Hyperdimension Neptunia Re;Birth3: V Generation is a remake of the third game in the series, Hyperdimension Neptunia Victory, for the PlayStation Vita. If you have played the previous two Re;Birth games, everything about this game feels very similar and too familiar. Thus it can be a bit boring to play through as there are no major changes. The graphics have remained the same and are still fairly decent. The story is told in a visual novel format with portraits and a lot of text with the occasional 3D cutscene. The map has been revamped with each nation having their own smaller 2D map to select destinations, with a bigger world map.
Despite the story trying to go in a different direction, it feels like a retread of the first two games at times. Time has passed since the events of the second game, and Neptune has become complacent in her role as CPU again. Nepgear does a bit of work but all of them are lazy, doing the bare minimum, if that. As a result, when they are forced to do some actual CPU related thing, Neptune ends up being sucked into an alternate dimension and kind of have to start again. She meets the alternate universe’s Noire, as well as the new character Plutia.
The villain organisation Seven Sages provides the antagonists for this game, and are the various major bosses. They sow chaos wherever they go and do not want the various nations to be on friendly terms and ally with each other. As a result, the various nations and their CPUs aren’t friends yet, and with Neptune’s appearance (and her knowledge from her own world), she sets about travelling and meeting them all.
The story is not too bad as far as the series goes, but it doesn’t feel terribly coherent. It seemed like the game leans very heavily on breaking the fourth wall now, with a lot of references and snarkiness. As a result, it can feel like an endless onslaught of those things, rather than telling an engaging story. The end result is that we have Neptunia blundering away in this alternate dimension and tackling the new threat, while meeting all the alternate version of familiar characters. Even the true ending can feel rushed and underwhelming.
The gameplay loop is not great. It is constantly broken by the abundance of cutscenes, which can be tiring when it seems never-ending. It’s made worse if you end up downloading the free DLC which adds additional playable characters and cutscenes, bloating the game even more. However, there is a massive improvement in terms of the humor with the characters constantly breaking the fourth wall. They know that they are in a game and they take this opportunity to make some hilarious commentary on typical RPG tropes.
The combat system is turn based with three types of attacks. Rush emphasizes number of hits (and SP recovery), Power emphasizes attack power (and damage), and Break emphases guard damage. All enemies have a HP bar and Guard bar, with the Guard bar acting like a defence of sort. If you deplete the Guard bar, the enemy is much more vulnerable to HP damage. While using special attacks will deplete SP, it is also tied to the EXE attacks, which are basically super moves. This can make easier or harder than previous games depending on how you approach it.
You assign different attacks to the three attack types, and you can combo together a string of attacks each turn. Positioning is also important as you can walk behind the enemy, dealing more damage when attacking from behind, or hit two enemies at once. All CPUs can also transform to their HDD forms which are stronger and faster. Later on, once you get your full party, selecting the four characters in your active party is important as you can do combination EXE moves, which deals significant damage. After having character faint in battle, you can swap them over to one they are paired up to in reserve.
Unfortunately, there are significant difficulty spikes which feels even harsher than normal. It’s probably partly due to the chapters being really short otherwise. You’ll crush normal enemies easily but then bosses can one shot you randomly, takes little damage and are generally unfair or annoying so you must grind. It’s uneven like this, which ruins the game quite a bit, especially if you are wanting to get the three endings (Normal, Good and True) in an efficient way.
Dungeons are repetitive as a lot of them reuse the same layouts and environments from previous games. These then repeat again and again within this game. The same goes for the enemy designs and the overall gameplay flow. It’s not to the point of being unforgiveable, it’s just that we have seen all of these before which does put a damper on things. There’s only so many times you can run through the same layout with the same skin five times before you think enough is enough.
The story is not too long to complete, taking only around 20 to 30 hours to get to the true ending, depending on you go about your way. You can easily rush through it in under 20 hours though, even for getting all three endings in your run. There are a number of postgame things to do, but it mostly involves grinding. Unfortunately, the difficulty spikes up even more during the postgame story content, so you are forced to grind for more levels and especially better equipment.
Overall, Hyperdimension Neptunia Re;Birth3: V Generation is more of the same from the previous two Re;Birth games, but perhaps with an extra high dose of referential humor. The combat system is solid, if bland and unremarkable, although the changes to the EXE attacks makes battles slightly harder. So while this is the definitive version of the game with plenty of quality-of-life improvements, the difficulty spikes and the uneven delivery of the chunks of story text do drag down the game.
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