REVIEW: Megadimension Neptunia V-II

Going HDD or using Gold Form with the Gold Third members will consume one bar of the EXE Drive meter. Since the meter builds pretty quickly that makes using these forms very accessible. Later in the game when the CPUs obtain their NEXT forms it will take one additional bar from the meter to upgrade them. When in NEXT form you will gain the ability to use a bigger special move, however when you use it you will revert back to human form. The Transformation scenes are back! These haven’t been around since the first Hyperdimension Neptunia and are a welcome addition. If you’re not a fan of these, you can tap L2 to skip them.

With all these new additions and tweaks to combat you may think this has turned into you being way overpowered and doing tons of special moves for easy wins. I can assure you that is not the case. You will use a lot more special moves, but they execute very quickly, so battle is not slowed down in the least. In fact I think combat feels faster and more fluid than before, with more strategy elements in place. I feel the combat in this game is the best in the series to date. One last thing to note about combat this time around is that shares will have an effect on a CPU’s strength during combat. Higher shares of course means a better boost, and the CPUs with most shares will get a Top bonus as well. If a CPU is KO’d during battle, their shares will fall a bit. This isn’t a huge deal because the guild quests give out a lot more shares then in previous games, so they can be built back up quickly.

The scouting system is back and bit more streamlined. You will send your scouts out to various locations on the map via the Scout menu. It will take them a certain amount of real time to explore each area. This can range from 5 to 15 minutes, and a notification will appear at the top of screen when scouts return. There are a ton of scouts to be found in this game so you will always have a constant flow items, credits, new dungeons and discoveries from each of them. Each scout has a few dungeon effects as well. Some will increase the amount of credits you receive from battles, do an enemy shift, or various other effects. I think this actually works better than the plans system found in the Hyperdimension Neptunia Re;Birth games. Scouts can also be leveled up to make these effects greater. They can also discover new monsters in each dungeon. This is very important for guild quests, as this is only way you will find some of the monsters you need to hunt. My only issue with that is the game doesn’t let you know when all the monsters in said dungeon have been discovered, so you don’t know when to move a scout to a new location. The only other issue I have with this section is you can only receive reports from the scouts in the dimension you are currently in. This wouldn’t be a big deal if moving around were a bit easier, but we’ll get to that next.

Moving around on the world map has been changed up a bit as well. You will click on the dungeon or town you wish to visit on the map, but this time there are roads to be traveled. Yes, your character will travel along a road as she walks to her destination. You will have to build these routes from one of the four cities on the map at the cost of a few credits as well. This makes traveling take longer than it should in general, but add in the fact that now you can get random encounters while traveling and it feels pretty unnecessary. Though one new feature I loved was that the game will place a sword icon by any location that has a monster you’re currently hunting for a guild quest. This is much easier than scrolling through the enemy list to see where these monsters are. One other thing that I feel needs mentioning is during the second story section you can start to invest credits in each nation. There are three different things you can invest in: Commerce, Industry, and Public Relations. Commerce will make new items appear in the shops, these are mostly costumes. Industry will make new items available for development. Lastly Public Relations will trigger short events of the Goddess interacting with her citizens. This could be in the form of a quiz show or street meeting. You will have to do this in each nation to discover all the goodies this game has to offer.

With all the guild quests to complete, tons of additional costumes to discover and a few different endings, Megadimension Neptunia V-II is a massive game. I’ve spent 50 hours playing it already and there is a ton of things I still have to do. I loved the depth of the story and the new soundtrack is simply amazing. There are a few annoyances with random encounters on the world map and the scout system, but this is very minor and doesn’t take away from the amazing experience the game has to offer. For series fans this game is an absolute must have, you will not be disappointed and will enjoy every minute of this. Newcomers should check out Hyperdimension Neptunia Re;Birth series on Steam or Vita before jumping in so you can get some references in the story. You could just jump into the series here, Neptune breaks the fourth wall often to recap players, but I feel you’d get a lot more out of this by playing the previous games first. This title is well worth the $60 investment. People may complain about Idea Factory’s yearly releases of this franchise, but they just keep getting better and better. I cannot wait to see what adventures the girls go on next!