Hyperdimension Neptunia was one of the first games I played on the PlayStation 3. It had a great cast of characters, a neat concept and also a
messy battle system. Fortunately the franchise did well enough to have sequels that revamped the battle system for the better. Not long after, the trilogy was remade for PlayStation Vita (and later released on PC) and while I bought the first game back in February 2017, I didn't start the game until late last month - which is about 4 years 6 months later...
Neptunia is a turn-based RPG with a large roster of characters, but only three at max can tag along during battles (though you can swap for another character for each individual so it's technically 6). The battle system is split into different areas, starting off with the Attack approach which gives you three methods; Rush, Power & Break, with 3 hit combos (you can mix and match between the three). Rush is good for increasing the speed of the EXE Gauge, Power is for strong damage attacks, and Break is to reduce the enemy's guard so that you can do more damage once it breaks. Once the EXE Gauge reaches a Level you can unlock a fourth combo that does extra damage, so the higher the EXE level the better. This approach is a vast improvement over the original which was quite hard to follow and a bit overly-convoluted.
Alongside the main Attack option, the battle also offers SP special which can help heal your team, add buffs & debuffs, and also do super attacks against one or multiple enemies. For Neptune, Noire, Vert & Blanc, these four also have the option to activate HDD which gives them extra attack power. You can also select Items in case you run out of SP and Defend yourself or try to Escape the battle if the scenario escalates. Again these are also improvements over the original battle system which was initially dependent on luck rather than being able to immediately use the items or special moves.
The battles overall can take seconds to a fair while depending on which enemy you're up against. In each dungeon, a majority of the enemies are pretty easy to fight unless they go into Viral mode which can increase the difficulty. There are also large 'tough' enemies that can overwhelm you if you are under-levelled but the good news is that they won't chase after you if you are close so you can literally walk past them without initiating a battle.
Then we have the boss battles which leads to my biggest issue with the game - the difficulty. Long story short, the difficulty ramps up by a lot compared to the regular enemies which ruins the pace of the game. The best way to describe this is if you're Level 20 and you can deal with fighting enemies that are around Level 18-22, but then you fight the boss who is Level 30 for whatever reason and easily defeats you even if you have the most updated equipment. This to me, is the game's biggest flaw in general because it ruins the pace and can often become unfun depending on the circumstances. The only way to fix this is the generic RPG approach of level grinding, which is unfortunate considering the battle system is very fun to use, and while you can suggest that spacing out your team is a key aspect to defeating high level enemies, the amount of damage they can do (and sometimes even heal more than the damage they take) will still cause problems.
Outside of battles, the game also has a Share system where each nation has a percentage of shares that will determine which of the two endings you will encounter (Normal or True). The True ending requires each nation having 20% shares and the enemy nation having 0% which is pretty easy to achieve. Shares can be achieved by defeating enemies in the Coliseum and going on Quests by fulfilling criteria like finding materials or defeating specific enemies. These will offer 1-5% shares for a nation, but in return can result in a decrease of shares for another so it's all about balance.
On the world map, you also have little message pop-ups which can give you new plans to make items, weapons and dungeons. This where Re;Birth's new features come in but its easily missable if you don't pay extra attention. The Remake system is a brand new addition to the game that lets you create new dungeons, new items, new game modifications and more after fulfilling certain criteria in terms of specific item drops from dungeons. When you create a dungeon, you'll want to visit them at least once so that you can unlock additional plans that adds more enemies and changes the item drops for those dungeons. The game modifications include weakening or strengthening enemies, more credits, more EXP, increase in the EXE Gauge and more.
You can also use the Remake system to unlock Nepgear, Uni, Rom and Ram, characters from the second Neptunia game, for the character roster but they each require 30% nation shares to unlock the plan followed by 50% shares, 1024MB of Remake System space and an specific item from one of the dungeons near the end of the game. The Remake system does have a limitation to avoid breaking the game entirely, which is about 2000-3000MB you can use at max. Fortunately, the plans you create in the first playthrough will carry over into New Game+ with the MB space reset so you can keep your pre-existing creations and make more in return.
As for the story, it's pretty much the same structure as the original with added characters to the mix. The franchise is a homage and parody of the video game industry with Neptune based on SEGA's unreleased Neptune console, Noire based on Sony's PlayStation, Vert based on Microsoft's Xbox, and Blanc based on Nintendo. The other characters include Compa (Compile Heart), IF (Idea Factory), MAGES. (searching for that Dr Pepper), Falcom (basically female Adol), Tekken (yes that Tekken), CyberConnect2 (designed like a dot hack character), MarvelousAQL (as busty as Senran Kagura), and Broccoli (not the vegetable, but the actual company who made Di Gi Charat). For those curious, Nepgear (Neptune's younger sister) represents SEGA's portable console devices, Uni (Noire's younger sister) represents Sony's PlayStation PSP/Vita devices, and Rom and Ram (Blanc's younger sisters) represent Nintendo's DS handhelds. Because Xbox is mostly console-based, Vert doesn't have a younger sister. Also NISA and Gust characters from the original do not appear in Re;Birth.
While the original PlayStation 3 version has a recycled battle system and assets from Cross Edge and Trinity Universe, two previous cross-over games from one or more similar developers/publishers oddly enough, the seriousness of the original isn't carried over into the Re;Birth version so it's more light-hearted than before. In terms of the story progression, there are 8 chapters in total and took me about 28 hours to complete alongside the preparations for other completion-based tasks like acquiring more dungeons, receiving the plans for unlocking additional characters, and levelling up the team to defeat the bosses. Once I finished the first playthrough, an additional 11 hours was spent getting everyone to Level 99 and acquiring 100 million credits for the Platinum trophy.
Regarding the 100 Million credits trophy, because I own a physical copy via the North American release (Europe was digital only), I had to take the long approach by fighting the Clione enemy which offers 322,000 credits with the Credits Up plans in place. It is a tedious journey but was much faster than I had expected as it took about 500 minutes to sort out. Fortunately since its accumulative, you only need to reach 50 million credits as you can then use the credits to buy and sell expensive items to reach the number faster. If you do have access to the DLC, that approach is much quicker due to receiving more credits by defeating an enemy in one of the Coliseum battles though it will require additional levelling up I believe.
Overall, aside from the frustrating difficulty spikes for the boss battles, Hyperdimension Neptunia Re;Birth 1 is a very enjoyable game and a massive improvement to the original PlayStation 3 release. The game has been released on PC with 60fps support, and there is a PlayStation 5 version now available called Neptunia ReVerse that I recommend for newcomers if they want the definitive release (it also has 60fps and allows you to have 4 characters during battles instead of 3 which makes a very big difference). Neptunia ReVerse also has a different trophy list which I believe is way easier to achieve compared to the PS3 & Vita versions.
