At this point, you probably know if you’re a fan of Hyperdimension Neptunia or not. It’s also likely that you have no idea what it is, so now we have a remake of the first game. It also might be a thing because the first game wasn’t so hot in the first place, and the series has seen a ton of functional improvements since. There are a ton of angles here that could justify Hyperdimension Neptunia Re;Birth1. Fitting, considering how scatterbrained this series can be.

 
Here are the basics: The Neptunia series is a sort of lampooning of the game industry and the culture surrounding it, in over-the-top anime style. The major console developers are represented as powerful goddesses (along with SEGA for some reason, perhaps as a goofy way to separate the player or avoid bias?), warring over support from the inhabitants of Gamindustri (GET IT?). Neptunia is bested, defeated, and loses her memory, only to find herself defending Gamindustri from the evils of piracy or something. Yeah, it’s a parody, but a parody of the industry from the industry is still gonna be a bit self-indulgent.

 
The name of the game in Neptunia is customization. You can craft equipment, switch up the equipment and stats of Neptunia in her powered-up form, control your position in battle and even tinker with each individual hit in your attack combos. In this new version, you can even customize your greater surroundings in a limited fashion, including enemy strength, items available in dungeons and more. I’m barely scratching the surface here; the amount of direct influence you have over your game is impressive.

 
Being a niche anime RPG joint, you can expect the usual hangups. Neptunia tries to hide behind the walls of parody, but it teeters on the line and often falls over it. Just like in the controversial world of Grand Theft Auto criticism, if you’re going to make fun of a thing, you aren’t going to succeed if you are pandering to the thing you’re making fun of at the same time. Calling out hardcore gamers on being weird perverts doesn’t work when that fire is being fueled in the process.

 
That isn’t to say Neptunia isn’t genuinely funny at times. When the jokes at the expense of the industry/audience work they are totally on-point, and hilarious. As far as returning players are concerned, there are a few differences for the sake of mixing things up, but nothing earth-shattering. Justifying this experience for established Neptunia fans will be the new mechanics, bringing all of the subsequent improvements to the series back to the thoroughly lackluster original. Portability is also a huge boon.

 
If you’re into Neptunia enough to know this exists, I can almost guarantee you’ll be into it. It’s the first game, but actually pretty good. It runs smoothly 90% of the time and has the combat from the later games. If you’re a newcomer, it depends on your threshold for the genre. If you need an RPG for your Vita, you could definitely do worse.

Hint: Make sure you pay attention to the sequence you want your moves to be in. Filling in unneeded spaces wastes points!

by Lucas White