Hyperdimension Neptunia Review

Hyperdimension Neptunia is a Japanese RPG exclusive on the Playstation 3 system. You are in the world known as Gamindustri that was spilt into four different regions: Planeptune, Leanbox, Lowee, and Lastation. Each of the regions are protected by four goddesses. An accident happened where the console wars wages out and knocked the goddess of Neptune out that made her forget her memories. You control Neptune on a quest to find Histoire that contains all the information about the world. the monster threats and find out why the goddesses hate Neptune so much. Developed by Idea Factory and published by NIS America (Compile Heart/JP)

I'm a huge fanatic on JRPG and I've been waiting for a long time to any new titles like this one. Hyperdimension Neptunia is not your typical JRPG. You will see lots of video game consoles and games alike.


This is where all the dialogue comes from. Even though there's no interaction in these scenes, watching their expression changes is good enough for me. The dialogue is full of humor and jokes that had me laughing from time-to-time. Jokes can range from video game reference to making fun of someone's boobies. There's an option to play the voices from Japanese or English. However, I was stuck with the English voices the entire time. The voice actors played out their roles marvelously. Whoever thinks the English voices are awful needs to buy a hearing aid.

The game does have its faults though. First of all, the whole shares gauge is so damn annoying where it's actually one of the requirements to get the true ending. Luckily there's a good trick around it, but if you don't find out sooner though, it will take you forever to raise it up. I did run into a few game freezes and glitches along the way. I had a few troubles with frame rate issue, but I was able to tolerate it.


The battles are traditional turn based. You create your own combos of whatever fits your play style. Healing is done automatically in battle depending on how you set it up. There are several methods to heal whether your HP needs to drop around 30% to activate or other requirements needed. To increase the chance of activating it also depends on the amount of percentage you add on that skill. You will earn more points to add to your percentage up the more you level up.


This game does require lots of patience having to go through dungeons whether the task is to defeat the boss, or kill a certain amount of enemies. If you don't like random battles, then this game may annoy you for a bit. The game does get way too easy even setting it on hard difficulty early in the game. But just like any RPG, the difficulty spike will jump up where you'll end up taking a ton of damage without notice. Just use the attack and defend trick where you have enough AP left to defend yourself toward the end of your combo.


You can upload your own images. Like this "awesome" example here.


Or you can use it as an attack!


Funny video game references brings laughter and nostalgia.


Neptune Break will make battles go much faster when you learn this move early in the game.


You can read up on the goddesses' blog to see what they are up to.


Major dungeons and level grinding. And yes, Blanc is actually smiling. O_O;


Gust is adorable. But be careful with your money around her. (resisting on yoinking her bunny ears)

Neptunia is a wonderful game that you should give it a try anyways. I don't think I ever laughed this much in any RPG I've ever played. Neptunia does break the boundaries of a typical RPG. I was very satisfied with everything the game has to offer, and it felt like my whole week spent on this game was well worth the time. The Characters are full of high spirits and passion that you learn more about their personally as you progress further into the story.

I don't think this game will receive much praise or attention due to the whole culture differences. I even called Gamestop since I wanted to play this game on the day it arrived, and they only ordered 3 copies for the people who reserved them thinking it wouldn't sell well.

It's really too bad that I finished the game before any good DLC comes out. I watched some videos of the new characters already so I think I can keep my money. Though, it'll be hard to resist getting Gust though!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SBlw3c41VqY (Dawww Gust)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iFTiAfc1x4E
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b8huqhJJLfg (She's just like Lucia from Pangya)


This game doesn't have a clock to show how long you spent playing this game. So I'm guessing it's around 50 hours getting the true ending. Most of my characters have already reached level 99, and I'm one trophy short of getting a 100% completion. Whenever I get around to finishing the monster list is beyond me at this point.

I've been playing and broadcasting this game for about a week now, so I'm sure several people were already bored watching me grind levels and do other quests to fully complete the game. I can set this game aside and finish up on some other games I haven't gotten around to finish.