For hardcore JRPG/anime fans only.
Hyperdimension Neptunia(which I'll refer to as HN)has almost all/completely all female characters.
The story for the game has an original and cute concept but it takes Japanese style wackyness to a whole never level.The story is about how Goddesses who represent regions or video game consoles such as the PS3,Wii,Xbox360,NDS are fighting eachother and I won't spoil what happens but I will say the story becomes quite imaginative but it's the type of story you can't take seriously.The characters are quite funny at times but the characters never grew on me that much and neither did the story despite it's unique qualities.
HN is one of those types of JRPGs that doesn't let you freely explore towns or a world map,instead you'll be exploring lots of dungeons and small outdoor environments and doing quests such as killing a certain number of enemies,making it to the exit of a dungeon,finding a certain number of a certain item etc.
The combat system for HN uses a turn-based system which allows each party member to perform combo attacks,link combos together(basically,if a character correctly performs a certain combo,they can have another turn attacking an enemy as long as they have action points remaining),summon classic SEGA characters or images that you have on your PS3's HDD and your Goddess party members can transform from being characters who look like young girls into more mature looking,bustier forms of themselves which allows them to do much more damage with their attacks.You can create your own combos and experiment to see which one does the most damage.A Goddess transformation lasts as long as a battle lasts.Summons can be used as part of certain combos but summoning uses a lot of action points(AP).
Your party members can use a healing skill,they'll use it at random and they require a certain item named 'reflexes' to use it which are left behind from defeated enemies.The fact you can't choose when to heal is annoying and I think is not a good idea.
The visual novel scenes look lovely and make the story that little bit more enjoyable.The visual novel scenes have beautiful backgrounds and a good variety of backgrounds such as beautiful countryside with a lake or dirty industrial looking cities or clean looking cities with sky scrappers or towns or inside buildings.The characters look lovely during the visual novel screens and have a beautiful use of colors used on them and I like Neptune's beautiful light-purple hair and how the Xbox360 Goddess has green colored hair to represent the Xbox360.During exploration the graphics look smooth and colorful but during combat the characters look a bit rough and lack detail when you see them up-close and it's the same for the cutscenes.
I don't like how many of the characters look like 10 year old girls but at least some of them can transform into mature busty women and there's a lot of busty Goddess characters who wear revealing clothing.The game has some very spectacular cutscenes during boss battles though because you'll see lots of bright-colored energy attacks.The cutscenes for when you summon SEGA characters and when you do Goddess transformations look kind of spectacular too.
The Japanese voice acting for the character conversations sounds cute and nice but the Japanese voice acting during battle sounds horrible.I don't like English VO's for JRPGs.Some of the music is horrible and annoying but the game has some great punk and electronic rock music.
Overall,I enjoyed this game but I can only recommend it for hardcore JRPG fans or anime fans.