Mugen Souls

No.

This game is both shallow and grindy and even I can’t be bothered to try for 100%. I got the true ending and I’m done. I looked at a couple of sites and apparently I would need to sink at least another 200 hours to grind my way to 100% completion and that could be as much as 500 additional hours. No thanks.

I do like the characters and I would be willing to spend more time in a game like this, if it wasn’t so grindy. You have to grind levels, you have to grind Moe Kills to upgrade your ship, you have to grind gold to upgrade your equipment, you have to grind another currency to upgrade your skills. None of it feels rewarding while doing it, so it feels like a chore rather than a game I’m playing to have fun.

Furthermore, there are way too many features and it you almost have to read guides to figure out what to do, but this doesn’t add to a deep experience, as each of the features were are still very shallow. The Moe Kill is especially irritating and I don’t know how anyone is expected to pick up the game and figure it out without either using a guide and treating the game like homework. Again, I play video games to have fun and this system was not fun. Most of the other similar systems, like Blast Off and Fever Time, can be ignored, but you NEED Moe Kills to beat the game.

Also, the game crashed, a lot.

There’s enough positive here that I can see a good game in this mess, which is the worst part about it.

I only played for 24 minutes but it was the most soul crushing 24 minutes of my life. Im going to buy a shotgun

Don’t bother with this PC release of the game, it’s quite evident from this and the Mary Skelter 2 PC release (being based on the vastly inferior Switch release with a load of extra bugs and issues tacked on top) that they don’t cooperate with the Japanese branch of IdeaFactory, unlike EastAsiaSoft. This port is also locked at 60FPS, even if the PS3 version runs unlocked (up to 60), so there’s no real reason you should be playing this version. Instead, buy the Switch release from PlayAsia, use nxdumptool to dump a ROM of the game, and then play it in Yuzu/Ryujinx at 4K and 60FPS with the content uncensored. Fuck Ghostlight for being increasingly low effort with their ports (and making empty promises about uncensored patches), and screw NISA for just opting to cut content rather than to go through cert twice (if the first appeal fails).

Standard: https://www.play-asia.com/mugen-souls/13/70fu1f?tagid=578221%22

Limited Edition: https://www.play-asia.com/mugen-souls-limited-edition/13/70fu1j?tagid=578221%22

EDIT: Checking the files of the Switch release, it's based on this port of the game, but interestingly, in the executable for this version of the game, you can get the bathhouse minigame to work (Albiet with missing graphics and corrupted text), if you copy the bathhouse.bra file from the Switch dump over to the PC version of the game.

The characters are cute, I like the story, there's quite a bit of fanservice as usual for Compile Heart/Idea Factory games but it's not a bad thing
The only thing i hate are the moe kills which are pretty hard for someone like me to understand and leveling up G-castle requires a lot of grinding/shampuru collecting (i'm still on lv1 as of writing this and i'm in the fire world)
Overall a pretty fun although very grindy game (kinda reminds me of Persona 2:Innocent Sin)

I own the original japanese release for ps3 and let me tell you the pc port is the best way play this game even with the bathing mini-game completely removed. This is one of the few games I was really looking forward to get ported to pc just because how horrendous it performs on ps3. The high resolution and 60fps upgrade alone made it worth it for me.

Gameplay wise is really different and experimental. It still has some resemblance with Disgaea as there is a high enphasis in grinding money and peons.
If you are looking for a more traditional rpg I would suggest to look somewhere else.

There's not much that's actually fun in the game.. You're constantly switching personalities and grinding..

The side stuff and ecchi stuff was censored to hell and the whole thing feels so shallow/dull...

These kinds of games rely on combat (or fanservice...) and when that isn't very fun you're not left with much else...

After more than 430 hours on record I can finally put this game away.
About 30-40 hours are needed to complete the game storywise.
The rest (~ 400 hours) was spent to grind massively in order to obtain every achievement that this game offers and overall very boring.
The only fun part was the planning to minimize the time you need to get the achievements.
But hey, I managed to watch 880+ Pokémon episodes while grinding.

Pros
+ Humourous Dialogues
+ Overall interesting game mechanics
+ (Free) DLC can be used to breeze through the story for a non-grinding experience.
+ New Game+: You can carry over stuff for your next playthrough.

Contras
- Game mechanics are only explained once! Couldn't find a menu option to rewatch the tutorials.
- Moe Kill (game mechanic): Instead of fighting the enemy you can make the enemy fall in love with the main character for faster grinding. Not very consistent and too random for my taste.
- Combo attacks seems to be weaker than normal attacks.
- Game crashes sometimes/Long loading time in battle
- Time-consuming to get every achievement

If you like JPRGs then this game might be something for you.
For achievement hunters I strongly encourage not to buy this unless you want to spent a huge amount of time.

I had hopes going into this based on what I had seen advertised, sadly I can't say they were met entirely.
Aside from clunky controls regarding battle and running around dungeons, after about halfway into the game I started encountering bugs or glitches in the form of audio chirps and character portraits stretching across the screen during certain side events, the affinity system was so odd it was awkward just trying to memorize it, I had ludicrous stats and levels but was getting my ass handed to me thanks to random crystal effects that I had to check every single time a battle started, the G-Castle battles were a nightmare until I realized how to grind for more peons to bring up it's power and even then most of it came down to rock-paper-scissors style combat which wasn't made any easier with the "helpful hints" in battle that were completely wrong at least half the time even when it was Ryuto giving them and not the enemy...
Honestly, I can't say I'd reccomend this game to others, don't even get me started on the fact that it felt 80% like a Nippon Ichi game but then the last 20% was just... I can't think of nice words at this point in time.
Bottom line, if it's on sale for really cheap, then maybe give it a chance if you like these kinds of games, otherwise I can't suggest buying it.

An obvious dream of any person is to run around and be so cute even the plant submits to how adorable you are. I mean, who wouldn’t want to seduce people into doing all their work for them? Well, in Mugen Souls that’s exactly what you do. Run around and seduce EVERYTHING. If you find fun in seduction this is the game for you!

But, in all seriousness, Mugen Souls is a JRPG where you have a mix of combat, exploration, and air ship battle. The controls, personally, for the keyboard aren’t the best or most comfortable so I do suggest using a controller. (I typically expect this with console games that are imported to PC). Since this is an imported game from PS3 you should expect graphics and quality to be pretty similar to the original. Since I’m a fan of many games like this (Disgea, Phantom Brave, La Pucelle, etc) this style will seem very anime.

The game follows Chou-Chou a girl who can transform into many “moe types” and by utilizing the types she will attempt take over the entire universe. Chou-Chou begins to recruit followers from each of the planets she conquers and sets off for universe domination. In the game, you get about two units from every world (for the most part), with there being seven world total, in the end having twelve characters plus Chou-Chou to battle with. However, you can only use four at a time in a party, meaning you will have to go out of your way to level other characters outside the story line. With the level cap being 9999, that number may seem ridiculously high, well it is, but the game offers easier ways to level up than just following quest lines. This takes place in another realm (Mugen Field) where the further you go in the more rewards and benefits you achieve. By doing this a player could easily get to level 100 in an hour. This isn’t required to beat the game only recommended, you don’t have to go out and hyper level if you prefer to stick to the storyline quests.

Meanwhile, there are battleship fights during the storyline you must partake in to help strengthen your warship (these can also happen in the Mugen Field). In these you are given multiple commands that your ship may do to take down the enemies. The tutorial does a better job explaining than I ever could but basically you throw things at each other until you kill something. These battles are turn based so you select your offensive and defensive commands when prompted.

For a game about seduction they do give fan service scenes to the players, however, with Steam they will be censored and keep the game’s imagery 13+. While some players may find harm in censoring the CG of the game it’s pretty standard with most games on Steam so it doesn’t terribly bother a player like myself.

Pros to Mugen Souls:
• Costumes!
• Tons of characters and character types
• Great music
• Lots of content
Cons:
• No help screen
• Moe Kill system can become overwhelming and complex
• You cannot skip link attack animations
• I still can’t really figure out the Peon Ball
• Tons of level grinding

For my rating of Mugen Souls, I would give it a 3/5 for those into the niche JRPG games it’ll probably make you laugh or smile. If you aren’t into the anime styled games then this wouldn’t be a game for you. There’s a lot of dialogue, not as much as a visual novel though, and sometimes you get so drowned in the dialogue and can find yourself easily forgetting commands because it just went right over your head. I think that because it was originally made for the PS3 when it was transferred over it could’ve used some updates in the graphics to make it smoother, however, that would be an individual opinion for some people think it adds charm to the game. I feel that Mugen Souls could have easily become more of a hit than it did however, with the competition being games like Disgea you can tell that there was less effort and more “lols” when making this in comparison.

If you are into JRPG games similar to the Disgea, Hyperdimensional, and other Compile Hearts titles this is for you. Otherwise, I would not recommend spending money on the game that you would shortly put down.

I, personally, would recommend this title to those that are into niche games.

This game has a great premise, cute character designs, good artwork, and music by Tenpei sato.
But, ultimately, I do not recommend it unless you are really into these sorts of games and have played everything else you can think of.

-The combat is *really* boring. I am not even complaining about the grinding aspect of it, I play Nippon Ichi games and such. The fights themselves are just not that interesting, and I was never motivated to level up for the sake of it. Most fights are hugely lopsided, like if you don't one-shot an enemy it will probably one-shot you instead. The "Moe kill" system is too complicated for its own good and doesn't make for very interesting decisions anyways.

-There are whole systems and mechanics that I never needed to pay attention to and really don't seem important to the game at all. There's a hot spring you can use to buff your party; they spend a lot of time showing it to you and explaining it and so on, but I beat the game without ever using it. There's also "G Up," "Fever Mode," "Blast Off," "Peon Balls" and so on, just a laundry list of things I never took advantage of and never needed to.

-The game world is tiny and yet still has lots of recycled assets. Practically the entire story is told through dialogue boxes with animated character cut-outs, even when events are happening that should really be portrayed by machinima or cutscenes or something. It's as if they recorded the voice-overs for a much more ambitious game and did not have the money to actually make it.

I'm disappointed overall, there was a lot of promise in the charming protagonist and the colorful cosmic-scale setting. I'm told the sequel is better, we'll see.

Note: This review was inputted at the request of a friend who played this game utilizing Steam's library share feature.

Disclaimer: While I'm heavily against the censoring of content, I decided to give the game a try anyways. This review will ignore that fact entirely since it's somewhat minor has been discussed and repeated ad nauseam. Personally, I'm all up for supporting a good localization as long as it keeps censoring and memes/forced humor/completely rewritten scripts to a minimum, in the end, it's not the localization team's fault that censoring needs to happen because of delicate western sensibilities.

Mugen Souls is a whacky over-the-top JRPG with free-move 3d-based combat, think tales games but turn based. The game has a very cute style going for it and a colorful cast of characters that you can customize with outfits and equipments, you can even crossdress the males!
Overall, I feel like the game is heavily underrated and underappreciated, and while not perfect, it's definitely worth a try.
As of the time of this review this is how I feel about the game(might update later):

Pros:
+ Character customization with outfits and equippables.
+ Humorous and lighthearted.
+ A lot to find, unlock, level-up and upgrade. Reach ridiculous numbers in levels, damage, etc; completionists and people who enjoy bigger numbers and progression might like this game a lot.
+ Fairly decent map designs compared to games like Fairy Fencer and Neptunia, I honestly found the maps a bit more detailed instead of re-used copypastes.
+ Pretty good and catchy OST.
+ Tutorials explain most things pretty well, make sure to pay attention though! I've certainly had less issues understanding mechanics than in Phantom Brave, for example, which received a lot of praise.
+ A lot of wonky and non-generic mechanics such as making giant balls of your servants and throwing them at enemies.
+ Haven't had any issues at all with the port so far, runs very well!
+ Good-looking aesthetics overall, cute graphics and a neat, readable UI.
+ Thankfully, there's some good guides out there for people who don't understand the mechanics.
+ Become the undisputed god(dess) of the universe as a cute anime girl!

Cons:
- Might not be for people who don't understand anime clichés.
- Unique mechanics might be clunky or not appeal to everyone.
- Forced to use link skills in battle instead of normally attacking in battle, which have needlessly long and drawn-out animations which get old quickly, these can be skipped by pressing what would be "R2" in a PS controller but this tends to make the combat feel less satisfying. IMO RPGs need fast and fluid combat...
- Not everything is fully explained, there might be some minor confusion with some things without looking them up. IE what's "ogre damage"? What's affinity damage?
- Spaceship minigame fights are a bit convoluted.
- Some minor unlockable content unavailable for dubbed voiceacting, thankfully the original undubbed can be selected.
- Generic units are initially a lot weaker than main characters unlike games like Disgaea
- Mugen Field is this game's version of the item world from Disgaea, a random dungeon with many floors that you do for power ups and exp, albeit a lot less interesting and made up mainly of just fights.

All in all, I think the game is quite decent and can be very enjoyable despite some of its flaws, so I recommend it to people who have enjoyed games like Neptunia or Disgaea and JRPGs in general, but expect a strange and different experience.

I was hoping that the port to PC would make this game better but it turns out that if you polish a turd, it's still a turd.

Mugen Souls tries very, very hard to be deep and interesting but it ends up as a pile of game systems and mechanics that don't mesh together at all. G-Castle Battles are like playing rock-paper-scissors except if you lose enough times you get a Game Over. The Moe Kill system and Chou-Chou's Form Change could have been interesting but there are so many affinities that at any given time you're about 100% likely to be in the wrong form to actually perform a Moe Kill. The Blast-Off system seems to work once for the tutorial and then the rest of the time, you do so little damage to anything with knockback that there's no point, so I have no clue why they even introduce it at the beginning of the game. Creating your own custom units makes sense for a strategy RPG where you're allowed to have many units out at once but you can only have 4 characters in your party and your party has already filled with clearly superior story characters by the time you get out of the first couple of chapters or so, so that's another pointless system. And Mugen Field is a pathetic attempt to ape Disgaea's Item World that somehow manages to miss everything about Item World that makes it fun.

In short, Mugen Souls is (still) irredeemably bad, regardless of how it was censored for Western release. It's just another bad JRPG trying to ride on moe.

I'mma be straight up honest with you: I regret purchasing this.
This game is a hodgepodge of uncertainty, and struggles with itself to try and figure out what kind of game it wants to be.
There's so many different aspects that it becomes hard to pintpoint it all.

To give you the basic though.
Mix neptunia's battle systems and Disgaea's art style, and you get this game.
It's all good and fun for about eight or so hours.
Then you start feeling the abysmal amount of grinding this game forces you to do.
Not going to lie, I'm just not for it.

It has quality humor though, and the character interactions are pretty great. If you want to play an RPG for laughs, then I actually do recommend it.

You know, this is a sad thing to write. I enjoy this game; The characters, the writing, the combat - all held up to what I was expecting when I purchased this game believing it was a full game.

The fact that Ghostlight cut content from this becuase 'Steam said too' rings false and sounds like trying to avoid the blame of their own actions when their customers starting getting mad. They have provided no proof of this conversation, and have gone silent on why they didn't do an off-site patch like many other games have done for the past year to put censored content back into the game for their customers.

I would normally recommend this game for those that enjoy Disgaea-like characters and stories, but I can not in good faith put any more money into the pockets of Publishers who fuck their customers over what they told them they were buying, then going silent when pressed for answers on why they didn't inform them or fix it back to the quality they expected.

TLDR; Don't buy shit from these hack pricks.

A game as absurd as it is full of kinks and innuendo as it is fun.

NOTE 1: Pressing R2 can skip battle animations! or you can disable them entirely in the config menu. This is very important for making the grind go faster.
NOTE 2: The free DLC is nothing but OP items that make the game impossible to lose. Disable DLC in the title screen menu before you press New Game if you want to enjoy playing through it vanilla.

Now, onto the review!/Mechanics Summary!

The story can be described in two words: Galactic domination. You play as (say it with me now) a loli heroine who has amnesia, but instead of saving the world you're going to 7 different planets subjugating each one along the way. This is done by finding the strongest people on every planet and forcing them to join you. Like all Compile Heart games you'll end up with a large cast of different personalities who are all hilarious to see interact with one another. Sounds fun? It is. Until the grind.

The gameplay for this RPG is surprisingly unique, so I'll try my best to cover all of the different mechanics because many people seem to get confused by the decent yet fairly terrible tutorial.

Instead of elements all characters have "moe" attributes (read: kinks) and it is your job to use this knowledge to either turn them into your peon, turn them into items, or anger the enemy so jpop will play. During battle the main character is allowed to "moe kill" by switching forms to one of 8 kinks (Masochist, Sadist, Terse, Bipolar, Ditz, Ego, Hyper, and Graceful) and then choosing 3 of 7 phrase options that appeals to the target's current emotional state (If they're happy they will react exactly as you'd expect, when sad instead of being slapped by a sadist maybe they want a hug etc.) and kink. While this may sound insane at first (it is) the naming convention is really the only thing that may throw you off, but there are element based attacks tied to the moe attributes that will help you distinguish what is weak to what. (ex. Masochist is Water and Sadist is fire)

Aside from that kink paradigm there's also an entire billiards-esque mechanic called "blast-off" at play where you can set your non-standard attacks to blast enemies around the battle-map smacking into other enemies causing the whole board to be mixed up. If an enemy is giving you a hard time you can keep smacking it back into a corner while your healers stay far away and safe. If you have enough blast-off energy you're actually allowed to shoot enemies in the sky too, and in the sky there are around 10 or so random items in every fight that can be gotten if an enemy smacks into them.

The final battle mechanic are the crystals. In every battle there is a large crystal in the center of the stage that produces an AoE spell random each time, and along with the large one there are also a number of smaller crystals with smaller AoE spells which also all effect those that stand in them. Both forms of the crystals can be broken with the aforementioned "blast-off" system by smacking them all around the map. When they shatter they also produce an effect that is as wide as their AoE. All of their buffs/debuffs can be easily read by simply hovering over them with the in-game cursor.

The final general gameplay mechanic ties back in with the "moe kill" battle mechanic where if you can successfully defeat enemies with it they will transform into your peons. When you collect X amount of peons your charm level rises (how easy it is to moe kill) and your Peon Ball "read: Spirit Bomb" gets that much larger. The more peons you have also increases the amount of workers you have on your space airship.

THAT'S RIGHT. SPACE. AIRSHIP. Eat your heart out NASA. This game does have airship battles, and they're actually pretty decent if you're not cheesing it. The airship battles are similar to rock, paper, scissors. You have 3 different attack styles, 3 different shield styles, and buffs. The standard attack deals the most damage, but it gets blocked by every shield type. The pierce attack goes through every shield type, but it is a fraction of the power of the standard attack and can get weakened more by the quick-attack. The quick-attack deals about as much damage as the pierce attack, but it lowers the damage received by the enemies attacks and gets blocked by the shields. During the fight the enemy/your ship's pilot will make remarks that help you guess what they are planning to do and 9 times out of 10 it will be the same, but to keep things interesting they sometimes mix it up. If that annoys you spamming pierce usually works if you're a high enough level, but if you decide to not peon often then you will definitely have to learn the airship mechanics fairly well.

Item Upgrades: You can upgrade your items to ridiculous levels if you're only playing the main story. Basically you can pump money into any weapon/armor you want to increase the stats for it. While not really limitless for all intents and purposes of those who are playing for just the main story it may as well be. If you absolutely adore the rusty sword and old moldy panties everyone starts with for armor (yep) you can scale those to late game easily, but if you want to get to level 9999 while grinding through Mugen field getting better equipment will be a requirement. (all the free DLC will be actually) Speaking of Mugen Field...

THE GRIND. This game has it. There will be times that you're skipping through so many fights and doing just story that you'll engage an enemy they will all move before you and suddenly your party is wiped. There are also times where the game may force you to complete X amount of kills to continue (though you're given other options too, but if you can't do those battles are required) of which also involves grinding if you haven't been beating a lot of enemies. When that happens you can either: A) spend a decent amount of time grinding the previous area or B) Head back to your ship and enter the Mugen Field which is a battle-rush zone where the enemies start out weak (strength based on size of your bet) but get progressively stronger the farther down you go. The longer you stay in there the larger your experience multiplier gets as well. Completely cheap? Yes. A fantastic way for a JRPG to make THE GRIND a bit easier? Also a yes. Grind responsibly.

Overall: A fantastic JRPG with lots of character. 8.5/10

First of all it caught my attention, mugen souls 40% off hhmm well so why not give it a go (didn't regret it).


- Good story and humor

- Artstyle is cute and great

- Battle mechanics is similar to Hyperdimension neptunia

- Controls default mouse and keyboard still confuses me (prefer try to remap your keys)

- Really good port no issues on my end

- DLC stuffs are kinda OP


Is this game Good? Yes
Is this game worth buying? yes....but much better when it comes on sale :)
Do I recommend it? Yes

I really want to enjoy this game, I really do. I'm going to finish it at least, even if it kills me, which it might. After a long kick of Hyperdimension Neptunia Rebirth 1 and 2, I decided to pick this game up, too since it was made by the same developers, thinking it would be a lot like the other 2 games (as well as Fairy Fencer F.) Sadly, compared to those 3 other games, this one feels very lacking. Not in content mind you, but in direction and I guess you would say "composure." This game has so many "gimmicks" that just get in the way of gameplay it's rediculous and they just pile it all on top of you in the first hour of gameplay.

There's peon capturing, where you use your 7 "moe forms" to match the enemies moe preference, then you have to choose from a group of random words to form some kind of sentence. Oh, did I mention which words you choose also need to match up with what mood (there are 7 seperate moods) the enemy is in, or else the enemy flips its shit and goes berserk, regaining all HP and getting an increase in attack and defense.

Then they throw these crystals into the mix that emit auras that do certain things (Some boost EXP, some decrease HP, some lock you in place so you cant move.) You can also go all Moe on the crystals to destroy them and cause another power up.

Finally, there's knocking the enemies around, where skills that you use can be toggled to knock an enemy back into other enemies, friendlies, or crystals to damage them like some kind of demented game of pool. After smashing a crystal, it goes into frenzy mode where you need to use certain skills to knock enemies into the air to break floating crystals.

You can make your own characters and customize their appearance, class, clothing, etc, but they're woefully underpowered and there's really no point in using them so far. They dont start with skills and they hardly learn any skills. Why use them when you can just dominate everything with your storymode characters?

Then there's the graphics, which pale in comparison to Rebirth 1, 2 and Fairy Fencer F. There's a weird fog that kind of hangs in the distance and the game needs some kind of Antialiasing because the staircasing on the sprites is brutal.

For me, this game is one big headache and I'm only able to play it a little at a time, but I am gonna finish it just to say that I have mastered the game of 100 gimmicks.

(I'm actually kinda glad they removed the hotsprings washing minigame, just cause it would be another gimmick on top of a huge gimmicky pile of gimmicks. Gimmick!)

Edit: See, there's so many minigames in this that I already forgot about one. The ship battles, which are kind of neat but essentially come down to a kind of rock paper scissors game where the amount of Peons you have somehow govern your powers and attacks for your ship. All these features are explained once, and so far, I havent found a help menu to explain them again. They pop up right before it needs explaining, then it just assumes you understand all of it and send you on your way without much of a demonstration. Then there's the Peon ball, which is sort of a ticking time bomb that can get bigger the more of something (I really have no idea) you do, and it can also reach critical mass and wipe your entire party for also doing other things (still, I have NO idea why it gets big, or why it blows me up.)

Mugen Souls honestly is a strange but ultimately fun 'wreck' of a game. Everything about the game is over the top, get used to the word 'overwhelming' however Its really a mixed bag of some good elements, and some which plainly don't work. But I'll get to those later in the review, for anyone interested in Mugen Souls - This is a warning, this game was originally shipped with an abhorrent amount of DLC which can break the game completely for the actual story mode, however on the flipside - the DLC is practically required for high level Mugen field exploration so be warned about the hefty DLC that will cost 4 to 6x the cost of the base game if you buy everything, and believe me the the DLC is fairly unbalanced and will more or less ruin the story mode, but if your the typical 'trophy hunter' type of player, then it will be required.

Mugen Souls is based about the undisputed goddess of the universe Chou Chou and her ability to turn practically anything into her peons, she has various different personalities that she can change into to perform these tasks, each one massively different from the next, she is accompanied with many different Heroes and Demon Lords, each with their own quirks, often humorous dialogue to said quirks.

Some of the biggest problems Mugen Souls has, besides the awful DLC is the fact the game can turn into a significant grindfest quite fast if your the trophy hunter type of player, if you don't care about unlocking trophies and just want to experience the story, then don't invest in any of the game breaking DLC, and turn off several of the free DLC which significantly unbalances the storymode to the point of making it a cakewalk. The DLC is more or less designed for the Mugen field which is, honestly the core mechanic of the game allowing 100 random battles vs ships/enemies and slumbering bosses, the problem with the Mugen field is this is where all the game unlocks are earned, and progressing through the field gets extremely difficult without mugen point packs to boost your equipment, sure the early stages of a low bet are easy and you can level up extremely fast (again, breaking the story mode) but upon reaching certain portions of the field monsters become extremely overpowered, this significant imbalance issue was fixed in Mugen Souls Z but it problem for Mugen Souls, and earning points/gold without the packs is slow, the cost of upgrading equipment gets overwhelmingly expensive fast with high level upgrades costing millions per point, bear in mind you can upgrade your equipment to 'overwhelmingly' high levels here.

Another poor mechanic is the G-Castle battles, honestly - they don't work. They tried to copy the Skies of Arcadia method but didn't make the battles interesting enough, the biggest problems is the A.I cheats against the player, your co-pilot will occasionally give you hints/clues about what your opponent is going to do next, and 70% of the time, it'll follow a set pattern, but then occasionally break that pattern so usually the best method to win these g-castles is to cheese the fight by using a certain attack constantly and never deviating.

Finally, while the sale is on I definately recommend the game for the story alone plus its a fairly long so its good value, if you can overlook some of the obviously problems then you'll enjoy Mugen Souls. Also, its really a minor detail but for some people its a deal breaker, Mugen Souls is signficantly censored over the original Japanese version, to the tune of over 100+ CG and a mini-game - the latter isn't really a problem since the min-game itself was fairly boring and didn't really do much except for fan service.

Overall 7.5 // 10

+ Great Story
+ Great Characters/Character Dialogue
+ Great Music
+ Character Customization
+ Moe

- DLC can break story mode
- Excessive DLC that isn't required/but recommended for Mugen Field
- Can be very grindy
- Airship battle mechanics are poor (These battles are better in Z)
- Censorship

Mugen Souls feels like a mix between Neptunia and Disgaea. Combat is similar to Neptunia but the story, art style and character creation/customization seems heavily inspired by Disgaea. If you liked either of the series you may like this one too.

Also, if you want to play the game without ruining balance and power up progress early in the game disable the free DLC packs. You can enable the DLCs at any time but I recommend playing through the game once for the normal ending before doing it.

Edit: Adding some comments regaring the censoring in this game since a lot of critisim seem to be pointed at Ghostlight for it. What has been removed is the bathing minigame (essentially one semi-nude CG per shushu form and playable character, just under 20 CGs in total have been removed).

Considering that the US version on the PS3 also had the bathing minigame removed (published by NISA) there wasn't much chance to see it restored in the PC version regardless of who published it. Instead of blaming Ghostlight I'd question the western fear for cartoon nudity in general...

Disgaea is like the tender childhood friend that married someone else and this game is the person you dated because it looks like her.
I feel empty like my steam wallet.

Bought it because of the Artstyle, same as Disgaea.
No such game as Disgaea on Steam yet, sadly(still waiting q-q)

Anyway, Gameplay is fun, sorta turn based strategy.
Customization is pretty neat, a bunch of options, no a lot actually.
Game looks flashy and keeps boredom away, you cannot be bored playing this, I promise.

I would recommend playing the game without DLC at first, it's kinda gamebreaking, I restarted the game without DLC once I got to use it, it's really boring.

Overall, for this price, if you're an RPG fan, a must buy.

Updated: OneAngryGamer has quoted my review :D
http://blogjob.com/oneangrygamer/2015/10/mugen-souls-steam-censorship-gets-lambasted-by-user-reviews/

""Keep in mind this is the Western Localization Released also known as the Censored Version. As much as Ghostlight wanted to bring the Uncensored version, Steam denied it.
So is this game worth your money? Yes because its at 40% launch and you will receive free DLC and its a LOT of DLC. You can choose to Activate or Deactivate them though its best to deactivate them as the items are kinda groundbreaking. So you get the Based Game and the DLC.""

Updated for DLC Info:
Locked DLC in the DLC Menu are:
Super Weapon Bundle 1: 5Items
Points Bundle 1: 4Items
Super Weapon Bundle 2: 5Items
Points Bundle 2: 4Items
Points Bundle 3: 5Items
Clothing Set Bundle 1: 8Items
Ultimate Unlock Bundle: 4Items
Clothing Set Bundle 2: 7Items

Free Bundle which is already in the based game when purchased: 31Items