No Perfection Here | Hyperdimension Neptunia PP: Producing Perfection Review

There have been a slew of video games that put you in the shoes of a performer, letting you live through the rise of becoming a true music superstar,but you won’t find one of those games here.

You see, Hyperdimension Neptunia PP: Producing Perfection is a game about being a manager for pop stars – not being the pop stars themselves. So get ready to manage your pop star while you sit in the background! Bored, confused and curious as to what the point of this game actually is.

The game begins by following the story of four CPUs who rule over the world of Gamindustri. A new “idol group,” called MOB48, is topping the charts of the music world, and they’re taking all of the people of Gamindustri’s “shares” of love. Naturally, the CPUs decided that the best course of action is to become pop star idols themselves and top the charts so the peoples love (or shares) will return back to the CPU goddesses. I’m not kidding, that’s the actual motivation for the main characters.

Since these CPUs – even though they’re goddesses – don’t know much about being pop idols, they use their immense power to summon someone who can manage them and make them the best pop idols they can be. They end up summoning your unnamed character, who doesn’t even know what he’s doing either. Regardless, you get to choose from one of the four CPUs, who all but one are based off of the three big video game companies, to manage and help them rise the charts.

As the manager for these pop stars, you’ll decide what these CPUs must do everyday to become more loved. You can train their skills, have them increase their fans by doing various public events, or rest by taking a vacation or spending time with other characters. This is what you’ll be spending the majority of your time doing in Hyperdimension, and it isn’t entertaining whatsoever. You’ll stare at your CPUs face, and most of the events are fairly similar to one another, so there isn’t much to look forward to; even when there is something new story wise, it generally is nonsensical and pointless.

Every so often, you’ll be able to put on a concert to show off your CPUs pop idol abilities. You’ll choose from one of five songs, so get ready to hear those same five songs a lot, and you’ll set up the stage for your idol(s) to perform on. During your CPUs concert, you’ll be tasked with switching camera angles and activating effects to help engage the crowd more and make the performance better. What the gameplay actually turns out to be is mostly mindless button presses and it becomes almost way too easy.

For the majority of the concerts I put on, I simply used one of the three effects I had when I could, and mixed in some different camera angles to capture them. You can hear what effects the crowd likes, and if you mix them in during certain parts of the song, your meter of crowd excitement will build, and it will increase your score. You can also activate your CPUs transformation to increase all effects, which almost seemed like an “I win” button rather than a special boost to use when in dire need.

The songs included in Hyperdimension are fairly catchy, but like previously stated – there’s only five in total through the entire game. Putting on the same song at the same venue over and over again recreates that feeling of hearing a popular song on the radio way too much, because you’ll get sick of each song fairly quickly, but there isn’t a big enough track list to exercise some different sounding tracks to test your producing skills.

There never is a real challenge to Hyperdimension, and while that’s initially okay, management games rely on ramping up the difficulty and making every decision crucial, but since the difficulty never ramps up, failure is nearly impossible, and any sort of accomplishment feels too easy, and it doesn’t have any sort of satisfaction tied with it.

Hyperdimension Neptunia PP is a very odd game, but that’s not a good thing. It introduces some new types of gameplay that you often wouldn’t find in a game, but it never pays off. Changing camera angles and simulating social simulations just isn’t exciting enough to maintain consistent engagement, and the nonsensical story brings little motivation to continue this very odd tale. If management sims aren’t your thing, you probably won’t find a lot to like about Hyperdimension. Actually, even if you do like management sims, you probably won’t find a lot to like about Hyperdimension. With more features, more in-depth gameplay, and more options to choose for non-concert days, maybe Hyperdimension could have actually been as fun as how the CPUs act, but this feature barren title never comes close to achieving much of any fun.

This review is based on a review copy of the PlayStation Vita game Hyperdimension Neptunia PP: Producing Perfection by Compile Heart.