Spend $10 on the Humble Weekly Bundle: Games from Japan for these 3 games

Video game bundles are great. Know what? Let’s take this a step further, because they’re better than Steam sales. I’ll take a decent Humble Weekly Bundle over a Steam Summer Sale any day. There, I said it. We all know it’s true, because the markdowns are so incredible. Plus, with a bundle you know you’re getting a spread of games suited to your specific interests.

Like this week’s Humble Weekly Bundle: Games from Japan. It runs until August 6, and it’s pretty great for people like us. You could get by only kicking in a dollar, and beating the average is nice, but the real deal comes when you meet a certain monetary objective to get the kind of game that normally isn’t in a bundle. In this week’s case, you want to go ahead and spend that $10, and I’m going to show you the three reasons why.

The first is 99 Spirits, which is honestly a lackluster place to start. After all, you can get it with a $1 investment. Why spend $10? Well, that is the usual price for the standard edition, but the one included in the Humble Weekly Bundle isn’t. It’s the normally-$19.99 edition that includes an art book and soundtrack. See, that makes it better.

That, and the knowledge that 99 Spirits is a legitimately good strategy game. It requires you to name opponents, possessed objects, before you can attack them. The word puzzles and strategic situations challenge your mind in multiple manners, and that’s great.

The second reason is Gurumin. You like Nihon Falcom games, right? Ys, The Legend of Heroes and Brandish were awesome. But, what if the developer made what was essentially their take on a 3D The Legend of Zelda game? Hey, that’s pretty much what Gurumin is!

Gurumin is one of the greatest games on the PSP, and is definitely the best portable title starring a cute girl with a drill. (Sorry, Drill Dozer!) You have to spend $10 on this bundle and help Parin save adorable monsters from Phantoms. I mean, you’d be paying $9.99 for this game alone anyway on Steam!

But the biggest and best reason to get the Humble Weekly Bundle: Games from Japan is Hyperdimension Neptunia Re;Birth 1. Remember earlier, how I went on about Steam sales? The lowest Re;Birth 1 has ever been is $14.99, and that was a special launch week promotion that cut the $29.99 price in half. It’s the $10 tier reward in this bundle, meaning even if you only grab it for this one game, you’re ahead of the game. Those other six titles? They’re backlog fodder.

And I know, you may have heard stories about Hyperdimension Neptunia. Most of them are probably true. The series is rife with fanservice, both the kind that involves nearly-naked women and pandering to the audience with constant gaming references. The first time around, Hyperdimension Neptunia‘s gameplay wasn’t even that good. While Hyperdimension Neptunia Re;Birth doesn’t do much to address the fanservice issue, it greatly improves the battle system and dungeon crawling, and offers a larger and improved story to boot.

Oh, right. There’s also that thing where buying any Humble Bundle has a chance of making the world a better place. Especially since this time, the Humble Weekly Bundle is benefiting Charity: Water and Direct Relief, making sure people have clean water to drink and access to medical relief.

Anyways, you should probably go buy yourself a copy of this week’s Humble Weekly Bundle. As you can probably tell, I’m all for going in at the $10 tier, but you’ll still have fun if you only kick in $1.