Platform: PS Vita

Developer: Compile Heart

Publisher: Idea Factory International

Rated: T

Release Date: March 29, 2016

A review copy has been sent by Idea Factory International

Trillion: God of Destitution is the first game to come out in the Makai Ichiban Kan series. These games, while unrelated, are created by a new team made by Idea Factory with the director of this team being Masahiro Yamamoto. If you don’t know about Masashiro by name, that’s understandable, but the main thing is that he has a history of working on Disgaea. Just like in Disgaea, Trillion is full of overly large numbers with trillion being at the very center of it.

Trillion, is the God of Destruction. Whenever it wakes, destruction and despair are a guarantee, as it will eat and eat and eat until it goes back to sleep only to start the cycle all over again. This time Trillion has set his sights on your home, the Underworld. Of course, because you’re its leader it’s your job to stop it. However, every country needs its leader alive in a time of crisis; so your brother goes in your stead. On your way to the battlefield, he is killed by Trillion with his last words asking you to take care of his line of Overlords, his daughters. In a fit of rage, you take on Trillion yourself… And die immediately. Later, a scientist by the name of Faust brings you back to life, but this comes with a price: you are to be kept alive until Trillion’s defeat. When Trillion is defeated, your soul will belong to her. With you in your new powerless state, leading an army that isn’t strong enough, the very Overlords you were meant to protect are going to be sent out to the front lines due to their raw talent. But, Trillion has gone back to sleep so during this time it’s up to you to hone their skills. Not all of them will fight Trillion at once, oh no. You will only be able to train one Overlord at a time.

You have a limited time to train until Trillion reawakens, so that means it is time to train your butt off. With training being the main component of this game, the game is much more of a raising simulator than it is a RPG. The only reason I say that is because the main component of the game are these training sessions. There are six different points you can gain with six different training sessions that will help accumulate these points. All of the different sessions will give you points in all 6 areas, but will mainly concentrate on one type of point. These sessions have random outcomes ranging from poor to excellent, with two additional steps between. The higher the outcome the higher the points you will get. Through very slim chances, you can obtain Fever Time and a Double-Up Chance. Fever Time will allow you to get excellent results for seven days and Double-Up Chance will multiply the points you obtain by the multiplier you receive from the slot machine. It’s also entirely possible where after you’ve trained, an event will happen which will either give you bonus points or a skill. Keep in mind that you just can’t train everyday because if you do, you’ll run the risk of getting an injury which will not allow your Overlord to train for a certain amount of time.

There are other ways for you to spend days such as resting to restore 50% of your fatigue. Optimally, what should be done on off-days is spending time with the Overlord you’re training. Sure, this doesn’t make her as well rested as she should be, but it does increase a very important stat in this game: affection. Affection is the first stat to go when in battle, meaning any damage your Overlord will face or any MP used will drain affection before anything else. Another way to spend the day is to ask your citizens for your support and raise funds to buy more and better items.

If you’d like, you can test your skills in the Valley of Swords. This area of the game is actually rouge-like, so the floor is entirely randomized. Every enemy you defeat will give you a certain amount of points and there is a chance to get money and better equipment. You can’t stay down here for long because when you die or take more than 120 turns, you fail and lose everything. Just think of it as training before you go train because the day doesn’t actually end when you do this.

The points your Overlord gathers doesn’t automatically level up anything. Instead, it’s just a large sum of points that has to be allocated to increase your stats, to learn new passive skills, or active skills that you can use for battle. Ultimately, you should allocate these points wisely because taking on Trillion is no easy task and growing stats that don’t need to be grown and learning skills that are completely unnecessary will only get you killed. Luckily, if you are killed, all is not actually lost as when you do die, the next Overlord will have gotten all of the points the previously Overlord had gotten. This will allow you to try out a completely different strategy or you can just keep the previous strategy in place. Just note that the girls aren’t blank slates as they have their specialties in some stats so it’s best to grow what they’re good at and not worry about what they’re bad at.

Once your timer runs out, it will be time to test your wits against Trillion once more. Thankfully, the fights against Trillion are easy to figure out as the game will literally tell you where and when he’s going to attack. So if you’re prepared enough, dodging his attacks and dealing damage becomes an easy enough task. The problem here is that because Trillion has a trillion HP, if you allocated your points poorly you’re just wasting your time and not doing enough damage. If you haven’t been raising your affection either, you may run into a problem because when the affection bar reaches zero, your Overlord will not retreat from battle. Keep in mind that Trillion is not stationary either, as you fight him he’s making his way through the underworld so if you die in battle or he makes it past your starting point, it’s game over. When your Overlord dies in battle against Trillion they are dead for good. All equipment on them is lost but, as said before, all experience points are carried over to the next Overlord so you don’t necessarily have to start from square one again. Before they die, however, they’re allowed to put all of their might into one final finishing move which can either let you train longer, seal one of Trillions body parts so he can’t use a move that used that part anymore, and more.

Despite this game taking place in the Underworld, nobody in the game is a lying, deceitful cheat. Instead, these characters and their motifs are based off of the seven deadly sins. While you only get a glimpse of their personalities as the main story unfolds, you get to see what they’re really like when you interact and spend time with them. For example, Mammon is the symbol of Greed and her favorite gift is a key that can open any lock. Granted, to anyone that sounds like bad news, but after talking to her, she’s nothing more than an Underworld-ly version of Robin Hood because while she is a treasure hunter, she always gives her findings to the less fortunate. The only real issue I have is with Zealous, our main character. Believe me when I say that I understand that he just lost his brother, his own life, his dimension is literally being eaten away, and that he has to send his sisters and nieces to their potential deaths, but the constant mopey attitude he has is honestly pretty annoying. Like I said, he has every right in the world to feel this way, but as a leader he can’t be this way throughout the story. It just doesn’t work.

At the end of the day, as an RPG, Trillion isn’t very good. It’s just not fun to play at all. Unless you know precisely what you’re going to be doing you aren’t going to be doing that much damage and, in the end, it’ll feel like everything you’ve trained for was just a waste of time and effort. On the other side of things, as a raising simulator, it’s at least very competent and with multiple endings you’ll at least be given a reason to keep coming back if you so choose.

6.5 /10

+ Raising Sim elements are good

+/- The affection system makes HP/MP bars useless if you do it right

-The actual battles are pretty boring once