Hyperdimension Neptunia Re;Birth1 is a remake of the first Hyperdimension Neptunia game that was released for the PS3 in 2010. This remake was released for the Vita in 2014 and later ported to PC. The original game was heavily criticized for being boring, repetitive and just downright not a great game. Re;Birth1 attempts to address all those flaws by basing the battle system around Hyperdimension Neptunia Victory, revamping the story which included including new characters and removing some, new dungeons and new music. The result of all this is a vastly enjoyable JRPG but still containing a few significant flaws which causes a barrier for potential players. Let's start off with the most important aspect of a JRPG: the battle system. Re;Birth1's battle system is a lot of fun. It is turn based combined with some action elements.
Approaching an enemy in the dungeon area will cause a transition to the battle area where your party of three will dish out the pain. Turn order is shown in the top right corner which allows you to strategize and plan ahead. Once your party member's turn arrives, you can freely move your character, the distance they can travel depends upon your stats. Therefore, each character can only move within a certain radius. While you're moving, there will be a highlighted area right in front of them which indicates their attach range. Enemies that fall within the range will be highlighted in red and if you position your character just right, they can attack two to three enemies at the same time. Different weapons also have different ranges, this adds a nice tactical element to the game as you try and position your character just right.
There are three main attacks, one focuses on raw attack power, one on raising your EXE gauge (more on this later) and one which causes more guard damage. You see, each enemy has a guard bar in addition to their health bar. Once this guard bar reaches zero, their defenses are lowered and you can do more damage. Battles against bosses will eventually resolve in using the strategy of reducing their guard bar to zero before unleashing your most powerful attacks. You get four attacks per turn too, so you can alternate between different attacks, which is a nice touch. You then have your EXE attacks, which are like the character's ultimate attack that causes huge amounts of damage. When you get your first EXE attack, it feels like it is overpowered and breaks the game but once you get one or two chapters further in, you realize that this is not the case.
EXE attacks gives out some flashy animations which are skippable by pressing the left shoulder button. Lastly, you have your typical magical attacks, which include buffs and debuffs as well as some strong moves, all of which uses up SP. Now, to keep overloading you with information, playable characters include CPUs, or Console Patron Units, who are the personification of a game console (such as the main character Neptune being a personification of the Sega Saturn). They have the additional ability of transforming into a more powerful persona, which are crucial for some fights. Now that all the battle mechanics are out of the way, the flow of the game basically boils down to the story being told in a visual novel fashion. That is, there is a lot of text with 2D art being shown and character portraits. After which you can traverse into a dungeon which is rendered in 3D before fighting a few bosses and repeat.
This works quite well because of the additional things you can do in-between. You travel via a world map which basically allows you to select the place you want to go and it'll bring up a text menu of what you can do there. Cities, which are also based upon consoles (e.g. Lastation from PlayStation; Leanbox from Xbox), each contain a shop, guild (for quests), Re;Birth1's version of smithing and extra text entries which expand the lore. It's really too bad that everything is menu based and not a free roam city, but this also means it allows for more efficient and faster selection and performance. You get in there to do what you had to do and then can keep going on with the game. The game features a "Remake" system which basically allows you to "change" certain parameters of the game.
To unlock these options for changes, you need to obtain the correct items first which means grinding and farming. After getting the items, you can unlock things such as new weapons, new dungeons, weaken enemies and awaken new abilities. It's an addicting side addition that adds a lot to the game without breaking it. However, the one downside of this feature is the fact that a lot of the additional content is missable. You see, you collect "Plans" which is the blueprints for unlocking something new, and they are only given at certain points in the chapters, disappearing if you either haven't fulfill the requirements or you've passed the chapter. It's annoying because you will need to play New Game Plus in order to try again. Dungeons are rendered in 3D and fully explorable. That said, they are somewhat uninspiring, small and very linear.
Enemies roam around on the field and they respawn very quickly. What might be the worst thing is that not only do dungeons often share the same locale, they can be carbon copies of an earlier one. This is sheer laziness and frankly, quite disappointing. Hyperdimension Neptunia Re;Birth1 retains the infamous difficulty spikes. You will be doing well against normal enemies on the field until you hit a boss in which they can kill you within one to two hits. You are then forced to grind to level up. What makes this worse is that the game uses a save point system so you could potentially lose a significant amount of progress. The game also loves to give you two to three bosses one after another with no chance to save or rest, each stronger than the last.
This difficulty makes the game feel unfair and that the developers are artificially extending the game time. Be wary once you enter Chapter 2 because this is where the difficulty spikes start to happen. It really sucks that when you gain 5 levels in a dungeon, that it is still not enough. The game also loves to throw impossible to win fights against you, while it defies your expectations every once in a while, since an invincible boss appears in every chapter in which you are supposed to lose, the shock factor wears off and becomes repetitive. With that said, once you've gained a few levels, the difficulty isn't too horrible in the later chapters until the final boss where you'll probably need to grind (maybe a fair bit depending if you have been skipping enemies beforehand) in order to complete the game.
Now, finally, onto the story. This is another important element of JRPGs. Unfortunately, Re;Birth1 contains a lackluster story which fails to grip your attention. It's not boring to the point of wanting to skip dialogue but it's not very interesting either. It had huge potential since it is supposed to be a fictional rendition of the Console Wars, making fun of them. Instead, you basically follow an amnesiac Neptune, one of the four goddesses, as she travels around the world trying to reclaim her lost memories. Along the way, she battles some tough bosses, find out a devious plan and collects a huge crowd who joins and helps her. It's your typical JRPG story without the really good bits. That said, the humor can be good at times, but is an acquired taste. This is because the game gives your fan service in heavy doses and it can get too much at times.
The dialogue often breaks the fourth wall, the characters know that they're in a game, which is pretty amusing. The story never takes itself too seriously which is a good thing. The ending is supposed to be a feel good ending but it lacks the required build up for it to have a big emotional impact. There's not enough drive in the characters' motivations to compel you to empathize with them. This is partly due to the huge cast, excluding the extra characters that you unlock, there are 12 playable characters where 7 of them are just superficial and are side characters that does not do much, yet they are shoehorned halfway through the game. The graphics are decent but environments can be empty of interesting items and interactive objects.
Frame rate drops do happen. For some reason, they actually happen during bosses even though there were barely any special effects happening. The music was good although I don't know why it was criticized for being too repetitive as I didn't find this to be the case. There is a New Game Plus option where you retain everything except story related matters. In order to unlock everything, including all the characters (there are 16 playable characters in total), you will have to play through the game twice. Other than that, there isn't anything new things in New Game Plus. Overall, Hyperdimension Neptunia Re;Birth1 is a fun game and a solid JRPG. The battle system is surprisingly fun and addictive. It really is too bad about the (oftentimes insane) difficulty spikes and the overdose of fan service which holds the game back and will inevitably put off many potential players.
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