Superdimension Neptune VS Sega Hard Girls (PS Vita)
The Sega Hard Girls are a set of characters where women have outfits based on the different consoles Sega manufactured back when it was still in the hardware game. However, despite this idea giving birth to some appealing and clever designs, they have found very little use outside of merchandising. There was a short lived cartoon with plenty of cute references to Sega’s history, but the Sega Hard Girls themselves surprisingly had no video game to their name until the creators of the Hyperdimension Neptunia series stepped in. Already built from a similar concept, the large and varied Neptunia series focuses on girls who are the embodiments of fictitious Sega consoles. Already with plenty of games to its name, Hyperdimension Neptunia could have helped Sega’s niche Hard Girl initiative find new love, but it does feel a bit like the developers were more focused on their own content than the guest stars who needed the push.
Luckily, the two main heroines of the game are essentially meant to represent the two halves of Superdimension Neptune VS Sega Hard Girls due to who they support in the conflict and how their powers line up with them. IF, pronounced I.F., is the central character, an adventurous but level-headed young lady who rides her prized motorcycle across the wastes of a once vibrant world. Locating the Grand Library, IF is surprised to learn that history itself is being destroyed and she must help ensure it isn’t completely erased. Helping her with this quest is the amnesiac Segami, a spunky and passionate young lady whose strong desire to fix the past helps spur IF to play a more than passive role in trying to keep things together. The two have a very fun dynamic, Segami constantly driving the action while IF’s more cautious attitude keeps them from overextending, but IF has her more passionate moments as well such as losing her temper when her motorcycle is even slightly dinged. This is exacerbated when we meet the third main player in the plot, the Hyperdimension Neptunia heroine Neptune ending up possessing the vehicle and fulfilling a jester like role for most of the adventure. Neptune is constantly cracking jokes, being silly, and egging others on, her airheaded antics providing plenty of hilarious little moments as you move along. Neptune does dip into meta humor, but acknowledging everything taking place exists within a video game is usually done in fun and new ways save for the fact the game often falls back on the formula of people telling Neptune not to get too meta in her commentary in a very similar way each time.
As for what fixing time entails, there are four eras of history to visit, each one based around the four tentpole Sega consoles. Mega Drive (the global analogue to the United States’s Genesis), Sega Saturn, Game Gear, and Dreamcast all represent points in a history where the world’s fate is tied, oddly enough, to the people’s enjoyment of video games. Each of these eras has a Sega Hard Girl representing the video game console as well as a goddess who is meant to protect the world, but the Sega Hard Girls and goddesses seem to be consistently fighting, leading to the barren future and inviting more trouble as time erases itself while they quibble. While Superdimension Neptune VS Sega Hard Girls is a turn-based role-playing game, much of your time spent with it feels almost like you are playing a visual novel, with hours of voiced dialogue for the game’s plethora of scenes. The fun writing and personality-filled characters make this an enjoyable plot despite its substance being a little strange and the story line feeling not as important as the cast, so even though most of the time during these conversations you’ll only see barely animated versions of the girls, the game does do a good job of making them worth watching.
However, as mentioned near the start, there does seem to be a discrepancy in who gets the most attention. The two new protagonists and Neptune as their comic relief naturally demand the most love from the writers and are handled well for their roles, but the goddesses who are characters from the Hyperdimension Neptunia series seem to have a lot more thought put into their personalities than the Sega Hard Girls. Plutia is a sleepy and over-friendly airhead who reveals an unexpected side when she transforms into her goddess form, Uzume puts on a strong front and is the tomboy of the goddess group, and Nepgear is a more reserved and agreeable sort who only strays from her cool attitude when something piques her interest. The Sega Hard Girls, on the other hand, are a bit harder to place, most of them falling into the same generic mold of determined and serious protectors of their time period. Game Gear’s got a laziness shtick that manifests in her voice and a few lines and Dreamcast is a little ditzier than the other four, but Saturn and Mega Drive are fairly close in personality because there is very little done with these supporting characters. Their character profiles seem to suggest the team wanted you to think there was more to them, but they not only have less going on, but the Hyperdimension Neptunia girls definitely get more dialogue and chances to show off their character.
While the cast may be uneven, the characters who do shine are mostly fun additions and the Sega Hard Girls are more wasted opportunities than weak participants in the plot. Whether they be goddess or Hard Girl though, they all end up joining your adventuring party, meaning that even though the story is skewed towards the Superdimension Neptune, your team of four fighters can be built almost as you please. They even all level up regardless of if you’re using them in battle or not, so while some characters have a head start based on when you unlock them in the plot, they remain viable options after they’ve had time to build up some experience. You must always at least have either IF or Segami in the team, the two protagonists participating in the level navigation as they platform, find treasures, and run into enemies to start battles. The areas they’ll explore have varied templates such as a virtual world of cubes, a lava tunnel, and a run down building, but they are recycled across the four ages you explore. Some of them do have significant changes between eras, such as the ruins that become harder to explore the further in the future you are and the Toypolis amusement center that gets more floors added to it over time, but some places like the forest just have the plants die out and it doesn’t feel like the different eras diversify the layouts enough. Enemies will change at least and late in the game areas get their own unique boss monsters, so at least the diversity outside of navigational challenges is varied enough.
Speaking of the enemies, the battles in Superdimension Neptune VS Sega Hard Girls involve you and whatever mix of goddesses and Hard Girls you desire going up against some rather strange creature. Men with planes for pants, dogs made of goo, large moving warp pipes like the ones found in the Super Mario series, and the screen from a visual novel dating sim are all enemy types you might encounter, but things like crystal golems, volcano bugs, and carnivorous plants means there are a few grounded ones to balance out the quirkier designs. Fights are turn-based and involve characters moving around a restricted area where their actions all draw from the same meter. Moving to position yourself, attacking, using items, and utilizing abilities all have different costs that use up this bar, the character’s turn ending once they’ve overdrawn or chosen to defend to save what they had left. Abilities can include things like IF or the goddesses using transformations that up their stats, magic spells that deal damage or can alter your allies or enemies to perform better or worse, and more powerful attack options. Your available fighters all have different strengths and weaknesses such as Game Gear having a focus on item usage, Neptune providing strong and quick strikes, and characters like Plutia focusing on healing abilities. You can change their class, equipment, and set abilities to make them more useful or varied, and over the course of a fight you build up Fever power that will then let your four girls have a period where they can unleash their super moves or simply get in free strikes without worrying about the enemies taking a turn until it dries up.
The Fever system is a good equalizer, but it’s pretty easy to store the power and use it against the game’s limited boss selection. Most boss fights you will want to build up Fever before entering, but the ones that can withstand it at least show there is some challenging design to them beyond just having the Fever burst on hand. The game can seem generous with healing items and the cash to buy more of them at times, but facing off with goddesses or Sega Hard Girls in the plot can necessitate careful item usage, smart attack pacing, and intelligent sacrifices to get around the power gap. While bosses are the biggest case of having to get around a much tougher foe, some areas will have a power spike for the regular enemies that makes them a decent challenge as well. Fairly regular battling will allow you to mostly keep pace, but if they ambush you and get extra attack turns, the stronger enemies can be devastating, while your own ambushes can give you the edge needed to keep pushing through a new area’s tougher opposition.
Grinding for more levels or to buy better equipment is an option always, but it doesn’t feel too necessary in a traditional sense. There are multiple plot missions you need to accept to progress the story, but sometimes you won’t be up to snuff for them yet. This is when you need to devote some time to side quests, areas having items you need to collect or enemies you need to defeat to satisfy these deviations while also giving you some time to bulk up while being productive. These are sort of busywork in that their design isn’t very imaginative, but they play an interesting and crucial role in how the game’s finale happens. The final boss is actually strengthened by any missions, be they side objectives or main story quests, that you allowed to expire. Having all quests expire forces a fight with a version of the boss you’re basically bound to lose against and the best ending requires completing all main quest objectives, but the expiration system does mean you can help determine how hard your final fight will be by engaging with these as much as you please. They do refresh after you lose the skirmish so you never permanently miss out on a quest, and while you might just throw your fights with the main antagonist to get it over with until you’re truly prepared, it is a unique take on how you face such an important foe. The final boss can be a bit easy because of how much you can weaken it, but the trade off is you’ll already have likely fought some hard battles to ensure you get it that weak… unless you get a bit too happy with the “plans”.
Rather than having traditional difficulty settings, you unlock plans as you go, these options sometimes being as small as determining whether or not you can see the eyebrows of the main cast through their hair while at other times drastically altering the battle system. You can make enemies tougher or weaker, disable ambushes or make it so you always ambush foes, and influence other little elements of the game to change its balance. The game does distribute the more impactful ones later on in the adventure so they assist with late game power gain or help you avoid unfortunate situations after already devoting so much time to the game, so it’s hard to begrudge the game for offering these difficulty adjustment options when they do. The combat isn’t quite as appealing as the character interaction after all, so after a good long time spent engaging with it, giving you ways to speed it up and reach the climax is better than dragging things out.
THE VERDICT: While Superdimension Neptune VS Sega Hard Girls is a crossover heavily weighted in favor of the home team, the gameplay and story balance does it quite a few favors. While there are a lot of cutscenes, the compelling main heroines and the quirky goddesses carry these well, and while the Sega Hard Girls were shafted in regards to unique personalities, they don’t drag it down either. The combat can start to feel a bit rote over time, but the boss fights and climbing difficulty of regular foes means some fights can still remain engaging and tense. The unlockable plans ease up that element appropriately and the adventuring side isn’t leaned on too hard, so while its appeal is closer to a visual novel because of the strength of the writing and character interaction, the RPG side is a decent enough gameplay supplement to keep the game going strong.
And so, I give Superdimension Neptune VS Sega Hard Girls for PlayStation Vita…
A GOOD rating. The role-playing game side of the game could definitely be punched up with more bosses, less reliance on Fever for them, and enemy skirmishes being more even rather than the sudden jumps in difficulty, but Superdimension Neptune VS Sega Hard Girls still can make a battle fun and tense and its regular fights aren’t offensive even when they’re too easy for their own good. Being able to pick your battles helps, and the quest system means you can visit the locations with purpose instead of needing to devote time specifically to leveling up and collecting cash. More area variety both in general and in how they’re represented across eras would help the adventuring and platforming stand out as more than a slightly involved way of getting around, but when it comes down to it, this game knows where the most love needs to go. The lead characters get plenty of time to set up jokes, engage in banter, and show the player who they are, and the goddesses get to join in on the fun as well as having the benefit of story quests highlighting their personalities and quirks. The scenes may just mostly be dialogue, but they have a level of writing needed to keep that interesting throughout the whole adventure with some laugh out loud moments and others that are drawn from your more intimate understanding of the cast as the game progress. Not everything lands well and some dialogue choices are a little strange or baffling, but besides underserving the Sega Hard Girls, Superdimension Neptune VS Sega Hard Girls justifies its existence by making its leading ladies fun to listen in on.
While I know of the Hyperdimension Neptunia series and played a game adjacent to it before, I have to admit I came to this game for the Sega Hard Girls. Having seen their cute little anime and finding the concept of them intriguing, it was a bit of a disappointment to see them play second fiddle in a game that should have been showcasing them to a broader audience. While a wasted chance to help the Hard Girls brand reach a wider audience, they are integrated into the combat well and ended up doing the reverse of what was likely intended in my case. While the popular Neptunia brand could have springboarded the Sega Hard Girls to greater prominence if they had been given the proper amount of focus, I was drawn in by their presence and got to meet the fun Neptunia characters. I now have a greater interest in their series than before because of the heart put into portraying that side of the crossover so well, but it’s always going to be a little bittersweet knowing that, despite the game turning out good in the end, it certainly missed its opportunity to elevate the Sega Hard Girls in a similar fashion.