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- NIS America
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- NIS America
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- NIS America
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- NIS America
Hyperdimension Neptunia
Released On: Feb 15, 2011
45
6.7
All Platforms
Metascore
Generally Unfavorable
Based on 31 Critic Reviews
45
6% Positive
2 Reviews
2 Reviews
52% Mixed
16 Reviews
16 Reviews
42% Negative
13 Reviews
13 Reviews
Metascore
Generally Unfavorable
Based on 31 Critic Reviews
45
6% Positive
2 Reviews
2 Reviews
52% Mixed
16 Reviews
16 Reviews
42% Negative
13 Reviews
13 Reviews
As fun as it can be, Neptunia is an extremely niche title. If the only game you ever play is Black Ops, avoid this like a spinning-up death machine. If, however, you really miss the JRPG heydays of the PSone and PS2, you need this. Now. [June 2011 p76]
It has an interesting cast of characters, a lot of solid diversity in the environment, that patented and crisp anime artistry, and plenty of immersive depth. But on the downside, the combat feels awkward because you have to keep checking your combos, the item system is just plain ridiculous, the story is silly to the max, and despite that aforementioned variety, none of the locales really stand out.
User Score
Mixed or Average
Based on 136 User Ratings
6.7
57% Positive
78 Ratings
78 Ratings
17% Mixed
23 Ratings
23 Ratings
26% Negative
35 Ratings
35 Ratings
User Score
Mixed or Average
Based on 136 User Ratings
6.7
57% Positive
78 Ratings
78 Ratings
17% Mixed
23 Ratings
23 Ratings
26% Negative
35 Ratings
35 Ratings
While the gameplay and combat can be a bit underwhelming, it's more then competently put together, especially in comparison to other Jrpgs coming out around the time. This can be forgiven for the rest of the game, the setting, story and characters are all unique and charming enough to completely carry the game. The character interactions probably being the best part.
The video game references are all pretty good too, nothing that insults your intelligence or terrible 4 year old memes that other developers like to put in their games.
Easily the most charming game of the series, and the sound track is pretty good too, though hopefully you'll be able to deal with the combat (Unless Rebirth is out by now in which case play that)
I wish IF localized their own game though (once again they did for Rebirth)
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PlayStation 3
Just Love it. Nothin more to say, just love it.
Would recommend to everyone with a good taste for games.
Its funny, have a good story, have a very good visual design. Just everything is fine =)
Thats how a game should be! This game is entertainment.
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PlayStation 3
Hyperdimension Neptunia is a decent concept that is poorly executed. The story is forgettable, especially after spending countless hours watching poorly acted cut scenes that have no bearing on the story whatsoever.
Its slow-paced combat and exploration, weak visuals, and plodding plot leave a lot to be desired.
Most everyone else can pass this one by and spare their teeth some trauma. [April 2011, p.79]
Hyperdimension spends too much time engaging in fan service and in objectifying women and not enough time on making the core gameplay compelling enough.
An allegory of the video games industry featuring consoles as characters should've been comedy gold, but if this were a games machine it'd be the Atari Jaguar.
Amazing JRPG despite all negative reviews many critics have given them, mainly because of the humour and lovable characters. Light-hearted with an interesting concept, this game is definitely a must buy.
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PlayStation 3
While the combat system is pretty rough, Hyperdimension Neptunia is where the series got its signature blend of turn-based JRPG gameplay and visual novel-style storytelling. If you're a fan of the later games, you owe it to yourself to see where it all began. The characters and humor that made the Neptunia series a fan favorite are here in full bloom.
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PlayStation 3
Story: I knew a good portion of the plot from playing Re;Birth1 a year ago, but there are some differences. Firstly, compared to Re;Birth1, the characters seem very self-restrained; Neptune is no longer a mindless pudding addict meme-maker, and I think that's a (really) good thing. In fact, the word pudding is never mentioned. She makes no jokes about Noire's loneliness every frame either. This sums up to the aura of hostility between each goddesses; they are reluctant to help Neptune in doing anything. The only real buddies Neptune made throughout the game are IF and Compa. Talking about them, since they receive more screen time, or I was not paying much attention, Compa is potentially a very funny character with her grandfather's quotes and other absurdities (like a part of one of the legendary weapons being a heirloom from her grandfather, who conveniently found it on his yard). Every optional quest has a little backstory read by 5pb on her radio channel. The problem with the story in this game is how slow-paced it is; Neptune finds the first Key Fragment very early in the game, then there is a lot of filler (go to dungeon, watch cutscene, repeat) with uninteresting stuff, just to resume unfolding on the late stages of the game. Compa says that the most important are the beginning and the ending, but this is obviously not true. In any case, the concept was well established for the sequels (which the developers apparently didn't expect to make, given how this game ended). Still talking about story, what surprises me the most about Japanese games is the amount of effort they invest on side content, which may not be viewed by the player, easily skippable if one does not pay attention. The game does not explain how shares work nor how to recruit the goddesses, yet there are voiced cutscenes after you recruit each one of them.
Combat system: Trinity Universe cemented the path, while Hyperdimension Neptunia took the opposite way. It shares a lot of similarities with the previous game, since a lot of content was recycled from TU (most enemies, some maps); both are traditional dungeon crawlers, wherein a battle is triggered every X steps taken, creating an isolated instance. TU is a mix of RPG with hack n' slash mechanics; 4-button long combos are inputted to deal more damage, linking attacks from everyone in the party to unleash even greater combos and damage. Basically, Cross: light physical attack (high hit count), Square: heavy physical attack (low hit count), Triangle: magical attack (multi-target) and Circle: custom skill (eject, healing etc). I liked that system a lot (is there any other similar game?). However, the developers decided to scrap the solid system combat from TU to make something anew in HDN. The combo system is still there, but the player must create them with every skill obtained. Needless to say, but I just spammed the same combo for every character during the whole game; I'm not a fighting games player to memorize all these damn combos. They thought that "customization" was a good thing no matter where it was applied, although Cross Edge flopped for its wide amount of complex customization. The real issue is how healing takes place; there is a menu called "Item Skills", where you distribute percentage points to increase the likelihood of being healed or receiving different buffs during battle. Dying to a boss because my HP was at 51% and not 50%, thus not triggering the healing effect was utterly frustrating. To worsen things, some Item Skills are given priority over others (if you're at 30% HP, it's the Item Skill whose condition is to heal under 50% that gets triggered, healing in a smaller quantity of HP).
Environment/art: dungeons are still large corridors with repeated layouts, but at least there is a greater variation of them here. I think the graphics are pretty good, mainly the 3D models for the characters, that no longer look like they are made of wax. The frame-rate is slightly choppy in some dungeons (factories) while stable in others (snow). I read that lowering the resolution to 720p amenizes the issue, but it didn't bother me that much. Oh, yes, there is a 3D Macaroon in this game (shopkeeper in TU). Of course, the major selling point of the game: living, beautiful sprites drawn by the talented artist Tsunako. I love her style. Talking about the sprites, they seem thicker in this game, as well as the manga-style expressions. The font chosen by NISA for localization is very stylish. Background images in cutscenes appear to be more varied.
OST: I have read amountful comments stating that the sound-track is mediocre, but I liked it. Not every song thrilled me, but I think that each one of them suited well the themes for every dungeon where they play. During cutscenes the song played is changed to match the situation portrayed, which shows the care they had in making cutscenes.
I ran out of words but, I suggest checking this game if you're a fan of the franchise.
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PlayStation 3
As much as I loved this series, the first game in the series is pretty bad. And I'm not gonna be biased about it at all as I've played through the game and went through hell accomplishing some of the stuff thrown at me by this game. Repetitive combat, boring dungeon layouts, and a messed up item system hurts the gameplay of this game, made worse when some of the backgrounds and enemies are ripped STRAIGHT from other games (Trinity Universe and Ar Tonelico being some of them). I also should mention that battles become nothing as soon as Neptune learns a certain move that you can spam over and over with no penalty until you win. Character DLC is pretty crap too since said characters join your party but you need to buy a ticket in order to use them, save for the actual DLC characters that came after them. What hurts it more is the game doesn't explain anything about how the shares system works, which is essential if you want to recruit 3 specific characters. It also doesn't say that restarting a fight that you died on hurts shares too so if you die too much and just choose to retry when it asks you to, it secretly removes your shares, which will make it impossible to recruit those characters. The story itself isn't that bad, and its good for laughs, but then the game just starts repeating itself storywise once you get further. Even then, the final boss is disappointing, who returns in the next 2 games as a stock boss enemy.
Overall, I wouldn't really touch this game again since the other two games from this series are a whole lot better than this one. I'd only recommend it to a VN fanatic or a crazy otaku who doesn't mind playing a half baked game involving girls who represents today's consoles. RPG fans should look somewhere else since this game would most likely not be worth their time. Even though this exact game got me into this series, I really don't see myself touching it ever again.
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PlayStation 3
As a fan of JRPG's generally speaking, I had high hopes that I'd enjoy Hyperdimension and initially I enjoyed myself, getting a few laughs out of the often clever game industry parody humor, even if the over-sexualised characters and innuendo occasionally made me feel a tad uncomfortable.
However, once the actual game play was introduced, that's when things got pretty ugly. The combat felt extremely clunky and unresponsive with characters often taking a pause after each individual strike despite my having pressed the button to continue the combo and while it was something I could have adjusted to, the lack of a traditional healing system made things extremely frustrating. While I didn't hate the system and even believe it would be great in conjunction with a traditional system to make things more efficient (Ie, a character auto-heals themselves in battle using a specified item or ability when they drop too low instead of you having to tell them to do it), on it's own it quickly left characters too low on health to trigger the heal before they were knocked out, thus leaving them stuck on 1 HP.
The graphics on the other hand, are a mixed bag. The anime-style frames and scenes look extremely nice and clean however the actual modeled game world and character sprites leave a lot to be desired. They really didn't look good and many of the dungeon designs were extremely simplistic and uninspired.
Someone enjoying Hyperdimension Neptunia is going to ultimately come down being able to look past a multitude of problems with the core mechanics. If you enjoy anime or JRPGs and can look past the shortcomings in the combat system, the average game world graphics and the over-sexualisation of the characters and dialogue then there's enough clever humor to have your share of enjoyment. Otherwise, it's probably best to stay away.
+ Clever game industry related humor
+ Great game to play 'Guess the reference'
+ Anime style frames and scenes look great
+ Extensive combo building system
- Clunky and unresponsive combat system
- Frustrating healing system that takes too much control away from the player
- Ugly and uninspired graphics outside of the anime styled scenes
- Repetitive dungeons
- Over-sexualised characters and dialogue can leave the player feeling uncomfortable (Especially due to characters being presented as quite young)
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PlayStation 3
Summary This unique RPG features game consoles personified as goddesses, CPUs (Console Patron Units), who you can customize visually with equipment to enhance their stats. Players take the role of Neptune and follow her quest to save the captive Histoire. This leads her to face the corrupt monsters ravaging the world of Gamindustri unleashed by ...
Rated T
for Teen
Platforms:
- PlayStation 3
Initial Release Date: Feb 15, 2011
Developer:
- Compile Heart
- Idea Factory
Publisher: NIS America
Genres:
