tl;dr : Despite the huge amount of good reviews, the game has way too many flaws and is only reviewed positively because it's a game with waifus in it, nothing less. It feels unfinished, unpolished and lacking in many areas (Gameplay, story, quests) and is full of bugs. Boring would be the word to describe my experience with it. I sometimes wish I never finished playing this game back when it was released. Avoid at all costs and spend your money and time elsewhere.
Aahh, Cyberdimension Neptunia. This game was full of promise, really. Big worlds, hack'n slash, quests, just like a real online RPG, except this one was made for solo (There is technically a multiplayer mode but more on that later).
Made by Tamsoft (the people who developped the Senran Kagura games, as well as the 2 other hack'n slash neptunia spin-offs) on Unreal 4, one could have thought they learnt from their mistakes from the previous spin-offs they made. They sadly didn't. The previous games suffered from huge balancing issues (Neptunia U was either too easy or too hard regardless of your progress, some characters were hella OP, like HDD Rom that could attack on a large radius while being able to move), but also from a lack of general gameplay (smash braindead ennemies that have no chance of hitting you or just hit giant bosses mindlessly until they die, with no feedback from your actions on them, all that with a non-existent combo system)
Now hear me out, this game did some things great, like the humor, the characters and the global art, the maps aren't recycled from any previous games, and the same can be said from the soundtracks. These points are the only positive ones this game has to me.
One of the first issue I have with this game is the combat system. You can wander in big maps, searching for ennemies to smash in order to finish quests, pretty classic. The problem is, the combo system is even less existent than the previous games they made. Before, you could use 2 different buttons to do 2 different attacks. Here, you only have a single button to mash, and that's it. You can also unlock skills and attribute them manually to some buttons, but sadly this isn't too great either. In the game, you have a health bar and a "skill bar" for my lack of words. The skill bar gets filled either with items or by smashing your opponents using the single attack you have at your disposal. Once you have enough, you can use some of your bar to do some more damaging attacks to your ennemies. And this is it. This is the only combat mechanic you will get. No combo, no diversity, really nothing much to see here.
The other thing that greatly disappointed me is how the ennemies are still completely braindead. They take ages before even trying to attack you, and you can interrupt their attacks easily. There is no dodging necessary here (because yes, you can dodge, but this mechanic is pointless). The bosses in this game are also extremely similar to MegaTag Dimension, where they are just huge spongy ennemies that don't react when you hit them.
The story is also extremely problematic in my opinion. It is extremely cliché and very much sugar coated. The story also created moments of tension, like when they tell you an enemy called Jack the Ripper wanders around in levels and one-shots people that are not careful or that moment when 2 players who use cheats beat the ♥♥♥♥ out of you and you follow them to try and take your revenge but it ultimately fell super flat. Jack the Ripper was just a boss in a very specific level that attacks so slowly that you can literally land a few hits and run away safely every 10 seconds and the cheaters were literally beat by our characters not long after they beat us in the first place, because apparently the power of friendship in a video game is stronger than cheats????
A point I want to make is the AI of the enemies (and especially bosses). Most a just braindead and barely attack you at all. Bosses are a joke (especially the last one) because they sometimes fail to hit you when they could (and SHOULD) clearly not miss. I do not think I have seen such a bad AI in video games before.
The multiplayer is..... unusable. Being able to joining a lobby is a matter of luck, there is no loading screen or icon indicating you're even joining a lobby, and whenever you're in a game you just get constant rollbacks from the insanely bad netcode, even if you play with people in the same country as you, just a few 100 km away.... Just forget this even exists.
Lastly, I would say the game lacks in playable characters. IF, Compa, Uzume, and a few more are just mere NPCs that own shops and that's it. You can only play as the main CPUs, CPU Candidates and Goddesses as saparate characters and it stops here. It makes for a very repetitive experience.
All in all, the game is a huge wasted potential. It took me a long time to write this review and I played when the game was relased but I know it was never patched so it is in the very same state as it was when it was released back then. I do not undertsnad the huge amount of good reviews on this game and it truly doesn't deserve them in the slightest. IF and Compile Heart should be ashamed of releasing such shameful games and simply milk their playerbase that only upvote because "haha, Nepu Nepu"... Avoid at all costs and spend your money and time elsewhere.
