Cyberdimension Neptunia: 4 Goddesses Online - Part 001 - Alph Plains
0Nep Nep.
A VERY long intro before any real gameplay starts, but it's worth watching to get yourself acquainted with the world and the characters, I'm not overly familiar with the Neptunia series, although I do own a lot of the games on Steam and PS4.
I'll point out any long story elements for those of you who just want to watch gameplay.
Around the 20 minute mark the characters make us aware of their origins, although it isn't explicitly said in universe.
Neptune (the main character) and Planeptune are SEGA based, with Neptunia herself based off the cancelled Megadrive/32X hybrid - the Neptune.
Noire is based off Sony consoles, Vert off Microsoft and Blanc off Nintendo.
Without giving spoilers there's four younger siblings representing the handhelds.
Nepgear is Neptune's younger sister and represents the Game Gear.
Uni is Noire's younger sister and represents the PSP
and Rom and Ram represent the dual screens of the DS.
Given that there isn't an Xbox handheld equivalent Vert has no younger sibling, although fawns over all four of the younger sisters.
If you like Vtubers and anime of this type with fan service in it, you'll definitely appreciate the story. Around the 19:10 mark is a lot of the interaction styles with Vert and the younger characters, but the others keep her in check. The overarching plot is pretty generic, but the character interactions and their own individual stories definitely stand out.
The voice actors of the four main girls are probably well known to people who watch anime, and dubbed Japanese video games.
Noire's VA has played Megumin and Puck among many others.
Vert's VA is still very active, but I know her best from Evangelion and Tokyo Mew Mew (showing my age there).
Neptunia's VA is probably the most unknown for me, although I do remember Rika from Digimon Tamers and I've played a bit of Star Ocean to recognise her as Welch.
Blanc's is probably the female VA voice I could recgonise anywhere.
Having played both Konata Izumi and Haruhi Suzumiya as well as Lena... erm Bulma in an ill fated and rather dire Dragn Ball dub.
They've all had voice roles somewhere in the Sailor Moon franchise as well.
On to the gameplay. Which starts just before the 28:00 mark if you want to skip to it.
It has the feel of games like SAO and other Action RPGs and plays similarly.
There isn't a decent level of customisation for your characters outside skins/weapons/other gear but you have selectable skills for each character, and each character has their own playstyle (though there's a little bit of overlap). There's no stat point assignment, which makes thing a little easier. I'll generally be playing as Neptunia and Uni early on and Nepgear later on. The AI is pretty competent to be fair for a game like this, they never tend to hold me up, and play as you tell them. Playing to their role seems to work well if you have a balanced party like the starting one.
Combat is pretty simple, for tougher enemies (and bosses) you'll want to utilise magic and abilities that damage the break bar to weaken them so normal attacks and abilities do a lot more damage.
If the AI plays in roll, you'll see Vert buffing you with the correct element to exploit a weakness, and magic being used to exploit weaknesses too.
Most bosses are mechanically not that advanced, but still present challenge, and are fun to take down.
The dungeons are quite quick to run through to key enemy spawns and/or the boss, and you'll find yourself replaying through each level a few times for various side quests/objectives, and you'll find enemies that are good to grind XP/Money on.
Some of the bosses also update to be stronger or change entirely on subsequent run throughs for other side quests.
I'll be using this as a benchmark for whether I'll record more games in the series (the main series or spin offs - this is a spin off), so if you want to see more Neptunia, make sure to like and leave a comment.
P.S. The rest of the descriptions won't be overly long like this, as many of my long time subscribers would know.