStation 3 in 2010. The first Re:Birth overhauled and vastly improved the RPG mechanics from the original 2010 release making the 2014 Vita release the best version of the first narrative by far. Continuing this trend, NIS America released Hyperdimension Neptunia Re:Birth 2 on January 27 2015, and the changes are even more dramatic.

Hyperdimension Neptunia Mk.2 was released to the PlayStation 3 in 2011; taking place directly after the events of the original game, the gameplay mechanics in Mk.2 were revamped greaty from the first release and forms the template by which Re;Birth 1 actually follws. Re;Birth 2 returns to this gameplay style—as such, Re;Birth 2 feels very much like a carbon copy of the original PS Vita release with a minor cast shakeup and very few actual additions—let's take a closer look.

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QCF: Fairy Fencer F

t's nice to see NIS bounce back from the edge of financial ruin like it has. Rumor has it that the Japanese RPG developer was certain to lose its doors for good, barring the success of Disgaea 4.

Thankfully, this wasn't the case, and we've seen some great offerings lately for our troubles, and respectively theirs. From the awesome Witch and the Hundred Knight, to the fan-favorite Danganronpa, and the recently-remade Neptunia Re:Birth 1. With so many games spewing forth from NIS recently however, there's bound to be some overlap, and Compile Heart's Fairy Fencer F is a perfect example.

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QCF: Hyperdimension Neptunia Re:Birth 1st

ippon Ichi's Hyperdimension Neptunia has seen a number of entries to its series over the course of the last five years or so. Most, if not all, have seen release in North America, two of which made it to the Playstation Vita; June's Hyper Dimension Neptunia: Producing Perfection was a shallow, mostly pointless mass of fanservice code that should pretty much be ignored. Hyperdimension Neptunia: Re:Birth 1^st, however, is worth a much closer look.

You would be forgiven if you didn't realize going into it that Re:Birth 1^st is a actually remake of the first entry in the series; albeit heavily remixed one, but that's exactly what it is. It tells the story of a fictional (and literal) console war, with nations modelled after all of the popular console brands you can find on store shelves even today. In each nation, a powerful goddess called a CPU fights for shares which represent their respective power amongst each other. Their battles were fierce and one CPU, Neptune, fell, crashed amongst the people of Gamindustri, and lost her memory. That's where the very typical story of Hyperdimension Neptunia picks up.

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QCF: Hyperdimension Neptunia: Producing Perfection

've always had a mild curiosity for the Idol Master Games. I enjoy titles of the Rhythm and music varieties, so I figured a game about Producing Idols would be right up my alley. While Hyperdimension Neptunia: Producing Perfection not Idol Master, it is along the same premise. Producing Perfection is all about producing the Perfect Idol group to steal fame and recognition from rivals MOB48 (a horrible play on AKB48) to grab more attention for Gamindurti while taking back the lost shares taken by these other groups. Sounds pretty fun.... “Sounds” being the operative word...

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