Mainline Neptunia is back, but at what cost?

This game is most likely my biggest disappointment of 2023 and I was already expecting a very mediocre game but not complete dogshit. This is the perfect example of a game that doesn't try and just expects people to buy it because it's "The Neptunia franchise" and fuck that's what everyone did, even me I bought the goddamn collectors edition for this game I hate myself. Actually what I hate the most about this game is that it hides under the "it's just a spinoff!" umbrella to hide the fact that it's utter dogshit. The Neptunia franchise has only been receiving spinoffs every year ever since the last numbered entry in 2015, I really wish Compile Heart would actually take the time to put work into their game because releasing one or two games every year is not a good sign.

So what's so bad about this game? Mainly the frustrating gameplay and the overall lack of polish and the enormous amount of reused stuff in this game.
The main gameplay of the game tried to be a bit like the original Neptunia games but without the turn-based gameplay. Instead, they just turned the game into an action RPG in the style of Final Fantasy 7 Remake, that doesn't sound bad right? Well, it would be good if they didn't lock the combat in a slow and clunky turn-based attack system. In this game you are supposed to make a combo that can go up to 4 moves, they all take a set amount of SP (stamina or whatever point that recovers overtime in battle) and it feels like garbage to play because most of the animations are slow and feels unresponsive. Most action games do an attack when you press the attack button but this game just puts the attacks in a turn list making the whole game more like a waiting simulator for the animations to end and then just waiting for the stamina to come back to do it again. I'd talk about how shit and boring the combat is but I don't have all day, just know that if it was a basic action game like Cyberdimension Neptunia - 4 Goddesses Online it would've been a way better game.
Also "Elements" attacks are OP in this game since they tried to make some sort of weakness system but 90% of enemies are weak to elements so just spam those and melee damage becomes shit after a while in the game due to bad balance so just use Ram the entire game and you'll be fine.

Now about the level design, there is like only 3 or 4 stages which are just the usual forest, cave, and apocalypse like usual. The only issue is that all stages type have like 4 or 5 different copies of each other and not only it's the same stage type it's also the same fucking stage like they just mixed and mashed pre-made stages as if it was a 4-piece puzzle. So yeah I hope you won't get bored of "forest", "forest with darker texture", "forest night", and "forest but with a special boss at the end".
The bosses are usually just a plain pain in the ass with a huge amount of HP and attack resistance. Most of them are really simple to beat, just massive damage sponges and of course, you have to fight each unique boss like 5 different times because they have to reuse the assets!

The story is ok, it's basic fun happy Neptunia gaming fun happy fun gaming reference wholesome happy fun till chapter 6 where it just becomes a shitty steins gate mixed with Madoka Magica so nothing to write home about, it's just ok and somewhat decent for the usual Neptunia standard I guess.

The ost have a lot of reused tracks but the new ones are pretty decent, that's one thing Neptunia games usually do right, and the same for the character art style and CGs it always looks adorable even though this game has like 5 CGs. What I didn't like about the art style on the other hand is... anything else this game looks like dogshit all of it feels and looks cheap like it's still a test build of the game, even the original Neptunia on PS3 looks better than this 2022-2023 release.
And this game runs at 30 FPS on PS5 it's fucking awful.


I do not recommend this game!

This game is odd.

I first played this game when it was released because I was quite hyped for this release but for the wrong reasons. Like most people I was expecting this game to be a "So bad it's good" type of game but it ended up being so "So mid it's ok".
After my first release playthrough I was somewhat disappointed, I thought the game was frustrating and too hard at times, thought that the story was weird and not as funny as I'd expected it to be, and just not having as much fun as I thought I would.

Now about 10 months after the release I finally thought it was time for a second playthrough and this time with the DLCs since the last DLC finally released on January 27th.

My thoughts have changed for the better mostly, I think that this game has a decent gameplay loop once you figure out what you are doing and how the game works, though the post-game of the game will tell you otherwise and you'll have to pretty much forget everything you know up till the credit of the game because the post-game is something else (I'll get to it later).
This game is supposedly like NIOH though I have never played that game, in this game you mostly just kill enemies by staggering them and finishing them off with execution-style cutscenes and get rewarded with new equipment pieces every 2 seconds. Honestly, the game barely tells you about anything when it comes to hidden functions of the game so during the main story missions you will be clueless and just do the same thing and just press the "optimize equipment" button while using whatever random class you decided to main for the entire game.

This is where the post-game come into place and pretty much filtered me out of the DLCs. The post-game at launch was pretty miserable if I'm being honest, it's mostly just doing the same missions again but with a new difficulty setting to get better armor pieces to do the same mission again but it's easier, that's a damn waste of time if I'm being honest you literally have no drive to continue playing or grinding because it's useless! Jack keeps talking about having a drive to keep on going, having a goal or someone to kill well this game doesn't really do it for us, no new goals, bosses, or literally any type of content.

Thankfully the first DLC somewhat fix this by adding two boss battles and some monetary system to grind for new weapons and more levels for each job to keep being stronger. If I'm being honest this should've been a free update to fix the lack of content in the launch version but it's better than nothing I guess. My main issue with this is the instant spike in difficulty since the game pretty much except you to have to grind the hell out of the game at launch with still barely any explanation and anything to help you figure out how the game works, but at least more challenge means more game time right? All I see is somewhat cheap content though.

The second DLC is finally high-quality content, though at the price of being even harder than the last and very unforgiving. This is where I finally called it quits and stopped playing the game. The main gimmick of the DLC is an endless tower with each floor making you do somewhat short missions with
gimmicks, It's honestly a good idea but the main problem with it is that it's gatekept with its difficulty and I just find it unfun since I'm lost and the game isn't trying to help me.

Though any grind freaks are welcome as the post-game is very grindy and tough from now on.

And unfortunately, as of the time of this review, I have not touched the third DLC and I'm guessing it might be good but tough content. Hope one day I'll get the drive to continue this game and invest some time in it but at the moment I'm more frustrated by it than anything.

Overall this game was released somewhat barebone but as time went on they finally added what the game was missing in the most awkward way possible. Nomura said that if the third DLC made enough money they would consider making a sequel of the game, I'd love to see more of jack in a full fledge sequel but I fear the third DLC might filter people as it did for me and not produce enough sales.

What I'd like to see in the sequel is more of what the DLC did but without the insane filtering difficulty.

I played this game with the mindset that it was gonna be bad but it was actually quite decent.

I actually do not understand the hate of this game it's just a decent God of War prequel that vaguely adds stuff to the story and I don't care if it just milks the franchise and ruins the story or whatever it's fucking God of War nobody came for the story until 2018 but fuck this is 2013 we just want funny Kratos killing god things with epic QTEs and cutscenes and this game did just that.

I'd say the most mediocre aspect of the game is the main gameplay since it was dumbed down from 3, it's kinda hard to make God of War 3's gameplay even simpler but they did it. I'd say the enemies feel a bit more like damage sponges at times but the main gimmick of the combat is the hook so if you never bothered using it no wonder you'll dislike the game but once you get the hang of it it's simple and enjoyable. The level design is honestly great, I was fearing that the game would be more like a gimmicky collection of enemies' gauntlets but it just plays like a good ol' GoW game.

You can also tell that this game received a much lower budget than 3 with worse visuals and gameplay and they also tried to give this big gimmicky multiplayer mode to sell more copies I guess? I don't even know if the servers are still on so I have no idea how it plays but maybe it was fun who knows?

Anyway, if anyone wants more of the original trilogy after playing God of War 4 and 5 it's definitely worth playing! And I had a ton more fun playing this than the last two entries of the franchise.

This is most likely the most infuriatingly bad platformer I have ever played and I'm here to explain why.

First of all, I'd like to point out the obvious good of the game and that would be the humor, it's really really good the cutscenes feel like some early 2000 nickelodeon cartoon it's great! But other than the humor it has nothing else to distincts itself in terms of gameplay.

The stages themselves are alright, the only issue is the random spam of strong enemies, the lack of health because 4 just isn't enough and the most infuriating one is the lack of checkpoints. I have died so many times and had to redo the same boring obstacle course just because they hate checkpoints in this game! Like come on this is a platformer game made for young players this isn't supposed to be complicated, I'm supposed to lay back and relax not fear if I'm in a zone with a checkpoint (because the few checkpoints are invisible), and just waste my time doing the same platforming, wasting my ammo, buying them again for 12 hours!

And you know what? I dropped this fucking game at the last boss because it sucked so much I was out of ammo and I'm guessing I'm supposed to have a ton of weapons by the end of the game BECAUSE I guess I'm supposed to grind for bolts because that's fun right? No, it's fucking not!

This game makes me really angry.
I really hope the sequel picks things up and actually be a good game and not just a good Nickelodeon show.

Also, the designs are really good I love how Drek looks like Penn Jillette.

This game is like the Kronos fight in God of War 3 but without Kratos screaming

Now here's one exemplary game on what games should be about, no useless collectibles in the open world, no dumb sidequests, and no useless cutscenes to force a plot upon the player to waste his time. This game truly only focuses on its main goal and that goal is epic boss battles and nothing else.

Sounds great? Because it is! Why 4/5 then? Because my issue doesn't come from the gameplay loop or anything it's coming from the lack of polish of the game. This game is glitchy as hell and the controls are god awful and especially on a horse it's all very frustrating. So yeah I wish the game was just a bit more fun to play rather than just a massive struggle against the controls. A few other annoyances like the sound effect when the health is low, the animation to get back up is like 10 seconds long it's very frustrating and oh god the camera moving automatically and getting stuck on walls and object all the time!

My last issue would be about the Colossus's fights because they start as wonderful boss fights to really cryptic and gimmicky fights that don't end up being fun at all. This game peaks with humanoid boss fights!

True chads googled "Why is my health bar halved in Demon's souls" 5 minutes after the intro.

This is officially my second Souls game with Elden Ring being the first one and by the gods, I had a damn good time with the game. I know that people dislike this game for being unfair and for having bad level design but honestly I simply just had a good time going through the bullshit, I didn't really think that the game was too unfair it just had some tidbits moments with awful enemy placement but nothing to really make me feel like I'm in a so-called "Souls-like". Most of the game's difficulty came from the slow moments personally since I felt like the character was a bit slow and clunky to roll around.

Boss-wise, this game is piss easy and none of them really frustrated me or just blocked me for a long period of time. The only two bosses with which I had trouble were the Maneaters with their awful and unpredictable patterns and the final boss which actually turned out to be fairly easy once you figure out his pattern, he's just very imposing at first glance.

Now it definitely wasn't a flawless game and it has a lot of issues mostly related to the online. First of all, the boss of 3-3 is an online battle with another player. Sounds stupid? It's even more stupid when you are forced to fight your opponents teleporting everywhere due to a bad connection or simply just encountering an overpowered player instantly killing you.
Now that's just one thing, the other is the lack of multiple save files which is apparently a feature in all Dark Souls games I have not played any Dark Souls games so do not quote me on that but what you can quote me on is that it's bullshit! I'd like to save to avoid making mistakes especially in a game where you can fuck up your whole progress at any time. Saving progress would be exploitable but when you can already just back up save files on PC and Playstation why bother? For example, I accidentally removed all upgrades from my Dragon+4 knight sword and now it's gone forever! all of my precious Dragonshards are gone.

Dragonshards... if you've bothered with upgrade paths you know that farming chunks of any type of stone are insanely time-consuming and just really tedious. They really should've changed the drop rates to be more generous because who plays a Souls game and just think "Gosh it's time to grind I'm so happy".

Now here comes the last part of my rant about odd game design, the World Tendencies, and Souls/Human bodies. World tendencies are probably one of the most infuriating gimmicks I have ever seen in a game, and yes I'm a completionist so this feels like a personal insult. The fact that world tendencies block so many events just because you died once as a human in said world because dying as a human removes -30% of the world tendency and you can only get some % back by killing the bosses of each world (if you killed all 3 bosses you cannot raise it any further) is honestly just evil because it can ruin your 100% run at any moment.

And yes the halved HP and souls mode is fucking dumb.

Overall I had a ton of fun exploring the maps and fighting enemies, I spent more time fearing for tough boss fights than actually facing one, and I had to suffer through a bunch of gimmicky bullshit that just makes the game tedious.

And yes I have dropped the 100% because of how hard NG+ is and I am really under-leveled for this.

But a bunch of this is forgiven with how beautiful this game is, this is probably Bluepoint's best work yet and I cannot wait to see more of what they can Remake while keeping it faithful to the original product, though a bit too faithful with the original bullshit at times...

The best Ubisoft game I have ever played.

Now that's what I call a modern reboot of a franchise! Changing everything to make what made the original games original and beloved in the first place to something that is little to almost not recognizable, Wait... It's not a reboot? this is God of War 4? Oh, man.

Ignoring the fact that this game barely has anything to do with the first three games, hell 6 even with the three prequels, this is honest to god high-quality AAA game that does come with the usual advantage and inconvenience of being a product from Sony's game studios.

This has probably been said a billion times by now but this game has wonderfully crafted cutscenes for the optimal cinematic father-and-son story experience, but is it truly what I wanted out of a God of War game? something that has been done to death in books, movies, games, and TV shows? Obviously not though it doesn't mean it's bad, far from it but it's just what I was looking up to damn it!

The story is just about a strong father having to overcome the obstacle in his journey with his wimpy son trying to be as good as him but it obviously doesn't work that easily. Yeah, it's not that interesting, if someone told me to watch a movie and this was the plot I'd instantly say "No thanks I have to play Final Fantasy XIII-2" but if someone told me "Ever heard about that movie of an Ex god going on a rampage killing all of the gods of mount Olympus to finally kill Zeus, his father, for his ultimate vengeance? Fuck yeah, I'd say yes because that's what God of War is all about, get what I'm sayin'?

But-but... you might say that story isn't everything and you are right! But-but... I say the gameplay isn't all that great...
Remember that part about Ubisoft? Yeah, I wasn't joking this is an Open World game with crafting mechanics for armor and upgrade materials and weapon upgrades and skill trees and, and, and! it's fucking boring! Didn't mean to come out as rude but christ an unoriginal story and unoriginal gameplay? Do better, Sony!

Though just like with the story, it might be uninspired and unoriginal it doesn't change the fact that it was perfectly crafted, I might even be a bit too rude with the gameplay since all of the previous God of War games are kinda all just Devil May Cry clones.

The combat is decent but awful at the same time but I'll get to that later. In a casual way, the combat is honestly perfect I just think it's ruined with useless stats and crafting that just makes the game a complete bore, I don't want to spend half of my time upgrading my armor for +2 attacks! The game also tricks you into thinking the axe is the new cool Kratos weapon but at some point in the game, you get the Chaos Blades back so all ends well in the best of worlds because the axe gets really boring after a while and the Chaos Blades are really fun to use!

But the combat ultimately reeks once you get into the side content like the valkyrie quest lines, they are like shitty Dark Souls bosses which behave unlike any other bosses in the game, and by that I mean they are really fast in a game with slow base combat... Yeah, it's not really fun...
I dislike them because Kratos's default speed is god awfully slow and he wasn't made for this kind of quick game of spam A to roll like Dark Souls. You could say I lack skills but I think that's just bad game design if you had fun dying over and over because Kratos can't handle fast button presses and starts doing anything but what you wanted to do that's your thing and I won't take it from you.

Most side quests in this game were uninteresting, they are either talk to this ghost and kill X of things or talk to the Dwarfs and go to X place to find X in an empty dungeon. Honestly, I found the dwarfs' quests to be the most fun because you can't get wrong with exploring a place in this game it's kinda fun but that's the end of it, you never meet any new NPCs or anything, just padded content.

Now, for the 100% we know this is a Ubisoft-like game so it obviously has the find 100 X hidden in the world for no real reward other than 2 XP and an achievement. Even if there was some fetch quest of useless crap it was ok and I did most of them during my normal walkthrough, but the worst part isn't here, it's in the stupid Niflheim place with its dumb randomly generated dungeon that serves no purpose other than wasting my time.

Conclusion for the side content, do the sidequests if you want to but they barely do anything for ya'
You can do the Valkyrie side quest, it's ok.
Do not do anything else post-game it's just padded content.

So did I like this game or not? I did! it was great! just not original in the slightest and the game keeps teasing you with stuff that never happens like Ragnarok, Thor, and Odin. We barely kill any gods in this game and I found it very disappointing. People told me that the story got a whole lot more interesting in God of War Ragnarok and brings back stuff of what happened in the old Trilogy and more god-killing QTEs! Can't wait to try it out.

A good-looking PlayStation 1 game?! How can that be...

Time to point out the obvious, this game is adorable and has one of the most unique art styles in all of the PS1 library, and proves that a well-crafted art style can be timeless just like how Wind Waker did in the next console generation.

Now, now we all know that this game is adorable but what about the gameplay? It's alright, the overall gameplay loop is great I really like exploring the dungeons, killing monsters, and finding secret items to unlock new weapons and upgrades it's pretty basic but it works well. Now the main issue of this game is the controls, it's infamously bad and even if I really do love this game I think it just really kills it. Of course, I'll recommend this game to people it's just that most people tend to get filtered by the odd controls, and especially when the game first starts you are forced into 3 boss battles in a row. The main issue with the controls is that it uses tank controls with L and R to rotate the camera to the side pressed making the game very clunky to control and move around, though you do get used to it so it's not unplayable.

Even if the gameplay isn't for everyone there's still a lot to love in this game such as the dialogue and overall ambiance of the game reminiscent of an anime from the 80s-90s which is highly noticeable during the cutscenes with the character's facial expressions.

Outside of the main story, there are a few side quests that unlock over time and they are fine at best, they are mostly just fetching quests in the city with cute scenarios and the reward often tends to be upgrade materials for new weapons.

This game is highly in need of a Remaster fixing the control and some gameplay clunk but nothing graphics wise dear god please do not make an HD remaster of this game and ruin the art style I beg of you Capcom do not fuck this up.

Roll Caskett is my wife.

This game finally let us do something else than pushing boxes.

Now here's a good example of a good sequel done right, I honestly don't have much to say about this title other than some stages dragging on a bit at times I think the game should've been a lot shorter and the lack of boss also doesn't help, though it's still a massive improvement from the first game.

Unfortunately, a lot of the bad thing from God of War I comes back in this game though they are not as bad as the original, the first one that comes to my mind are the puzzles, though there are still a lot and most of them sucks but it's still not as bad as the original. The other one would be the forced platforming sections which get old and tedious fast, but at least the combat improved and the storytelling is honestly great I love Kratos's story and how the gods decided to kill him.

Overall a damn fine action game for its time which is a definitive improvement from the first game, though the franchise doesn't peak till the third game so if you are doing a God of War binge, get ready for the third game!

Worst. Box pushing simulator. Ever.

It was finally time I started my God Of War binge and you know that it's not a real game franchise if the first entry isn't outdated and not as good as the other titles, but even with how raw this game can be at times I thought it was an overall "Fine" game.

This game is honestly just another Devil May Cry 1 clone from the PS2 era that doesn't really do much to stand out from the others, especially when it uses a pretty basic theme of ancient Greece which isn't a bad theme at all it's just not really original. The gameplay is honestly very smooth and probably the best part of the game, though what annoyed me the most from this game was the puzzles and level design. The very first part of the game before entering Pandora's temple is honestly awful, it's hard to find where to go or know what to do. Thankfully once you get to the Pandora temple it gets way better and truly feels like Devil May Cry 1 with how the temple is made, it's one of those games with one big map with a hub, and every time you explore a path you unlock a new ability or find a new item to open a new path once you come back to the hub of the temple and that's damn good level design! Just like how Resident Evil 1 Remake did things and it's really fun. Unfortunately, it's not as good as it sounds since this game is full of terribly annoying puzzles which are mostly just "push box on X to open or activate Y" and pushing items is really REALLY slow in this damn game it's just a waste of time to make the game longer. My last issue would come from the platforming which is honestly just bad, nobody wants to do platforming in action games, especially bad platforming at that.
Ultimately, my biggest disappointment was the lack of boss fights in this game, I was expecting a bunch of badass bosses fights from God Of War with cool QTEs and such.

Do I recommend this game? Not really but it's not bad so give it a try if you want to play the whole franchise it's only about 6 to 7 hours long, plus Kratos's background story is pretty decent in this game.

This game is as good as how Kratos is in bed.

After playing the first two original games which were mostly alright I already knew that God of War III would be the greatest game of the trilogy, though I still had my doubts, and god I was so wrong for doubting the quality of this game since it turned out to be one of the greatest action game I had ever played.

God of War III is pretty much all of the things we all loved from the two original games but better in every way such as the combat instead of giving us new abilities like in the two older titles they decided it was time to do what DMC does and add multiple weapons. Adding 3 more weapons is an alright choice, honestly I never really used them other than the fists weapon and the basic blades but it's still a nice change of pace.

The greatest change from the previous two games is the pacing and level design, GOW 1 and 2 often made us stale on certain dungeons with repetitive pushing puzzles and a bunch of boring enemy waves but GOW 3 decided it was time to throw out the pushing gameplay and pretty much got rid of any type of puzzles and replacing it with really good boss battles and good combat segments.

The pacing is wonderful in this game, the enemy combat segments are never too long, whenever you get bored of a place there's a new boss to fight and then the loop continues and it works oh so well due to the bosses being really fun to fight and watch the over the top QTEs that comes with it.

This game is pretty much the action game power trip I've been looking for ever since I finished Star Wars: The Force Unleashed and Metal Gear Solid Rising, I'm so glad to have finally decieded to attack this franchise and I hope God of War 4 will be as good as this game.