What if the console wars (Super Nintendo versus Genesis, PlayStation versus Xbox, etc.) and the politics of game companies like Capcom or Square-Enix were played out by a bunch of feuding anime girls designed for maximum moe? That’s the genius, crackpot premise of the satirical Neptunia series of JRPG games. With its most recent release, Megadimension Neptunia VIIR, a quality of life upgrade of 2015’s Megadimension Neptunia VII with VR elements slapped onto both ends, the small development team at Compile Heart delivers a finely polished effort with deep RPG elements and a surprisingly emotional story that somehow fails to equal the sum of its impressive parts.
One unequivocally positive thing I can say about my 40 plus hours with Megadimension Neptunia VIIR is that, unlike many of its JRPG cousins that play their candy colored nonsense mostly straight, VIIR embraces its otaku madness with plucky abandon brandishing its worn JRPG tropes and borderline obnoxious fan service like so many bits of flair on an ita bag. This is truly a game that never met a fourth wall it couldn’t wreck. The girls, referred to alternately as both goddesses and CPUs, are presented to the player in skimpy, color-coded outfits perfect for an occasional upskirt panty shot, each waifu catering to a specific taste through a variety of underlined personality quirks. These take the form of recognizable genre stereotypes from the staunchly loyal little sister type to the secretly soft hearted domineering type. It’s as if the CPUs are members of a contentious girl group, violently jockeying for prime position on your bedroom wall.
There was a time in my life, just before college, when my fascination with anime was at its peak and I had a whole shelf of Tenchi Muyo tapes to prove it, that I could see myself getting obsessed with something as harebrained as Megadimension Neptunia VIIR. The idea of visual novel/dating sim style anime girls personified as game consoles has tons of goofy, and possibly poignant, potential but the concept, which rarely translates into meaningful gameplay beyond some surface level name swaps that computerize standard potions and spells, feels like it’s played its best hand. Now, seven games into the franchise, a conceit this rich is wasted on a game that refuses to commit to a singular vision to serve it.
VIIR is divided into three divergent chapters; Z, G and H. The first of these revolves around Neptune and Nep Jr, representing never was consoles from Sega, who find themselves sucked into an apocalyptic game world on the verge of collapse. The goddess sisters are soon enlisted in the fight against rampaging monsters and mechs by Uzume, a brackish survivor hardened by her struggles, whose trademark swirl and magical ability to bring her dreams to life is a none too subtle allusion to the now defunct Sega Dreamcast. In one of the best early in-jokes, the stoic voice of her companion (communicated with via a peripheral that recalls the VMU) is revealed to be a fish with a handsome man’s face similar to one of the Dreamcast’s most iconic releases, Seaman! It’s a fun choice to start off the adventure, especially if you’re aware that the Dreamcast had a second life in Japan and retains an underground popularity to this day, still receiving regular software releases despite being discontinued in 2001.
The following chapter, G, takes a strange detour away from the story of Z (or does it? WINK) instead pitting the various console goddesses from previous games against a cabal of game developers known as the Gold Third that have taken over the world of Gamindustri in Neptune’s absence. For those with even a base knowledge of the games industry, it will be immediately obvious which company K-sha who hides in a cardboard box, for instance, is supposed to be but that doesn’t make the reference any less hilarious. Nor does it preclude the game from feeling disjointed.
Just as the story unfolds in a haphazard way, playing VIIR is a schizophrenic ordeal like flipping through channels late at night between a cable access telethon, the last and unfunniest thirty minutes of Saturday Night Live, and the recap episode of a knock off magical girls anime with a mythology as exhaustively deep as it is boring. While I’ve read the opinion that it takes “a certain degree of cultural sensitivity towards Japan to really appreciate” this style, I call malarkey. This isn’t bad because it’s reminiscent of other forms of Japanese storytelling, it’s bad because it jerks the player around, kills the momentum and undermines the drama at every turn. Just as things are ramping up in one direction; whether that’s in the story or a dungeon slowly opening up a rather meaty and impressive battle system with surprising layers of strategy built in, it kicks you back to something else. Usually, another long imminently skippable cut scene like when the girls decide to make pudding to cheer one another up.
Yup.
During these our main characters blather back and forth in what amounts to a budget version of a Japanese comedy duo act in the style of Downtown or London Boots or… man, my references age me. It’s nice character work and there’s a ton of fun insider humor if you’re down with the wackiness of it all, but it completely derails the action. By the time you get back to fighting you’ll have forgotten all the little tutorials that popped up to tell you how to make the most of the robust battle system. To be fair, for the first 20 hours, you probably won’t even need such advanced tactics.
Fighting in the game doesn’t get challenging until you’re much farther in. This is a shame because there’s quite a few original ideas here like having defense options pop up after you’ve exhausted your allotted moves for the round. Also worth a mention are the combo attacks between playable characters which require careful planning and power meter management to align the combatants for panty-flashing, heavy damage super moves. It could be argued Final Fantasy XIII had a similar slow burn but that game features top shelf Hollywood grade presentation, and VIIR, well, doesn’t although the crisp graphics, lively voice work, and colorful aesthetic go a long way towards making you forget that.
When VIIR is not making the player initiate more cut scenes, requiring multiple journeys across the board game like world map or within unnecessary sub menus, it’s dropping you into a poorly rendered, graphically wonky room in which the player is visited in VR by characters from the Neptunia series for a scripted experience often heavy on the fan service. This is the V__R of the title. There’s a segment of fans for whom this will be a great addition to the game but for me, it was exhausting. Especially since every time I started to drift off, the game would prompt me to respond with a nod or a shake of my head to one of the nattering girl’s inane questions. For those thinking things will get fun sexy time, think again. For a game with as much gratuitous cheesecake as this one, there’s very little stank to titillate in the VR portions.
Although the segments start out as rote introductions to the various CPUs, advancing the main game opens up vignettes that get progressively more active. Characters begin falling through the ceiling, nosing through your book collection and tripping over your couch allowing more and more of their personality to shine through. You can even switch out your dull grey couch for a purple one, if that means anything to you. Make no mistake, the VR in VIIR is completely tacked on. If you’ve already played through Megadimension Neptunia VII, there’s very little in the VR additions to entice a second play through.
Recommendation: Honestly, I’m not sure I can fully recommend even a first one. As the hours ticked by I kept waiting for the game to stop screwing around and get down to business but with all the starts and stops, it only ever seems to flirt with the prospect. This one’s best left for the diehard fans and maybe those with a high tolerance for Japanese quirk who don’t mind enduring its more off-putting elements to get to the hearty JRPG goodness at its center.
Megadimension Neptunia VIIR was provided to the reviewer by the publishing company but this fact did not alter the reviewer’s opinion.
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