It's sad when you make a trilogy of games and they are so dogshit you have to remake them all over again...
Hyperdimension Neptunia Re;Birth1 is a remake of the odd and forgotten Hyperdimension Neptunia which was totally overshadowed by its own remake, I actually had no idea how different the original game was from its remake, I thought Re;Birth was just a texture enhancement job but it's actually a complete conversion of the game that pretty much act as a reboot of the franchise, giving the franchise a new life, and seeing bad games becoming good is what I love to see.
The gameplay is quite similar to something like Final Fantasy 13 or Xenoblade Chronicle where you can move your character in a circle with the enemies inside and the goal is obviously to kill them in a good old turn-based fashion. One main complaint I heard about this game was how grindy it was and honestly, I understand why people see this as an issue but personally, I love grinding if the gameplay is fun and if the game pretty much lets you fuck around with its system like how Disgaea does with its cheat shop that is oddly similar to some of the feature in the game called "Remake Plans", they let you mess with some of the game systems in exchange of enemy drops or other items to unlock them. It also reminds me of how Final Fantasy 10 gave us the ability to break the damage limit and the freedom of the character sphere system, you really feel the freedom in this game and that's my favorite thing in a turn-based RPG.
For the grinding issue, I do agree that it's an issue early game during chapter 2 when the game is still limiting your option and just doesn't give you much to work with other than grinding basic enemies till you can beat story bosses. Once chapter 2 is complete it's when the game becomes a ton of fun and pretty much drops everything at your disposition, it never takes too long to level up if you know what you are doing.
I could go on and on about how the battle system works but I'll just let you try it out for yourself and find out if you find it satisfying or not.
Story wise this game is miserable, but I don't mind it. It's a damn Neptunia game so I really wasn't expecting anything story-wise and I think that's ok! I mean when you watch a slice-of-life anime I don't see anyone complaining about them not having an epic story, not all turn-based RPGs must be the next Final Fantasy 7, this game is the slice-of-life of JRPGs.
Now for the rest, I think the soundtrack is really, really good I actually never see anyone mentioning it when talking about this game, It's nothing as good as Final Fantasy 10 but it's good in a Nintendo type of soundtrack way where it's just bubbly and fun to have as background music, it fits the tone of the game. The art style is great! I'm a big fan of Tsunako's artwork in this game and I'm glad they never changed the art direction for the future games.
Now for a few complaints, the stages. The world stages or whatever you want to call them are visually lame, they kinda missed out on making them more "video gamey" by adding consoles, games references in the background, and whatnot. Another issue with them is that they are repeated over and over and over! Same with the enemy models! It's not a big issue as I don't care much but the amount of copy-paste in this game is crazy, but it's still decent for a budget JRPG.
One of my least favorite parts in the game was to equalize the shares for the true ending, it was really tedious, and also getting 30% and 50% for the CPU candidates, I wish shares were easier to manipulate.
Overall this was a really decent JRPG that I could not finish for the life of me when I was younger, I would always play chapter 1 and then drop at chapter 2 because I was young and didn't like turn-based RPGs all too much back then, though now I'm smart and I love fun games so it was right up my alley!
To anyone who likes turn-based RPGs with breakable systems like Disgaea should definitely try out this game.
Hyperdimension Neptunia Re;Birth1 is a remake of the odd and forgotten Hyperdimension Neptunia which was totally overshadowed by its own remake, I actually had no idea how different the original game was from its remake, I thought Re;Birth was just a texture enhancement job but it's actually a complete conversion of the game that pretty much act as a reboot of the franchise, giving the franchise a new life, and seeing bad games becoming good is what I love to see.
The gameplay is quite similar to something like Final Fantasy 13 or Xenoblade Chronicle where you can move your character in a circle with the enemies inside and the goal is obviously to kill them in a good old turn-based fashion. One main complaint I heard about this game was how grindy it was and honestly, I understand why people see this as an issue but personally, I love grinding if the gameplay is fun and if the game pretty much lets you fuck around with its system like how Disgaea does with its cheat shop that is oddly similar to some of the feature in the game called "Remake Plans", they let you mess with some of the game systems in exchange of enemy drops or other items to unlock them. It also reminds me of how Final Fantasy 10 gave us the ability to break the damage limit and the freedom of the character sphere system, you really feel the freedom in this game and that's my favorite thing in a turn-based RPG.
For the grinding issue, I do agree that it's an issue early game during chapter 2 when the game is still limiting your option and just doesn't give you much to work with other than grinding basic enemies till you can beat story bosses. Once chapter 2 is complete it's when the game becomes a ton of fun and pretty much drops everything at your disposition, it never takes too long to level up if you know what you are doing.
I could go on and on about how the battle system works but I'll just let you try it out for yourself and find out if you find it satisfying or not.
Story wise this game is miserable, but I don't mind it. It's a damn Neptunia game so I really wasn't expecting anything story-wise and I think that's ok! I mean when you watch a slice-of-life anime I don't see anyone complaining about them not having an epic story, not all turn-based RPGs must be the next Final Fantasy 7, this game is the slice-of-life of JRPGs.
Now for the rest, I think the soundtrack is really, really good I actually never see anyone mentioning it when talking about this game, It's nothing as good as Final Fantasy 10 but it's good in a Nintendo type of soundtrack way where it's just bubbly and fun to have as background music, it fits the tone of the game. The art style is great! I'm a big fan of Tsunako's artwork in this game and I'm glad they never changed the art direction for the future games.
Now for a few complaints, the stages. The world stages or whatever you want to call them are visually lame, they kinda missed out on making them more "video gamey" by adding consoles, games references in the background, and whatnot. Another issue with them is that they are repeated over and over and over! Same with the enemy models! It's not a big issue as I don't care much but the amount of copy-paste in this game is crazy, but it's still decent for a budget JRPG.
One of my least favorite parts in the game was to equalize the shares for the true ending, it was really tedious, and also getting 30% and 50% for the CPU candidates, I wish shares were easier to manipulate.
Overall this was a really decent JRPG that I could not finish for the life of me when I was younger, I would always play chapter 1 and then drop at chapter 2 because I was young and didn't like turn-based RPGs all too much back then, though now I'm smart and I love fun games so it was right up my alley!
To anyone who likes turn-based RPGs with breakable systems like Disgaea should definitely try out this game.