Sometimes developers do the impossible. Make a broken game unbroken, make crappy visuals look stunning and make a nonsensical story make sense. You could call something like that a remaster, a remake, a Director’s Cut. None of those apply to the newly released Hyperdimension Neptunia game, because this is truly a rebirth in every sense of the way.
Hyperdimension Neptunia Re;Birth1 is born
The original Hyperdimension Neptunia offered some really cool concepts, a great premise and awesome characters. Besides those things, the game was a broken mess. For instance, you didn’t have control over the medic character Compa, but only could give her hints that you needed healing. Another eye sore for a lot of people where the rotating continents, which blocked your path at certain times and you had to wait for the right moment to cross over. An interesting concept on paper, but horrible when you actually implement it in the game. But Compile Heart knew it had gold in its hands, if they just tweaked the experience and follow up MK2 already improved on a number of things. Victory was probably the first game to consider actually playing through, they redid the battle system which made it so much better. So when they announced they were going to remake the first one for the PS Vita, they knew that had to say right away that they implemented the Victory battle system.
Reborn gameplay
The battle system of Hyperdimension Neptunia Re;Birth1 is a turn based one. You have to position your characters on the map and depending on the weapon they are sporting they get an attack square or a larger bar. Since there are multiple enemies you can attack at the same time, the trick is to navigate your player to the right spot, so it can attack more than one enemy at a time. This can get quite ticky and is by far the least fun during battles. The battles themselves are great fun and come with more tactics than you would initially give it credit for. There are the usual special attacks, which look good, but aren´t always the thing you need in battle. There are three forms of normal attacks, one to rank up your combo meter so you can deal out an extra attack at the end of your combo, one to deal heavy damage and one to break the shield around the enemy. This usually comes down to breaking the shield first and then dealing heavy damage. The extra combo in the end is especially handy in the boss battles. You can save up your combo meter during a level and enter a boss battle with this at the start. But it´s also possible to start fresh at the boss battles, by avoiding all the enemies on the way. The fields in which you encounter these enemies are nicely animated, but lack variation after a while. In some cases I had the feeling I was playing the same map as before, but was playing in a totally different field. When you´re on the field, you will never get attacked by the larger enemies, but the smaller enemies will follow you around to attack you once they notice you. When you swing your sword in time, you will have the advantage in battle, but if they manage to sneak up on you they will have the first attack.
Nicely shaped
The graphics of Hyperdimension have never been a strong point on the PlayStation 3. If you look online for some reviews of the first game for PS3 you’ll find remarks claiming it looks like a PS2 game. The reason why I mention this is that this time around Hyperdimension Neptunia is actually one of the better looking games on the system (PS Vita exclusive). Somehow Compile Heart has managed to improve their assets by a lot and the game is a real looker. Not only the skits with the CPU girls are nicely animated with an eye for detail, but also the fields, main characters and enemies look great. The engine is also running very smoothly, with barely a hiccup in frame rate to be found. There are barely any load times, but this does mean that when you enter a field enemies still need to be loaded in and sometimes pop up out of nowhere (with a nice effect by the way, not just ‘now it isn’t there and now it is’). The story is told with barely moving character models, in a visual novel style. This is a often used style of story telling on the PS Vita and for what it is worth, Hyperdimension does it well.
Remake system
The remake system is a really nice addition. It helps you change the rules of field, can make enemies stronger and change the loot drops. It adds replay value and makes it fun to play around with. In the shops you can buy new costumes for Neptune, which can change her appearance quite a bit. Always wanted to see what Neptune would look like with blue or orange hair? Want to see her with cat ears or a bunny tail? Now is your chance! There are a lot of customizable things in Hyperdimension Neptunia, from moves to special discs which can boost your stats and give you special effects. The game has a lot of depth, which is mostly optional. This makes it a great RPG for experienced players and newcomers to the genre.
Funny NepNep
The story of Hyperdimension Neptunia Re;Birth1 has been changed quite a bit from the original. There have been made several improvements in the flow of the game and in my opinion all these adjustments are more than welcome additions. The story itself is a classic one, which would surpise nobody. The setting however is awesome. Hyperdimension Neptunia is basically about four girls which represent the different consoles (Xbox, Nintendo, PlayStation and Sega are all represented). The Goddesses are CPU’s and they fight a console war over whom is the most popular one. If they have a lot of fans in one land, their power grows in that territory. Compile Heart created a fun and light hearted story around this unique premise. The conversations are fun to read through and the story is interesting enough to follow, even though it uses the ancient old memory loosing as a starting point for the game.
