Mahou Shoujo Lyrical Nanoha A’s Portable Impressions

So I’ve been actually playing the game, and here’s what I got so far:

Looks like there are 9 characters with no slots for secret characters. Then again, secret characters are secret so we’ll see.

Game itself is interesting, plays kinda like a simpler mix of Gundam vs. Gundam and Senko no Ronde.

You have 2 ranges: long and short.

Long range gives you 3 moves that take up MP. MP works kinda like the bar in IaMP or Daemon Bride, once you run out, you’ve gotta wait for it to reload. (Dunno if you can graze though…)

Short range changes those moves to a melee attack, parry, and grab. Melee attacks vary in combos by using different combinations of attack, parry, and grab after the initial hit.

Blocking seems to take up MP and you can Ex-Guard by having good timing.

You have an Accel gauge with 4 stocks that refill quickly, kinda like GvG’s boost meter. Every time you dash, you use up one stock. Unfortunately, you can’t seem to dash cancel/NEXT step (which btw, they really should’ve let you do).

You also have 2 stocks per round of “Full Drive” mode which seems to refill your MP on use. While in Full Drive, you can also do a super if you hit them with a melee-range attack, kinda like Narutimate Hero, if you’ve ever played that.

Story so far takes place between the last 2 episodes of A’s. Reinforce is still around, but all the main plot has been resolved.

I’m still playing the Nanoha campaign, but what seems to be going on is that clones of the Yami no Sho Knights are popping up and Nanoha’s gotta kick some ass befriend them.

Just beat the Nanoha campaign. She seems pretty broken if only for her long-range pwnage. She gets this fast 3-shot attack that can be charged up (Accel Shot), a bind, and the Divine Buster.

Reward for beating the campaign? Yuri-yuri NanoFate awesomeness of course.

Hell yeah.

I’ll update this as I play moar.