Have you seen all of those news posts about how women are badly represented in video games? Well Hyper Dimension Neptunia Re;Birth 1 did not get that memo, and I have no problem with this at all really. Neptunia has always had had publicity in the west due to its more…risky, I mean within the first 10 minutes of the game you have some fanserive where two characters are tying each other with tape…but I’m not going to say you shouldn’t enjoy this.
So if you have never heard of a Neptunia game before, which wouldn’t be that shocking as their games have never been super popular outside of Japan, but their presence in certain media (Tumblr) has been strong. But the game in its simplest form, 4 girls who are secretly goddesses, when transformed they take on much more, Voluptuous forms and dresses. Each character is actually a reference to a big game company with Nintendo, Sony and Microsoft being the “bad” characters and…Sega being the protagonist. Yes Sega, for some reason this game focuses around Sega’s rise back to power, maybe the company who made these games still hold a candle for them but I guess out of all the game companies from Japan and America Sega is the other most well-known from the big three.
The game starts very similar to well all the rest of the games, Purple Heart (Sega) is attacked and ganged up on by the other goddesses, causing her to transform back and be sent to earth. There you have to run around in a quite delightful retro inspired world map with nice little retro representation of your characters, go through dungeons and fight monsters.
Now whilst dungeons can be fun, it really isn’t done fun at all here, walk around a baron and uninteresting dungeon, attack sparse and repeating foes and get to the end and finish, you do that far too many times to the point where it is no longer fun anymore. The ironic part is when you get into a fight its quite fluid, with you walking around the battle field freely and delivery combos, why you need to go through the whole encounter and changing screen part is behind me, this could all be done when walking around. It just gets very samey, and it feels like all that is pushing you forward is the weak story being dangled in front of you, and the chance for fan service (there is always fanservice) so it bored me pretty quick. Though I do like story with my boobs and panty shots, but that’s just me, and this game really lacks something on the story side of things.
Fighting battles is pretty simple, move your character around in your movement range in a mini battle field, walk up to your foe and use either an ability or basic attack. The only difference here is that basics can be chained together, and so many will cause a guard break, increasing the damage taken. The only other thing that is worthy of note is your ability to change forms to your goddess, and deliver a special attack, whilst in your form (With tantalising changing scene) you have increased attack and defence, its your win button on most fights and finishers for bosses basically.
Graphically there is an update, but nothing major, this is remake of a Vita game after all, and neptunia games have never ever been famous for their graphics, with textures that look straight out of PS1 games. Yes you have better resolution, coming from the vita to 1080p, menus and character models in game look okay. However, when in cut scenes it’s obvious that there is something wrong, all of the characters look fuzzy and out of focus which whilst not too bad, it is a shame they didn’t put the work to fix these up a little. As I mentioned, textures in game look nothing short of horrendous, I’ve seen better textures from PlayStation era, and whilst it was obvious on the PS3 and Vita versions of the games, good lord did it look terrible at 1080p on my 27” monitor, no excuse.
Oh did I talk about the DLC for this game yet? There is quite a selection, there are many free pieces of DLC, which I don’t get why it isn’t just added to the game vis update, but that’s not the point. At the moment most of the DLC are 80 pence, which is pretty cheap but If I was gonna get any i would rather get one £3 pack with it all. Though if what is available on the PS3 or Vita is anything to go by, expect a flood of DLC to be added soon, from new costumes to weapons and sound tracks.
Hyper dimensions Neptunia Re;birth 1 (That semi colon really upsets me) is a game for those who really really want a standard Japanese RPG on their PC. There has been a flood of interesting titles of late and this is going to be one more to add to that collection, and the tag “Anime” on steam. It’s a mindless game that doesn’t really task you much it gets 2/5 for that alone, but you can stare at anime breasts, just don’t expect much more than a one handed experience.
Disclaimer:All scores given within our reviews are based on the artist’s personal opinion; this should in no way impede your decision to purchase the game.
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