Hyperdimention Neptunia: Producing Perfection

For fans of the genere who have missed this one I’ll give you a heads up now that it’s a side story and a completely different genere from the usual RPG with the fragile 4th wall.

This time it’s a waifu raising dating sim idol game where you chose one of the 4 charicters and you as a poor shmuck summoned into their world on a whim have to help your chosen girl become gameindustri’s top idol. With a frigile 4th wall.

Now at this point I’ve played through all four girls ‘good’ ends and one ‘true’ end to get a getter grasp of it but as you can probably guess from this and it’s launch date that it’s very short.
It’s realistic to be able to complete a run in a few hours as you have up to 180 days (or get the bad end) to make your girl the most popular. This is easier than it sounds because that only means you need 26% of shares, less if you’re fast.
But as their are 12 endings, 3 for each girl it makes sence that it’s not too long, otherwise people would likly get bored/ get a new game to play long before that point. Especaly considering the only difference between the girls is the scenes and not the gameplay itself.

The gameplay however is largly like a dating sim if you’ve ever played one. If you havn’t the closest thing I can liken it too is the limited time and spending them increasing your socal links and/or stats in a persona game.
Except here it’s increasing your girl’s apptitude at beign an idol and puting on conserts. Which is from a mighty pool of 5 songs, one of which is only usable in freeplay and as your final game winning consert.
During which you time using flashy effects with the audences excitment you get a higher score, and by extention more fans. That and changing camera angles that I don’t think did anything but let you get an angle of your choise for veiwing the dancing.
You can also change the outfits and which stage you use to keep it fresh.

Now the key point fans of HDN really care about, the events.
Their are assorted events and shanagagans for all of the girls, some also involving the girls little sisters, some just involving them.
For instance, you get kidnapped by them and when you ask why you were knocked out and dragged all this way

All of the girls have their own unique events of course, and a few that crossover, such as the one above and the ones where all of the girls you can chose meet up for somthing.
This includes one for (presumably) all of the girls where you accidentaly walk into them in the bath. Because that’s apparently easy to do, not sure I get how, to be honest.
Most scenes thataffect stats will only raise them, apart from stress and guts, they fluctuate a lot.
The exeption to the core stats is ‘Trust’ some scenes can lower it, for example reacting incorectly to the bath bit.

Now this is somthing I don’t tend to do but this IS an idol game and I’ve never played one before, as such I asked a friend who plays them a lot his take and he basicaly turned his nose up at it because.

Theres no rhythm game stuff during song sections and instead just some dumb fiddling around.

and that

It’s a dating sim masquerading as an idol manager like IM@S

As such there you have it. If you want a decent idol game then don’t look here.
I would even go as far as you say if you’ve never played a Neptunia game then you’re probably better off not bothering either, after all a lot of the events really need a prior knowledge of the setting to know whats going on to make any sence I feel.
That said I went into it looking for shanagagans from Neptune and the crew and thats what I got, so if you’re a fan of the series and just want whats basicaly a visual novel of Neptune and co then you could do worse.

All in all it’s a 3/10, I enjoyed it sure, but that doesn’t stop it from being a terrable game that scarcly warrents the full price. After all is said, there is almost no real gameplay and is only going to be of interest to existing fans of the series.
And numbering among the eight of us that actually own a Vita no less, unless ofcourse the vita suddenly became more popular while I wasn’t looking.

Val.