Yet another trainwreck of a Neptunia spinoff that gets a very undeserved "Very Positive" rating. That's basically three in a row for Neptunia action spinoffs. I'm starting to think the fanbase doesn't really care for getting even a decent game, and would be happy enough just getting whatever has Neptune's gob plastered on the cover. IF/CH can sell this game for 60 bucks, and the general fanbase would be more than willing to pay 80 dollars for it.
Cyberdimension Neptunia: 4 Goddesses Online is an action-based Neptunia spinoff, although dissimilar to Action Unleashed and MegaTag, this game is not a musou/Warriors type game. This means that you're no longer fighting off hordes of brain-dead enemies. Instead, they have innovated by making you fight brain-dead enemies in groups of five. Seriously, the enemy AI hasn't improved from the previous two games, although it was kind of understandable in Action Unleashed and MegaTag because they were, you know, Warriors type games.
The story is... well, it's stupid. It's one of those stories that can only happen if everyone in it has no brain. To give you an idea of how stupid the story can get, there's a time where someone manages to hack the MMO (the story involves the characters beta testing the MMO) and spawn high level enemies in the starting area. The solution? Why, send all the high level players to clear out the enemies, of course! And then there's another time where the main characters are sent to hunt down a cheater... by killing their in-game avatar? Have Idea Factory/Compile Heart's writers ever actually played an online game in their life?
The combat hasn't really improved much, either, in fact, you only have one attack button now, and everything else is special attacks. While they have tried to make combat more involved by giving enemies various elemental weaknesses, you can just ignore them for the most part and just brute force your way through combat with the exception of bosses and Metal Dogoos, who require you to spam elemental skills to break their guard so that you can actually do some damage. The problem with this though, is that combat is extremely static, where you have a guard break phase that involves using whatever elemental attacks you have, then a damage phase where you can no longer use your heavy hitting special attacks because you wasted all your mana spamming elemental attacks. While it is possible to kill bosses without guard breaks, it will make the bossfights take much longer, and trust me, you don't want to be playing this game for any longer than you should.
Part of the problem with the combat is the characters themselves. You can play as the 4 CPUs, their Candidates, and the Angels, but for the most part, they're all very similar in general gameplay. Each one of them is capable of doing elemental damage, and each one of them has highly damaging special attacks. Every character is capable of blocking and parrying, regardless of what archetype they are, meaning that Uni, the Thief, can block and parry just as effectively as Neptune, the Paladin. Ranged characters are redundant because everyone can use ranged elemental attacks, and it's not like it's an advantage to fight from far anyway when the AI is so dumb and/or easily exploited that melee characters won't have a hard time. There is basically zero balancing between the characters. The only exceptions are Neptune and Blanc, who are the only ones who have healing spells.
Also, why is it that when your allies die, it's okay, but when you specifically die, you go back to the main city? I hate games that do this for no reason. At least Dragon's Dogma has a lore reason for why it's acceptable for your teammates to die, but not you. This game has no reason at all. If Blanc dies while I'm playing as her, it's an instant lose, but when the AI is playing as her, it's totally fine for her to die as many time as she pleases. That makes no sense.
And don't get me started on the friendly AI. It's so stupid. And it's not even an endearing kind of stupid like in Dragon's Dogma (and at least in DD, they have moments of brilliance, while 4GO has none). Anyone who says that Cyberpunk 2077 has the dumbest AI should play this game, because the stupidity of the friendly AI in this game will give Cyberpunk AI a run for its money. The friendly AI in this game is so stupid that they can't even jump. They just teleport to where you are when they encounter even the slightest ledge. Don't be surprised when you develop myopia (or if it worsens if you already have it) after playing this game, because whenever your allies teleport to you, they do so with the most obnoxiously bright special effect I've ever seen in my life. It beats out Holy-spamming White Mages in FFXIV.
The AI also regularly runs into enemy attacks, fails to block or dodge, and have no strategy in fights besides "charge and die". You can command them to do general things like saving their SP (so that you can switch to them for damage phases because they're stupid), hang back and play more defensively, or play as aggressively as possible. The commands work for the most part, but only a handful of them are actually useful.
To give a little bit of credit, the dungeons you go through are more interesting than the arenas of Action Unleashed and MegaTag, but to take away that little bit of credit, the dungeons are ultimately just corridors you run through to get to the boss at the end. While that might sound like any dungeon in an MMO, at least an MMO dungeon is interesting to fight through, with minibosses in between and some nice setpieces every now and then to break up the monotony. In 4GO, you just fight regular enemies all the way until the boss room. There's even one dungeon where the developers must have gotten lazy and just placed a bunch of default Unreal Engine assets in a blank hallway. They couldn't be less subtle about how much they don't give a ♥♥♥♥.
This game boasts an online feature, meaning you can torture some friends to play this rubbish with you on the world's ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ netcode. I'm not kidding, the online function is complete arse candle. Think of the worst online experience you've ever had and multiply it by a hundred, and you pretty much get an idea of what it's like to play this game online. Even if you do get an online game going, the multiplayer just boils down to completing a single dungeon and that's your lot. If any of you die in battle, you are immediately removed from the game, unable to rejoin, and whoever remains is just left to continue on their own.
The PC port is a mess, too. I can't run this game at a smooth 60 FPS on medium settings. My PC isn't a beast, boasting only a GTX 1050, but that's way higher than the GTX 960 they're recommending for the "Recommended System Requirements".
This game truly disappointed me. I actually had some hopes for 4GO, but the game fell flat. This is the THIRD action game that the trifecta of Idea Factory, Compile Heart, and Tamsoft have made together. And this is the THIRD time that they made a mediocre action game. You'd think that by the THIRD game, they'd figure something out. I only expected a decent game, nothing too spectacular or game-changing, but I guess even that is too much to hope for.
