Hyperdimension Neptunia Re;Birth2 Sisters Generation (PS4)
The Neptunia series takes place in a land called Gamindustri where video game consoles and companies manifest as women who usually compete for shares of public attention in a fantasy twist on the trend of console wars. Appropriately, some of the things that threaten the actual game industry can be issues in this video game based world, and Hyperdimension Neptunia Re;Birth2 Sisters Generation, a remake of Hyperdimension Neptunia mk2, sees them encountering a very natural threat for such a premise: game piracy. However, this turn-based role-playing game is really more about the interactions between its characters than the main danger threatening them, and after the first entry hit it out of the park with the weird and wonderful Neptune, the sequel made the odd choice to focus instead on a whole new cast with a lead with a very different disposition.
In the world of Gamindustri, four goddesses protect the nations of Planeptune, Lastation, Lowee, and Leanbox, but their strength comes from Shares, a way of tracking the public’s favor for the goddesses. Taking place in a different world than the original Hyperdimension Neptunia and its remakes, Hyperdimension Neptunia Re;Birth2 Sisters Generation sees a group called the Arfoire Syndicate of International Crime trying to undermine the goddesses by spreading game piracy to the masses, and right out of the gate we see how effective ASIC have been. The four CPU goddesses all lose in battle to ASIC’s forces, only Neptune’s little sister Nepgear able to escape thanks to the help of her friends Compa and IF. Now with the most powerful threats to their rule trapped in the Gamindustri Graveyard, ASIC seeks to revive the deity of sin Arfoire, but Nepgear is more than just Neptune’s family. She’s a CPU candidate, and the other nations have their own back up CPUs as well or other fighters who can help turn the people away from ASIC and back towards the four nations so that the back-up team can have the strength needed to free the CPUs and save Gamindustri as a whole from the return of Arfoire.
The quest to foil the ASIC will be your reason for traveling across the land to tackle new dungeons and meet new characters, the cast of Hyperdimension Neptunia Re;Birth2 Sisters Generation given so much time to talk it can nearly feel like a visual novel at times. Our main character Nepgear is an earnest, kind-hearted girl who always tries to reach out to others, a remarkably reserved contrast to Neptune whose absence is felt for a considerable amount of the experience. Nepgear is certainly sweet and pleasant, but her role of the main character does show she doesn’t have as much room for amusing interactions as the rest of the crew. Uni, Lastation’s CPU candidate, is a feistier personality whose feelings of inadequacy make her standoffish, a good contrast with Nepgear but one where Uni makes the interactions interesting rather than them both providing laughs. Uni can even get some moments where the game eases back on its usual humor focus to let her have a genuine character moment and even basically state the game’s message on the idea of game piracy, but other characters can be far more comedic. Red calls any girl she finds attractive her “wifey”, but with such a simple youthful appreciation of the women she’s talking to that it avoids feeling skeevy or uncomfortable in a game that is otherwise not afraid to set up perverted moments that show its ladies in various provocative situations. Rom and Ram, a pair of CPU candidate twins, can have rather sweet moments with the reserved Rom or some potentially annoying situations caused by the bratty Ram, but IF is a good balancing presence through the whole adventure with her more serious but not stiff personality.
You’ll get a fairly large party over the course of the adventure, especially since Hyperdimension Neptunia Re;Birth2 Sisters Generation includes all the DLC from the original release so you get a few extras if you choose to enable them. However, the game doesn’t make the best use of its cast, particularly because of the situations you find the group in. Chapter 2 in particular ends up a bit of a slog, Nepgear heading to each nation, meeting the CPU candidates for the first time, and not making too much progress on her goals so that the game can save it for later chapters. Chapter 2 is disproportionately long while other chapters can almost just be a single dungeon and boss fight, but Chapter 2 spends a lot of time not only gradually working on introducing the world, but its main activities are a bit repetitive as well. A character the group calls Underling appears early on, a recurring villain who does have her moments thanks to her spunky attitude and how the group just can’t take her seriously as a threat, but you constantly encounter her and even the characters acknowledge how it has gotten old well before you’ve reached the end of even chapter 2. Hyperdimension Neptunia Re;Birth2 Sisters Generation reuses bosses in general far too often particularly because Underling keeps cropping up or her latest plans somehow necessitates facing the same foe a few times, although at least the game handles similar recurring villain Warechu a little better. A little mouse that is quickly smitten with Compa, his swooning over Compa working well for getting some fun moments out of Compa who otherwise just felt like a more confident yet sillier version of Nepgear. His actual battles are rarer and he comes and goes more than Underling, but unfortunately the story feels like it putters around quite often and even then sometimes gives you rather basic objectives like returning to a previous dungeon to grab an item just to add a little more time to the adventure.
The interactions are still the best part of Hyperdimension Neptunia Re;Birth2 Sisters Generation even when it doesn’t know how to best utilize its characters or pace its adventure to keep conversations consistently fun and interesting. The world of Gamindustri can be an enjoyable place to explore as well, especially if you’re able to pick up on the various references to actual video games and systems that permeate the setting. The land of Lowee, based on Nintendo, has citizens that make little comments on the common elements of the Mario series, the enemies in dungeons can take on shapes like Space Invaders, dating sim screens, and even the head of Dr. Kawashima from Brain Age, and areas have more direct references in their names like the Atari Marsh. It is interesting to overhear someone who is engaging in some ASIC backed piracy and how a world based on gaming might contend with such an issue, although some of the best brief bits of dialogue you find will probably be things like a precious little dog who talks like he’s a seasoned warrior. You don’t visit towns per se, often just selecting things from menus when it comes to world map interactions, but there’s still a good bit of humor both game-derived and character based that squeaks through and can keep you going, even if it takes a bit too long for the game to put all the characters together so they can best bounce off each other.
When it comes time for action, you’ll head out into fairly small dungeons where you can look around for items off to the side but mostly just decide if you’ll fight the monsters wandering around. Once you do initiate a battle, you’ll be placed in a battle space where you have control of four characters, although for each of them you can set a back-up character who can be swapped in or provide some extra buffs and attacks based on how well you’ve cultivated their relationships either through optional events or just having them paired for a while. During the turn-based fights, you can move freely in any direction but only a certain distance, a character’s attacks then having specific range considerations. A basic attack might only hit one enemy or have more of a sweeping area, or you might choose to use a skill that targets a specific region of the battlefield. It can be a bit fiddly to try and hit as many foes as you want with an attack with wide range, but you have the all the time you need to set up the attack and you can use the directional buttons for micro-adjustments to make the most of your attack range. While every character will have specific unique powers like healing, dealing heavy damage, or doing things like boosting and lowering specific stats, even your basic attacks are a bit more interesting than regular strikes. You can set combos moves for each character, and the order you press X, Square, and Triangle when doing your regular attacks determines which of you three extra hit types you’ll do. Triangle attacks are Rush attacks that build energy for your most powerful EXE attacks the quickest, but Square’s Heavy Hits will deal the most damage while X’s Break moves will deal more damage to the enemy’s guard meter, breaking that guard making them more susceptible to damage until that bar recovers. You can get new attacks for each type including magics and special effects that don’t use the Skill Points necessary for special abilities, and the CPUs and CPU candidates can all assume more powerful Hard Drive Divinity forms to up their power in more important fights.
One reason it is a bit disappointing that Hyperdimension Neptunia Re;Birth2 Sisters Generation reuses so many bosses is that the battle system does have room for interesting strategies and yet bosses rarely get new noteworthy techniques on rematches. You do need to consider character positioning for both hitting a target and avoiding the range of an enemy’s powers, and while you can invest in Plans that can make things tougher or easier or provide new tools for battle, there will be moments that put up a good fight, especially since revival and SP refilling are often dependent on items you might not have too many of. There is a curious optional element called Stella’s ☆ Dungeon where you can send a character wholly separate from the plot called Stella and her cat pal Felis off to dungeons to gather items and grow, her escapades sometimes providing you useful items too, and her dungeon quests continue in real time whether you’re playing or not. However, the rewards aren’t that exceptional initially and it takes her quite a lot of time to get through everything, Stella’s adventures similar to other extremely high level content in that it is there for people who want to devote a lot more time than what it takes to simply beat Hyperdimension Neptunia Re;Birth2 Sisters Generation. There are multiple endings that are a bit easier to pursue than other optional content, although they tie to the game’s Shares system where the extra quests you can do while exploring will raise or lower favor for the various nations. The true ending requires a good balance while others are more all over the place, but Hyperdimension Neptunia Re;Birth2 Sisters Generation comes with a few ways to speed up what could have been repetitive and grueling activities. Share raising can be easily done at the Colosseum, and strengthening bonds is easier at the special Lili Dungeon, these appearing late in the adventure so as not to throw the systems out of whack before you start trying to pursue specific outcomes. It’s a bit of a fix for something that would have been rather bothersome to invest time in without these boosters, but they also don’t play a huge role until you reach the point where you can start manipulating them in your favor more easily so it doesn’t hurt the experience much either.
THE VERDICT: Hyperdimension Neptunia Re;Birth2 Sisters Generation moves the spotlight onto the handheld based sisters of the original CPUs, and while Nepgear is a likeable lead, her subdued personality can make the cutscene heavy adventure feel like it is not bringing enough laughs or emotion to make the chatter consistently interesting. This mostly falls on some rough plot structuring, especially with repetitive run-ins with Underling and a Chapter 2 that drags because of how limited progress is made towards the main goal, but new faces like Uni and Red will liven up the dialogues and the overall cast still make for a fun bunch that bounces off each other fairly well. The action suffers some from a considerable amount of repeated boss encounters, but the attack systems and managing your range also allows for battles that do push you and reward you for investing in some of the more involved parts of the game’s fighting system.
And so, I give Hyperdimension Neptunia Re;Birth2 Sisters Generation for PlayStation 4…
An OKAY rating. Nepgear isn’t a bad character, and the plot can do nice things with her generally kind ways and even produce some comedic situations when she clashes with a character who draws out a different side of her. However, she’s not a particularly strong driving force, which might partially be why it feels like the story drags its feet so much in Chapter 2. She’ll encounter characters you do eventually recruit and yet it feels like it’s split in half to very little benefit, time away from Uni, Rom, and Ram not altering their relationship to the main crew much so it almost feels like it could have all been resolved sooner so the plot moved forward at a better pace. At the same time, Underling and the general rehashing of multiple different bosses far more times than was needed probably drives it in more that things are not moving along or doing their best to introduce new elements either for the action side or the frequent dialogue scenes. You still get some effective elements like Uni having a well done personal arc and still fitting into the game’s sense of humor, and characters with a clear shtick like Red don’t overdo it or slow things down so you can enjoy their eccentricities instead of growing tired of them. The voice acting is a strong tool to make many of the characters more likeable or amusing, and even Broccoli, a true child among a rather young cast who is a catgirl riding on a blob, ends up being a surprisingly fun addition since she’s surprisingly the one who acknowledges and is weirded out by nonsense more than characters who aren’t nearly as cutesie. The battling and small dungeon exploration, despite obvious reused elements from other entries and other parts of this journey, still give you an action component with some depth and difficulty so it’s not only there to get you to more cutscenes, although it would definitely help if more time was spent on consistently exciting encounters that keep asking you to think about your approach to positioning and when to utilize certain skills.
Perhaps appropriately for a game about younger sisters struggling to step up to fill the shoes of their absent siblings, Hyperdimension Neptunia Re;Birth2 Sisters Generation doesn’t measure up to Neptune’s adventures in the previous game, but it’s not a complete wash either. Returning characters and new cast members do mix well even if it can take some time to bring it all together, but it feels like being left to stew in the slower parts is what really undermines the interactions since they aren’t providing enough interesting fresh material to keep you consistently interested. It can take some endurance to clear Chapter 2’s lengthy quest to get little done, but the gameplay can help carry you through even if it isn’t immune to its own baffling choices. This remake didn’t tidy up enough, but it seems like this sequel was a bit of an awkward effort to find where the series should go after the first was a success. Introducing the CPU candidates was ultimately a good idea, they just didn’t have the support of a stronger game experience to make them shine like the lovable bunch that kicked off this RPG series.