Neptunia, what on earth happened to you? You were a franchise that fans gathered around for ages, celebrating and flailing about on all walks of life. The original Hyperdimension Neptunia games on the Vita and Steam are some seriously fun moments in my developing life, and I even convinced my wife to watch the anime with me when it first aired. Full of 4th wall-breaking humor, tons of video game lore saturation, and fan service that could make Ken Akamatsu blush, the Neptunia franchise has always been one that knew what the fans wanted and delivered it in terms of visuals and gameplay. Until we reached Neptunia – Game Maker R:Evolution.

I haven’t been as privy to the recent Neptunia games (I fell off around Megadimension), so I wasn’t totally surprised to be lost when I started up Neptunia – Game Maker R:Evolution. Thankfully, it takes very little time to realize that I should be lost, because we’re in an arbitrary dimension that is separate from the core dimensional world. Instead of Neptune (older Neptune from Dimension Zero, if that helps) teaming up with Vert, Blanc, and Noire, she’s now hanging out with Pippih, Reedio, and Jagaa, the three “Failure Goddesses.” Representing the Pippin, the 3DO, and the Jaguar respectively, they seek to craft games that get the people going and bring back their esteemed goddess status, which I guess is important. 

Sometimes the lack of trying to fabricate conditions actually makes the explanation much funnier.

Like many titles from Idea Factory, you need to understand there’s going to be a lot of reading and vocal exposition throughout the world of Neptunia – Game Maker R:Evolution. Rather than bake the plot in for gradual unveiling, players will be frequently held hostage in protracted conversations that are equal parts wild exposition and pointless exchanges of entendres and silliness. When you get into a moment of talking between characters, you can never tell how important it’s going to be from the onset: you simply have to grin and bear it to figure out what on earth is happening. The opening scroll actually told me very little, and I didn’t really get any informative pieces until Chapter Two, and even those were tangential. The majority of everything else was finding out how quirky everyone was and having them be cute at one another. Which…was a lot. 

You can successfully divide Game Maker R:Evolution into three distinct chunks: talking, dungeons, and “game making.” The talking we’ve already mentioned, but it bears repeating because it exemplifies what the game does best. For all the meandering, the conversations were fun, and I liked the revisitation of the sprite animations. Instead of pointlessly bobbing or being stock still, each character had a full range of subtle movements that helped to convey what they were saying and also gave their personalities a chance to shine through. Jagaa, for example, has some good, mild gesticulation when she’s attempting to be serious, whereas Pippih is more explosive while still being in control. It’s clear where a lot of the attention went to crafting the game.

It’s also where fans on the Nintendo Switch are going to have the most pleasant experience because it’s rendered in a contained field and thus doesn’t get a chance to suffer from lag, stuttering, or loading issues. I cannot figure out, for the life of me, why Idea Factory titles still chug on a Switch if they aren’t visual novels (Cupid Parasite ran like a dream!). Refrain Chord performed well enough, but it also changed up how they approached combat, which may have been key for survival. Game Maker R:Evolution is brand new, having just dropped last year, and yet I could not believe how bad things got once you were in the meat and potatoes of the game, which is the dungeon work. 

Jesus, I could open my mail on those rough pixels.

Let’s be clear, the dungeons are a problem not just because of performance. Sure, I didn’t love having to wait several seconds on either end of starting combat, or the fact that the game seemed to freeze every time an enemy was vanquished, or that moving between loading areas was a question of “will the game ever come back to me?” All of those are technical issues that could conceivably be patched out (though doubtfully). The problem is that the dungeons, the combat, and the exploration are mind-meltingly boring and bad.

First and foremost, the layout. Neptunia – Game Maker R:Evolution has decided to make dungeons that are sprawling, multi-layered, and also look completely the same from different angles and sections. The minimap gives you very little detail as to where you are, so needing to constantly call up the larger map is a must (and also a lag in gameplay). At which point, God help you if you need to go up or down a few degrees, because then you need to alter the altitude of the map to fully see where you’re going, but then lose where you just were. Trying to read the map is like looking at a weather satellite in real-time and keeping track of two counties at the same time. It’s possible but also confusing if you’re not a meteorologist.

And when I say sprawling, I mean these dungeons can be HUGE. Big is not necessarily bad, but it is when you just want to get somewhere and move the story ahead. No can do, especially if you can’t find one of the save points that are very stingily peppered throughout. You can, however, hop on your Neptune motorcycle, which handles like a Ford Festiva with two flat tires. You rocket ahead at incredible speeds, turn in wide, awkward swings, and cannot/will not stop before crashing into an enemy, even though you’re desperately trying not to start another pointless fight. I JUST NEED TO GET TO THAT SWITCH OVER THERE, I’LL FIGHT YOU LATER.

One of the few motorcycle screenshots I got where I wasn’t about to crash/had crashed.

These maps and the motorcycle make trying to take the sidequests in the dungeon a hassle, which is a shame since the side quests are incredibly easy and WILDLY generous. NPCs are just hanging around these dungeons, oftentimes asking you to kill a few of the minor enemies in the area, and the reward is items, cash, EXP, and far more points than anyone should ever get for slaying a handful of Doggos. It’s almost like the side quests are incentives for you to interact with the only point of interest that aren’t mechanically necessary. Which, don’t get me wrong, I appreciate, but it’s suspicious how lucrative the quests are.

Then you’ve got the actual fighting, and, boy howdy, Neptunia – Game Maker R:Evolution really knows how to make what should be something spectacular an absolute chore. In spite of if you get the initiative drop or not, every combat encounter is the same. You rush forward and start hitting the button you want (Y or B, two different attacks that matter not at all) until the game prompts you to swap characters. Now you’re beating on the enemy as another of the Goddesses, but a chain has been established. If the fight lasts long enough for you to link in all four fighters, now you deliver a massive, explosive attack every time you change seats, and the enemy really has no say in it all.

Yes, you can do the transformation thing that all Neptunia games let you do, and now the characters are even stronger than before, but 9/10 times it feels like gleefully dropping a Phyrexian Dreadnought into play when your opponent just has a couple Crimson Kobolds. The henshins are fun to witness but, except for some much later boss battles, wholly unnecessary. Just like the powerup attack that you can trigger with X, which basically saves you time on needing to keep pressing buttons for a couple more minutes. I was taught how to dodge in the tutorial and I don’t think I needed to ever do it once. The characters could heal with a quick press of the L-Stick if needed, but that even wasn’t a frequent thing. It’s just button mashing for the sake of button mashing.

Neptunia’s characters now taking inspiration from Pokémon for their final attacks.

Not everything needs to be an artful execution of combat like Devil May Cry or even the Souls games, but the sheer number of fights that came, plus the necessity due to quests and motorcycle mishaps, made it go from a part of the experience to an ordeal that I dreaded every time I entered an area. And you NEED to enter a bunch of areas to push forward the final and most important(?) part of the package: game developing.

Look, I get it, it’s right there in the title. It’s a major plot point. It’s kind of the whole reason we’re doing this particular song and dance instead of my real wish, which is a sequel to Hyperdevotion where I can just keep waiting on monsters in a musou setting. So it’s not really a surprise that players need to take plenty of time out of their bike riding and enemy punching to head back to HQ and work on your next titles. But Neptunia – Game Maker R:Evolution has one fatal flaw in this idea: it’s not well done or fun in the slightest.

Borrowing heavily from every other game that’s already done this schtick (but especially Game Dev Story), you need to use the CP points you’ve gathered from enemies and quests to expand different parts of your skill tree that, ultimately, leads to better game development. Then you need to do the whole “mash-up genres and concepts” thing to push forward a bold new game, knowing that the tried and true will always be best (just start with action/adventure, you’ll have an easier time than visual novel). Then you can sell the game, and the finished product can be equipped as a passive accessory to give some bonuses in…combat.

See if you can spot the homage characters that deftly dodge copyright laws!

Everything about the “Game Maker” aspect is just an excuse to get back into the dungeons, run around more, and fight more baddies, including when the actual storyline ultimately circles back into 3D exploration and thumb-numbing fighting. There is all this equipment to buy and find, and I’m strongly beginning to suspect the developers themselves realized how insufferable the dungeons are. The reason behind this is that the treasure chests scattered throughout are not in obvious places: most of the time they’re at dead ends or tucked into spots that you normally wouldn’t seek to venture into unless you were trying to 100% the map (a feat you end up doing by accident most of the time). If you find a chest, though, most of the time it is packed with different treats and weapons that you probably shouldn’t just find lying around. 

That’s what the rub of Neptunia – Game Maker R:Evolution: everything that you normally appreciate in an Idea Factory coming across wrong. Sure, you have games like Mugen Souls, Trillion, and even Moero Chronicles where the blend of encouraged leering and overpowered everything comes together in a silly package that you appreciate as a fan. But when the act of trying to play the game is a chore – get sucked into battle, do next to nothing, hear characters yell a lot – you become resentful of the overcompensation. Oh great, I got ten heal potions, every character leveled up and I got enough CP to add more story options to my game. I should be elated but I’m just eyeballing the map, hoping I can find a save point so I can go for a walk or something.

Music and voice work are superb, I doubt there was ever a question of that. The graphics look swell enough, though I’d like to believe it looks markedly better on the PC or a stronger console. But the act of playing Neptunia – Game Maker R:Evolution is just something I began to dread as I went forward. All the quippy jokes about Arfoire and the different puns in everyone’s names were unfortunate reminders that, eventually, I’d need to leave this encapsulated conversation where things looked good and felt good and have to go back into, yes, a dungeon, and then I’d be mashing Y and B without any thoughts in my head. 

Seriously, axe everything else, I’m here for THIS nonsense!

If you must have everything from Nep Nep in your possession, by all means pick it up, but don’t expect anything special or even acceptable to crop up in front of you. A game’s combat shouldn’t matter so much in titles like these, but when you’re forced to endure so much while also wandering aimlessly in environments both sparse and crowded, it had better be amazing. This was not amazing. This wasn’t even passing. Neptunia – Game Maker R:Evolution is a drill set you keep jotting down even though you understand it because the teacher thinks you’re stupid and need to study harder. Now you haven’t learned anything new and you hate math, and I’m walking away from this game before I really start to dislike Neptune.

Neptunia – Game Maker R:Evolution is available now on Nintendo Switch, PlayStation4, and PlayStation5.

Reviewed on Nintendo Switch.

A copy of Neptunia – Game Maker R:Evolution was provided by the publisher.