Just before beginning this review, just a quick note that unfortunately the posting of this does not break my current end of semester review downtime. Unfortunately I have only managed to clear two-thirds of my assignments and exams at this point in time, with the final 3,000 word essay which should be cleared in the next couple of days – hopefully before E3 2014 gets fully underway.
While Compile Heart’s Hyperdimension Neptunia video game franchise has never been what an average gamer would call a ‘Triple AAA’ series, all the games to date have proven to be decent RPG’s which have comfortably scored in the B-range on The Otaku’s Study when it comes to reviews. Hyperdimension Neptunia: Producing Perfection is the very first spin-off console game in the series, which plays on the idol raising genre of games that aren’t big in Western markets but have proven popular in Japan with games such as The Idolm@ster. Unfortunately while I had nothing against the idea of producing an idol game with the Neptunia characters in the first place, what has been delivered in Producing Perfection left me greatly underwhelmed and sceptical about any further spin-off games Compile Heart decide to produce for one of their most renown series.
The game starts as all previous games have, with Gamindustri and its four major continents – Planeptune (Sega Neptune), LaStation (PlayStation), LeanBox (Xbox) and Lowee (Wii) under threat. The evil idol group MOB-48 has constructed and are making use of an idol boom across Gamindustri to steal a majority of the shares from each continent. Retaliating to this threat, the four CPU goddesses get together and decide that they will become idols to go up against MOB-48. You, yes you yourself, are placed in a predicament where the four goddesses summon you to their world. Given the option of teaming up with one of the goddesses, the pair must practice and take to the stage in order to rise up the rankings.
Most of the storyline is delivered through the same storyline events that you would expect from the main RPG series, with an emphasis on comedy and the occasional “console wars” reference. In this regard the game is pretty enjoyable, even with a limited number of events per character that can be cleared in an hour two two. Unfortunately where the storyline suffers is the actual overarching plot, with no real major conflicts against MOB-48. More frustrating was that upon collecting the necessary number of shares required to achieve a dominance over the group, the game simply brushes them off in a few lines of dialogue before focusing on the game’s main focus of becoming the best idol in general. I am not going to rule out the possibility that I missed several events given it took me only an hour or two for each main character route, but I was nevertheless expecting more from my personal experience.
Gameplay was also pretty general and didn’t loan itself to multiple playthroughs. The game provides 180 Days to get your CPU Goddess to the top of the idol rankings, with each day either being dedicated to a particular event (Reading the idol weekly idol rankings takes up an entire day!!) or providing the opportunity to do one of several publicity or lesson opportunities to raise the number of fans your character has or one of their five stats which provide a boost on the stage or additional events. With no particular mini-games attached to these events like was done with Bandai Namco’s The Idolm@ster series, most of Producing Perfection comes down to cycling through menus and trying to weigh up what skill you need to raise in order to rise up the ranks quicker. ‘Repetitive’ and ‘Boring’ are two words that come to mind when describing this section. While these stats do have some benefit on the overall performance score, it would have been better if there were some tangible benefit for each skill when doing a concert.
Every couple of in-game weeks you are finally provided with the opportunity to have your CPU goddesses (and others should you decide to form a duo or trio later on in the game) perform on stage. There is some nice customization options including a range of different stages / special effects and plenty of opportunities to customize the girls’ on-stage appearance. It is most probably the highlight in terms of gameplay, as everything else in terms of on-stage performances are for visual effect more than gameplay oriented.Your job while the idols are dancing around is to simply move / change angles of the camera (Being unrealistic with your movements seemed to warrant a better reception) and when the crowd starts cheering, put on an effect to increase your score.
Asides from this, you are simply left to complete this process at least four times to complete all four character routes. Additional playthroughs can be avoided by using the Unlimited Concert Mode to choreograph the concerts without any limitations imposed on you. There is also the ‘Viewer Mode’, where you orientate your Vita portrait-style and both gaze at and touch the girls. That might add an extra 20 minutes to your game experience, but otherwise did nothing for me personally.
To the game’s benefit, it does look very pretty on the PlayStation Vita and has left me pretty excited for what we can expect visuals-wise when Hyperdimension Neptunia Re;Birth is released later this year. The game also provides plenty of English voice acting from the original English cast, however the songs themselves have not be redubbed meaning there can be a few jarring moments where a characters speaking voice and singing voice can be different in tone. But on the note of music…. there are a grand total of five tracks in-game that can be performed by all four idols. For the sake of comparison, The Idolm@ster 2 on the other hand came with around 15 songs (Minus DLC content) that could be performed by any combination of 13 idols of 765 Pro.
It is good to see that at least one Japanese idol game has made it to Western markets and kudos must go to Nippon Ichi Software America for that decision. However while there were a few spaced out moments in the game that proved to be enjoyable, most of Hyperdimension Neptunia: Producing Perfection failed to provide any form of entertaining or even decent gameplay – as navigating through menus and then just jiggling around the left / right sticks during concerts is hardly my idea or fun. Ultimately, it ended up a less memorable experience than NIS America’s 2010 action RPG Last Rebellion… and that’s saying something.
If you are new to the Hyperdimension Neptunia series, I recommend considering Hyperdimension Neptunia Mk2 and Hyperdimension Neptunia Victory on the PlayStation 3, in addition to the upcoming remake of the original game Hyperdimension Neptunia Re;Birth 1 when it releases later this year.
