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Hyperdemension Neptunia Re;Birth first impressions

By: RJ (@rga_02)

I’ve always been neutral to the Neptunia series. I neither hate it or love it. Prior to this I’ve only dabbled with Hyperdimension Neptunia Victory & Hyperdimension Neptunia: Producing Perfection and I enjoyed my time with those two titles to an extent. I know what to expect and not to expect out of this franchise. This series is geared towards a niche audience. An audience who loves to devour anime and video game tropes like there’s no tomorrow. Not everyone will appreciate or even understand that. But beneath all that unfamiliarity, there might something special with the Neptunia series that can resonate beyond that niche group of people.

What I love about the game so far is the writing. Idea Factory has done a splendid job with the localization of the title. The story is nonsensical, but the references, puns, jabs in this game is like candy to a person who is well aware of what’s going on in the gaming medium. My personal favorite reference is when Neptune hums a similar tune akin to the Final Fantasy victory fanfare when you win a battle. 

The combat system has been revamped to what’s found in Hyperdimension Neptunia Victory. Which would be a godsend for a lot of people considering the battle system found in the original title from my understanding was very mediocre. The combat system is fairly easy to pick up and master. It’s a bit bare bones compared to the likes of other jRPGs, so for those looking for something with a lot of depth, you might be disappointed. However, battles are not sluggish compared to past games like Victory. While there are some frame rate drops here and there, for the most part, battles are smooth and fast moving. And if you don’t feeling like you want to take the time to git gud, a new feature found in this game not present in the original is the Remake System. Where you can set the features to help you progress much faster in the game such as lowering the levels of the enemy you encounter in the game. But if you are looking for a challenge, you can also use the remake system to toughen the dungeons up.

My biggest gripe of the game so far is quite possibly the soundtrack. Of course it would be foolish to expect some Uematsu level of music quality in a game such as this, but the OST in this game is simply just forgettable and boring. I believe that the soundtrack helps define the game, but that simply isn’t the case here.

Hyperdimension Neptunia Re;Birth will be coming out on the PlayStation Vita August 26th & 27th for North America and PAL Regions respectively.