Monster models and animations in combat are slick and well-animated, so it’s a shame they aren’t used outside of battle. This persists until the end of the game, and the lack of any heads-up as to what kind of creatures players will encounter is always a mild annoyance. However, after an hour or so, when Neptune has moved onto fighting other enemies, seeing most of the encounters signified by dogoos is jarring. Early battles almost always include a dogoo monster, so seeing dogoo monsters move around the screen during platforming at these times makes sense. As Neptune navigates her 2D world, enemies are visible, and players can choose to run into them to start a battle, or navigate around them. When characters stand still, they’re impressive to look at as they sway slightly or have their hair blow in the breeze, but when they start walking, their movements are akin to those of stiff marionettes.Ī specific graphical issue follows players into the battle system as well. There are small graphics that appear to guide players down various paths, but too often those graphics are placed over busy backgrounds and are nearly impossible to spot. The intricately designed backgrounds make it difficult to see paths to take and buildings to enter in town. Unfortunately, this also presents an issue.
#ARTISAN STUDIOS REMASTERING FULL#
Various locales in the game have quite different ambiances to them, making the 2D platforming world full of visually interesting places to explore. The crew at Artisan Studios lives up to its name with a beautiful looking game consisting of bright, vibrant backgrounds with plenty of small details to behold. The first big positive is the art direction. Though there’s plenty of humor, without an especially engaging story to fall back on, Super Neptunia RPG is left to try and impress gamers in other ways. The beautiful backgrounds belie how difficult it is to find where one can enter houses, or which platforms can actually be jumped on.
That one battle is pretty much a microcosm of the entire game. The first battle consists of Neptune picking up a Dragon Quest-style cypress stick to fight slime-like creatures called dogoos, yelling “I choose you!” as she attacks, and then whistling the Final Fantasy victory fanfare when she wins.
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As they find each other and ally themselves with various factions throughout the game, the story becomes just a vehicle to do what it does best: humorous, callback-filled fanservice to other game series and game systems. The premise for the location is a perfect fit for the first 2D outing for Neptune, Blanc, Vert, and other series’ staples. She quickly adapts to her situation and learns that she’s been somehow transported to a land of 2D-only video games, with the creation of 3D games strictly forbidden. Like in many of the other games, Super Neptunia RPG opens with the titular hero, Neptune, waking up without knowledge of where or who she is. Battles are a slog due to certain design mechanics, and a persistent lack of text hampers many aspects of what otherwise is a refreshingly different Neptunia experience. Ironically, being the first 2D Neptunia game and co-developed by the Canadian company Artisan Studios, Super Neptunia RPG suffers almost the exact opposite problem. The consensus was that often the games have decent battle mechanics, but the gameplay is often buried beneath a near insurmountable wall of text that rarely is important to story development. This past June, RPGamer staff spent an evening discussing a bevy of Compile Heart games on the RPG Backtrack.
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