Neptunia: Sisters VS Sisters has lost the series’ sparkle
- Developer: Idea Factory/Compile Heart
- Publisher: Idea Factory/Reef Entertainment
- Release date: 24th January 2023
- Genre: Action-Adventure, JRPG
- Platforms: PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Windows
- Reviewed on: PlayStation 5
- Game Supplied by: Publisher
Neptunia: Sisters VS Sisters Review
Neptunia games are renowned for being bright, breezy, and cheerful, full of wit and humour. The laugh-out-loud dialogue and occasional risque comments that regularly break the fourth wall are aspects of Neptunia games I look forward to the most. Sadly, the humour that would normally carry me through the entirety of the game has been sucked out of Neptunia: Sisters VS Sisters, leaving a very dry, run-of-the-mill experience.
Neptunia: Sisters VS Sisters doesn’t feature the main series protagonist (as she would describe herself), Neptune, but instead places you in the shoes of her younger (and frankly much duller) sister, Goddess candidate in training, Nepgear. The game has an age rating of 12, which likely stems from one alternate character outfit, but with the absence of any slightly naughty or cheeky conversations, this could have been even lower. With a new protagonist and a risk-averse narrative, perhaps it was a conscious effort from Idea Factory to try and garner a younger, newer audience for the franchise.
The game does, however, have an interesting premise that retains the series’ aptitude for satire and pointed social commentary:
“While the Goddesses were out responding to a distress call from the faraway PC Continent, Nepgear and the other Candidates were sent to investigate an abandoned laboratory. It was there that they found the “Ashen Goddess”, who trapped them in a deep sleep capsule. By the time they awoke, 2 years had already passed. The latest smartphone, the “rPhone”, dominates the market.
Neptune has been missing since her mission to the PC Continent, and in the absence of its Goddess and Candidate, Planeptune was ravaged by a strange new phenomenon, the Trendi Outbreaks. Suddenly finding herself robbed of home and family, Nepgear falls into a deep depression. This is a story about finding hope in the midst of despair, and the rebirth of a Goddess in the wake of destruction.”
I’ll keep this review spoiler-free, especially since the story is one of the better ones in the Neptunia franchise history. The four main characters, Neptune, Blanc, Vert, and Noire, are all busy or missing, fighting their own battles to save Planeptune. Nepgear has to visit each land whilst also trying to find Neptune. She is hoping to bring the team back together once and for all to defeat the outbreaks of the Trendi phenomenon, and the person/s orchestrating the attacks. All is not as it seems, though, and each area has its own unique take on what is going wrong in each land. For example, Vert, the goddess of Leanbox, has been brainwashed by a Vtuber, who has captured the hearts of its inhabitants. As the majority of them stay indoors listening to this Vtubers broadcasts, nothing gets done, so Nepgear and her team arrive to clean up the mess.
One way in which the series has finally moved forward, albeit not very much, is in the visuals. Sisters VS Sisters is half visual novel, half third-person dungeon crawler, but it is the visual novel aspect of the game where the visuals have taken the biggest step forward on the new hardware. What were flat but pretty 2D pictures now have added depth, with a smooth 60fps gloss evening out the movement. With such good character model designs and interesting outfits, it’s a shame so much is covered over by the dialogue box, but at least the text and dialogue are very clearly presented and easy to read.
Although the dungeon-crawling adventure aspect has moved on it is still, visually at least, slightly underwhelming, especially on a PS5. Bland environments have been given a little more texture detail, but the world design of the areas you explore is still very simple. Character models are stiff, basic and uninspired, and the range of effects during battles is limited, which makes it look and feel dated, despite being a new game.
As you explore the dungeons, you will have to locate control panels that will open a door for you to proceed. It was never too hard to find these control panels, and if you really wanted to, you could run past every enemy in the field very easily to get to the mid-level or end-of-level boss fights. Of course, by doing this you wouldn’t learn how to properly engage in combat or collect materials and rank up, but if pushed for time it is achievable.
When you do enter a battle, you will encounter the new, unique battle system. I like the fact that the Neptunia franchise is always willing to experiment and give its fans new experiences, but this battle system is not one of its best. The battles are in real-time, and you can freely play and move as any of the three characters in your chosen team. Each character has AP points, which is a basic attack button (square) to launch an AP attack.
Each type of attack has a value, and each character has a limited number of AP they can spend before the gauge refills, and you can change the sequence of these AP attacks to your liking. The key is to move from character to character instead of waiting for the gauge to refill on one particular character and try to keep the combo of hits continually moving. After launching the AP attacks from one girl, pressing L1 or R1 will then shift you to one of the other girls so you can launch their attacks. If your timing is accurate, you should be able to keep attacks flowing and minimise downtime while the girls’ AP regenerates.
In addition to the basic AP attacks, you have access to skill-based attacks, which use a separate gauge. If you refrain from using skill-based attacks and let this gauge fill up, you’ll be able to launch an all-powerful EXE attack by pressing L2 & R2 together. This will stop the action for a moment, and you will be treated to a short cinematic of a powerful attack from one of the team which lands with devastating power.
For the majority of the time, I was getting through most battles without needing to move any characters. I simply timed my four-button basic attack sequence and queued attacks from each girl until all the enemies were dead or I had saved up enough skill points to finish the battle with an EXE attack.
Although you can move around the battlefield and guard, the only time I did so was when I was out of sequence with one of my characters and was waiting for her AP gauge to fill up before I started the process again. It wasn’t very complicated and again led me to think this simplicity is meant to be more approachable for a younger audience.
It was only for the harder boss fights that any modicum of tactics was required, like using items, or finding specific AP attacks that exploited a boss’s weakness, but these moments of excitement were few and far between.
What was most disappointing, though, was the RPG element of the game. Even though you can choose which attacks you can assign to each character, and each attack does have different attributes and cost, I was over seven hours into the game, and into chapter three before a single new attack for one of my characters appeared so that I could change her sequence.
You can also change your character with discs, which are like player buffs, but these discs have to be developed. Unfortunately, the tutorial explaining how to choose and develop the aspects of the discs was so unhelpful that I just randomly chose three aspects to see what happened when a disc was complete.
The most natural and well-implemented RPG aspect was gaining credits to buy new items, such as weapons, armour or consumables in the in-game shop. To help get better items and more credits, you can complete side missions and Chirper requests (Chirper is a tongue-in-cheek parody of Twitter, which occasionally has some witty banter). Here, you can find requests from people who will reward you if you fulfil them. These can range from finding items to killing a number of enemies, but they weren’t very engaging. Side missions seemed to have even less to them, other than just watching a few minute’s worth of dialogue play out.
Linking all these events together is a world map that clearly marks the location of your next objective, as well as places of interest for you to go to be able to complete the side missions. Navigating around the world was pleasantly quick, enabling a speedy and intuitive gameplay loop where you travel to your destination, view a cutscene or two, clear a dungeon and boss, and then head back to the hub world to rinse and repeat.
Finally, the audio of the game was acceptable. It is to be applauded how clear, concise and easy to understand the voice actors were. Sadly, the entire game wasn’t voiced, and there was very little for the talent to work with, but they did a good job with what limited dialogue they had. The combat and dungeon effects were ok at best – the best aspect would be in the powerful wind up’s and landing of an EXE attack and for some of the basic attacks. However, the score was very limited and hearing the girls repetitively chattering the same lines during exploration, and little in the way of any environmental effects meant that overall it wasn’t a great game to listen to.
Summary
Disappointing would be how I would sum up Neptunia Sisters VS Sisters. It’s not an inherently bad game, but it’s missing a lot of the wit and humour that make Neptunia games so much fun to play. As a result, Sisters VS Sisters becomes a bit tedious because it plays it too safe and by the numbers. Long spells of boring dialogue, coupled with an overly simplistic combat system and a visually underwhelming gameplay world, means the game hasn’t got as much to offer as previous entries into the franchise.
The story does hold its own weight, and it is interesting finding out what exactly is going on, but the dull narrative that gives the characters and voice actors very little to work with makes it a grind to get through. For younger players interested in the Neptunia franchise, or someone wanting to try a JRPG for the first time, this would be a suitable title for them to experience, but it’s unlikely to appease stalwarts of the genre.
