Goddess of Victory: NIKKE | a Review
originally published on 13/12/2024;
Hello everyone, I am the calm and collected G.E.M.Simov, a gambling addict pretending to be the commander of a squad of specialized robots, and I’ve come to tell you about my tasks in “Goddess of Victory: NIKKE”.
Simple review details - I rank games on an out of 10 basis, granting up to 3 points in 3 categories, as well as a last, single point from my own self, depending on my experience with it.
Gameplay
Henceforth, I will refer to this game as just NIKKE. In addition to that, I need to make it clear that this is a gacha game, which means it relies heavily upon particular design choices meant to entice Players into spending money on the game, with which money they can become more powerful.
In addition to that, it must be noted that this is a phone-game that has generously been made available on Personal Computers, as a result of which it is designed for a phone, and as a phone game, which means it will feature prompts such as “Tap”, even if the version currently in exploitation is the PC port. That ought to indicate just how high the effort that went into the game’s polish is.
So, NIKKE is a gacha game in which the Player assembles a squad of 5 Nikkes, and then engages in fights with that squad. A fight in NIKKE features a field with four layers - one of those layers, the one closest to the Player’s vantage point, is where their 5 Nikkes are situated, while the other three layers are for the enemies.
As a fight begins, a timer starts counting down. It can range from 60 seconds to well over 180 seconds, and the fights can have different objectives that are related to the timer in different manners.
Those objectives can roughly be split into four different varieties, starting with zone control, which requires that the Player destroys enemies in a particular section of the screen, while keeping a value at more than 50%. That value increases over time while there are no enemies in the specified section of the screen or whenever an enemy in that section of the screen is killed, whilst it decreases while there are enemies in the aforementioned section of the screen. The timer is important in regards to this objective, for the fight concludes when the timer ends and, depending on whether the value was maintained at more than 50%, the Player wins. If the value was under 50% at the moment the timer ended its countdown, the Player loses.
Then there is a “tower defense” objective, which features a wall at one side of the screen and a certain value. Enemies appear on the other side of the screen and move towards the wall, and every time an enemy goes through the wall, the value is decreased. The objective here is to wait out the timer, without letting the value drop to 0. Winning occurs when the former happens, and losing occurs when the latter comes to pass.
The last two objectives are a lot more similar than the other two - they both depend on the Player destroying enough enemies before the timer ends, though they are different in the sense that one of them relies on the destruction of a single enemy, while the other relies on the destruction of a multitude of enemies. If the enemies are destroyed, the Player wins. If the enemies are still alive by the time the timer runs out, the Player loses.
With that out of the way, let us examine how enemies get killed. Out of the five Nikkes in the Player’s squad, only one of them is controlled by the Player, while the other four will automatically target enemies and shoot at them. The Player controlled Nikke can also target and shoot enemies, which occurs by holding one’s finger on the screen (or clicking the mouse’s Left Button) and dragging it over the screen until the crosshair (which will be situated under the Player’s finger or on the mouse cursor) is situated over an enemy, at which moment the Nikke will start firing.
There are many different ways of firing, dependent on the type of weapon the Nikke is associated with. Some, like Machine Guns, Assault Rifles or Sub-Machine Guns feature large quantities of ammunition, allowing for a consistent stream of singular bullets that deal small amounts of damage per hit. Others, like shotguns, have small amounts of ammunition, but fire a plethora of bullets at once, dealing substantial amounts of damage to enemies who are closer to the Nikkes (in the second layer out of the four on screen). Others yet, like Sniper Rifles or Rocket Launchers, must first be charged up, which occurs automatically when the Player hovers the crosshair over an enemy, and fire a single shot when the Player’s finger is removed from the screen or the Left Mouse Button is let go.
All Nikkes can run out of ammunition, at which point they will reload, with every Nikke having a different amount of time they need to reload their weapons. While reloading, Nikkes are hidden behind cover, which acts as a secondary health bar.
Now, Nikkes can take damage, because enemies can attack. If a Nikke takes damage while shooting, their primary health bar - or just their health - is where that damage goes to. If a Nikke takes damage while reloading, or while instructed to take cover, then the damage will go to the cover’s health. Thus, the Player has the option to make their Nikkes take cover by either tapping the User Interface Element depicting the Nikkes, or by pressing the appropriate keyboard shortcut (while playing on PC). The same prompt will then order them to resume attacking.
An additional means of losing a fight is presented by the opportunity for the Player’s Nikkes to run out of health. That can be avoided thanks to the other things that Nikkes can do - each Nikke has three abilities or skills associated with them. Some of them are passive, occurring whenever something happens - such as whenever they run out of ammunition and need to reload - while others are active.
The active component of a Nikke’s abilities is tied to the “Burst” mechanic, which is characterized by a bar that fills up as the Nikkes do damage and destroy enemies. Whenever the bar fills up totally, “Burst” occurs, allowing the Nikkes to use their active abilities.
The Burst has three stages, each lasting up to 10 seconds, which 10 seconds allow the Player to select the active ability they want to use or, alternatively, wait out an active ability that is on cooldown. Using an active ability in stage one transitions Burst to stage two, and using an active ability in stage two transitions Burst to stage three. Then, using an active ability in stage three, Full Burst activates and goes on to last for a certain duration, providing a positive effect to the Nikkes or a negative effect to the enemies. When that duration ends, Burst is charged up from scratch once more.
With that said, those are all the mechanics involved in this game’s fights. There are a few outliers - mainly some enemies who do things to the Nikkes or for other enemies, such as providing a barrier that must be brought down before enemies behind it can be damaged, healing damaged enemies or stunning a particular Nikke, preventing it(her?) from acting for the duration of the stun. There are also enemies who, upon dying, provide a beneficial effect for the Nikkes.
Lastly, the objectives that feature one enemy in need of destroying, which are boss fights, sometimes feature the appearance of circles over certain parts of the boss enemy. Doing enough damage to those circles before their duration concludes will have a beneficial effect for the Nikkes, in the form of more damage done to the boss or preventing the boss from performing an attack at full power.
However, all of this is optional. Nikke is a game that features the option to automate everything in a fight. Already more automated than manual, the fights in this game feature two buttons in the upper left side of the screen. One of those makes the Player controlled Nikke act automatically, while the other makes Burst active abilities to be selected automatically. Thus, the Player has the option to make the game play itself.
That is, already, a problem. If the game has such functionality, then it exists as a means of solving an issue. What kind of issue could the game be solving by automating the gameplay? Could it be that the game’s gameplay is not the main purpose of the game, and so it can be put to the wayside in favor of something else?
Regardless, automation of a game’s gameplay, without that automation being achieved via the Player’s actions (such as what is possible in Minecraft via the utilization of redstone) is a bad design choice, particularly because it negates the point of the gameplay existing at all. There are some very minor elements to Nikke that can be interpreted as encouraging manual play, which are related to enemy “cores”, which are specific parts of the enemies that, when hit, take more damage than normally hitting the enemy, but even when allowing the game to play itself, the cores are already getting hit by the Nikkes reasonably often.
Thus, this game puts effort into creating a set of relatively interesting and distinct scenarios for battles, provides the Player with the opportunity to engage in those battles, but then does not provide the Player with a tangible benefit for engaging with said battles, for the Player could simply automate them. That is a great failure of the game’s design and, already, makes me more than willing to subtract a whole point.
Of course, I am taking into account the inventiveness that goes into the design of the Nikkes’ abilities. Some are really interesting - as an example, “Red Hood” normally has a sniper rifle with 6 shots per reload, but whenever her active ability is used to trigger Full Burst, her weapon transforms into some weird amalgamation of a Sniper Rifle’s damage, a Machine Gun’s ammunition capacity and a Shotgun’s rate of fire, while also penetrating enemies and doing damage to those behind them. It is incredibly intriguing and entertaining to engage with - however, when the game can do that by itself, what point is there in my engagement with it?
With that said, I am going to conclude this examination of the “fight” gameplay segment. There are two other segments that are present in Nikke, and I will now turn to the “exploration” gameplay segment.
Fights do not just occur. They must first be initiated, and that initiation takes place after the Player’s squad has run up to an enemy on the map. The game’s Campaign mode, and its Lost Sector mode, feature locations that can be explored. The Player maintains control of their Nikke squad, only this time the playing field goes from being a Point-of-View oriented, layered painting, to being a map that is being observed from above from an Isometric perspective.
By tapping or clicking on a location on the map, the Player makes their Nikke squad travel to that location. On the map are present many things - be they enemies, intractable objects (like teleporters, buttons, chests) and secrets. The Player is encouraged to interact with everything, for in the case of buttons and teleporters, they provide access to other areas of the map. In the case of enemies, they also provide access to other areas of the map, while also progressing the story (more on that a bit later) and providing currencies (more on that later as well). Lastly, secrets can provide anything from currencies, to story elaboration and even songs from the game’s soundtrack.
The exploration gameplay of Nikke is a lot simpler than the fight gameplay, but it has a bit more charm - namely due to the fact that it cannot be automated and requires the Player’s engagement, as well as a measure of problem solving, though that is mostly found in the Lost Sector mode of play. In the Campaign mode, what the Player is tasked with doing, and what the game does not do for them, is discovering the secrets scattered around the map, which, if obtained in their totality, provide a bonus reward.
With that, however, the exploration gameplay of Nikke concludes. It is neat and quaint, when compared to the rest of the game’s gameplay, but it is very limited in scope and features. The last type of gameplay that I’ve identified in Nikke is the menu gameplay. This game really likes presenting menus to the Player, through which the Player must navigate so as to advance in some regard.
The menus of Nikke lead into either the exploration gameplay, through the selection of the dedicated “Campaign” or “Lost Sector” buttons, or into the fight gameplay, through the selection of most other buttons, such as those labeled with: “Interception”, “Tribe Tower”, “Simulation Room”, “Arena”, and yet others such as: “Story” or “Challenge”
The rest of the menus in Nikke are split into either selectors, which do not directly lead into “gameplay”, if it can be so called, but rather into a menu that provides the Player with the opportunity to select the type of gameplay they will be engaging with. There are also shops (lots of shops) which allow the Player to spend either their accumulated currencies OR Real Money in exchange for in-game currencies. There are also reward menus, which feature vast quantities of rewards for the Player, though they also feature shop elements, which makes them a tad odd.
Lastly, there are upgrade menus and then there is the Outpost menu, which is a fancy menu that features the perks of all other types of menus with a circumstantial absence of the shop menus.
So, let me begin by talking about shop menus, due to the fact that selector menus are relatively self-explanatory or have already been explained. Just in case, the selector menu is like a crossroad that leads into other menus. One of the menus led into by the selectors, and which menus lead into nothing subsequent, are the aforementioned shop menus.
They could be explicitly titled shops, allowing the Player to use a number of the currencies obtained via fights, exploration and reward menus to obtain currencies, Equipment or Nikkes. They could be recruit menus, which allow the Player to engage in the main gacha mechanic of the game, which revolves around obtaining Nikkes by playing a very particular slot machine.
There are four types of recruit menus - there’s the event recruitment, which is temporary, there’s the ordinary recruitment, there’s the premium recruitment and then there’s the Social Points recruitment. One of those - the premium recruitment - is exclusively restricted to currencies obtainable via Real Money transactions, while the other three can only benefit from Real Money transactions, but are not limited to exclusively them.
The Social Points recruitment is related to a very small and insignificant mechanic that swirls around a Player’s friend list - each day, the Player can send and receive up to 30 Social Points, with 1 Social Point being sendable to 1 friend, and 1 Social Point being receivable per friend. Thus, Social Points recruitment is limited to up to 3 recruits per day, due to the fact that 1 recruit costs 10 Social Points.
This system is intriguing, because it provides incentive to having many friends on one’s friend list, so that the Player can get all 30 Social Points obtainable in a day. At the same time, however, there is absolutely no other reason to have anyone on the Player’s friendlist, as this game - which is always online and requires a constant internet connection - has literally 0 multiplayer elements, aside from the “Arena”, which is pseudo pvp (more on that slightly later) and “Unions”, which are large groups of Players who have access to additional content and that content is only completable via cooperation (more on that even later).
Regardless, the only reason that this game is always online and requires constant internet connection (which impacts what little gameplay it has tremendously negatively, because it fails to go through loading screens even if there is an internet connection, and thus leads into a forced repetition of content, mainly fights) is so that the Players do not have even the slightest opportunity to modify the game’s files so as to alter the experience provided and better their odds at obtaining certain Nikkes or increasing the amount of currency they receive.
Simply put, the game is always online because the company behind it wants to milk as much money out of the Player as possible, and that negatively impacts the quality of the experience in more ways than just disconnections or a forced inability to play the game owed up to server maintenance. More on that - later yet!
Going back to recruitment, that leaves the Player with two real options for the recruitment of Nikkes - those being the event and ordinary recruitment. Each of those features two different means of recruiting - there are recruitment Vouchers, split into Event Vouchers and Ordinary Vouchers, which can be used for 1 recruit per voucher. Alternatively, the Player can spend 300 Gems to get 1 recruit.
Aside from the ever-present issue of obtaining these currencies - the Vouchers and Gems - and having to contend with limited time options that attempt to manipulate the Player into worrying about missing out on something, the main issue found herein is that there are three types of Nikkes.
There are Rare (R) Nikkes, which are utterly worthless when it comes to gameplay, because they are the weakest possible Nikke that the Player can get, and they are also limited in the number of mechanics they can partake in to increase their power, when compared to Super Rare (SR) or Super Super Rare (SSR) Nikkes.
The only purpose that these R Nikkes have is to each feature a 6%+ chance of being the Nikke the Player gets whenever they recruit, of there being almost 10 of them, thus presenting a very pleasant wall of 50% chance of the Player getting something completely worthless when recruiting, and also providing a very small amount of a currency that can be used to purchase other currencies and even Nikkes (though the Player would need to recruit 80 R Nikkes to be able to trade those in for an SR or an SSR Nikke).
Clearly, the point of these is to simply clog up the pool of possible recruitment options so as to create an artificial scarcity in regards to SR and SSR Nikkes so that the Player, who is already dealing with a scarcity of resources when it comes to Vouchers and Gems, is incentivized to spend Real Money so as to have more chances of getting the useful Nikkes.
Nevertheless, the same issue that plagues R Nikkes also applies to SR Nikkes, though those are not as limited, mechanics wise, as the R Nikkes. However, they are, ultimately, weaker than the SSR Nikkes exactly because of the fact that they have limited interactions with the mechanics that SSR Nikkes have access to, which also puts them at a similarly “high” level in regards to how desirable they are.
Thus, there is another large number of Nikkes that have a considerably higher chance of appearing whenever the Player recruits, which do have their uses but are, ultimately, worthless when compared to the SSR Nikkes.
So with just this single mechanic - this particular shop - the game has showcased that it is purposefully designed to be as unpleasant and adversarial towards the Player as possible. Inconveniences and Problems, purposefully shoved in the game and then coupled with a solution that in the game, meant to urge the Player to spend money on the game. How come? Well, that premium recruitment I mentioned features a 100% chance of obtaining an SSR Nikke every 10 recruits the Player gets - whereas all other types of recruitment have no such safety net.
This is already problematic enough to indicate that the rest of the game will not be any better, and the design principles followed by it will all be adversarial towards the Player and will have, as their goal, to manipulate them into finding some enjoyable element of the game and then will force the Player into paying so as to get to enjoy that established element.
Let me mention an important thing in regards to the shop menus - all of them, with no exception, feature a time-sensitive set of things that can be purchased. Some are exclusively comprised of stuff that will not be on sale in 24 hours, whereas others are, similar to Event Recruitment, around for up to two weeks. With that said, it can easily be noted that Nikke wants to manipulate the Player into feeling something particular, and that feeling that Nikke seeks to instill within the Player is not one that improves their experience of the game.
That said, let us go over to the upgrade menus (the Outpost will be examined later). Those are menus that feature one particular mechanic that interacts with the overall power of the Player - which is measured by adding up the Power Rank of the five Nikkes in the Player’s Squad. Each of these menus, due to having a different mechanic that increases the Power Rank of Nikkes in some way, requires a different type of currency. Some of these mechanics have universal effects - simply increasing the Power Rank of every Nikke. Others have more localized, but still broad effects, increasing the Power Rank of particular types of Nikkes. Then there are individual effects that only apply to a single Nikke.
An example of a universal effect would be the Recycling Room in the Outpost, which utilizes a special currency used only in the Recycling Room, and when that currency is used to obtain an upgrade, the Health of all Nikkes is increased, which in turn increases their Power Rank. An example of a broad effect is, again, found in the Recycling Room, which this time requires a different currency that is used for the purchase of an Upgrade that increases the health and Attack of all “Support” type Nikkes, thus increasing their Power Rank.
Lastly, individual Power Rank increases come from direct upgrades performed on the Nikkes, from Attraction Rank increases, from Limit Breaking, from Equipment, from Skill Level increases, from Harmony Cubes and so on and so forth. The important thing to note here is that all of those means of increasing individual Power Rank, as well as the ways of increasing Power Rank universally or broadly, requires different currencies, and in some cases overlapping currencies.
As an example for different currencies needed to increase Power Rank individually, there is Attraction Rank. Attraction rank can be increased by advising a Nikke, which can only be done once per day for a given Nikke, and for up to 3 (by default) Nikkes per day. In addition to that, another way of increasing Attraction Rank relies on giving gifts - which are pseudo unique resources that are incredibly rare.
Now, giving a gift to a Nikke increases their Attraction Rank by a value, which value is dependent on the gift that is presented and on whether the Nikke likes the gift. These gifts may increase Attraction Rank by a large amount in the early Ranks, but at higher Attraction Ranks, most gifts become relatively inefficient at increasing the Nikke’s Attraction Rank value.
Thus, the Player is incentivized to obtain more gifts. One of the means of obtaining gifts is by completing unique and one-off quests that show up in relation to how far along in the Campaign the Player has progressed, requiring two or three fights before being obtainable. Each quest awards two gifts, and those gifts are generally liked by a particular Nikke, meaning that giving them to the wrong Nikke is wasteful.
As a result of that, the Player might wind up feeling pressured into buying gifts from the shops, with those gifts costing as much as 5 recruits in the Recruitment Menus. The alternative to that, of course, is to wait and advise the Nikkes on the Player’s team every day, slowly increasing their Attraction Ranks and their Power Ranks subsequently, until it finally reaches the maximum… Though that would require more than a month of doing this.
Another example would be Equipment, not only for its unique resource consumption, but also for its overlapping currency consumption. Equipment must first be obtained, and considering that there are more than 10 tiers of Equipment, as well as different types of Equipment, only usable by certain Nikke types, that is already a daunting task.
However, there is more to it. A Nikke has four Equipment slots, and each piece of Equipment can be enhanced a number of times, depending on the rarity of the Equipment. Each time a piece of Equipment is enhanced, a resource must be used up - be it another piece of Equipment or a specialized resource - and an amount of currency, correspondent to the amount of enhancement that will be done, must also be spent. That mounts up to quantities that are a bit obtuse - as an example, the Player generates 35000 units of currency upon clearing a fight. From a fight with a Power Rank similar to that one, the Player can obtain a piece of Equipment (as well as 35000 units of currency).
However, to enhance that piece of Equipment to its maximum level, the Player needs to invest 50000 units of currency. That might not seem too bad, but it must be kept in mind as more things are introduced later on.
Direct Nikke upgrades start off by being quite cheap and easy to afford, to becoming relatively expensive, until they become borderline impossible to obtain. That can be observed by comparing the price of one level - 600 units of currency, then 840, then 4860, then 6540, then 10350, then 14600, then 30960, then 41580… And on and on. Now, taking what was kept in mind - that the price of enhancing a piece of Equipment to its maximum level costs 50000 units of currency, and that a single level costs roughly 42000 units of currency, whereas a fight in the campaign gives 35000 units of currency, it becomes apparent that there is a scarcity of resources.
How, then, is that overcome? By engaging with all the other forms of content that the Player has at their disposal? The aforementioned “Simulation Room”, “Interception”, “Arena”, “Challenge” and “Story” - those do not provide any of the currency needed for Nikke upgrades or Equipment enhancement.
Those that do provide some - being “Tribe Tower” and “Lost Sector” - provide minor amounts, with the former giving less than 12500 per one of its one-and-done floors, with the Power Rank required being one that features Nikkes at upgrade levels requiring 42000 units of currency, and the former giving 5540 with that same Power Rank requirement, which features Nikkes at upgrade level ghosts of 42000 units of currency.
Clearly, something is amiss here - for the ways the Player has of obtaining currency are not productive enough to keep the Player capable of increasing their Power Rank, relative to the Power Rank requirement of the fights they must engage in. Perhaps the intent here is to force the Player into interacting with the other mechanics that allow for Power Rank increases? Even so, those are not sufficient, as they are similarly bound to either Power Rank or time - with everything, aside from “Tribe Tower” and “Lost Sector” featuring limited interactions per day, which introduce a stopper to the Player’s means of progressing.
The answer is two-fold. Half of it is hidden in the Outpost, the other half is hidden in the shops. Let us finally approach the Outpost and talk about it - in short, the Outpost is a small hub that features a number of upgrades that can be obtained. Some of those upgrades are purchased directly, as is the case with the Recycling Room, while others need to be unlocked via the completion of a certain task or the fulfillment of a certain set of conditions. Each of those, however, must first be built, and building them requires the purchasing of an upgrade in the “Tactics Academy”.
First - the unlockable upgrades provide utility, rather than Power Rank. As an example, the number of times the Player can advise their Nikkes per day is increased by one of these upgrades by 1, raising it from 3 to 4. Another upgrade increases it by another 1, and yet another - by 1 more, and again and again. Other such options include an increase of the number of fights in the Arena the Player can take part in, before having to pay Gems to enter.
These upgrades are very good, but the means of obtaining them are very arcane and esoteric, being related to the completion of achievements (even though there is no such thing as an achievement in Nikke).
Now, the Tactics Academy - that is a menu in the Outpost which allows the Player to unlock various upgrades, provided the Player has constructed the appropriate building (which requires that the Player has discovered the building’s blueprint, which are scattered among the secrets that can be found during exploration gameplay) as well as a stupendous amount of currency. As an example, at the point in the game when the Player gains access to the Blueprint for the required building, one of those upgrades costs 800000 units of currency - and the Player only gets 35000 per fight in the Campaign, 12500 per floor of the “Tribe Tower” and 5000 per Lost Sector clear.
However, obtaining these upgrades as quickly as possible is paramount, because they also affect the Player’s means of generating currencies. While the Outpost may be a good way of losing currency, it is also the best way of getting it. That is owed up to two mechanics - the “Bulletin Board” and “Outpost Defense”.
The Bulletin Board, being the less potent generator of the two, is a mechanic that takes into account which Nikkes the Player has unlocked, then asks the Player to wait for a period between 30 minutes and 2, or more, hours and awards them with some sort of currency, Equipment or resources.
Outpost Defense, on the other hand, is much simpler - in the sense that it requires even less engagement on behalf of the Player. All that it does is that it generates a set amount of currency every minute - increasing with each Outpost Defense level, which increases with each Stage in the Campaign that has been cleared so far - which is stored and can then be collected with the click of a button.
This mechanic allows for the accumulation of all the currencies the Player needs to upgrade their Nikkes and, subsequently, obtain the other currencies that are needed to further increase their Power Rank via the other mechanics that increase Power Rank. However, the fact of the matter is as follows - to generate enough currency for 1 level, when the amount required to level up is equal to 41000, the Player needs to spend three hours waiting for Outpost Defense to accumulate that value.
And that is with Outpost Defense being as high a level as it can possibly be with the Power Rank afforded by Nikkes that require 41000 units of currency per level. With a bit of math, the reader can discern that to meaningfully upgrade one’s squad, the Player will need to spend more than 75 hours worth of waiting, which amounts to just over 3 days and nights. The alternative, of course, is to make use of the shops - by buying Gems, the Player can then spend those gems to “Wipe Out” the “Outpost Defense”, instantly generating 120 minutes worth of currency.
Thus, yet again, the Player is incentivised to pay. The game is made inconvenient, or rather it has a problem designed into itself, which problem’s solution is being sold to the Player. Nikke keeps on reiterating that its intent is not to provide the Player with a cohesive, pleasant experience, but, rather, to force the Player into paying.
Now, I know that I did not really elaborate on Unions and Arena - the multiplayer elements of the game - but they are both incredibly loose means of creating Multiplayer. Arena features the creation of a squad of 5 Nikkes, as with normal gameplay, which squad is then set as being the Player’s squad. The Player gets a with 1 out of 3 other Players, up to 3 times per day (by default), and based on whether the Player wins or loses, they are given a ranking. Depending on what ranking the Player has at the end of the day, they are awarded a number of Arena Points - a currency usable in the Arena shop - which is pretty much everything the Arena is used for.
The fights are special - in that they do not feature the 4 layers of ordinary fights, nor do they feature the opportunity to control any one of the Nikkes - they are completely automatic. As a result of which, there is no gameplay at all.
Unions are, similar to Arena, means of accessing another shop - the Union Shop - which can only be accessed if the Player is in a Union, and the things sold in the Union Shop can only be purchased with the Union Currency, which can only be obtained by taking part in a “Union Raid”, which, in turn, is only available to Unions that are level 3 or higher, as a result of which being part of a Union that is not level 3 is completely pointless.
Union Raids function in a manner similar to how Interception functions - which presents a boss fight to the Player and grants awards based on how much damage the Player’s squad manages to deal before dying or before the timer runs out. Simply put? There is so little interaction with other Players, that it is entirely pointless to even refer to it as a multiplayer element.
Thus, ultimately, Nikke winds up being exactly what one might have thought that it is - it is a gacha game that does its best to appear welcoming, and as though it features a plethora of well paced features with smooth progression, only to then pull the rug from underneath the Player’s feet and leave them in a drought of both gameplay and progression, forcing them to pay for power so as to be able to continue playing.
That it achieves by doing its best to trick the Player into developing a connection with its Characters - the Nikkes - who are all intended to be objects of romantic and even erotic interest for the Player, as well as by relying on the sunk cost fallacy, for by the time the Player gets to the point at which they must spend money to meaningfully progress, they would have already invested at least a dozen hours into playing the game.
Simply put? Nikke is a horrible game, purposefully made to be horrible, so that it may sell the Player the means of negating that horridity. It features a few neat ideas, and the experience that it provides over the first few hours is very respectable, but seeing as that is misleading, and purposefully so, it does not deserve any recognition.
I will admit that there are a few things that save it from being a complete travesty - the abilities of the Nikkes, the few moments when the gameplay actually works to create a somewhat engaging experience, if only for a minute, and the conceptual complexity of the systems involved… Still, it is bad. 1/3
Presentation
NIKKE looks okay. Actually, it looks good in some regards - such as the pieces of art that are present in the game - but it also looks very off - such as some of the pieces of art that are present in the game. Ultimately, the game has a middling appearance, because of a number of problems that plague it.
Children, or women who appear incredibly reminiscent of adolescents, make up a decent chunk of the Characters present in the game. Oddly enough, a very small quantity of those Characters is spared from the main “appeal” of NIKKE - which is the sexualisation of female Characters. Immediately, without any room for consideration or interpretation, there are children, some of whom are clad in skin-tight bodysuits, who wind up in unnervingly sexualised poses.
That is a problem. A very considerable problem. There is the option to argue that the sexualised children are an optional element, and are not, actually, mandatory, but that is owed up to chance. The Player does not get to decide which Nikkes they get, nor does the Player decide which Nikkes they can use. There are situations in which the Player, if they want to engage with some of the limited content the game has on offer, they will be forced to utilize a child Nikke, and that child Nikke is going to be sexualised, and that might, at the very least, unnerve the Player slightly.
At worst? Let's not even conceptualize it.
That is the issue that does not rely on interpretation - the Characters are short and petite; with the signs of sexual dimorphism being underdeveloped or outright missing; and with their faces featuring a resounding lack of any features that might indicate age, with round shapes and with large ocular organs. These Characters are designed to look like children, because they are children, as is evidenced by the content of the conversations they have with the Player and the personalities they possess.
Aside from that major issue, there is another potential problem. All Characters are obscenely sexualised. So much so that even for a person willing to overlook the presence of a few Characters in a game who have outfits that are a bit too skimpy, or outfits that show off a bit too much skin, or even proportions that are too bombastic, would find it difficult to disagree that this game sexualises its Characters to a gratuitous extent.
The most readily apparent indication of that would be their apparel and their appearance. NIKKE attempts to maintain a theme, or at least maintain the pretense to have a theme, but almost immediately fails, because the theme relies on a post apocalyptic situation, in which humanity has been driven underground (which implies weakness, or at least a disheveled state) and robots, called Nikkes, have been created. Nikkes are the super soldiers maintaining humanity's existence through constant battle with infinite enemies…
But the Nikkes have cute and sexy outfits, some of them attempting to emulate military uniforms, others being casual wear, others yet being elegant dresses, yet more being clad in all manner of clothing that has the express purpose of being appealing. They are also immaculately clean. Regardless, the main problem is that the Nikkes are super-robot-soldiers, but then they are neither clad like such, nor do they act like such, and they definitely do not look like such.
The Nikkes are super models, if not more. They have proportions that are utterly impossible, they have outfits that accentuate those preposterous dimensions and they are also animated in a manner that focuses on the movement of these particular body parts. Many of them have humongous breasts, with each as big, or even bigger, than the head of the Character in question. Those jiggle luridly.
Most have stupendous in size behinds, which wobble uncontrollably while the Nikkes are engaged in battle. Many of them position themselves in ways that draw attention to their rear ends, or in manners that accentuate them.
And what does that lead into? It means that whenever the Player is presented with a Character, that Character is either a sexualised child or a sexualised adult woman. In the case of the legal objects (since they are machines, more on that later), the Player is either shown their fronts, including their bosoms, or their backs, with the focus being on their rears. There are almost no alternatives.
NIKKE, no matter how good in regards to its Gameplay or Story, is a game that has been designed with one statement in mind: “Sex sells!”
Thus, NIKKE is doing its best to present the Player with as much softcore pornography as possible, gating it off via gambling and time or gambling and real money, whilst incentivizing the Player further by introducing more than just a cute or sexy Character, but by presenting the Player with these Characters and their relationship WITH the Player. Lastly, there is also an unnerving element of ownership that the Player is provided with - the Player owns these Nikkes, these not-quite-people, these women.
That's a lot, but a decent amount of it is implicit, not explicit, and as a result of it relies on interpretation. I interpret the game as presenting the Characters in an objectified manner, I interpret the game as presenting the Characters as inconsistent with its theme… But the rest is true.
The game does present its Characters in an extremely sexualised manner. It does so with the intent of creating a desire within the Player, which desire is further kindled via the romantic relationship every single Nikke winds up having with the Player.
With those negatives pointed out, I suppose it is proper to inform the good reader that there are three means of viewing a Nikke - one of them is the frontal, standing image that is animated slightly. This is the most common one, as it serves as a portrait and icon for the Nikke, is used in “cutscenes” and story moments, is present when the Nikke is recruited, when it is upgraded and so on. Then there is the battle of combat view, which features a squatted or seated stance for the Nikke, observable both frontally, while the Nikke reloads or takes cover, and from the back, when the Nikke is firing its weapons.
These two modes of viewing a Nikke are the sexualised ones, with the combat view being constantly wobbled and shaken by the firing of a weapon, and this everything remotely sexual jiggles, while the frontal view features the opportunity to tap(click) on the Nikke and play an animation that, often, leads into jiggling. The last mode of viewing is the “chibi” mode, which is almost free from sexualisation, but is also very scarcely used - only during the exploration segments that take place on the campaign map.
Even so, there are some redeeming qualities when it comes to the appearances of the Characters. In regards to how successfully erotic they are, I'd have to agree that the task has been successfully completed, especially those endowed with… Milkers…
Ahem, that said, everything else about NIKKE is very odd. It features a very detailed and lengthy tutorial, which informs the Player on almost everything that they might need to know in regards to how to play the game - in that sense, the way information is presented is very good, and almost everything that there is to be learned about the playing of the game is nearly perfectly conveyed.
However, at the same time, the game struggles with presenting information, mainly in regards to explaining what Characters do - each Character has a number of abilities (skills), which each do different things. These skills are described in some manner, but the way they are described is incredibly inept, leaving some of them to be completely incomprehensible or, at the very least, thoroughly confusing. There are lots of keywords that get used and none of them are appropriately explained, there are situations in which things that are described as happening or taking place do not, actually, happen - at least not as they are described.
That remains a theme with NIKKE - for it has some good ideas and it presents certain elements of itself very well, but then other elements are dreadfully improperly done. An example would be the fact that the game forces humongous walls of text onto the screen, or pop-up sub-windows that rarely have any kind of bearing on the Player’s experience, which pop-ups cannot be disabled. Similarly, there are often calls of action that show up and urge the Player to purchase something - almost always offering a temporary discount.
Another example of odd choices in regards to designing the Presentation of this game are the exclamation points that bring to the Player’s attention the opportunity to do something in a particular menu. Due to the fact that a lot of this game takes place in menus, the Player has to navigate a humongous number of them to interact with a large number of the game’s mechanics, and due to the fact that those mechanics are time-gated, the Player might forget or might not know when next the mechanic is intractable.
Thus, the game makes use of orange exclamation points that appear over icons in the menus, which is helpful, but not always. There are times when the exclamation point indicates that the Player can do something, but, in truth, the Player cannot do something - such as whenever the Player is being informed that they can participate in a Raid battle, but they are not in a Union or their Union is not high enough level to participate in Raids. However, there are also instances of exclamation points not being present - such as there being no exclamation point to inform the Player that their Special Arena cache is full.
Overall, it lacks consistency, and not just in that regard. When it comes to the audio, it is far too cluttered, with intense musical tracks playing while five different firearms fire at will, and Characters spout one-liners and even more sound-effects go off. Not only that, but the quality differs.
The music has points that are incredibly high, but those are incredibly rare in the overall schlock that the game’s soundtrack features. At the same time, the voice acting is very competently done, but half of the things that are being said and the way they are being said overwhelms the Player with intense degeneracy that takes away from the experience.
Then, there are also issues with how the game presents its story, which issues affect the Player's ability to interact with the game and/or access the story for repeated viewings. There are some elements that are presented via the medium of text messages in a pseudo group chat. Those are neat, in the sense that they act as both means of fleshing out the Characters but also as a means of adding more context to the events that are transpiring. However, at the same time, those chats are ‘archived’ in the same way as normal chats - there is no search functionality, and the only way of going back and rereading them is to scroll up, constantly, until the first message is reached.
Similarly, there are instances of things transpiring - missions or quests being undertaken - which feature ‘cinematics’ that present some information, add more context to the world itself, and yet are not repeatable. Those cinematics are not accessible after the quest is completed, however, at the same time, there are other cinematics that are repeatable, which supposedly take place in a similar manner to the unrepeatable ones. The oddity is that ones are repeatable, and others are not.
Another issue would be that some cinematics are skippable, while others are not, even if said cinematics feature ‘choices’ that might be important or might somehow affect the story. Additionally, there are large amounts of the story that are conveyed through text files that must first be discovered as curiosities on the map screen, but said curiosities are incredibly inconsistent in the sense that sometimes they have a glimmer effect, showing where they are and allowing the Player to find them, while other times there is no glimmer effect and the only way for the Player to find them is via intensely minute movements.
Ultimately, the game has some good ideas, and does an overall good job at presenting itself, but it comes up short of what it needs to be truly remarkable. 2/3
Story
The tale that NIKKE tells is not over. In fact, it is an endless one - most likely - due to the fact that the game has been very successful from a monetary standpoint, as a result of which the studio behind it will keep pumping out new Characters and new content as a means of maintaining the interest of it's playerbase.
Even so, there is enough story in it to pass judgment, and not only that, but it is also intriguing enough that it presents the opportunity for some dilemmas and some serious contemplation. Whether or not it does so is another thing entirely.
In short, NIKKE takes place on an Earth that has been ravaged by mechanical creatures called “Raptures”, who so thoroughly devastated humanity that most of the male population has been wiped out, due to the fact that a lot more men were recruited in the militaries to fight against the invaders. In a last ditch effort, following some gruesome experimentation, humanity creates a type of machine - the Nikkes - which starts doing battle against the Raptures. At the starting point of the story, humanity is confined to an underground city, but is not barely scraping by - or at least such an impression is left.
The Player takes on the role of a commander who has just left the academy, and through a series of events winds up stationed on the one surface outpost that humanity has. Over the course of the story, they encounter a multitude of Characters, some of whom are antagonists, others allies, and develops complex and odd relationships with them.
Ultimately, the story winds up a bit downtrodden by a few problematic elements - mainly the desire to appeal to as broad an audience as possible, as a result of which it does not dare to make any great statement. However, in it are present depictions of incredible class disbalance, with some humans being so wealthy that they are essentially kings, while others live off of scraps, scavenged on the surface, in incredible poverty; of contemplations on what it means to be human, of how humanity is measure in relation to the humanity of machines - such as the Nikkes, who are essentially human, but machines, for they feel pain, they have emotions, they are human in every regard except their fragility.
It allows itself for examine a number of concepts, but does so in a superfluous manner. Every Character, every Nikke, has an arc, or a story of their own, but that story does not boldly move into a particular direction, instead presenting to the Player a particular set of circumstances and the Character's resolution to deal with those circumstances. There might be a Character who develops in some regard, such as warming up to the Commander or becoming more comfortable with interacting with their companions, but they remain, largely, the same Characters.
The most interesting aspect of NIKKE’s story is the setting. How come there are these Nikkes, how come there are these Raptures, how come things are as they are, how do ordinary people survive or what are their conditions? The game manages to intrigue the Player with those questions and, over the course of the story, and via many of the texts the Player can discover, a lot of those questions are answered. The mystery that holds the Player’s curiosity at the start of the game is enough to urge them to keep exploring, which speaks to the quality of the writing.
Ultimately, however, the game’s focus is on Characters and its need to be perpetual, leaves the story in a very secondary, even tertiary position, as a result of which it has problems, and not the least of those is the fact that the game never shies away from treating the Player as an owner of the Nikkes, as the latter being sworn to the Player… There’s this particular uncertainty with all those Characters, whether the feelings they have are genuine, and whether their decisions are genuine, or if it all stems from something beyond themselves, their prime directive which they cannot forgo.
Additionally, the fact that the Characters must all be different, and cutesy, and lovable makes for a very odd situation. Many of them look totally out of place, others don’t even seem to exist in the same world as others - as an example we can present Tia and Naga, who are… Schoolgirl Nikkes? How does that make sense? What’s going on here if those two Nikkes actually need to go to school? The number of plot holes that open up underneath each new Nikke is very concerning, and while there are attempts at rectifying or explaining things away, it rarely works - as an example, the statement that it’s for entertainment is most baffling, due to the fact that humanity is supposed to be on the brink, and yet it is using its only effective soldiers as means of entertainment?
Odd choices, but it is not all bad. It is, actually, more good than bad, though it does have a decent amount of bad. 2/3
Legendary Point
Does this game get the Legendary point, so craved and wanted by all and none at the same time? I feel inclined to say that it does, if only because of my overbearing appreciation for certain aspects of this game, but at the same time they are very minor in comparison to the whole. In addition to that, I recognize that they are purposefully made as such, in an effort to appeal to the audience in a manner that affects them on an emotional level and, thus, could be regarded as ‘special’, in a sense.
As a result of that I am afraid that NO, I cannot give NIKKE the Legendary Point. No matter how much I appreciate the bountiful slopes of the chests, nor how incredible the audio is at some very rare points, or how intriguing some concepts may be. 0/1
Conclusion
5/10. Nikke is a very underwhelming game that is designed with the goal of getting the Player hooked on it, much like how a person gets hooked on gambling, and extracting as much money out of said Player. To that end, it does everything possible, and it is intriguing, as well as entertaining for a few hours. Afterwards, however, I would not recommend it to anyone except the most hardened, infirm fans of gacha games.
In the bag of mediocrity it goes, to gather dust and to be forgotten. All of it, safe for the ladies, who will serve to inspire many works of art of the degenerate variety…