I'm still shocked that this is actually pretty good. I mean, the original was like a barf-tastic version of Xenosaga--each monster battle took about four or five minutes. And now all the fights are only one minute long.

...Playing this on the PC thanks to the Humble Bundle purchase. I don't believe it. The devs fixed everything. So now it's actually playable with no PS3 slowdown or crappy controls. Lol.

So I tried this game out for laughs and I'm enjoying it. Battles are fast and characters are the traditional moe shit which I somehow love. It's official, I'm a weeb.

At first, I tried #Hyperdimension Neptunia on PS3, a mistake I never should've comitted. The fights were excessively slow, it was so discouraging after only twenty minutes of gameplay that I quickly put the game (and the series) in the "Unplayable" category, shamefully. I only tried the remake a year later, after asking myself if I REALLY should buy it after this first shipwreck. After many times going around in circles, I decided to stand still and bought it, which turned out to be a good decision because the remake is vastly superior compared to its original. It looks great, the fights are as fast as any RPG combat session and there are dozens of playable characters and stages. The story wasn't anything special but the references to the real-life console wars were funny. I recommand to play it if you want a relaxing game, with short sessions and tons of unlockable dungeons and stuff.

My Favorite Character: #Vert.

Whew okay. So I beat Hyperdimension Neptunia Rebirth and got the true ending. Be prepared for a WALL of text in the spoilers but my TL;DR is that it's a really great game. It has a simplistic cute (self aware) story and a really good really in depth battle system. If it looks like something that might interest you and you like turn based JRPGs go for it. Now for my review/in depth thoughts:

SpoilerGenuinely one of the best JRPGs I've ever played (and games, period) it's so god damned fun. Keep in mind I'm speaking specifically of Rebirth, apparently the original isn't nearly as good. I've heard good things about victory but can't really vouch for it. But anyway it's the most fun I've had playing a game since Dark Souls (which I did play earlier this year, but you know)

Erm where to start. Art is pretty great, character designs are some of the best moe type designs around. It's done by the same person who did the Date a Live designs which are also really great. Graphics are sharp and pretty. Dungeon environments aren't especially good but they're certainly serviceable.

Music is pretty darn good. The default battle theme is kinda meh but there's like 6 boss/alternative battle themes that are all really good, and a couple other standout tracks aswell. OST isn't the biggest but it's again quite good. I just wish someone uploaded it on YT so I could share some of the best tracks, but I can't find it anywhere. VA is good both for English and Japanese. English has a lot of scenes that aren't voiced, I wish I had known that before I chose to go with it. But on the other hand battle quotes and the such aren't translated for the Japanese version so it's a tradeoff.

Whew okay story. Honestly it's hard to say. It's a parody so it never takes itself seriously, ever. Even in supposedly dramatic moments the characters will be goofing off. There's nothing especially good about it, but it's trying to be a comedy not a drama and it succeeds. It's genuinely pretty funny the whole way through. Not quite laugh out loud funny, but I couldn't count the amount of times I cracked a smile. And they make good use of the console wars aspect of it with an in game feature reflecting it. Characters are pretty 2D but they're a likeable kind of 2D that don't really try to be 3D so I don't hold that against them. It's a cutesy moe story, and it's fun. That's all that matters to me, but I know it's not for everyone so fair word of warning. It also has a LOT of text at a time (though most of it's voiced, nearly all in the Japanese VO)

The references are really fun. There's the big obvious ones like Mario and Legend of Zelda, Uncharted, Halo, Dead Space, Call of Duty, etc etc. But there's also lots of smaller subtle ones like MGS-Revengance, Dark Souls, Madoka, Toukiden/Soul Sacrifice and the such. It's never in your face or obnoxiously cheesy it's just kinda there, a lot of them I'd call subtle. There's VN monsters, mario pipes, Gundams and etc. as enemies. I have to say my favorite is having MC hum the Final Fantasy victory tune when she levels up. Also all the characters being based on real things is cool, like the 4 Godess' being the consoles, or characters representing Compile Hearts, Marvelous (aka Xseed), Idea Factory, MAGES, Cyber Connect and so on.

It's just so nice to have something that revels in gaming culture and has so much fun with it especially in a time where people are saying how awful games and gamers are. It's refreshing.

Okay finally the Battle System, which is easily the best part. First off it's freaking HARD. I mean BRUTALLY hard. As in you need to spend serious time grinding if you don't get to wiped (which I was several times throughout, and had a lot of close calls). It's to the extent that over on places like Gamefaqs people are complaining the game sucks because they suck at it. Some "professional" reviewers even did the thing where they knocked off points because they don't want to get gud. And all of that is assuming you don't activate an option to make it even harder which you can do pretty early on and it's basically hard mode. There's also easy mode for sissy babies which I guess people were too dumb to use. It's extra funny because later on if you know what you're doing and have the right moves it gets a LOT easier. The best comparison I could use difficulty wise is something like one of the SMT games, maybe IV

But anyway difficulty aside it's a very in depth battle system. You have to take a bunch of stuff into account, like which characters to use (there's like 13 of them) spacing, whether you want a weapon with a wider swing or one that's more powerful and so forth. You have to choose which kind of attack you want to do, one that simply has more power, one that can break an enemies guard, or one that charges your limit break meter more. There's also a partner system and you can swap mid battle so you could say have one character that heals when needed and another that charges the limit break meter. It's so fun that I actually enjoyed grinding which is rare for me. All of that is just scratching the surface but (quite surprisingly) it has one of the most in depth turn based battle systems I've ever seen.

I also really feel the need to point out for lack of better term, quality of life features. Stuff like no random encounters with easily avoidable enemies, items/spells that restore percentage based HP/MP, MP items you can actually buy, people getting equal EXP without splitting even if they're not in the party, an art gallery, a music player, a bestiary, in depth stats, new game plus, selectable voice overs, a centralized side quest system, etc. On there own none of these features are especially amazing but there's so many of them that together they really make the game much more fun to play.

Anyway despite all that there's several things I didn't cover, it's a really big game with a lot of content. I do have some minor gripes like too much reused dungeons and enemies (though it's not worse than Persona in that regard), the default battle theme being kinda boring, characters keeping equipment when they leave their party and other small things. But none of them stop the gaming from being amazing. Really the dividing factor will be if you can enjoy a mostly laid back (but very self aware) cute story with a lot of text. If so then highly recommended. I'm definitely getting the sequels and also doing NG+

I've always heard mixed things about this series, but seriously considering picking it up, it looks fun and I love the character designs/concept. Anyone tried later games in the series and have thoughts?