Literal Split Personality, in action.
The next Compile Heart game developed for PS3 under the direction of Keiji "Shin" Inafune (no, not that one).The plot revolves around Chou Chou, a self-proclaimed god who wishes for world domination.
It was released in Japan on March 22, 2012, and by NIS America in Europe on September 28th, 2012 and in the U.S. on October 16th, 2012.
Not to be confused with M.U.G.E.N (though somebody might put this game's characters in there if they haven't already).
A sequel was released in 2014, entitled "Mugen Souls Z" detailing the adventures of Syrma, who wants to become the "Ultimate God" once again with the help of Nao and Chou Chou. In 2015, the first game was ported to PC, and the sequel followed in 2016. Another port of the first game, this time for Nintendo Switch, was released in 2023; this version was not only faithful to the original Japanese release, it included all of the extra content that was originally DLC.
Tropes Associated with the first game, Attouteki Yuugi Mugen Souls:
- Absurdly High Level Cap: 9999 is the highest level you can obtain in this game.
- AI Is A Crap Shoot: The original purpose of the Dimensional God was to be a Weather-Control Machine, however a corruption from a virus caused it to attack everything on sight.
- Amnesiac God: Chou Chou has no idea who she is other than knowing that she's a god.
- Armour Piercing Attack: The G-Castle's Pierce attack ignores all shields and attack absorption.
- Bittersweet Ending: The Normal Ending. Chou-Chou abandons her peons in order to destroy Vorgis for good. While a post-credits scene shows they eventually found her somewhere at the edge of the universe and can speak with her, she is unable to come back with them. Thankfully, it seems this ending isn't canon.
- Bowdlerize:
- NISA decided to remove a mini-game that has controversial elements in it to avoid the AO ESRB rating (as discussed by a mod
). - The PC port was going to avert this until Ghostlight was instructed by Steam that they could not keep the mini-game. The Steam port, however, did avert this as part of "faithfully adapting the content of the Japanese original".
- NISA decided to remove a mini-game that has controversial elements in it to avoid the AO ESRB rating (as discussed by a mod
- Calling Your Attacks: A variation with Soul. When casting a spell, he'll say "Spell" and then just say whatever it does. Such as "Spell! That magically teleports me safely to the castle!" Or "Spell! That heals all wounds in a flash of light!".
- Censor Steam: Necessary for the various bath scenes, and in the Japanese version, a small extra mechanic to the hot spring minigame.
- Character Customization: Not only are you able to create different characters, you can customize the clothing of everyone in the playable party, including the main characters.
- Color-Coded Elements:
- Cool Ship: The G-castle.
- Crush Blush: Ryuto gets this all the time when someone pokes fun at his crush on Chou-Chou.
- Daddy's Little Villain: Subverted, Vorgis is NOT Belleria's father after all, and she isn't much of a villain.
- Defeat Means Friendship: Every single boss fight ends with Chou-Chou having the defeated person as their slave.
- Department of Redundancy Department: The 7th World is called "Earthen Soil World". Gee, might as well say "Planet Planet Planet".
- Disc-One Nuke:
- It's pretty easy to wander into the Mugen Field at early levels, get into a random ship battle and get a huge EXP bonus, propelling your party forward 20 levels or more, pretty much steamrolling the rest of the main story for a time. Generally that could be bad, but in a game where you can increase the level way higher than you should, it's a pretty good thing.
- The equipment in some of the DLC packs are endgame level in terms of power and can be used as soon as you buy the DLC which can make the early levels a complete cakewalk. The Steam version of the game goes even further as it comes with some of said DLC packed into the base game.
- Does This Remind You of Anything?:
- Beat the clones of your party members in the post-game of the Golden Ending (good luck with that by the way) and look at the CG picture. That is all.
- Also, the CG images that show up whenever someone goes into Syrmas coffin.
- Duel Boss: Chou-Chou has a one-on-one match with Belleria.
- Elemental Rock-Paper-Scissors: Personalities in Mugen Souls act as elements, and have corresponding strengths and weaknesses. Incompatible personalities will reduce the power of team attacks, adding a certain degree of strategy to party formation.
- Encounter Repellant: Warding Powder
- Epic Fail: In-Universe, Altis failed so hard at being a demon that she was reincarnated as an angel instead.
- Expy:
- Chou-Chou's true form really looks like Goddess Madoka albeit with more...filling.
- Ryuto has the same look, temperance, and even has the same English VA as Almaz, from Disgaea 3.
- Syrma has the same personality and English VA as Plutia.
- Reu is a young child who has a surprising amount of energy and strength just like Peashy.
- Forgotten Friend, New Foe: Belleria is Chou Chou's first friend and she forgot all about it.
- Guide Dang It!: Getting the True Ending in typical Compile Heart fashion. Granted, they do give you some ideas on how to get it after getting the Normal End, but figuring out what the threshold is is up to you. It requires 20% average charm level and at least 19% on all personalities.
- Giving Someone the Pointer Finger: Chou-Chou loves doing this all the time. To a lesser extent, so does Altis.
- Happiness in Slavery: Ryuto. To the max. This guy will never stop serving Chou-Chou if he can help it. Admittedly, Chou-Chou isn't a particularly harsh master... Most of the time...
- Hates Being Alone: Chou-Chou. It's the reason she created her world in the first place. She became even lonelier after realizing that she was only an observer of the world she made, not a participant.
- Hoist by His Own Petard: Go ahead, go overload that Peon Ball. We'll wait to see your reaction.
- Hot Springs Episode:
- Brings back the good ol' fashion minigames from Record of Agarest War 2
- Unusual for Compile Heart, this happens at the beginning of the game.
- Informed Ability: Chou Chou Sadistic personality is actually not a real sadistic in fact she's more like of an arrogant queen, a real sadistic would be her Terse personality who shows absolute zero compassion to others and even managed to save Shirogane by torturing him so much that it excites him. NISA later confirmed they would make significant changes to the character in order to make her more sadistic to a western audience.
- Knight of Cerebus: Vorgis.
- Launcher Move: Some skills enable you to launch enemies up in the air.
- Lethal Lava Land: Fire World is a place covered in hot molten rocks.
- Level Grinding: Say hello to the Mugen Field.
- Literal Split Personality: Chou-Chou Infinite has split herself up into seven different personalities: Ditz, Hyper, Graceful, Terse, Sadistic, Masochist, and Bipolar.
- Marshmallow Hell:
- Never shown on-screen, but it's implied Chou-Chou ran face-first into Marina's chest when they first met.
- In the ending, Belleria is hanging out at Chou-Chou's cleavage, who's now grown HUGE.
- Monty Haul: If you download the DLC; it's a Compile Heart tradition after all.
- Mundane Utility: The main purpose for the shampurus apart from being servants or live ammunition, is to be used as living soap. They start to foam up when they get wet, and temporarily shrink in size when used in baths.
- Nose Bleed: Ryuto makes one at the beginning of the game when he sees Chou-Chou and Altis naked in the bath. In fact, he gets these a lot.
- One-Hit Kill:
- The Death status effect will instantly kill anyone who is inflicted by it regardless of their health.
- Small Crystals with the Enemy Attacks Inflict Death effect will allow enemies to score a kill no matter how many Death resistance you have.
- One-Winged Angel: Vorgis gets a second form when he eats Belleria's gemstone to fuse with her to become a God of Destruction.
- Person of Mass Destruction: Chou-Chou, the protagonist, is able to literally drop an Energy Ball the size of a freaking galaxy!
- Personality Powers: Each of the 8 personalities have a corresponding element assigned to them.
- Ego - Non-Elemental
- Bipolar - Dishing Out Dirt
- Sadist - Playing with Fire
- Masochist - Making a Splash for physical attacks, and An Ice Person for magical attacks
- Hyper - Blow You Away
- Ditz - Light 'em Up
- Terse - Casting a Shadow
- Graceful - Shock and Awe
- Pinball Projectile:
- Turning on Blast Off allows certain attack skills to launch enemies to bounce people, creatures and crystals around just like playing a game of pool. The amount of Blast Off points determines how far the target will go, and can be increased by using offensive skills to attack. Hitting an enemy before entering battle to trigger an Encounter Attack will increase the initial amount of Blast Off points from 200 to 300. Getting caught from the back by enemies will decrease your Blast Off points to 100. This is the only method for all characters without Moe Kill or Captivate abilities to break crystals. Enemies can even use Blast Off against you to deal powerful knockbacks in later parts of the games.
- You can enter Fever Mode by moe killing or captivating the small crystals, if you target the blue crystal balls that are above you by launching an enemy with a Blast Off skill that contains Float. The flying enemy will be mercilessly knocked around by the balls, and you can earn large sums of money depending on the number of times you have launched your foes into the crystals and the damage limit of Triple Counter Stop / Damage Carnival.
- Pragmatic Adaptation: Nippon Ichi made changes to the original US versions of the game, such as removing the extremely lewd bathing minigame in its entirety.
- Sequel Hook: The game ends with Chou-Chou declaring her new ambition to rule the entire universe. And Altis still wishes to become a demon even after being promoted into an even higher rank Angel.
- Shout-Out: Lots.
- The trailer ends with a Peon Ball. The size of a Galaxy. That does 8.9 billion damage.
- In Z, after a while an NPC named Jason who is wearing a hockey mask appears.
- One of the twin swords you can can use is named Amaterasu after the sun goddess and uses a similar colour scheme.
- Spell My Name With An S: Even the website and the game can't seem to agree whether it's Shu-Shu or Chou-Chou. However, the official translation is the latter, and it should be noted that it's pronounced "Shu Shu" either way.
- Sphere of Destruction:
- A purple one appears when Alys finishes posing on the concert stage.
- The effect of Dees' Catastrophe Magnum causes a green one, when the beam hits its mark.
- The impact of a derpy anthropomorphic wolf dummy causes an orange one when it drops from an irregular "Magical Sphere" Marina made in her special attack.
-
Spiritual Successor: It's basically a Hyperdimension Neptunia game. Of course Nippon Ichi's American branch is publishing it overseas... - Tactical Rock–Paper–Scissors: How the ship-to-ship combat works in this game.
- Theme Music Powerup: When entering Fever Mode, you are treated to the game's themesong overriding the battle theme for as long as the Fever Mode lasts.
- Three-Strike Combo: When a character equipped with gloves, they will punch their target three times. When using Dual Wielding weapons, they will strike twice every time they attack.
- The Starscream: Vorgis to Belleria.
- Unknown Rival: Well, more like "unacknowledged rival". Alys thinks she's Chou-Chou's rival, and while Chou-Chou does pity her, she knows that she is infinitely superior.
- What Happened to the Mouse?: You never do get to actually visit/conquer Soil World. While it is freed from Vorgis' stomach in both endings, Chou-Chou and company never actually go there in the story or the postgame.
- Word Salad Title: If you must know, the literal translation of this game is "Overwhelming Game Infinite Souls".
- You Are Not Alone: The group gives Chou-Chou this treatment when she recalls how lonely she was as a god.
Tropes Associated with the second game, Mugen Souls Z
- Attack of the 50-Foot Whatever: Peon Ball is replaced with Ultimate Soul, which summons a Chou Chou whose size varies based on Syrma's charm levels.
- Bittersweet Ending: The Normal ending. Chou-Chou and the rest escape the final battle between Awakened Tioni and Belleria and the two manage to survive their battle, but the 12 worlds were destroyed in the aftermath and the two are in a deep sleep for an undetermined amount of time, Chou-Chou is also stuck in her chibi form for the foreseeable future.
- Breaking the Fourth Wall: After defeating Fake Ace Bellaria asks the player if they would want a reward for beating all of the clone characters.
- Covered in Gunge: Victims caught in Syrama's coffin will get covered with purple ooze and have their powers drained.
- Dark Is Not Evil: The Renegade Shampurus or Belleria's shampurus in the first game may be a demonic version of the regular shampurus with a slasher smile. They are actually quite friendly, rather than being malicious or mischievous that their appearance leads us to believe.
- Demoted to Extra: Chou-Chou loses her powers and gets shrunk down to a tiny chibi form in the beginning, handing the playable character status to Syrma.
- Femme Fatalons: Syrama's coffin forms two liquid clawed hands that pull its victims into it. When captivating enemies, the claws will reach out in a 360 degree motion, dragging them into the coffin. After learning Ultimate Snatch, Syrama can use it to grab flying chests.
- Fetch Quest: Many of the Planet Spots require this; instead of asking the player for enough money to buy an item (as in the first game), they now ask for the item directly.
- Flanderization: Zigzagged. Some characters' personality traits are downplayed (such as Alys losing much of her Valley Girl speak), while others are exaggerated (such as Marina's clumsiness).
- Fun Size: Chou-Chou gets shrunk down after losing her powers because of Syrma's coffin malfunctioning.
- Guest-Star Party Member: Belleria is this, if you're locked into the normal ending, only being in the party for the Ivory World Arc, she's immediately removed from post game afterwards.
- I'm Taking Her Home with Me!: While Reu and Fake Reu are playing together Tsukika askes Shirogane if she can take Fake Reu with her.Tsukika: Um... Mister Shirogane...?Shirogane: No.Tsukika: I-I didn't say anything yet!Shirogane: You want to take the other one with us. No way.Shirogane: One is enough of a handful already. There's no way we can handle two.Tsukika: I-I'll take care of them both. I'll make sure to feed her, and walk her every day...!
- Hopeless Boss Fight:
- When Nao and Syrma fight together for the first time, they suffer an overwhelming defeat from Chou Chou and Ryuto.
- The first boss fight against Ace. It is impossible to beat him even in New Game Plus, as he will hog the invincibility crystal and you can't knock him away because the Blast Off mechanic isn't available at the beginning of the game. The only way to end the battle is to wait until the round counter runs out.
- Late-Arrival Spoiler: The game is a direct sequel, so this is to be expected. For starters, anything regarding Belleria.
- Permanently Missable Content: The twelve worlds are destroyed in the Normal Ending, denying the player access to anything except the G-Castle, Mugen Field and the option to start New Game Plus.
- Weapon Wields You: One of the Ultimate Gods is a pair of swords. The swords take control of Nao once she touches it, forcing her to turn against her allies. Once the group beats the curse out of her, the blades are stuck in her hands like glue. The swords finally separate from Nao after she gets pushed into the coffin and gets to keep it as her legendary weapon.
- Western Zodiac: The theme for the twelve worlds.
- Yin-Yang Clash: Belleria and Tioni the two goddesses of destruction end up destroying the 12 worlds when the two clash into each other in their true forms in the normal ending.
