Megadimension Neptunia VII by developer Compile Heart, Idea Factory and publisher Idea Factory International—Nintendo Switch review written by Pierre-Yves with a copy provided by the publisher.
Estimated reading time: 5 minutes
Existing in a subset of reality is this wonderful world known as Gamindustri. Split into four separate masses in which the only important one is that of Leanbox and my lady Vert, our tale brings us back to this land controlled by four CPU Goddesses and their hijinks through various realities and their fights for survival as things have gone very sideways once again for our four heroines.
Megadimention Neptunia VII for the Nintendo Switch is a return to the original that had graced the modern era on both the PS4 and the PC. Not including any of the VR enhancements as the switch doesn't have any form of it, I found it a bit odd that they weren’t adding in anyways as you could still play through without a headset. That said, it was nice to return to a pre-rebirth treatment that I felt more natural with than that of VIIR which changed things up, not in a bad way, but in a way that required pressing more buttons and doing a lot more mental math.
Now for those that may not know this niche, yet popular niche series, Hyperdimension or Megadimension Neptunia is the story of the main “protag” Neptune, aka Nep-Nep and the Goddess Purple Heart of the landmass of Planetune. Accompanied by Noire (the Goddess Black Heart of Lastation), Blanc (the Goddess White Heart of Lowee), and Vert (the Goddess Green Heart of Leanbox (aka the best Goddess)), these four Goddess are both rivals and close friends as they fight to keep their countries safe from those that would disrupt the peace. Basically an anthropomorphic approach to the physical consoles and the console wars, this RPG series spends most of its time making video game references and breaking the fourth wall for some entertaining shenanigans.
Megadimension Neptunia VII is still the latest core entry in the series and in a new approach, had split itself into three unique chapters each with their own title screens, intro videos and almost self contained storylines. Starting off by finding a console that our video game savvy protag had never seen before, Neptune and her sister Nepgear get pulled into another dimension that physically resembles their own yet on the verge of destruction. Having nothing better to do, the sister team up with the resident and only Goddess left Uzume (Orange Heart) in order to fight back the destructive forces closing in to finish the job.
The one thing that hasn’t changed over the years is that this is an awesome story in the Neptunia universe. You get your doom and gloom with plenty of doses of video game related fourth wall breaking nonsense, you get a full chapter where you get to take turns in which each Goddess becomes the protagonist and not simply second fiddle to Neptune,. Finally, you get plenty of good old fashioned RPG goodness with plenty of combat, tough boss fights and re-exploring areas in order to find everything as you unlock upgrades that let you do more to the environments.
What unfortunately doesn’t work so well for this latest re-release is the performance. Even if it came out years after the PlayStation 4, the Nintendo Switch doesn’t quite have the same power under the hood even if it has much more versatility. The reason I’m saying this is because the Zero Dimension chapter took a lot out of the Switch and honestly I was very happy to be able to turn off certain rendering features because otherwise it was almost unplayable with how slow and choppy everything was. Once you leave the Zero Dimension, both in its chapter as well as into the second overall chapter with the Golden Third, everything runs smooth and the rendering features can be turned back on, but it still makes for a good third of the game that was hard on the system to run.
As this is basically our fifth review of the title, I’ll leave it to a past me, Nick and Richard to go over all of the little tidbits from the PS4 and PC versions of both the gameplay and the story between the original VII and the revamped VIIR
Megadimension Neptunia VII - PS4 (Nick 2016)
Megadimension Neptunia VII - PC (Richard 2016)
Megadimension Neptunia VIIR - PS4/PSVR (Pierre-Yves 2018)
Megadimension Neptunia VIIR - (PC/VR 2018)
Summary
Overall though? If you’ve been wanting to return to Gamindustri as it’s been a while or you want a solid RPG for your Switch that you want to bring around with you or play comfortably while out on a balcony during this social distancing time, Compile Heart and Idea Factory’s Megadimension Neptunia VII is a great choice and one that you should really look into.
Score: 7.75 / 10
