Playing the Game
NOISZ, as well as its expansion, NOISZ re:||VERSE, contain elements of visual novels, rhythm games and bullet hell games - though to be more accurate, it's a visual novel with gameplay segments combining rhythm and bullet hell. This page details the rhythm/bullet hell part.
Gameplay
The gameplay of NOISZ can be summed up as "performing to the beat"; as long as the player does everything to the beat and doesn't get hit, everything will be fine. There are three things a player can do other than moving:
- Shot: Mapped to Z on the keyboard by default. This fires an upward laser, and does damage to the boss.
- Shield: Mapped to X on the keyboard by default. This causes the player to shield for 4 beats; for these 4 beats, all blue bullets will be absorbed and will add to combo, and along with blue lasers, will not cause damage or Combo Down. Pressing Shot will cancel Shield.
- Special: Mapped to C on the keyboard by default, this activates a Style's B skill if it requires player activation. For most styles, this is not used. Any style that uses the Special button notes this in its description. All styles that use the Special button also accept Shot+Shield for skill activation.
The aim is to defeat the boss for each song. In NOISZ ARC⌖CODA, Shot, Shield, and Special are their own buttons on the arcade cabinet. NOISZ ARC⌖CODA also has one additional button: Flash, used to change your movement speed.
Combo
Combo is the bread and butter of damage output; higher combo results in higher damage output. Collecting a bullet and shooting to the beat both award one combo each, and collecting several bullets at once will result in combo going up by the same amount. Take note that combo is preserved if the player does nothing; not pressing anything will result in combo staying static, and can be beneficial if the player is unsure of whether they can keep rhythm in a certain section.
The exact formula isn't known, but it depends on several factors: combo, life multiplier, and style multiplier. Your combo is the biggest contributor to damage. At just ~25 combo, you already deal 2x as much damage, and it just increases even further from there. Therefore, keeping combo is key.
- Every life lost takes a bit of power away from you. The damage penalty is usually not too big for purposes of clearing stages; the main reason losing lives is bad is because you lose your combo.
- Each style has its own preset damage modifier. Usually the styles that have weaker style abilities have stronger damage modifier to help it.
- In overflow (including the entirety of Overload charts), the damage formula is different. There is no life multiplier; you deal the same damage at full lives and at one life left.
Getting hit by a bullet or tapping the Shot or Shield button offbeat will result in Combo Down, which reduces combo by a large amount. Combo will be reset to 0 at the beginning of each verse, also reducing damage output accordingly.
There are several combo indicators; the pulsing NOISZ around the player character, the flashing light above the boss HP bar on the bottom are the two most visible indicators.
Songs
The structure of gameplay is a song, broken up into verses; during the song, the player must dodge bullets and lasers aimed at them by the boss associated with the song, while hitting the Shot button to the beat of the song in order to do damage to the boss. To clear a song, the player must deplete the boss' health bar to at least 0.00% in each verse, and survive the full song as cleanly as possible. Failure to do so in every verse will result in the song not being cleared; if the player drains it before the verse ends, any additional damage is considered Overflow damage as a percentage of the boss' full healthbar; for example, reaching 100.00% Overflow damage means twice the boss' full health was done by the end of the verse, and that verse's total Overflow will be saved.
The player has a limited amount of lives too, dependent on Styles and Modules; in most cases, reaching 0 lives will result in damage done being reduced to a very small amount per shot. In some cases, such as Lethal Rate, reaching 0 lives means a Game Over, and Parry Style allows the player to heal themselves.
Each song also has Total Overflow, which is the Overflow of each verse added up; this is relevant for certain scoring and Grades.
Difficulty
There are four difficulties, from easiest to hardest: Easy, Normal, Hard and Overload. Promotional materials for NOISZ re:||VERSE mention a "re:||VENGE" difficulty, though at current, it is not available. The re:||VENGE difficulty is currently intended to be released with NOISZ episode G.
Note that there is also difficulty level, which is a number and thus on a different scale to the difficulty. For example, it is possible for an Easy to have a difficulty level of 6.0, and also for a Hard to have a difficulty level of 5.0; the scale is different for each song.
Overload
Overload has different mechanics than its preceding difficulties. You begin each verse in Overflow (at +0.00% Overflow). Lethal rate is always active on Overload. Grade requirements also vary from those of lower difficulties. All grades have the requirement of the previous grade.
| Grade | Requirement |
|---|---|
| A | Survive the song. (Leaving Overflow, such as through Dark Slayer, does not prevent you from getting an A) |
| AA | Get +600% total Overflow or higher. |
| S | Get +1200% total Overflow or higher. |
| SS | Take no damage at all during the entire song. |
On Overload, all damage is white, unless a specific Style or Module ability allows for red damage. Unlike lower difficulties, taking red damage does not affect whether you can get an S-Rank.
Life Loss
There are two main kinds of damage: red damage and white damage; in general, you get red damage if you get hit when the health bar is less than 0%, and you get white damage if you get hit when the health bar is more than 0% (after Overflow). This means in Overload difficulty, all damage is white.
Losing lives comes with a small damage penalty in pre-Overflow, and reaching 0 lives (on stages without Lethal rate) dramatically reduces your damage output.
So far, the only difference between them is regarding S rank; in most charts, you cannot have red damage if you want to get an S, but white damage is allowed.
Some styles and modules affect damage:
- Parry style: You can heal damage. It is entirely possible to heal up red damage and obtain an S this way.
- Soul Crash style: Soul Crash takes 1 life when activating its Crash Mode.
- Slayer module: All damage you get is red regardless of the health bar.
- Lunatic module: You reset the verse whenever you take damage. Therefore at the end of the song, you are guaranteed not to have any visible damage.
There is a third kind of damage, which only happens when you get hit after the last verse ends. This does not count as either red or white damage, but still nullifies an SS run.
Void bullets (neither red nor blue, but black and white) do not count as damage: they instantly kill you.