When it originally released on the PlayStation 3 in 2011 for US gamers, Hyperdimension Neptunia was met with mediocre scores, at best, but it didn’t stop the series from spanning multiple sequels and forays into different genres. Hyperdimension Neptunia is now reborn as Hyperdimension Neptunia Re;Birth 1, and developer Felistella takes changes that worked well in the sequels and apply them to the original title. What we’re left with is a much improved remake that shines much more brightly, though it still isn’t without its issues.

Hyperdimension Neptunia Re;Birth1 revisits the world of Gameindusti, which has been the host of the Console Wars, a conflict between four goddesses who watch over and protect their respective regions. You play as Neptune, one of the four goddesses, who is attacked by the other three and is banished down to Gameindustri. A now amnesiac Neptune is saved by Compa, a nurse in training, and they then begin their journey to regain Neptune’s memory and defeat the evil that is threatening the world.

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Welcome to Gameindustri, host of the Console Wars.

If you didn’t notice yet, Re;Birth1 borrows real world likenesses and parodies names from the big console manufacturers to populate its world. It seems a little cheesy – and it certainly is, at points – but it’s also fun to see the game not take itself to seriously, and it has a lot of fun with the world it presents and the characters that inhabit it. The four goddesses, or “CPUs,” represent Xbox, Nintendo, PlayStation, and Sega, respectively, and they’re constantly fighting over shares in the world of Gameindustri. When a CPU has high shares, their power is increased immensely; an analog for the real life competition between leading console makers.

Veterans of the original Hyperdimension Neptunia may be surprised to find that the original combat system has been gutted out and replaced by the much more free-form combat found in Hyperdimension Neptunia Victory. Instead of the traditional immobile turn-based combat found in most JRPGs, you’ll be able to position your party members around the battlefield. Each character has a movement circle, and they’ll be able to travel anywhere within that circle. This offers the opportunity to place your bruiser characters right in the fight, while keeping your weaker support characters in back away from harm, since enemies have limited movement circles, too. I loved that I had the ability to move my party members around during battle, and it adds just a tad more strategy and spice that is often missing from the conventional JRPG combat formula.

Within combat, each character has three separate basic attack options when fighting an enemy: rush attacks, which increase your EXE meter, allowing you to do special attacks; power attacks, which do massive damage to health; and break hits, which will quickly deplete an enemy’s guard meter. Each enemy has two separate health bars; one being their actual health, and the other being their guard meter. An enemy’s guard will diminish the effectiveness of your attacks until it is depleted, so it’s best to take that down first in encounters.

The satisfaction from Re;Birth1’s combat dilutes slightly, because of the necessity to grind for levels in order to progress. I found myself stuck in areas, because my characters weren’t strong enough to defeat the enemy that would trigger the next event in the story. What’s strange is that defeating normal enemies is generally easy, but the difficulty spikes up immensely and without warning once you start fighting bosses and large monsters. Attacks that would evaporate smaller enemies would barely scratch these larger ones, and I found myself getting wiped out fast. Since the smaller enemies are barely a threat, grinding levels by fighting them is a monotonous affair, and it become a guessing game deciding if you’re strong enough to fight the monster you’re grinding levels for.

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Movement in combat adds more strategy to battles.

As someone who’s never played a Hyperdimension Neptunia JRPG, I was unpleasantly surprised by the sheer volume of tutorials Re;Birth1 carries with it. JRPGs are known to be in-depth and complicated, but this is usually balanced by great pacing and in-depth tutorials that down overwhelm the player. Re;Birth1 doesn’t simply overwhelm you with tutorials – it engulfs you entirely. The moment I started to grasp and understand one element of the game, another was added to the mix. Once you actually sit down and read the tutorials and spend time really learning them, it doesn’t become so bad, but spacing out these new elements could have avoided this issue, entirely.

Added exclusively to Re;Birth1 is the remake system, which allows you to alter monster difficulty to your liking, reveal new dungeons previously hidden, and create new items. I really enjoyed unlocking new areas to take my party, but they’re not that difficult to unlock in the first place. Simply unlocking the new areas from the get-go would have been a much more logical choice, because it just feels like speed bumps to pad out the length of the game, which it certainly doesn’t need to do, since it’s an already lengthy title at around 40 hours to complete the story alone.

Hyperdimension Neptunia Re;Birth1 is a fine addition to the Vita’s library, and it’s definitely worth re-visiting for those who’ve played the original. Since it’s a remake of the first game in the Hyperdimension Neptunia series, it’s also a great starting point for those who missed out the first time, though it certainly won’t be for everyone.

This review is based on a review copy of the PlayStation Vita game Hyperdimension Neptunia Re;Birth1 by Felistella and published by Compile Heart.

Gaming Goddesses | Hyperdimension Neptunia Re;Birth 1 Review
Overall7.5
Positives
  • Fast turn-based combat
  • Fun, quirky story
Negatives
  • Grinding is a necessity
  • Endless tutorials
7.5Overall Score
Reader Rating: (1 Vote)
8.5

About The Author

Josh is a Senior Editor for New Gamer Nation. He'd love to chat with you about games on Twitter.