1099: Nep-Nep-Nep-Nep

It's another Hyperdimension Neptunia post, I'm afraid. Normally I'd make an effort to try not to talk too much about the same thing several days in a row, but having started the sequel to Hyperdimension Neptunia (imaginatively titled Hyperdimension Neptunia Mk2) this evening, I felt compelled to share some of my first impressions. (Besides, this is my blog, dammit.)

That first impression can largely be summed up by me nodding and smiling at developers Compile Heart and Idea Factory and going "Good job, guys."

You see, Hyperdimension Neptunia Mk2 takes all the things that were good about its predecessor — an amusing but oddly well-realised world; some excellent, memorable characters; some lovely 2D art — and ditches all the things that were a bit rubbish. Consequently, out go the endless cookie-cutter dungeons, out go the PS1-era random encounters, out go the weirder aspects of the battle system (like the bizarre mid-combat "item crafting" system and the seeming necessity to skip animations to take full advantage of the "guard break" mechanic) and out go the sequences that served no purpose (waiting for landmasses to approach and then having to run an insultingly easy dungeon every time you wanted to travel anywhere).

In comes a game which is not just a dream come true for a Hyperdimension Neptunia fan, but a game which actually appears to be a very good JRPG generally. Okay, you're still controlling an all-female party of candy-coloured self-referential anime archetypes so if you're not on board with that you're never going to be on board with this series, but almost everything about the first game that sucked a bit has seemingly been rectified with this new game. It's still not perfect and it's still rough around the edges — the in-engine graphics are still a bit PS2-ish in quality, riddled with jaggies (can't remember the last time I wrote that word!) and the frame rate still blows, but just like the original managed to be entertaining despite its flaws and technical shortcomings, so too does its sequel. Only said sequel is, as I say, a much better game on the whole, too.

The biggest overhaul to the game's base can be seen in the battle system. It's still focused on making combos, but there's no longer the need to micromanage every possible combination of three different buttons pressed up to four times. I actually quite liked this aspect of the original, as it gave the game a fun puzzly mechanic as you attempted to make combos that flowed nicely in to one another, but it did make getting a new character a bit tiresome, as you had to spend a good 10-15 minutes setting up their button combinations — usually only to discover in a boss fight that you'd done something wrong somewhere. (Fortunately, it was possible to rejig combos in mid-fight, which was nice.)

Nope, what we have now is a much more streamlined system — triangle button does multi-hit attacks, square button does powerful attacks, cross button does attacks that prioritise damage to the enemies' "guard gauge". Like before, each attack costs a certain number of Ability Points (AP) to perform. An initial attack is of a fixed type, but from that point on, you can customise the specific "move" (and AP cost) that is assigned to each of the three buttons depending on if it is the second, third or fourth attack in a combo. Characters unlock "EX" attacks as they level up, requiring that the player use both a specific button combination and expend a particular number of AP during a combo before triggering a more powerful special move. Each character has their own suite of "skills" outside the attacks, too, which cost a combination of AP and Skill Points (SP, which charge up through attacking enemies) to perform. These vary from special attacks to support buffs and healing skills, and mean there's no longer the reliance on random chance when attempting to keep your party at full health.

Combat now allows characters to move, too, giving the whole thing a light strategic feel, as all attacks cover a particular area, and characters clustered together can all feel the brunt of one enemy's attack if you're not careful. The whole thing is way more fast-paced than the previous game — a feeling helped even more by the fact that the load times between field and battle screens are lightning-fast.

I'm not far into the story yet, but it's been enjoyable so far, despite what essentially amounted to an extremely mild tentacle scene approximately five minutes into the experience. (Said "tentacles" — actually cables — weren't doing any more than just holding the previous game's "CPU" goddesses prisoner, but it's very clear that it was a reference to… well, you know.) New protagonist Nepgear (hah) is appealing and endearing, and successfully distinguishes herself from her ditzy sister — the previous game's protagonist — by basically being the exact opposite in terms of personality. Where Neptune was loud, brash, confident and, let's not beat around the bush, endearingly stupid at times, Nepgear is much more reserved, rational, intelligent and innocent. There's a lot of scope for her to grow as a character — particularly when accompanied by the increasingly world-weary IF (rapidly becoming my favourite character in the series) and the ever-optimistic Compa — so I'll be interested to see how she develops as her journey progresses.

There's still a heavy focus on non-linear and repeated sidequesting in the new game, but it actually explains what effect doing quests has right from the beginning this time instead of, you know, not at all. Yes, the "shares" system from the previous game is back again, but it's integrated into the story this time, representing the world's level of belief in the "good" goddesses and the evil forces of "Arfoire" — the previous game's villain and a thinly-veiled reference to the popular Nintendo DS storage device that was often used for piracy. Essentially, doing quests now wrests back "control" of particular areas from Arfoire's followers, allowing you to strengthen an area's belief in the goddesses and ultimately turn things around for the world, which has seemingly gone to shit in the intervening time between the end of the first game and the start of the second. Manipulating the shares is also key to unlocking certain events.

Oh, and there's a whole relationship system between Nepgear and her party members now, rather charmingly called "Lily Rank". (For those who don't get why it's called this, the Japanese word for "lily" is "yuri", which is a word also often used to refer to same-sex romantic and/or sexual relationships between women — rather appropriate for describing the relationships between members of an all-female party, particularly as within the first three hours Nepgear has already been kissed by one of them, ostensibly to shock her into transforming into her "goddess candidate" form for the first time since escaping captivity in the intro.) Characters with a better Lily Rank between them provide bonuses to one another in combat, and can be paired up to do various joint special abilities. Naturally, a better relationship between them also results in more scenes between them, too.

Also the music's much better by about a thousand percent.

Also it's just great. I like it a lot. Actually, I liked the first one a lot, despite its flaws. I can see myself really loving the second one. And the third one's coming in March! Yay!

I'll shut up now.