Part 44: CPU Black Heart

Ugh, last time on Hyperdimension Neptunia stupid Neptune got her stupid memories back I guess. Now on Hyperdimension Neptunia…

Hey, you said you wouldn’t do this.
I said nothing of the sort.

LWE Feinne on Neptunia Game Mechanics: Recruiting Black Heart Edition
Okay, so we’re recruiting a goddess today. So let’s talk about the chain of events that lets us do that. Once we have the Quartet Arms, we are able to see an event “The Last Battle?!” in Lowee. We need to select this event and then carefully NOT go to it. At this point we’ll see the three events where the other CPUs tell us to get fucked appear. This in turn will allow us to get Neptune’s memories back, after which point we are finally read to recruit the other three CPUs.

So, in order to do this we need to, in each of their lands, trigger an event called ‘Versus <Goddess Name>’. This will happen when that land has approximately 40% of total shares. Lastation is pretty easy, there are several low level Boss Conquest quests in small dungeons. Don’t both too much with higher level quests, they all give similar changes in shares. If you haven’t done some of the Lastation quests this is a really great time to do them and get the processor parts from the hidden chests. Even if you’re starting from scratch this really shouldn’t take more than a good half hour or so, just get good at skipping animations and using Monster Call to cut down on encounters.

Once Versus Black Heart appears, it’s time to assess your readiness for the fight. You want to be in the high 40s to low 50s ideally, because this is a one on one fight of Neptune versus Black Heart. The first step is to turn things to Easy, because otherwise you really need to probably grind up into the mid fifties and that’s a pain. Easy, as I noted a bit ago, makes both sides do less damage. Otherwise you will start running into some real issues from the massive damage she can dish out. Normal Nep Bull should be good enough to get you through things, but you might want to watch your health and switch to a better one if it looks like it’ll get triggered next turn. Now let’s get to the pre-show.

I’m pretty sure you agreed not to be a sore loser.

Video- “Duel”

Watch

I dunno, but we gotta try. If it still doesn’t work, then we’ll just bop her on the head like you did to me!
Are you still sour about that?
I know it was kinda my bad, but… Ugh, I can’t believe I lost!

I agreed to no such thing. And even if I did, you dragged me out of the crepe shop to do this stupid thing in front of Blanc, that wasn’t cool. I, I totally wasn’t cool with just hanging out with you, jerk.



Y’know, I can tell you actually are happy to see me. Histy told me it’s best to come talk with you alone.
Don’t waste my time. Just answer the question I asked. What is it? What do you want?
I wanna defeat Arfoire. I need your help! This isn’t the time for us to be all ‘grr!’ at each other. It’s bigger than us!
Us…? You remember now? This is surprising. I thought you’d be more depressed and whiny.
I’m over it.
That’s nice. I’m still not gonna help. I’ll get her on my own, if it comes down to it.
I don’t have any desire to help you, nor do I need to. Next time you come here, I’ll be in Celestia. I hope.
We should buddy up and help each other! Let’s go get Arfoire arm-in-arm. It’ll be really fun.

Sure. I gotcha.



I like aiming for future-proof perfection. We’re not the same. I’ll do this my way. Go ask someone dumb enough to agree!
I heard you’re resigning as a goddess. So what’s the rush? You got some spare time since you’re unemployed, right?
Don’t you think you’re the one lacking a sense of urgency, quittin’ like this?
I’ve made my decision. I’m not stepping down because I want to ‘quit!’
…It’s best I don’t interfere with the imperfect human world. For Lastation… and myself.
Ugh. You’re pretty committed, huh? Look, just gimme a chance. What can I do to convince you?
…
Okay. I guess I can give you a chance. I’ll help you if you can defeat me.
If I win, this talk is over. I’ll go to Celestia as planned. Whaddaya say?
All righty, deal!

I still don’t see how you beat me.



I’m not. I realized that girl with the cleavage and plug suit was you when I got my memory back.
That’s right. You remember now. Then… I won’t have to go easy on you, right?
Not like you would if you could, but you should!

Maybe I’m just awesome.

Video- “Versus Black Heart”

LONG

Boss Battle: Versus Black Heart
So the actual fight now. First of all the fight is super long, she’s got lots of health and even on Easy hits hard enough that you want to Defend consistently. She starts out with simple stuff like Tricolor Order for the first section of her health. Throw about half of your AP at her each turn, watching the Guard meter so as to time your Breaks to maximum effect. You actually probably want to wait out the Break so that she’s back to normal when her turn comes around, because she’ll wreck you even harder on her turn if she’s still in Break status. She’ll move on to some more powerful attacks increasingly commonly as her health drops, but you’ll really know things have started once she does her first Infinite Slash. From this point on she’ll consistently do either an Infinite Slash or Volcano Drive every turn, sometimes even both. If you’re not Defending these attacks will probably wreck you, especially if you started the turn relatively low. Note that if she does Infinite Slash first she won’t do a second attack, but she’s totally allowed to cheat and do it second. Don’t take any risks at this point, because if you die you’re probably out twenty minutes of fighting her. Just play it slow and steady until she falls.

Maybe you’re just a cheap jerk.



I’m not that irresponsible, unlike you.
…Fine, I guess it can’t be helped. I’ll assist you, but only until we stop Arfoire.

LWE Feinne on Neptunia Mechanics:
So now we have Black Heart!



Black Heart uses one handed swords, and as I’ve noted is the most balanced of the CPUs. She has good magic stats and a lot of magic-based gun attacks, with a full array of strong specials available on that front. She’s also got good normal attacks, and most of her specials do a lot of hits. I build her combos a lot like Neptune’s, since it’s convenient for me to do so. It’s designed to open with a Triangle combo into her powerful transform attack, Splendid and Naughty. Unlike Neptune, I actually have it set up with a Switch as the Cross (Volcano Drive in this case) because it’s totally viable to just spam S and N (since it’s a lot of hits, unlike Neptune’s good Transform). I of course also have Tricolor Order, her cheap Combo Link, on Circle so I can transition to the Circle combo series. I’ve got that set up to be able to switch like Neptune with a Circlex2 Trianglex2 into a Lace Ribbon Dance switch as well as throw out her ultimate, Infinite Slash, or transition into a Cross combo and move to magic damage. Black Heart is able to do all sorts of shit so building her for versatility is so key. Oh yeah, and as to the vote. We were in fact voting for which variant of her costuming we were going to use. Vanilla, the standard Black Heart, won. Let’s see the other two.





I’ll have some bonus videos to show her off where I’ll be using those, so don’t feel too bad if you prefer one of the others. Black Heart’s dungeon skill is Monster Call, probably the least useful of the three sadly. So once you recruit Black Heart, you’ll get a whole bunch of scenes available (we’ll see those next time). She starts at level 60, and I’d suggest you have her replace IF like right away because she’s infinitely better.

Oh well, at least Next Time on Hyperdimension Neptunia: Noire. An episode about me! Finally!