NTE Neverness to Everness Fogden Game - So many new characters! Nitsa!

I finally managed to get through the finale of the Scarlet Letter chapter in NTE featuring the Fogden Games, and honestly, it was one of the greatest rides I've had with this game since release. It starts out as a fairly standard preparation phase to stop the villains and recover Nanally's soul, but things change rapidly once you enter their base.

Once inside the Fogden Games, the group gets split up, and we experience completely different gameplay styles compared to what we're used to. First, we play as Daffodil in more traditional action-RPG duel encounters against increasingly powerful bosses. All of them with human forms, and several featured genuinely interesting designs, such as Sweeper.

Sorry Inanna, but your machinations were so obscure to the point that I still don't know what was the whole deal with you...

I had various screenshots of Zankou, but I feel like this one explain the best my reaction to her character design. Huge!

Then the perspective switches to Linko and Nitsa, and all of a sudden we're playing an adventure platformer: dodging enemies, navigating hazards, and eventually tackling a minigame where we rush down a river and clear obstacles with Xiaozhen to reach our destination. After that, there is a massive fight against a dragon, followed by a wild sequence where we turn into giants inside a simulated city, engaging in a full-blown kaiju battle against monsters. It was quite a trip, to say the least...

I still don't fully understand the overarching plot; Inanna's and the Scarlet Letter's true motives still elude me even now, but I enjoyed the action and the character interactions enough that I can't complain too much. Sure, the story mentions that Inanna wanted Hotori's immortality, but that explanation felt poorly fleshed out.

Alphard still exist, I completely forgot she was a thing in the first place. Actually did she even appear at the beginning of the game or was my imagination?!

Nanally being back is the best thing that came out of the story. She's the mascot character of the game at this point way more than Taygedo.

On top of that, at the most critical moment, we get rescued by a literal giant deus ex machina that seems tied directly to our protagonist. It really feels like the writing team struggles to maintain a smooth, coherent narrative flow compared to what you see in top-tier gacha games.

On the positive side, this chapter was an absolute treasure trove of new characters, perhaps even too many, to the point where I found myself asking, "Wait, were you introduced somewhere earlier? I've never seen you before." Nitsa is a prime example: she looks stunning. The same goes for the "enemy" Poinsette, who will almost certainly become playable once she gets reformed at the academy. Hopefully, my savings will hold out whenever these characters finally get added to the banners.

Nitsa character design is interesting, I fully expected her to be water/ice based, but turns out she uses her cloth to pull and move things. I wonder how will her gameplay be...

Giantess Nitsa? Where do I sign to take her home and head pat her all day? Come on, you can't leave me hanging!

I'm not entirely pleased about Zankou being locked away in prison "forever," though I doubt it will actually stay permanent. They'll almost certainly need her assistance and intellect down the line. Besides, how is she already playable in the first place? I can literally have her hang out at my house right now!

Either way, I'll continue catching up over the coming days, and hopefully I can write another post once I finish the next chapter. Apparently, the spotlight will be on the witch this time. We've already had the chance to pull for her, but I don't really understand her significance to the main narrative yet.