Oh nice, gotta check it out. The game is great but it lacks some polish halfway through. Currently playing NG+ on Crisis Mode
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The first bosses are challenging but starting with Doppelia they lack any tricks, only HP bloat. I even chastised myself by not using any engrams from my previous run and playing a different build (deemed penetrating kick and Holy curse OP).
Some things I noticed (I didn't see everything yet so I might misjudge something):
- in the secret club, the chastity amulets doesn't protect you after seeing the Training scene
- Not sure what is the point of streaming games, music when working at the cafe just gives you 5k
- Why can you go to the beach with Hibiki only once?
- Enemies waste their turns on applying effects that you already have, trying to destroy your clothes that are already destroyed and raising your Arousal that doesn't seem to do anything in a fight
- I have yet to figure what fame even does, its hard as fuck to decrease it without using items.
- Some events like the Sex Shop work requires you to already have 100 lust in the middle of the game.
- Fights where you fend off enemies with untransformed Amane are near impossible to loose (you can even use the slave collar)
- Can you even destroy those hypnosis poles if you have all negative memories? I can already only get to 10% resistance
- You rarely have to use a bath because after a loosing scene you go straight to bed (all the restaurants are pretty useless too)
Some things are confusing
Exposing in park doesn't seem to do anything unless you go to the men's bath.
You'd expect a scene at the pool or the roof, or residential area or anything happening at school at night
Changing to more lewd outfits doesn't do a lot
I wish there was a bit more filler content, to give you a reason not to go to class, raise your stats like domination, miasma, corruption. Some more interaction with Hibiki. It's still a great game, but it feels like they only realized half of the game they intended.
Regarding the difficulty: yeah, the game gets really easy once you get the necessary engrams, especially the fire ones, because for some reason just about any enemy, including bosses, can get a Burning status. Even more ridicilous is that tier 3 and tier 4 fire spells apply different Burning statuses which can stack. Add to it Divine Poison from the last weakening engram and you can kill just about any enemy outside from the last 2 bosses, and for them you just add Memoria's Empowerment, Void Walkers, that spell that gives you +1 action for the next two turns and start spamming Takemikazuchi while healing when needed.
The CN mod actually changes a lot when it comes to difficulty as basic attacks are somewhat nerfed, SP is now mostly gained through Concentrate command (but it actually gives a lot of SP, and it only increases with equipping attack engrams), and the enemies mostly come with modifiers like physical/magical resistance or outright immunity, or high attack/agility instead. They can have up to 2 such traits and they are written in their name, so if you see Anti-Magic Slime, yeah, don't use magic on it. Bosses can randomly get those too, so sometimes I just reload when I see a boss with Anti-Magic in their name...
Struggle mechanics are also a lot different, and Renegades can now also use bondage items on Amane, so she can potentially be unable to do anything but give up.
Regarding some of your other points:
-It might be because I'm playing the CN modded version but in the Secret Club after losing and getting trained Chastity Amulet works until Celesphonia runs out of MP, maybe that's the same in your case?
-The point of streaming is mostly for her 'sex on stream' scenes, otherwise it can't be compared to how much you can earn simply from beating up Renegades
-Don't you mean Hazuki? Because Hibiki can simply go there at any time. But if it's about Hazuki, yeah, they should have had more scenes together.
-I'm not sure what arousal does either aside from visual effects and letting Celesphonia gain lust faster.
-Fame increases the money Celesphonia earns from her fans' donations after finishing a stage. Basically the more City Reputation and Fame you have, the more money you get from every enemy you defeat in battle (meaning without Instakill).
-Sex Shop work event is for those who goes all out in corrupting Celesphonia, otherwise you are supposed to pay money. It's just a choice in how to progress the game.
-Apparently Engrams are like those martial arts program packages in Matrix, so Amane even in her base form is now like "I know Kung Fu". So it makes a bit of sense that normal goons without Renegade suits can't do much to her.
-Hypnosis devices can be destroyed if you go get some Anti-Hypnosis items first. Get a book from Downtown to get a passive skill for it, also in there you can buy an accessory with Hypno-Res. There is also Heart Lock which you can find in a secret room in the building of that love cult in the Outdoor Mall, which gives 50% Hypno-Res. Even all the Sex titles give at max -30% Hypno-Res, with accessories and skill you should be able to get it to around 50%.
-Using a bath is mostly to clean Celesphonia after encountering random perverts.
-Exposing in a park attracts those men to the bathroom, otherwise no one is there. Also you get an option to remove Amane's underwear if she exposes herself enough times.
-Not having any school events in the night is indeed strange, it even has it's own bgm and nothing happens.
-Not going to class reduces your reputation, which can go into negatives and activate some events like teacher disciplining her or the swim club boys demanding sexual favours from her. It also affects her school title.
-Miasma barely does anything in the base game, but in the CN mod they made it so that the more miasma you have, the more corrupted Celesphonia looks and the less max MP you can have. Basically every point of miasma is -1% Max MP.
-Domination is mostly a useless mechanic that basically spawns perverts on the streets after reaching a certain amount. It's hard to keep it high since defeating a boss drastically decreases it. And there is that lipstick item in the Sex Shop that basically activates the max Domination effects without needing to reach it and activating a bad ending, so there is literally no point in it aside from seeing that bad ending.
-Corruption and Soul Corruption exist mostly to give Celesphonia more sensitivity levels and give her access to dark engrams and dark synthesis (which has really strong items). And also another bad ending once you reach 100 corruption. Strangely enough you can't get it after beating the final boss as both Corruption and Domination get capped at 99 at that point.