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| Neptune knows her role. |
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| A big stick and no pants is a winning combination. |
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| You can't regain your memories on an empty stomach. |
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| Neptune does cute stuff throughout the game. |
Neptune is not alone in her quest, as she's joined by numerous badass waifus. Each girl brings her own brand of cuteness to the table as well as their own niche. You can have up to four girls kicking ass and taking names, which I like. Heck, there are even a couple of cuties, Manu and Al, who pop-up throughout your journey to give you tutorials. There's a good chance otakus will want these girls on their next pillowcase.
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| Some waifus will join you to regain their own memories. |
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| Manu and Al are fixtures in every guild. |
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| Manu is very devoted to keeping you informed on the game's mechanics. |
The gameplay is a combination of RPG and platformer. There are elements from several RPGs mixed in. For example, they implemented the skill system from Final Fantasy 9, where each weapon has skills you can learn by using them enough. Also, as is the case in many modern RPGs, random battles are a thing of the past. You can see the enemies and choose to avoid or fight them. If you do chose to fight, what you see walking around on the map is not always indicative of what you'll be fighting, so be prepared for anything. You could very well be walking into an ass-whuppin'.
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| What you see isn't always what you get with enemies. |
The combat is similar to Valkyrie Profile, with each button assigned to a character. Simply press a button and the assigned character will do an assigned action. Things feel a little less smooth than in Valkyrie Profile because of the way those number wheels work. In fact, combat feels quite clunky, but it's functional. You can string together some serious thrashings once you learn how things work.
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| Combat can be clunky, but there's still tiny bit of flow to it. |
Your battle formation is also something to consider going into battle. You can change which cutie leads the party, which changes how they all fight as well as providing some passive benefits that are only active when that girl is the leader. You can also change each character's skills manually to determine how they fight at every point in the formation. You WILL want to fiddle with this, unless you like taking ass-whuppins and burning through resources.
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| Preparation is the key to avoiding a vicious beating. |
That leads me to the next thing. This game is pretty hard for what it is. Enemies seem to always land criticals, already hit pretty hard when normally, and take quite a bit of damage. Regular battles require a degree of strategy and knowing what works on what monster. If you don't, battles we drag on. This is made worse by the fact that you can't change formations mid-battle. Adding insult to injury, if your party leader gets hit with the Stop status, nobody in the party can act, aside from using items. WTF?
The platforming works well enough, but is also kind of shitty. For starters, Neptune moves at one speed and that's lightning speed. That really sucks when you're trying to avoid enemies or to land those symbol attacks, because they'll pop up faster than you can react. It doesn't help that enemies are sometimes obscured by the foreground.
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| Combined with Neptune's break-neck pack, the foreground can make monsters difficult to see and/or avoid. |
Then, you have impossible jumps, which goes hand-and-hand with falling into pits. The pits don't kill you (at least not instantly), but you will take a good hit to your HP and respawn where you jumped from. Heck, there's one jump early on that you can't make and the game realizes this, so it places you on the next platform. While it is nice that you don't have to keep making that jump, it's still shitty design. Other jumps are extremely lucky. You may or may not make the jump, depending on how the game feels at that point. And sometimes your button presses don't register, which will have you running right back into the pit. If patience is something you lack, game controllers will fly. There's is an ability to help out later, but it doesn't come soon enough.
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| Trust me, this part is shitty. |
Navigating the world is made simple. All you have to do is find a save crystal, select the World Map, option, and select your destination. When selecting a town, you will travel from crystal to crystal and when selecting a dungeon, you can choose to warp to the entrance or one of the crystals hidden within. It's a good way go from quest to quest and avoid fighting pissants.
Another big part of the game is questing. There are a number of quests you can embark on by going to the guild hall or talking to characters with numbers over their heads. The quests are usually worth doing, but some will just drain your resources and/or time. Still, some others will take a bit of time to finish or even get started, so don't give up.
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| You can receive quests from guilds... |
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| ...as well as the random nobodies you'll run into. |
On to the little stuff. The graphics are all over the place. They are always bright and colorful, but sometimes things are too small. Bright and small is not a good recipe for long-term eyesight. They probably do this to cover up the marionette effect going on with the characters legs when they walk. Neptune's legs are fine because she always runs, but you'll definitely notice something off during story segment when character are walking and big enough to actually see.
The music isn't bad, but it's not very memorable. I literally forgot the music seconds after turning off the game. Don't get me wrong, there is some good stuff. It just doesn't stick with you.
The voices on the other hand are cute. Not necessarily good, just cute. The main characters aren't bad and speech is clear and in English, which is always a plus. The NPCs might make you laugh though, saying little nothings or just chuckling for no good reason.
Also, there's performance issues. I don't usually talk about performance in my reviews, but it can get really bad here sometimes. There are times where you'll try to swing your sword to do a symbol attack only for the sword to vanish mid-swing. Also, there are times where you'll hit the jump button, only for Neptune to not jump. The press is being recognized because she'll say one of her jumping phrases, but she simply won't jump. This sucks because you might be trying to avoid an enemy only to jump right into them. The music stutters every time you enter a different area, an embarrassing flaw to say the least. To top it all off, sometimes the takes it's sweet time to the point where I think it's frozen. Seriously, there were times when I thought the game wouldn't even load because it just got...stuck.
What we have with Super Neptunia RPG is a cute little game with a sense of humor and some glaring flaws. The combat system is kind of rugged, but it works well enough. The exploration/platform parts could have used some more work, as there are some truly confounding jumps early on that you MUST do. The performance issues are weird, because this game can't possibly be that taxing on your system. The game is fun and the girls are cute if you like these types, but it's held back BS that simply shouldn't be there. Either check it out or buy with caution.
