[Hyperdimension Neptunia][PS3][Review]

In Hyperdimension Neptunia you play as Neptune, one of the four  goddesses on Gameindustri. These goddesses are known as CPU’s (Console Patron Units). The CPU’s live in Celestia ( a place where only the goddesses can go) and each own their own land masses on Gamindustri.   The CPU’s don’t exactly get a long and because of this they cause what is known as the the “Console Wars”. The goal of the Console Wars is that the one who ends up on top will be the true goddess and ruler of gameindustri. The other three goddesess (White Heart, Black Heart, and Green Heart) decide to team up and knock down Neptune in hopes to better their chances of winning.

Well Nep gets knocked down from Celestia and ends up crashing down on her own landmass (Planeptune) only to land on her head and coming down with a case of amnesia. She is found by a young girl in nursing school named Compa who nurses her back to health, shortly afterwards they embark on their adventure.

The story is relatively bland, monsters are invading game Gamindustri and there is an overall badguy causing all of this. Most of the game involves seeing an event and doing quests in order to progress the story. I’ll be honest, the premise was quite interesting but it wasn’t really a major player in the actual story. The game doesn’t shine with it’s plot but rather with character interactions, the game is pretty damn funny and the characters are enjoyable.  That said, unless you’re a bit of a hardcore gamer and play JRPG’s often you wont get a lot of the jokes. Not to say that you will be bored with the story, but it’s only entertaining at best. Moving on.

Gameplay involves going to the world map seeing what story events you can and then going to dungeons. Let’s talk a bit more about the dungeons. There are several islands on each landmass and each one contains a set style of dungeon. What this means is that you will be seeing a lot of the same dungeon backgrounds recycled with a new layout for you to explore. This didn’t bother me all that much since you won’t be going on the same island many times in a row except for when you are grinding. Enough about design though.

Exploring a dungeon involves one of four objectives. Either you will need to reach a certain location, defeat a specific boss, reach the exit,  or collect items by defeating specific monsters. Pretty standard for a dungeon crawler. While exploring, you will encounter random battles unless you use a certain technique, but we’ll get to that in a second.

In the dungeon you have several abilities. These abilities include Hammer Crash, Monster Call, and Treasure Search. Hammer Crash allows you to break objects that block your path. Monster Call allows you to summon monsters for battle, these battles generally summon 4-5 rounds of monsters and once you defeat them you are given a set number of steps before you get drawn into another battle. So basically it will allow you to avoid battles for a bit of time. Treasure Search allows you to find hidden treasure chests in a dungeon, these chests usually contain rare items.  Now lets talk about the battling.

Fighting is turned based with the standard AP system you find in Compile Heart games. For those of you who don’t know of it basically you have an arsenal of attacks you can use which you can chain into combos and each attack is tied to a specific button. Each attack uses a certain number of AP which varies based on the power of the attack. Your turn lasts as long as you still have AP left and once you can no longer attack your turn will end. There are also other aspects to the fighting system, for example; you have the ability to either chain your combos which allows you to chain into a new combo based off the last button you have pressed in your previous combo. You can also switch rows and bring a character from the rear row into the front and allow them to attack in your place.

One thing that’s a bit different is that you can’t control healing at any point in the game. The only way to heal yourself is by equipping a healing skill to your character that will initiate itself. Sounds easy, well the skill is controlled in percentages and the more points you allocate towards it the higher chance it will activate. You can relocate these points at any time during a battle as long as you aren’t in the middle of a combo and it is your turn. In addition to having to allocate points, you must also have a correct amount of various ingredients. You  get random types of ingredients at the end of battles, in treasure chests, and by purchasing them in the game’s store.

One thing that was kind of annoying was the planet share system. It was never really explained much and you don’t actually get to see them until about 3/4 through the game. So what is the planet share system? Well every time you do a quest is increases shares for a certain landmass. So lets say you do X mission, it will give you an increase in Lastation’s share and will subtract from Leanbox’s. So you are basically exchanging shares.  Every time Neptune dies in battle it also decreases from all of the shares. What does this mean, and why should you care? Well in order to view all the events not related to the main story, and to get the true ending, you must have a certain amount of share for the Landmass you are on. For example a certain event will only show up once you have 30% Lowee shares. This is tough since you can’t see how much is being exchanged with each quest unless you have a certain character which you don’t get until later in the game. So in other words you can totally screw yourself before you even get to that point. The only way to really avoid this is to do the main story quests and then go do quests to increase shares and get the other events. I had to go through a second playthrough to get everything. I just wish the game had actually explained it.

Graphics. The graphics to this game look pretty darn good. The whole game is done in cell-shaded animation. I have seen other games pull it off better, but regardless this game is beautiful. Character portraits are animated and drawn very well, and character models on screen are also in full HD and look very smooth.

So let’s talk about the music, well what little of it there is anyways. There’s no OST included in the LE of this game, and that’s probably due to the lack of music. You end up hearing the same tracks recycled throughout the game which is kind of a bummer but I got over it. The intro song is pretty amazing though.

What about the voice overs. Well you have the choice between Japanese or English Audio.  You can’t complain when you get that choice. The Japanese track has more voicing than the English, but I guess that’s to be expected. In fact the English track doesn’t even contain voices for 5bp or Red. But both of those characters aren’t a main point of the story and aren’t playable unless you purchase them. What about the English voicing that IS there? Well I actually found the dub to be pretty good. At first I wasn’t a fan, but during my second playthrough I decided to check it out and was pleasantly surprised. I thought Neptune’s voice was awesome, and Christina Vee voiced Compa. There are some notable voice actors in the cast. That said I’ve heard better game dubs, but this one definitely avoided falling into the pool of being awful.

Ok now that all of that is out of the way, let’s talk about my likes and dislikes concerning Hyperdimension Neptunia.

The battling, in my opinion was extremely fun. I always love seeing a nice turn based battle system. Some people have complained about the whole AP system in other Compile Heart games, but I’ve always enjoyed it. Now as much as I enjoyed it, it can really get repetitive, especially after you’ve created your perfect combo trees. You will end up spamming the same attacks after a while and I can see where that can get boring. I guess that can be said for any turn-based system though.  The music was kind of lacking, but wasn’t bad. Someone who is not a fan of dungeon crawlers will find this game absolutely awful, but if you are a fan of them you will probably enjoy this game a lot.  While it’s a pretty basic game, it also does everything it sets out to do on the mark.

Now for the score. This is something I had an extremely hard time doing. So I’m going to give you two different scores. The first will be aimed at the normal gamer, and the casual JRPG fan. The second will be towards players like me, who primarily play JRPG’s. I’ll also give the reasons why.

Score for average gamers: 7.4  Funny character interactions, a somewhat entertaining story, and average gameplay mechanics make for an entertaining game that you will probably enjoy once. The reason for only a 7.4 is that battle mechanics may feel old and outdated, and the lack of open world exploration may make the average player feel extremely restricted.

Score for JRPG players: 8.5 Dungeon crawling will feel familiar as will the turn based combat system. Various references made throughout the game will make you laugh. The whole feel the game will feel familiar. You will be used to this kind of gameplay and you will enjoy it regardless of how basic it may be.

So bottom line, if you only occasionally play JRPG’s you may want to pass as you may feel this game is a little too straight forward and primitive. If you are a JRPG player who plays them often, you will find this game to be fun and familiar, and find this game highly entertaining.

I found this game to be one of the best of 2011 from the games I’ve played. So if you are like me I say buy this game if you have the opportunity. I just hope that you can find this out of print title for a decent price if you decide to get it.

As always feedback is welcomed, if you have any criticism or notice anything I have forgotten, feel free to tell me.