Nayuta – One of three new SSR units for the 3rd anniversary event.
The third anniversary of popular booty shooter Goddess of Victory: Nikke is finally here! While I started playing a few months after its release in November 2022, I was very conscious of the game’s existence around the time of its launch. This is going to be a bit of a sampler of my thoughts about the first half of the Goddess Fall story event, the current state of the game, and a few story/lore ramblings as well.
SPOILER WARNING!
I’ll be discussing Goddess Fall and the new campaign chapters in detail. A new Story Mode was added to the game that makes it easier to experience the story for anyone who has been interested in the game’s story, but not the grind that typically comes with a gacha.
Eden’s Spear + Goddess Fall
The other week Nikke‘s developer, Shift Up, released a side story called Eden’s Spear. Beginning with the 1.5 anniversary, Side Stories were introduced to supplement the game’s overall story by providing context for upcoming events.
Eden’s Spear was a prologue that set the events for Goddess Fall and we learned a few important pieces of information for the overall story of NIKKE.
- The Rapture Queen has been orbiting the Earth for over a century. Her influence over the raptures on the surface has negated due to a wall of liquid metal (presumably Siren/Little Mermaid’s doing) that has also blinded her.
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Nihilister has been plotting against the rapture queen. She knows the location of Liliweiss’s body and plans to use it as bait to poison the queen.
I think these are the two major reveals for Eden’s Spear. There are other smaller things like Eden’s Spear being also being the name of an enormous particle cannon that’s built into the settlement of Eden.
The entire story of Eden’s Spear is getting the fans re-familiarized with Johan’s squad, Inherit. We haven’t seen much of them over the past year and many fans ask about nikke who are stuck in NPC jail, like Papillon. Turns out the reality is not that far from the truth. She has been stuck on Eden as a hostage this entire time our characters have gone to the Crystal Region and fighting the four beasts.
Even Marian, who we hadn’t seen since the 1.5 anniversary, made an appearance at the very end.
Goddess Fall
Oh boy, where do I even begin?
Goddess Fall begins right after Eden’s Spear. For anyone unfamiliar, Nikke splits these major events into two parts, usually. Part 2 will not be available for another week, so many of us who have completed Part 1 have an agonizing wait ahead of us.
The first thing I wanted to talk about was that I appreciate that these major events do not involve our player character AT ALL. Part of creating a fictional world that feels alive is making sure it exists even without the protagonist present.
It’s both anxiety-inducing and very cool to see all these characters hold their own.
Unfortunately, that brings me to the first part of the story were my jaw dropped.
Noah’s “Death”
Listen, we’ve all gotten excited when we finally pull a Pilgrim in the standard banner only to be completely disappointed when that smug brat points at us and laughs.
Noah is this very strange character who received some character development after we initially visited Eden. Neon and Noah formed a sort of “ignored character” alliance that helped the commander win against Mother Whale. Since then, Noah has been less reluctant about opening up. She’s still smug and an annoying brat, but it seems that her time with Neon left an impression on her.
Pioneer joins the fight against the Rapture Queen who is descending upon Eden and bombarding them with massive lasers. Among them is Rapunzel who also helps Noah understand that her shield can protect the people she cares about.
The Queen fires another laser at Eden and even with the combined shield power of Rapunzel and Noah, it isn’t enough. So Noah pulls Rapunzel behind her and decides to tank the laser from the Rapture Queen by herself.
Noah tanking the Rapture Queen’s laser by herself.
And she does. Noah goes silent. Then we hear a *thud*.
It’s very similar to the 1.5 anniversary where Chime got her head cut off by Indivillia, but the circumstances are slightly different. There’s no guarantee that Noah will recover completely because not only did her body overheat, her human brain overheated as well.
Chime’s head was sliced cleaned off and was able to be stitched together. While I think there’s a chance Noah will recover, I’m not completely sure to what capacity that will be.
My jaw actually dropped when Noah fell to the ground. Despite never using her in-game I felt as thought the community had lost an icon.
The Return of Rose and Red Shoes (Kinda)
This is one reveal that really caught me by surprise. I think many people were expecting Red Shoes to come back to some capacity and it seems that she’s currently a personality construct that does not have a physical body.
Rose’s appearance on the other hand, completely blindsided me. Granted, it’s been a very long time since I last read Scarlet’s event. After reading as quick recap, there was no mention of Rose surviving. In fact, it says that Scarlet buried Rose and the rest of the Nikke in her squad after the sisters fought.
This implies that Rose was purposely dug out and revived.
An interesting point from Scarlet’s event is that Rose was designated as the leader of the squad due to her high performance score in simulations. The missions that the melee squad participated in became more dangerous as time went on. The reason for this was not because of humanity losing the war against the raptures specifically, but they were sending the melee squad on suicide missions until there was only one standing.
The last Nikke standing would become a Grimms Model, like the ones that made up the Goddess and Old Tales squads.
In Rose’s debut cutscene she delivers critical strikes to Indivillia and Chatterbox, driving them away from Marian.
Next to her appears Mirror, who has an identical appearance to Red Shoes, the character responsible for creating Nikke corruption with assistance of the raptures.
Nayuta seems to be aware of their existence as well. Shift Up is definitely planting the seeds for a very disturbing reunion between Scarlet and Rose. Also, what will Cinderella and company think if they run into Mirror? There’s not much I can talk about considering they appear towards the end of Part 1. Let’s hope Part 2 gives us some answers.
Overall, I’m really satisfied with the first half of Goddess Fall. Nayuta has been a great unit. I’m a bit of a casual, so I can’t really talk much on how she is stat-wise. I really like her design though. She has that Xuanzang Sanzang vibe, who is also another character I really love.
Actually it’s too coincidental … do you think Shift Up was reading my social media?
UHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH…
Thoughts on the Game after ~3 Years
It’s been very interesting to witness the evolution of live service games. Despite how much I love NIKKE as a franchise, I have to remind myself that ultimately it is a source of revenue for Shift Up.
That being said, I don’t think it’s impossible for a property to both a cash cow and critically acclaimed. It requires leadership to walk this shaky tightrope of giving the fans and investors what they want.
My opinion is that Shift Up is definitely struggling to accomplish this but still landing hits when it matters.
A great example of this is their release schedule for their content.
A new character is released almost every month and occasionally (like during this anniversary event) multiple are released for a single event as well.
It’s caused a bit of friction within the community because it seems that the players generally do not accumulate in-game resources at the same rate that characters release.
Shift Up has created temporary solutions like in-game events that reward you with resources for just … playing the game. The last one was themed around the character Drake, and I finished it several months ago. Even now, I’m struggling to build up a few units to create teams for Solo Raid and Union Raids respectively.
It took me many months to build Bunny Soda and Bunny Alice to a decent point where they could start participating in content seriously.
At least they’re aware of the issue.
Like recently, we had a Resident Evil collaboration event which introduced three units: Claire Redfield, Ada Wong, and Jill Valentine.
Claire was a free unit and both Ada and Jill weren’t game changing units.
I think the community collectively sighed in relief. I myself managed to grab a copy of Jill just because I’m a fan of Resident Evil, but I haven’t really invested in her at all.
In fact, I was glad that I had gotten my copy without using too many gems. At the time we were about a month or two away from the 3rd anniversary event and people aren’t made of money! Unless you’re a whale, managing your resources is always something you’re thinking about and why I believe gacha games are so appealing. I wouldn’t be surprised if people factored them into their budgets.
Back to the actual game, their QA process seems to been taking a few Ls since the release of Behemoth’s solo raid, too. Often, Solo Raids have had technical issues on release and players are compensated for the days it is taken down or for maintenance due to bug fixes.
Honestly, I think people would appreciate the occasional breather. Aside from that the game is pretty decent. What’s really holding my attention is this emotional connection I’ve developed for the characters. That might be intentional of a lot of these games nowadays. If there’s a great story and good music and other things you identify with, then you really start to find a home with the game. It’s been part of my daily routine for nearly 3 years!
I know a few friends who have tried the game and many who like the characters, but aren’t really into the game itself. That’s fine. I think I’m the same with certain characters from Blue Archive, where I’m just a tourist and not a hardcore fan. Because frankly, who has the time to play more than one gacha at time? Even playing two takes up a good chunk of the workday.
Those are my thoughts, before I start going off on another tangent. I’m looking forward to Part 2! In the meantime, I’m gonna listen to the theme song to Goddess Fall for the 100th time.