Recent reviews by Link

What should I say. This game is not like the other spinoffs of the Neptunia series. It's a JRPG with Visual Novel style story telling - just like the main series games.

The most obvious one is that all the characters not related to Planeptune are absent - this means no Noire, no Vert, no Blanc.
However seeing that the game includes the SEGA Hard Girls who represent the SEGA consoles it makes sense in a way.

As a player you move through multiple eras of the SEGA console history - each era having one goddess from the Neptunia series and one SEGA Hard Girl. In my opinion this way of telling the story works great.
And well: IF as a main character works perfectly well. She got a new sidekick for this game with Segami who's supposed to kind of represent SEGA as a whole. Both Segami and IF harmonise perfectly with each other character wise.

The basic gameplay is as you expect by Neptunia games. The battle system has been slightly adapted and allows for more variety of battle styles. Other things have been simplified.

A negative aspect about the game: the difficulty can be all over the place. The game seems to have a quest order in mind but as you can choose quests in a random order you might accidentally choose far too difficult quests for your level which would either require extreme grinding or retreat. Your choice.

The game uses those missions to tell its story. A short non spoiler idea: the history is disappearing. Goddesses and SEGA Hard Girls across all eras are fighting each other destroying everything. You have to return time to its original state - fix it and find out why it has changed.

Last but not least: graphics wise this isn't a cutting edge game. It's a Vita port. However, I like it. I grew up with SEGA consoles and the hints to my personal past were a lovely experience. If you love Neptunia, get it. If you love Neptunia and grew up with all those old consoles - get it, it's urgent.

Don't get it if you don't like the Neptunia style of story telling or RPGs with unbalanced difficulty spikes.

Yes I bought this.

Don't question me.
I know what I was doing.

Edit: And honestly, after several hours of playing - despite the insanity of this game I really gotta admit it is kinda funny in its own way. It doesn't take itself seriously.

Well, I see myself writing a review about this game. I didn't expect me to do this.

I bought the game during the reduced week. I got the digital deluxe edition so I've got access to all DLCs and I got a digital artbook and the soundtrack. I mostly buy Neptunia games to support the franchise. I like the stories they tell, the characters are quirky and adorable. And I love to see many Japanese franchises coming to the West as I consider myself a J-Gamer. Now why do I write a review of THIS game and now the Re;birth parts - or Neptunia U.

Well, to be frank: because this game touched me at a very personal level.

So let's try to start with the technical parts:
Technologically speaking the game is like the Re;births just sub par. It has seemingly high system requirements and it basically delivers graphics which are not on par with modern games. It is without any doubt the best looking title of the Neptunia franchise but seeing how the Re;birth parts and Neptunia U and such are essentially Vita ports you'd expect that. Still it has a graphical performance which even early PS3 titles would beat - and maybe even PS2 titles (except for their lower resolution obviously).
Same can be said for the rest: the battling system is solid for JRPGs, you cannot however have very complex influence about your character development. You level up.. you change equipment. You adjust combos - and you develop items which give you some boost in some directions. That's solid! But not super outstanding. A few positive changes however include:

• the foes this time act far more strategically so consider who you send against them and how you position your team
  
• formations are far more complex
  
• you don't just smash your enemy to break their defense. You work around it
  
• A new form even stronger than the CPU form

So well.. all in all: very solid, graphically weak - but let's be honest. You don't play this game if you search for in-depth RPG game play. Do you play it because Vert has huge boobs? Or that Blanc doesn't have any at all. Maybe! In general: all the characters are as stereotypical as you expect in Neptunia - you have your Tsundere, you have your polar opposite twins and so on. Then you put a little more depth than just the stereotypical hull and that's it. It's the little depthes some characters have which make them quite lovable to me.

But then: especially our big new character Uzume who joins this game. She has far deeper than the others and in my honest opinion a very lovable character after some playtime and grasping the story.

And that's it: the story of this game in my opinion is just great. Not only does this game give you a very lengthy story line which stretches across 3 major stories and thus giving you several hours of game time. And even more importantly: forget about the RPG part.. forget about the simple graphics. But read the story in all its glory. The story is very touching, very deep and while it's very lengthy it doesn't feel stretched. At the end I felt like all of those details were necessary - where I sometimes thought "Okay, that's cute but what does it mean." The end tied up everything perfectly.

In addition: the music - while often still being very generic and sometimes literally plain unfitting - at some places to me shows true glory this time. Originally I only bought the digital deluxe edition to convince Idea Factory to release more stuff in the West - now I catch myself listening to many of the tracks the game has to offer.

Worth it: very much so! Would nep again! New game plus - I'm coming. I'll just wait 3 more days.

Okay, where should I start. I saw this game quite a few times in my Steam recommendations before actually buying it. And well, not wanting to sound rude towards other "anime games" you usually read stuff like "It has anime boobs 10/10" so I didn't check the reviews when it said "Overwhelmingly positive."

Until that one day: and all reviews came up with: "Ignore the super cutesy appeal, it's a great platformer"

And this is simply what I can only fully agree with: the game is a 2D platformer - combined with Touhou like bullet hell battles - and those battles get extremely hard over time. I just saw the credits for the first time (apparently there will be quite a bit of post game content which I haven't explored yet) and boy - I was playing on "Novice" difficulty and the bosses were giving me a really hard time. I'm not saying the game's unfair:it never is. The controls work perfectly fine, they're super responsive - just make sure to get a controller to play this - in my case I remapped the buttons. But yeah, the controls and everything working just great made me never blame the game if I died (and it happened quite often).

Other than that: If the cutesy appeal would turn you off - then you'll be certainly missing out on a great and challenging platformer.

The story might be a bit absurd to be frank - a bunny gets transformed into a girl and she searches for her master. And as the story progresses she searches for her master's younger sister.
Sounds simple? Well, maybe! But all the characters in the game have a little trait - there are very many so don't expect them to be super deep but they're very charming.

So well: I recommend it!

The feeling at horribly failing to not fight in a battle.

It fills me with determination!