RE-REVIEW: Neptunia Virtual Stars


Title	Neptunia Virtual Stars
Developer	Idea Factory, Compile Heart
Publisher	Idea Factory International
Release Date	March 29th, 2021
Genre	Action RPG
Platform	Steam, PlayStation 4
Age Rating	Teen
Official Website

Just over a week ago I put out a review for Neptunia Virtual Stars on the PlayStation 4. I had a really good time with the game, and would certainly recommend it to fans of VTubers and Neptunia. After that review was live I got a chance to look at the Steam port of the game, and since a lot of readers here are PC Gamers now, I decided to take a look at the performance of this port. Let’s see if it can outdo its PlayStation counterpart.

This review is going to be more about the performance of the PC port than about gameplay and story. You should check out my review of the PlayStation version for those details, but here is a basic overview of the story. The girls arrive at an event in Gamindustri to check out a cool new VR game together when they are suddenly transported to a place called Virtualand. Here, the planet Emote is being destroyed by an invading force, the antis. Faira, a Goddess in this world, has asked the Goddesses to help her save her planet from these invaders. The Goddesses will not be alone, however. Faira has also enlisted the help of rising VTuber stars, Me and You, members of MEWTRAL. Can the girls band together and save this world from certain doom?

The biggest difference between these two versions comes in the graphics department. The PC version can run at 60FPS at up to 4K resolution. I tested this at 4K for a few minutes and didn’t see any major hitches, but I mostly run at 1440p. I do suggest running this one off an SSD however, it seemed to have a few minor stutters loading in when I had it on my spinning drive. I’m not usually one to notice jumps in framerate, but where this game is action based the solid 60FPS really makes the shooting and overall feel of the game much better. The smoother framerate really helps out in the BeatTik mini game, since it makes the timing much easier.

The PC version of the game does support mouse and keyboard. This can be remapped anyway you wish and you can even use a controller and mouse at the same time. I used a controller mostly, but I played around with the sensitivity settings and such for the keyboard and mouse to see how customizable they were. I think this could probably be adjusted to fit any play style, and it’s good that Idea Factory International has included so many options here.

I think I enjoyed the Steam release of Neptunia Virtual Stars a bit more than the PlayStation version simply because the framerate is smoother. It is important to note that I did the first playthrough on a vanilla PlayStation 4, so the PlayStation Pro or PS5 may handle the game much better. I put about 13 hours into this version and just finished Novella when I decided it was enough to cover this port. I didn’t run into any major issues during this time, like hard locks or crashes. In the end this is a very solid port, and I don’t think any PC players will find anything to worry about if they pick this one up. It’s really a ton of fun and spending time with the Goddesses and our favorite VTubers is just a win.