The box is large, and the artwork covering the exterior is flashy. Keeping the hefty 88,000 won price tag in mind upon opening the lid, the first thing that caught the eye was the striking Nikke acrylic stands. A fleeting thought crossed the mind that the production quality was quite impressive.

The trouble began right after. Lifting out the acrylic stands revealed yellowish corrugated cardboard crammed inside to keep the contents from shifting. Even the inserts partitioning the box were made of plain, unadorned white paper. For a moment peering into the guts of an official product released to commemorate the 3.5th anniversary, the first impression was somewhat awkward.

The Goddess of Victory: NIKKE board game is crafted by Gembloux Company, specialists in trading card games and board games, utilizing Shift Up's Goddess of Victory: NIKKE IP. Launched in line with the original title's 3.5th anniversary, it marks South Korea's first official board game adaptation, having kicked off pre-orders last April. For the record, Gembloux Company also tackles the Nikke IP with its proprietary TCG Nibel Arena, but this board game is a completely separate beast.

Much like the source material, players step into the boots of commanders taking on the mechanical lifeforms known as Raptures. However, this is not a cooperative joint effort; it is a competitive slugfest where you share the same battlefield while vying to see who can blast away more Raptures.

Laying out the components reveals that the 25 types of acrylic stands are essentially the main event, leaving a handful of cards and a single punch board to round things out. Add in the aforementioned dreary fillers and inserts, and you will definitely find yourself double-checking that price tag.

That said, dismissing the acrylic stands as mere trinkets would be a mistake. They double as actual functional components during gameplay. When playing Nikke skill cards, you rotate the corresponding acrylic stand to indicate an 'exhausted' state, with the rulebook designating the rear view for reloaded states and the front view for exhausted ones. It cleverly reflects whether a Nikke is facing the battlefield or not, which is a neat little mechanic recalling the original game's dance of shooting and taking cover.

The game wraps up in three rounds. Each round rolls out in order: Burst preparation, player actions, Rapture actions, and round cleanup. Before kicking things off, players draft a squad of five Nikkes. If you haven't the slightest clue what kind of synergy to put together, you can simply lift the recommended squads straight out of the manual.

During the Burst preparation phase, you flip over the Burst cards corresponding to the current round. Burst cards are split into stages 1, 2, 3, and a Joker, but you can only flip cards matching the active round, meaning the spread grows by one card as the game progresses. You get two cards laid out in round two, and three in round three. As the rounds march on, your commanding reach expands as well.

Players get a mere three actions per round, and the mandatory action on any given turn boils down to one of two choices: play skill cards or reload all your Nikkes.

You start with a hand of five skill cards and lay them face down beneath the Burst cards. Resolution flows strictly from top to bottom, row by row, culminating in the Burst effect at the end. Cards don't come printed with flat attack values; instead, the card effects themselves generate the damage, meaning the exact cards you pick and the stacking order dictate your raw firepower. That said, laying down a skill card requires the corresponding Nikke to be in a reloaded state.

This is precisely where the necessity of 'reloading' comes to light. Once you play a skill card, that Nikke becomes exhausted, and exhausted Nikke cards can no longer be played. To flip them back up, you have to spend an entire turn purely on reloading. On the flip side, a reload snaps every single exhausted squad member back to their feet simultaneously. Do you pour on more firepower right now, or take a breather to prep for what's next? You are forced to weigh these options before every single one of your three precious turns.

Raptures boast individual attack power and health pools. When a Nikke's attack lands, you pile your colored cubes onto the Rapture card to tally the damage, and once the cubes match its health pool, it goes down in flames. Vacant spots are immediately backfilled with fresh Raptures the moment any player wraps up their turn, meaning the battlefield never stays quiet for long.

This introduces a rather unique mechanic to the game. When a Rapture is destroyed, the player who deals the killing blow claims the Rapture card for points. But does that mean everyone else who chipped in got nothing for their trouble? Far from it. Other players who pitched in with attacks also advance along the experience track based on how many cubes they left on the card.

The experience track is kept entirely separate from the victory point track. As you advance along the track, you will occasionally breeze past item spaces, hitting crossroads where you can activate defense or explosion tokens, or choose between recovery and reloading. At game's end, your final position on this track translates into bonus points.

To sum it up, every single time you target a Rapture, you face a three-pronged choice. Snag the finishing blow for points, or settle for guaranteed experience if you can't seal the deal. That experience lets you scoop up defensive or offensive gear, which ultimately converts into points anyway.

Once all players burn through their three actions, the Rapture phase kicks off. Unmitigated attacks that completely bypass defenses hit first, followed by standard attacks. If a boss is present on the board, its offensive maneuvers are resolved ahead of everything else.

Standard attacks are calculated by pooling the attack values of every single Rapture currently on the field. To counter this, your Nikkes' collective defense is calculated by summing three things: the defense values printed on all Burst cards regardless of orientation, the defense from skill cards played that round, and any active defense tokens. If your defense falls short of the incoming onslaught, you take penalty tokens equal to the deficit.

What deserves attention here is that one of the main pillars of your defense is literally 'the skill cards played in the current round.' Failing to lay down cards doesn't just mean you miss out on attacking; it leaves your defenses completely exposed.

One more thing: during the round cleanup phase, the player with the current highest score takes the starting player token for the next round. It sounds like a front-runner's privilege, but in reality, it leans closer to a curse. Since the player holding the lead token attacks Raptures first to stack cubes, trailing players can easily swoop in with finishing blows to steal away the points. It's a system where forging ahead essentially works for everyone else's benefit, though it isn't a total loss thanks to the aforementioned experience track cushioning the blow.

Running a two-player match, we stuck strictly to the manual's recommended squads. The squad chosen was an 'exhaustion-enhanced squad' comprising Neon, Maid: Agent Bunny, Helm: Aquamarine, Maiden: Rosanna, and Rapi. The opposing side rolled with a 'cumulative damage squad' featuring Tia, Anis, Nayuta, Hongren, Red Hood, and Nonsense Red. From setup to downing the boss, it clocked in at just over an hour.

Yet, despite deliberately picking a squad touted for utilizing exhaustion, the writer rarely ever found any Nikkes getting exhausted. Neon was the sole reason why. Skill cards indicate their Burst stage, restricting round-one plays strictly to Stage 1 Burst cards. Neon was the only Stage 1 Nikke in the squad, leaving zero room for alternative choices early on.

Curiously enough, Neon's skill card packed an effect that instantly executes up to three Raptures sitting at 1 HP, bundled together with a reload effect. Since the card reloads itself the moment it gets played, there was zero need to waste an entire turn purely on reloading. While opposing Nikkes grew tired one by one and turned to stare blankly at their commanders, the writer's squad kept standing tall with their backs proudly turned to the enemy.

Round one thus went swimmingly. The trouble started right after. Each Nikke only brings two skill cards to the table. Depending on the exact mix of cards drawn into your hand of five, your mobility options for that round get strictly locked in. By rounds two and three, where the Burst card count climbs to two or three and combos are supposed to pop off, the exact skill cards needed simply refused to show up in hand. The stage was set to rain down absolute devastation, yet there was nothing left in the chamber to fire.

Across the table, the exact opposite played out. Late in the game, the opponent's entire roster of Nikkes burned out, turning all their acrylic stands around to face this side. With not a single Nikke left capable of laying down skill cards, their only option on those turns was to reload. Meanwhile, Raptures kept spawning relentlessly, and the Rapture phases marched forward on schedule. Most importantly, playing fewer skill cards that round meant their defense cratered, and wasting one of your precious three turns on maintenance meant sacrificing both points and protection in one fell swoop.

In hindsight, it was like witnessing both faces of the coin in a single match. The opponent stalled out because every single Nikke burned out, whereas the writer hit a wall because, although the squad never exhausted, the hand of cards couldn't be put to proper use. Both sides found their momentum choked off from completely opposite ends while dealing with the exact same three-turn limit.

The final result was a razor-thin victory for the writer. Given how narrow the point spread was, it wouldn't be much of a stretch to say that the single turn the opponent spent on reloading decided the entire match.

The true letdown came at the very end. The boss attack triggers exclusively in round three, serving as the dramatic climax of the experience.

The boss faced this time around was Chatterbox. Occupying the boss slot while spanning three horizontal spaces across the board, it lacked any particularly troublesome abilities and was swept away in the blink of an eye. It felt rather anticlimactic.

Looking back, there was a structural reason for this. Round three is the exact moment when the maximum number of Burst cards are laid out and firepower hits its absolute zenith. Under such conditions, a massive target spanning three horizontal squares turns into sitting duck prime for area-of-effect punishment. The section meant to serve as the grand finale inadvertently devolved into the easiest leg of the journey.

This stings even more considering Chatterbox is explicitly recommended as the introductory boss. If a slot is meticulously designed for newcomers' first encounter, that exact moment dictates their initial impression. That said, the box packs a total of six distinct bosses featuring unique effects and patterns, leaving open the possibility that pulling a different adversary out of the box would flip the impression entirely.

The most regrettable aspect of this board game is the total absence of narrative. The box contains zero campaigns, scenarios, or lore text explaining the world setting. Someone completely unfamiliar with Nikke opening this box would remain entirely in the dark about humanity losing the surface or what a Nikke even is. The characters printed on the acrylic stands serve as practically the sole narrative touchpoint. Without those stands, the experience would feel infinitely more barren.

While it captures the original game's shooting mechanics nicely, its other great strength—the story—is entirely absent from the board game format. In that regard, it's tough to claim it captures every single facet of the Nikke IP.

Even so, anyone who has touched the source material will spot plenty of recognizable nods. The sensation of drafting squads and timing your Burst sequences, alongside the rhythm of shooting and reloading, ring true. Above all, the process of rotating those acrylic stands to decide which Nikke takes the field and when delivers a surprisingly convincing sensation of stepping into a commander's shoes.

To wrap things up, let's break down who this title is actually for. First off, fans of the original work will find it well worth a recommendation. Getting your hands on 25 different acrylic stands carries inherent meaning alone, and the familiar sensation of assembling squads and triggering Bursts springs back to life right on your tabletop. How you swallow the 88,000 won price tag ultimately depends on how you value those acrylic stands.

For board gamers completely blind to Nikke, verdicts will likely split. The strategic depth of shifting which Nikkes you can deploy and what firepower you can unleash each round, adapting your tactics accordingly, is undeniably fun. However, the sparse components relative to the price tag will likely make buyers hesitate. You also have to factor in that playing this requires spreading Nikke's distinct artwork out across a table in front of multiple people, meaning personal tastes in art might dictate whether the game ever gets unboxed at all.

Just as a quick addendum: the writer tackled this as a two-player affair, but a strong hunch suggests filling the player count all the way up to four would make it considerably more enjoyable. Seeing an even wider array of Nikkes take the field, watching the combos born from differing squad combinations collide, and turning the score chase into a cutthroat scramble would surely cook up a much more thrilling showdown.