The first Hyperdimension Neptunia was definitely an interesting game. Technically the entire series is an interesting subject when it comes to games but the first game is especially so. Despite receiving mostly poor reviews from critics and a lot of gamers themselves, its unique premise and ideas helped it put Idea Factory on the map. Shortly after its release, demand was so high that prices for a new copy of the game that it went for up to $120 new on Amazon. I remember when I first found out about this game, I was incredibly fascinated by it due to its premise alone. I have looked up as much as I could about the game and was almost decided to get the game used for $80 despite it looking far from a well designed game. There were easily a lot of noticeable issues with gameplay and presentation, but its personality was so intriguing that I wanted to play it anyway. In fact, I was so interested in the game that It was what prompted me to get a PS3.

Now for the question as to whether it was worth it or not, if the game was still at its ridiculously high price than it would not be worth it, but thankfully it was reprinted and is now more affordable. Even then I would not say the game alone was worth the purchase of a PS3 seeing as how, despite its personality and charm, it does have issues. However, seeing as how the game got many highly improved sequels as well and there being a large RPG library on the PS3 that I have not even come close to playing all of, I was glad to be introduced to the series and to have bought the system. That being said, the quality of the first game still seems to be up for debate among fans of the series. Some think it is a good game while others simply appreciate it for starting the series and believe owning the game itself is just a novelty. If the later games did not exist, then it would be recommended just for its uniqueness and charm, but both Hyperdimension Neptunia Mk2 and Victory have improved upon the first game and would be recommended more so if you are interested in getting into the series.

It is also worth noting that there are a lot of cases of early installment weirdness when you compare the original game to its successors and the transition could be rather jarring. However, the first Hyperdimension Neptunia does have some interesting elements that make it stand out from some other JRPGs and, similar to that of Astonishia Story, it is still an interesting game in its own right, albeit not the most well designed and presented, and it even does some things right that its successors did not.

Neptune Does What Nintendon’t

So if one is reading this and is not aware of this game’s premise, than hearing the premise alone will probably be enough to increase one’s interest in the series. To put it bluntly, it is about sexy, scantily clad, anime chicks fighting monsters, and it is all an allegory for the video game industry. Okay I admit that I could be leaving some context out but that is basically it. While there have been plenty of games in the past that have tried to be funny, there are few that have attempted to take aim at the very industry they are a part of. In fact, the only other known attempt of an allegorical take on the video game industry was a train wreck of an OVA that can best be summed up with the words “rapist Tetris.”

Essentially the approach of Hyperdimension Neptunia is that each major company is personifies as one of the four goddesses who have been at war with each other since the dawn of time. These goddesses are Black Heart, representing Sony, White Heart, representing Nintendo, Green Heart, representing Microsoft, and our main protagonist, Purple Heart, representing Sega. Now one may notice something that is not right with that description right away, that being that Sega is personified despite them dropping out of the console market years ago, but the explanation for that is given shortly. Within the first ten minutes of the game, Purple Heart is nearly killed by the other three goddesses and she drops down to earth where she gains a human form, goes by the name of Neptune, and has amnesia.

Now as predictable as it is for an RPG to involve amnesia, Neptunia executes it in a surprisingly unique manner where Neptune does not know her past, but you do. This is a recurring plot element in the game that touches upon a lot of surprisingly deep subjects seeing as how, unlike every other JRPG protagonist in existence, Neptune does not want her memory back. This makes things suddenly seem a lot more interesting when the other goddesses learn this and notice that, for the first time in history, two of the goddesses are almost able to become friends instead of trying to kill each other. Of course Neptune’s own personal reasoning for wanting to keep her amnesia is simply due to her laziness and not wanting to deal with responsibility but that aspect is at least understandable. Neptune, to put it lightly, is not competent enough to run a lemonade stand let alone a continent.

Shortly after Neptune descends to earth, she has her wounds tended to by a nurse in training named Compa, named after the developer Compile Heart. Of course Compa is just as ditzy as Neptune so, because the game needs a competent character, they run in IF, an adventurer named after Idea Factory and who plays the role of straight women to counteract Neptune and Compa’s stupidity. The main plot of the game from there involves Neptune being reached in her dream by a mysterious living book named Histiore that claims to be the creator of the universe and says that Neptune needs to collect four plot coupons in order to save the world. Despite the fact that it is literally mentioned in game that this is all completely out of left field and is difficult to believe, they decide to go on their mcguffin fetch quest anyway because Neptune likes the idea of saving the world.

From that point on the plot takes such a huge nosedive in terms of pacing and quality that ET may find himself having difficulty levitating out of it. This is perhaps one of the biggest flaws with Hyperdimension Neptunia’s narrative; it moves at a snail’s pace and goes absolutely nowhere. To give an example of just how poorly paced the plot is, you obtained the first of four plot coupons in the first quarter of the game, but you do not get the other three until three quarters of the way through. Until then, you have subplots on each of the landmasses in which the game takes place, all of which are lead by one of the goddesses.

There are two problems with these sub conflicts. The first problem is that these all progress simultaneously throughout the course of the game. These plots will be set up in that you progress one plot as far as you can, then you go to another landmass and start their storyline. The problem here is that this introduces obvious plot holes regarding which one of these takes place at which time seeing as how you could be working on one storyline at a crucial moment in the other one yet be on an entire different continent and the plot will just stay as it is while you are not there. This also means that you complete them all at around the same time and it takes until near the end of the game to get the rest of the plot coupons. As much hate as some games like Final Fantasy XIII have gotten for linear structure, linearity itself is not inherently bad. In fact it probably would have been more appropriate to tackle one of these at a time in a fixed order so that you get a better feeling of progress and so that the plot makes more sense.

The second problem with them is that they are incredibly boring and almost nothing interesting happens during any of them. It is during these events that the game tries too hard to be deep and complex that it forgets to actually be entertaining. There is so much faux-political lingo and different terms thrown around that are obviously supposed to represent one aspect of gaming culture or business that it starts to feel more like guesswork trying to piece these things together. This is despite the fact that Idea Factory was worried that no one would get that this game is a parody of the video game industry and that the game lacks any subtlety. Within the first two minutes of the game, you are told that the war between the goddesses is called the “Console War” and that the world is literally named Gamindustri.

There is an important rule when it comes to comedy, and that rule is that, “if you have to explain the joke, then it is not a joke.” Apparently no one told this to Idea Factory because they feel the need to bludgeon you over the head with the most obvious ways of telling you that this is based on the console war. The game’s landmasses are named Lastation, Leanbox, and Lowee, if it was not obvious enough by the goddess’s’ designs and the look of each landmass. At least with Sega’s landmass Planeptune they are subtle about it seeing as how it was named after the canceled Sega Neptune console, something that may require the player to actually use their brain.

What is ultimately the final nail in the coffin of Hyperdimension Neptunia’s hope of making a legitimately intelligent satire about the industry is that they choose to have the game’s message be the most utterly trite and obnoxious moral they can think of; piracy. First of all, they represent this by having the main villain of the game being named Arfoire, named after the R4 chip used to pirate DS games, a name that could not be less subtle unless they gave her an eye patch and called her ARRRfoire. The lack of subtlety is not even the problem here though. The problem is that this game chooses to use the most predictable and tedious message they could have gone with and played it safe instead of choosing something that might have been interesting to hear. Regardless of what sensationalist preachers may tell you, piracy is not the biggest threat to gaming! Hell it is not even close to the biggest threat.

There are much worse threats than piracy that could have been chosen. The fact that game companies spend so much money creating games that they can sell millions of copies yet still end up going bankrupt, that certain companies,who will not be named, constantly buy out smaller developers and run them into the ground and enforce anti consumer policies, corrupt video game journalism sites that are clearly paid off by the companies in order to give their games good reviews and press. Hell anyone who was familiar with the “Stop Online Piracy Act” a few years back would realize that this sensationalist reaction to piracy is even more of a threat than piracy itself and is the kind of thinking that lead to that bill being created. I am not saying I condone digital piracy but it is not black and white. In some cases it has actually boosted sales for Nep’s sake! Yeah it is morally wrong but it is usually harmless and it is disappointing that Idea Factory could not come up with a less cliche topic.

Despite the game failing to have a storyline that is neither insightful or entertaining on its own merits, there is one aspect of Hyperdimension Neptunia that saves the story from being complete garbage. That aspect is the game’s humor. Now some people normally tend to compare Hyperdimension Neptunia’s humor to that of the Disgaea series. Despite there being some similarities, there are some key differences that separate Disgaea from Neptunia in terms of humor.

Disgaea’s style of humor is mostly farcical and absurdist. The humor comes from such ridiculous things occurring in the plot that you end up laughing due to the sheer absurdity of the events of the game. In the first Disgaea game, you have such ridiculous plot points as the dark lord of the underworld dying by choking to death on a pretzel, said dark lord’s son getting blackmailed into a challenge because the bad guy has an embarrassing photo of him, and said dark lord’s son having a literal weakness to sexy women.

While these scenes were generally amusing, to an extent, I would say there were relatively few moments of brilliance in them seeing as how the absurdity alone seems to be the joke. Now Neptunia is often like this as well, but the major difference comes in the delivery. Within the first ten minutes of the game, Green Heart responds to a comment made about her breasts by saying, and I quote, “Wh-? Breasts are symbolic for both maturity and fertility. The size of my bust equates my aptitude as a goddess.” What makes this specific line work well is that it takes a sophomoric statement like, “I am better than you because my boobs are bigger,” and changes the wording to make it sound more intelligent despite the meaning being the same. In that line it is able to combine a joke that relies on its absurdity with more intelligent sounding dialogue that also carries a more immersive tone.

Some may have heard that Hyperdimension Neptunia is very reference heavy when it comes to other games. Humor alluding to another work of fiction is not always handled the correct way seeing as how some may rely on doing so without any context or reasoning. A lot of times, works of fiction based on referential humor make the mistake of needing to explain the reference to the viewer, which defeats the point of making it. Thankfully, while Neptunia’s main story is about as subtle as a hundred pound brick dropped on your foot, the humor is a much more subtle form. First of all it is worth mentioning that it does not treat you like an idiot and with any gaming references and one will find them funny because they noticed them on their own. I will admit that the references do occasionally sound forced but a lot of times they are well timed and are amusing.

Most of the game’s best humor is purely situational and timing based however. These jokes are far more effective when you see them for yourself instead of having them explained. Neptunia’s hilarious one liners are ones that kept me laughing throughout the entire game and it clearly shows a creative sense of humor. In fact, these jokes generally tend to be made even funnier due to the contrast of the game’s nature as an attempt at a legitimate satire. It is so effective that it is practically enough to carry the entire game on its own despite the main plot itself being rather uninteresting. This makes Hyperdimension Neptunia a rare case where a work of fiction fails as a satire yet still succeeds at being funny.

A huge reason that this is the case is the characters themselves are already compelling and well written enough on their own. As mentioned earlier, the character of IF exists to play straight women to contrast Neptune and Compa’s ditzy nature. It is thanks to IF’s character that Neptune and Compa’s incompetence never grows too grating. Yet despite Neptune being rather stupid and initially somewhat annoying, her character is also a refreshing change of pace from most female protagonists as well as video game protagonists in general. A lot of female protagonists either tend to be either one dimensional schoolgirls in skimpy outfits that are made to appeal based on sexuality, or emotionless “strong” female characters made to appease feminists by portraying them with characteristics associated with masculinity. Sexualized or not, Neptunia is still one of the few games out there to feature an all female cast and still have most of the cast have well developed three dimensional personalities.

For a Game Based On a Multi-Million Dollar Industry, This Game Sure Is Cheap

Okay there is one aspect regarding Hyperdimension Neptunia that is hard to ignore, and that is this game is incredibly cheap. The production values of this game are abysmal. Unless you are someone who cares absolutely nothing about graphics this may be a difficult hurdle to overcome. The only thing I can really say that was done well in terms of graphics is that the character art is well drawn and some of the attack animations look kind of neat; granted not neat in a technical sense but more so in a way that it looks kind of cool to see the first couple of times. There is also a neat effect where the character images actually have some slight animation to them and move slightly which I suppose is a step up from still anime shots.

As for the problems with the game, a large majority of the game is even more menu based than most turn based RPGs. There are no towns or overworlds in Hyperdimension Neptunia. Instead you have a menu where you select your options to view an event, an optional gag cutscene, advance the plot, use the shop, or travel to a dungeon. Cutscenes are mostly handled visual novel style where you just have a portrait of whatever character speaking and some text, with the exception of a few fanservice pics of course. While the art style itself is at least good, it is rather redundant that, aside from Histoire or Arfoire, no NPCs even have a fully drawn portrait. Instead they have a black silhouette displayed in a small frame. Although the game does make fun of his at one point where the main characters need to know where to locate a lost child and asks the mother what he looks like and she responds with “he is represented by a generic NPC silhouette like everything else in this game.”

The only part of the game with any animation is in the dungeons which themselves are made up of the constant dark and gray caves that are reused ad nauseum. It does not help considering that the design of these dungeons are often re used themselves. Given how cheap this game is, I was somewhat surprised they did not pull a Nier on you, and change the dungeons into a text adventure game. Even in these dungeons, the game has some abysmal draw distance to the point where you usually cannot see a few feet without fog. Thankfully, finding your way around dungeons is still pretty easy seeing as how you are given a map of the entire dungeon upon entering.

The in-battle graphics are also cheap seeing has how you can barely go five minutes into the game without seeing an enemy model reused from Cross Edge or Trinity Universe, and even the game’s own enemy models are reused at a ridiculous rate. Of course this can oftentimes be because the game likes making you re-fight bosses with higher stats, which would be unforgivable if it were not for this game’s wonderfully addictive combat system. There is one aspect of the game in terms of graphics that is an absolute godsend and that is the ability to skip any attack animation by pressing the L2 button. This does not apply to just long attacks but to even physical attacks which is something that greatly cuts down on the time spent on random battles. Chances are that without this feature, the game’s length would likely be doubled given how long the game’s attack animations can be seeing as how a lot of special attacks resemble summon animations from the ps1 era Final Fantasy titles in terms of style and length. As it turns out, this feature was added in the North American release by Nis America and was not in the original Japanese version, and thank god for it because the game would have been nigh unplayable without it.

In the sound department, Hyperdimension Neptunia is much more effective at what it needs to get done than its graphics. In terms of sound effects, the game does a really great job at making the attacks look and sound much better than they would if they were absent. The voice acting is also top notch as well and really lends itself well to the game. The game also features the ability to listen to the original Japanese dub for those who prefer them. The only thing I can really complain about is that the voice clips tend to repeat a lot. Hearing Compa yelling out, “I don’t like getting hurt,” when being attacked is amusing the first couple of times but it does get old after a while.

The music in Hyperdimension Neptunia is a mixed bag. A lot of the songs of themselves are at least decent enough, but the way they are used is a problem. During cutscenes, it always feels like songs play at random and half the time they do not fit the current situations. In fact, the songs seem to play like a MP3 player set on shuffle. There is a certain specific song that is clearly meant to play for funny moments, you will know it when you hear it, yet most of the time it just seems to be playing when nothing is happening.

As for the music itself, it has the habit of only having a few original compositions and remixing them several times based on what function they serve in the game. These songs themselves do work well at some points where the game’s main theme is remixed into the boss theme, but in others it starts to seem rather redundant like in most normal battle themes that are remixed versions of song of whatever landmass you are currently on. The dungeon songs themselves range from bland elevator music to what are some pretty interesting and catchy songs. Particularly the tracks, White Time, Planeptune Rising, Lastation Rising, and Leanbox Rising are all pretty cool songs that represent their settings pretty well. The only problem is that random encounters frequently interrupt the songs and they start from the beginning. The theme songs for the land masses are pretty good on their own as well. Leanbox has a calm and peaceful song, Lowee has an upbeat and happy song, Lastation’s theme is very mechanical and industrialized.

The boss battle themes, however, are particularly brilliant. The normal boss theme, simply tilted “Tough Guard,” is a song that sounds both threatening and beautiful with its use of blaring horns at the start, the pounding drums, and its use of flute instruments that mimic the effects of the violins in the infamous theme from the movie Psycho. The actual violins in the song contribute a sense of beauty. Then the song uses the same deep horns to play a beautiful melody that simultaneously sounds threatening and beautiful. It follows it up by playing the same melody using violins and then a rendition of the main theme of the game using the horns. Given the fact that I felt the need to give a detailed description of that song, one can tell that it is one of the best normal boss themes I have heard in an RPG. This song is played constantly throughout the game, including some random battles towards the end, yet I never got tired of it.

Yet the real kicker is that it is not even the best song in the game. Green Heart’s battle theme, “The Soul of Fight” retains a similar mix of threatening and beauty while adding sense of throughout it. Arfoire’s battle theme, “Sacred Time” is much more slow paced yet sounds rather dark and mysterious and the simple way the melody is performed makes it all the more effective. As a result, I did not mind that the final boss theme was basically the same song except remixed with different instrumentation and a faster pace, seeing as how the addition of the church organ made it sound all the more chaotic and fitting for a final battle.

Someone Heal Me. Please

So far, aside from graphics, every aspect of Hyperdimension Neptunia has done very well in one area but very poorly in another. The gameplay of the game is not the same case. The game is generally pretty fun in its base gameplay of navigating dungeons, finding treasures, and defeating bosses. But at the same time there really is not that much else to the game other than dungeon crawling. So here you are left with a game that instead of doing one aspect well and another aspect poorly, you have one that does one aspect well and just decides to skip out on everything else altogether.

On one hand, this could be seen as a good thing because the game decides to stick to its guns and not try and over complicate things with obnoxious mini games that take up a quarter of the game or backtracking across a large overworld to complete generic fetch quests. This game is the perfect type of game for people that just prefer to sit back and handle the game at their own pace. It also helps that sidequests typically consist of the same objectives as what you do to advance the main plot; that being get all the treasures in the dungeon and defeat the boss at the end. Admittedly, finding and looting a dungeon’s treasure is half of what makes it enjoyable and is handled in a way that is more satisfying than most RPGs, regardless of what the contents of these chests are.

There are some certain specific issues regarding the game’s design that need to be brought up. The first is that the recommended levels for the game’s dungeons are not even close to being accurate. Do not listen to what the recommended levels of these dungeons say; there is not a single dungeon in this game that cannot be beaten at level 99 at most. Despite this, the recommended level for a lot of the free DLC dungeons are often times in the hundreds and the final DLC dungeon says the recommended level is 999. It is important to notice this seeing as how there is DLC for both stat boosters which will simply make your characters so overpowered that it removes any challenge and strategy from the game and options to increase the level cap (which is unnecessary seeing as how there is nothing hard enough to warrant a level cap increase).

Also on the subject of DLC, I must praise the game for not charging money for any added dungeons in the game, but that is not the case with other characters. There are a total of four optional characters in the game that you can only obtain through DLC, two of which join your party as part of the game’s main plot. This makes it clear that these two were planned specifically for DLC. Granted at least they did not sink as low as to make them day one DLC, but you still should not make it obvious that you are planning something to be DLC. Considering that you do not gain more than the first three party members towards the end of the main game and that a major mechanic of the game’s battle system requires more than three party members, it makes it clear that the game would have been better had they had the characters in your party to begin with. Again, this can be alleviated to some by saying that it only costs $12.00 dollars to get all four characters, it is still not a practice I support but at least it was not as bad as some companies nowadays.

Also one rather annoying aspect is the share gathering. The game explains nothing about this to you and you cannot even see the current shares until you unlock a certain character. The way that shares are gained is by clearing a certain dungeons multiple times in order to take shares from one landmass and add them to another. Not only is this process annoyingly convoluted but it is also really tedious as well. Now one may be asking; what do the shares even do? First of all, they boost or drain the stats of the goddess corresponding to the landmass they are a part of depending on how they are divided among the landmasses. However, the impact they have is so little that it is practically unnoticeable and it is not worth bothering with all the repetition to gain strength when you do not even need it to beat the game. On the plus side, this also means that losing shares whenever a goddess dies also has minimal impact on the game as a whole. The only reason that one will ever be trying to gain shares is because gaining enough shares for one landmass will activate an optional event on said landmass and allow you to unlock the goddess of the corresponding landmass as a playable character. This, of course, means that the games pace will be brought to a halt when you decide to unlock the goddesses.

Aside from the brilliantly written humor and characters, the battle system of Hyperdimension Neptunia is easily the game’s biggest strength. The combat system of Hyperdimension Neptunia is a very complex system that will likely be difficult for someone to wrap their head around at first, especially if one has little JRPG experience. This is mostly a result of the system’s own complexity and the fact that the game does not explain it well enough for the player to understand. I will try my best to sum up the multiple aspects of Neptunia’s battle system in a way that is easy to understand.

Battles are initiated through random encounters and are turn based with three characters out on the field. The game differs from most turn based RPGs in that, instead of each character getting one attack per turn, they get multiple attacks that each cost a set amount of AP per turn. Also unlike most turn based RPGs, these attacks are not menu based. Instead you map each attack to a specific button and the attack following it will be different based on what buttons are selected in sequence resulting in a series of up to four different moves. One cannot simply choose the most powerful right away and you need to start out with weaker moves and end the combo with the move that costs the most AP. In addition to this, the final ability in a combo can be either a combo link, which allows you to continue the combo by skipping the first attack of the combo and restoring the AP of the last attack used, or switch out to whichever character is in the back row. To add yet another element to this system, the amount of AP you have when you use the defend option has an effect on how much defense you are given until the next turn.

Does that sound complicated to you; well that is not even all there is. Enemies, in addition to having HP, also have guard points which are depleted along with their HP. When their GP is depleted, a guard break is inflicted where all attacks will ignore defense while the meter is filling back up. This means that a vital strategy is imputing the combos that deal the most damage fast enough that you can maximize the amount of damage done within the period of the guard break. However, that still is not all there is when it comes to the complexity of Neptunia’s combat system. Healing is handled very differently than in most RPGs in that you cannot choose directly to heal. Instead, healing is based on allocating a certain amount of points to a formula that will activate depending on what is meant to trigger it. For example, the first move you are given in the game is one that will restore 30% of a character’s HP when they take a hit that lands their HP under 50% of their max. This may sound simple, but what this also means is that they will not be healed if their HP is at 60%, and then if HP is reduced to 10% the next time they are it, they are only restored to 40%. Thankfully that is not the only formula and the conditions and effects of each formula vary depending on which one you have set for each character. Some of the conditions can be based upon when a character defends, is damaged, inflicted with a status ailment, or is switched in, while the effects could range from healing one character, to healing multiple characters or reviving dead characters in battle.

Hyperdimension Neptunia also allows you to change the points allocated to each formula, as well as changing equipment, during battle, which also adds yet another element of strategy to the game. Ultimately, it is easy to see that Neptunia has a system that is very confusing and difficult to get used to, but if you do get a grip on the game’s combat system, it becomes a very enjoyable experience during boss battles where you will need to utilize each aspect of the system in order to take care of the bosses effectively. The only problem is that normal enemies become cannon fodder halfway through the game and can mostly be beaten in less than one turn. Thankfully, the game is packed with many different intense boss battles that are especially in the end game content where you will find yourself fight up to seven bosses during one battle on multiple occasions. The way that difficulty is handled is also brilliant in that it increases the amount of damage enemies do, yet decreases their HP, which rewards players for taking higher risks and simultaneously makes the game challenging and convenient. The ability to save anywhere you want at any time is also a welcome addition.

Conclusion

Hyperdimension Neptunia would have been a game that would have been a lot easier to recommend on its own merits had its sequels never existed, but even now it is a pretty interesting game. Perhaps it is not the most shining example of a JRPG but it is still an interesting one nonetheless. It certainly shows that there was at least some effort to create something unique and fresh despite a nonexistent budget. Unlike its successors, it is not always clear what Hyperdimension Neptunia set out to accomplish. It sounded like it legitimately wanted to be taken seriously as a satire at some points, but its attempts at a legitimate, artistic statement come across as rather forced and half-assed. Despite this, its attempts at humor tend to turn out even funnier than its successors do simply because of the contrast between its faulty storytelling and witty humor. In a gameplay sense, it easily shows that one person’s repetitive is another person’s addicting seeing as how the game remained fun throughout the entire experience despite there being only slight changes that occurred.

While it is easy to brush Hyperdimension Neptunia as a bad game simply because it is easy to point out its numerous glaring flaws, I choose not do so simply because that is not the way a gamer should approach a game. When I think of people who think that making a list of flaws and expecting that to serve as their only argument and completely ignore the possibility that maybe there can be an experience that someone can enjoy despite said flaws, I think of depressed people who decided they were going to hate the game within the first hours of playing yet forced themselves to continue just so they can later write harsh words about it on the internet. Hyperdimension Neptunia is a game that serves as something that can easily fit those guidelines and served as a something to take out anger on for those that gave it a 2 or 3 out of 10. Realistically I can be seen as being a bit generous by giving this game a 7 as if I had to base it strictly off observation it would probably be a 6 instead, but I am instead trying to say that it is a game that might be worth your attention anyway.

Obviously I would point to its sequels faster than I would point to this one but considering that it does do some of its own things well, it may turn out better than one would expect. It also launched what is one of my favorite game series of this generation,and there had to have been at least enough of a spark in it to accomplish that. Is Hyperdimension Neptunia necessarily a good game? Not in every sense, but given its structure and design, it can be an interesting experience if you are in the mood for it, and sometimes I am in the mood for it.

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This review was originally posted to GameFAQs on February 18th of 2014 and has since been re-edited with enhanced presentation.

If you would like to play this game for yourself, it can be bought here or as part of the Hyperdimension Neptunia Hypercollection compilation, which can be bought here.

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