Megadimension Neptunia VII Reviews

A Nep A Day Keeps the bad vibes away! Megadimension Neptunia Victory 2, commonly mistaken as Neptunia 7 due to people not reading Roman numerals, follows an arc-based story: you complete one arc and move on to the next. There are three endings, one of which is very easy to get, but I'm not going to go into that because SPOILERS, DEARY! This game introduces Uzume, Umio, K-Sha, B-Sha, C-Sha, and S-Sha to the universe, as well as, you guessed it, another Neptune! The combat is a little different compared to its predecessor, Rebirth 3, but it's quick and easy to adjust to the changes.

game is so good that I've purchased it 4 times(twice on psn, 1 physical copy and now the steam version as well). definitely recommend. just don't go for the platinum if you value your sanity

[h3]TL;DR[/h3] Best Nep, buy if you like Nep, (or any other CPU, or CPU candidate). If you're new to the series, this may be your best bet to start liking it. (You may also consider VIIR instead if the issues listed in the below section bother you.) [h3]Overview[/h3] Having played all the main Neptunia games, those being the three Re;Birth games, as well as this one (excluding the spin-offs), Megadimension Neptunia VII is by far the best entry in the series in my opinion. While I did find the story of Re;Birth 1 to be most engaging overall, the incredible amount of grind needed to get through that game is what made me give it the title of "the best game I never want to play again". On the other hand, the story in VII may be somewhat less immersive, but the relatively low amount of grind, as well as improvements to the mechanics is what made this game worthy of a recommendation. [h3]Story[/h3] VII has a fairly creative approach to the story mode - rather than telling the story from start to finish from the perspective of a single character, it is split up into separate sections, within which every major character (CPU) becomes the protagonist at least once. In each of these story segments (with the exception of some of the later ones), the protagonist is part of a small group of friends traveling together, which gives not only the personality of the protagonists, but also that of their friends a time to shine. Past games in the series tended to have an issue where particularly energetic or assertive characters would be overshadowing some more reserved ones, so this new focus on different characters was a very welcome change. This approach is not without its drawbacks however, as the way these segments were implemented resulted in the story feeling somewhat disjointed, and lacking in an overarching goal - while the end goal is not revealed until the final 3rd of the game. [h3]Final section[/h3] Speaking of which, the final third is what I considered to be the biggest missed opportunity. While the first section of the game was great, and the second one was still good, in the final one, the writing just seemed rushed, without much consideration for anything. For example, the way the main antagonist's motivations are revealed is literally via a 5-10 minute monologue, in which she explains her entire backstory, as well as her grand plan of what she wants to do and why. At that point, the game would've already had around 30 hours to gradually and indirectly reveal these things to the player, but it chose to reveal almost nothing during the second major section, only to then reveal everything all at once close to the end. Finally, the question of antagonist's powers also appears to have been an afterthought, since she is supposed to have near infinite power, except when that would make it impossible for the protagonists to win, at which point her powers are nerfed to give them a fighting chance... at least that's how it appeared to me, unless I missed something. Example: At one point she brags about being able to create an infinite number of enemy monsters... but she never does so, even though she would win if she did. [h3]Good mechanics[/h3] Compared to the previous games, dungeons and combat have seen some significant improvements - there are a lot of new dungeons, a sizable amount of which are a lot bigger than before, as well as additional tactical options in the turn-based combat, based on the characters' position on the battlefield. The new travel method involves stepping over a varying number of connected "nodes", depending on distance (much like a board game), rather than teleporting, which made the game feel more grounded as well. [h3]Issues[/h3] However, this wouldn't be an "Idea Factory International" game if there weren't also a sizable number of questionable design choices. (It is worth noting that a lot of of the following appear to have been addressed in the VIIR version of the game, which may be worth considering over this one.) [list] [*]Traveling has a chance of a random encounter on each node you step on, which itself becomes tedious quick, but also your destination is not saved upon an encounter, meaning that you have to re-select your destination after every single random encounter on the way (extremely tedious). [*]Negative status effects (poison, skill seal, etc) persist after battle, but positive ones (EXE drive) do not, which was the reverse in previous games. [*]Characters no longer recover health after leveling up. [*]Characters who are not active by the end of a battle do not level up (this is particularly annoying, since it makes certain characters uselessly weak after not using them for a while, including story-based sections where you cannot use them). [*]You no longer heal when leaving a dungeon, but only after traveling to a city. [*]The amount of each item (heal, sp charger, etc) is artificially limited to 30, which when combined with the need to travel back to a city each time to buy new ones can be annoying. [*]On rare occasions, enemies can be very unbalanced, leading to some normal (non-boss) enemies being able to wipe out your squad in a single turn if you encounter a large number of them. [*]On at least one occasion (first Giant fight), one of a boss' possible attacks is able to one-shot your entire squad regardless of how they are positioned - the only way to win is for the boss not to use that attack. [/list] [h3]Linux[/h3] While there are issues with running this game on Linux, it is possible to do so. First, it is important that you use Proton-GE when launching the game for the first time. (You can use ProtonUp-Qt from Flathub to dowload the latest version, then select it in the Steam settings for the game under "Compatibility".) If you first launched the game using a non-GE Proton version, make sure you clear all your game preferences first. After launch, Proton-GE will download the required dependencies to play the game (about 1.1 GB worth) - this can take a while, and the game will report itself to be running during that time. After which, the game should launch and be fully functioning. (If not, there are manual steps on ProtonDB.) (You may want to disable Steam Overlay for this game, as some people have reported crashes.) The only issues I have encountered were consistent frame drops when navigating any menu system, as well as during the (rare) cutscenes. Most of the game involves either combat or Visual-Novel-style story elements however, which ran without any issue - no crashes either (with Steam Overlay disabled).

Much better in terms of Stability than Rebirth 1 to 3. It's also much smoother to run, and less prone to crashes. also it doesn't require as much grinding, allowing for a better experience.

i suppose i would put negative rating to this game, but since the story was promising, there were couple new mechanic and some improvements and such, then this time, i can leave positive rating for this one. the only unfortunate thing i didnt enjoy were, ran into a lot of difficulty spikes, and then afterwards, grinding to get the good ending seemed like such a chore. I have to say the experience wasn't worth it. yeah, like really, story can gets intense from time to time but grinding it? probably not worth it. Yes, there was a point where you needed to farm/grind regular mobs to level up characters from around lvl 25 to 30 or so to unlock the strongest skills necessary to defeat the bosses and advance in the next story, and you had to do this for each faction (four times). It's fortunate that this is the sole instance where you need to grind; it feels unintentional, as if the developers overlooked this moment during their balance testing. I hope all turn-based games didn’t involve grinding and instead focused solely on tactics and gameplay. (normally i hate grinding game into completionist but i can put neptunia series as excepction as i liked the game so much. i just dont like involving grinding to enjoy single player games and not making grinding as focus of chore)