Title: Hyperdimension Neptunia Producing Perfection
Developer: Felistella
Publisher: NIS
Genre: RPG, Idol simulator
Platform(s): PlayStation Vita
[divider]
When I got Hyperdimension Neptunia Producing Perfection (henceforth PP) for review I had no idea what to expect. Didn’t think I would really like the game after watching the trailer but I really enjoyed it after spending a few minutes with it. Hyperdimension Neptunia PP is a spinoff idol simulator game for the PS Vita.
The premise is nice. You fall into Gamindustri and meet the four CPUs (Blanc, Neptunia, Noire, and Vert). You are hired by one of them and take on the role of their producer. The fate of Gamindustri lies in your hands as you try and regain shares and fans from MOB48 (An actual joke take on the popular Japanese idol group AKB48). It is your job to choose what activity your idol spends her day doing. There are a variety of activities to choose fun to boost various stats. As the game progresses you can form a group with the other CPUs for concerts as well.
The core gameplay in Producer mode involves mostly visual novel-esque dialogue, stat boosting activities that are mostly non interactive with a concert performance. The concert allows you to control stage effects, costume changes and camera angles. All these affect the total rating of the performance. You can choose from Work activities like Ad Campaigns and Events that help boost your career or Lesson activities that boost a variety of stats. Activities come with increases in stress and the Relax activity (yea I know) brings that down. Overall I wasn’t bored one bit during the activities and gameplay barring the end of day event. This has your Idol, Vert in my case, telling you mostly the same monotonous things each night. The bright side to this scene is the absolutely stunning image of the landscape in different places changing from day to night. Each week you see the idol rankings and try to improve over the next week. Overworking your idol will lead her to get sick or feel too sleepy.
Unlimited Concert mode is great if you just want to stage concerts with the elements you have unlocked so far. The animations in concert mode are really nice with great character models. The audience is usually invisible with glowsticks moving around. If you perform well enough, you can perform again for an Encore. Viewer mode is similar to the Hyperdimension Neptunia App that lets you dress your idols up however you want in the costume elements you have unlocked. There’s even an alarm mode. The config settings allow switching to the original Japanese voice overs. The dubbed voices are really nice and I didn’t feel like switching at all. You can save at almost anytime so this is great for short bursts of gameplay that usually ended up crossing the 1 hour mark in my case.
Interactions with your idol are never boring and have some great humour in many scenes. Visuals throughout are great. The background artwork in most places is really good and the night events have wallpaper worthy backgrounds. Some of the interface elements could have been done better like the main menu buttons. PP also lets you control almost everything with the touch screen which is always great. The music in game is excellent and the number of songs for concerts is probably my biggest complaint. There are only 5 songs you can choose from and since your idol gets a better rating for performing her own songs, you will end up listening to one song too many times if you want to get an excellent rating each time.
Hyperdimension Neptunia PP surprised me. Not only has it been localised really well but it is also a lot of fun to play. Subtle things like a retro styled loading screen and digs at gamer culture with the overall fan service make this game really really good. I hope more songs are either added because that is more or less the main complaint with the game outside of the overall length.
