Mugen Souls Z – improvements from the first game

With Mugen Souls Z no Steam getting closer to launch, we thought now is a good time to go into a little more depth and discuss the various changes and improvements over the original Mugen Souls game.

This post is going to assume the reader has a working knowledge of the original game, so if you need to know more about Mugen Souls Z and its game systems, please check this previous article.

So, without further ado, let’s get started:

Brand new plot and main protagonist: Mugen Souls Z is a direct continuation of the story from the previous game. This time, Chou Chou and the gang are joined by a new ultimate goddess, Syrma, and a new hero, Nao. Chou-Chou is stripped of her overwhelming powers via a mysterious coffin, and must rely on Syrma to conquer this new universe in her name. As well as the original game’s cast, a whole new set of heroes and demon lords, a seriously angry new enemy and a couple of other mysterious characters unite to create an even wilder story than the first game. And with such a huge ensemble, things are possibly even more eventful!

Small crystals are colour coded: During battles, the small crystals that affect your stats and abilities when you’re within their area of effect are now colour coded, making it far easier to see which crystals you’re being influenced by and to manoeuvre yourself to exploit positive effects and avoid negative ones more effectively. I can’t tell you what a help I’ve found this small change while playing through the game – definitely one of my favourite changes! ;)

‘Captivate’ a vast improvement over the original ‘Moe Kill’ system: The original Mugen Souls’ Moe Kill system was a neat and interesting mechanism allowing you to turn enemies to your advantage, and was essential for higher level play, but it had its problems for sure. As part of the evaluation and testing process, I spent many hours gazing, utterly perplexed, at fan-made tables trying hard to predict the various possible outcomes from Moe Killing enemies in various moods.

Fans of the original, fear not! This time we have the Captivate system, which shows you the outcome of every approach you make to an enemy in advance, allowing you to plan your actions far more purposefully and FAR more quickly. This transforms the game utterly, and for the better. Another one I really, really like!

Fever Mode skippable: Mugen Souls Z is a grind-heavy game. If you’re a levelling obsessive this is one of the greatest games with which to indulge yourself! But wait: to boost your characters you’ll need money and the easiest way to get it is using ‘Fever Mode’ in battle. Simply put, if you Captivate a battle arena’s Large Crystal you’ll engage Fever Mode, during which you’ll be able to Blast enemies up into the sky for 100s of hits, and generating a fortune in Gold in the process. Fever Mode is by far the fastest way to earn G, but it results in very long attack sequences, which can slow down your Gold Farming a fair bit. This time, Fever attacks are skippable, enabling you to power grind for G in the bare minimum of time. What a blessing!

Lots of other grinding time-savers: As well as skippable fever mode animations, in Mugen Souls Z you’re able to skip entire cut scenes with the RT button. There’s also no lag when fighting large groups of enemies using AOE skills. Tutorials are individually much shorter and spread out far more evenly through the game’s opening hours, making for a pacier, more evenly-balanced beginning section. There’s also an easier way to review them as you can press the Back button and see them whenever you like!

Link Attacks are now skills: No more fretting over whether or not you’ll do a link attack when attacking enemies with allies nearby. This is because Link attacks have been added to the Skills menu, with their own unique icon to help you find them more easily.

A stiffer challenge for Story mode: The story mode has been far more carefully balanced this time, so instead of being pretty easy throughout the regular story and ramping up crazily right at the end, Mugen Souls Z offers up more graded and decent challenge throughout. The post-game content also requires real mastery of the game’s systems if you want to get anywhere.

Enemy skills now viewable: Once you’ve progressed a little way into the game you’ll gain the ability to view enemy skills, which is pretty darn useful when you’re not sure why your various attacks and skills are resulting in zero damage. Saves a lot of guesswork that’s for sure. J

Retire from Mugen Field via menu: Now, during any Mugen Field run you can retire and head back to G-Castle at any time. Brilliant for me, when I was being over ambitious and kept getting stuck, way over my head. T_T

Ultimate Soul effects: Syrma’s version of the small peon ball attack. Rather than just destroying other enemies or healing your party, ultimate soul ball can now produce other effects, including boosting your attack power, buffing your defences, boosting EXP gained and more…

There are other small improvements throughout that I don’t have space to go into here, but generally speaking I can safely say that Mugen Souls Z is a huge improvement over the original in all respects. It looks better, its game systems are easier to understand and more evenly introduced and it retains all the fun of the original in a much friendlier, but more substantial package. I personally can’t recommend it enough, even hundreds of hours in. ;)

The good news is that very soon you guys will be able to try the game out for yourselves. With that in mind, more news on release date and pricing in the near future! :)

MUGEN SOULS Z ©2016 IDEA FACTORY / COMPILE HEART / GCREST, Inc. All rights reserved. Mugen Souls is a trademark of IDEA FACTORY. Licensed to and Published by Ghostlight Ltd