Hyperdimension Neptunia Re;Birth3 V Generation

Continuation after rebirth 2. By far this is the most polished and better version than RB2. The story intense escalated quickly, interesting and much fun rather than before, improved HUD, no crash so far, autosave featured after chapter ends and much more. Good to give it a try. But ps : english voice line unavailable for this series

Also, stop with the hate with Plutia pls. Plutia > all

pretty nice classic rpg game to grind to

Amazing game, so much fun. I love everything about this game. When it comes to RPG this is the Apex !

I'll be honest here, I didn't enjoy this one very much. It feels less like Re:Birth 2 and more like Re:Birth 1 2.0, especially when you consider like the first game, Neptune's the protagonist again. Who the hell did the writing for some of her lines, because I swear Neptune is an idiot most of the time in this game. Keep in mind the second game is canon, so the Deity of Sin stuff from the last game did happen. And yet it feels a lot like DDD Sora, in which Neptune's intelligence levels decreased somehow. I will admit I was getting pretty annoyed by Neptune.

Gameplay wise, not much has changed between games. The main new thing is there isn't a collective bar for EXE Skills, but each party member's SP is their own EXE Skill bar. Since everyone only caps out at 1k, you have to be more careful...is what I would say, but in lategame, where money is no object, you can just buy lots of SP restoring items and nuke regular encounters with Plutia's Stress Relief if the formation is right that it hits all enemies. It made regular encounters, even in the final area, fairly mindless, but I didn't start using this strategy until Chapter 9.

Speaking of mindless strategies, we have the Oracles, or at least Histoire. Available super early, and even at Level 1 is a total monster, doing far more damage than everyone else. Yes, by endgame, she falls off, so she's pretty much a Jagen, but before that, she's basically the best party member in the game. On another hand, non-CPUs are less worthless than they were in the past two games. They can now use a thing similar to HDD called Awakening, but I barely used it since I primarily used the CPUs.

On the gameplay front, one of the worst changes was locking numerous things behind Stella's Dungeon. Symbol Attack Gains, one of the best plans in the game, is locked behind a high floor of Stella's Dungeon, a mechanic that requires you to wait through real time. You can't just blast through it either because if you try sending Stella up too high, she'll get defeated and lose her equipment, and you don't get that stuff back unless you got the DLC. Stella's Dungeon was in the last game too, but it was purely optional and didn't have Plans locked behind it. This game, however, locks several Plans, primarily Dungeon Change behind this mechanic.

Speaking of which, the changes to the hidden items, I didn't like either. Sure, before you were combing maps spamming the button to search for the hidden item, but once you found it, you were set. This time, hidden items are in blocks like Mario, but said blocks are invisible. The elephant in the room here is that the contents are semi random. Some of these blocks in certain areas contain weapons or Plans, like Credits Up, but good luck getting them without leaving the map and coming back over and over again.

The story is nothing to write home about. The Seven Sages are like Saturday morning cartoon villains with how bumbling most of them are, two of them are reused characters from the first game, and Rei's not a very strong antagonist. Along with that, we have another case of "the true ending is locked behind something dumb." First game was Shares, which hardly matter in this game. Second game was Lily Ranks, which mandated grinding Nepgear's Lily Ranks. In this game, there are cutscenes you must see in Chapter 5 and Chapter 6 to get key items. Don't see them? Congrats, you're locked out of the good ending. Don't do all of Rei's events in Chapter 9 and that BS eggplant nonsense? Congrats, you don't get the best ending. If I had not been using a guide, I'd have been screwed.

On top of that, outside of the beginning of the game, certain guild quests are mandatory to progress the story. Usually, the mandatory quests are to get you used to the mechanic, but now they force you to go back and interact with it occasionally to progress the story.

There is one new thing too. Challenges, where you're rewarded with extra stat points or Plans on the character who fulfills certain objectives. This is character specific, so challenges done with Neptune don't count towards Noire, for example. However, they also locked EXE Skills not given through the story behind this mechanic. Another step back.

Many of the area environments are straight up reused from the first game. Surprisingly, almost no environments from the second game return. Nepgear's already the butt of most of the jokes in this game when she's on screen, but bringing back layouts from her game was too much too, apparently.

Anyway, I didn't like this game very much. The only reason it gets a 2 and not 1 is because it's not very PC intensive, so I can play it just fine. "It runs," is what I'm trying to say. I'll probably never replay this game again, though.

it's a good story, you won't be bored

The Best Neptunia game i ever played

Nep Nep Nep

In my view, the weakest entry in the series.

For someone like me who has played all three Re;Birth games, and is currently halfway through VII, I can confidently say that this game has been not only been the worst story experience out of all, but also the only case in which I found the game an overall negative experience.

While I disliked the grindfest that was Re;Birth 1, and the lacking story in Re;Birth 2, neither of these elements were bad enough to where it made me dislike the game as a whole... but this time it's different.

Overview

Neptune gets isekai'd (sent to another dimension), and needs to find her way back, while navigating the challenges that present themselves in this somehow different, but also somehow similar place.

Sounds fair enough, if it wasn't for some issues...

Out of character

Based on my experiences with the previous (and following) games, it seems that some of the characters are actually out-of-character for sizable portions of the game.

Now, you may reply "Well, they're from another dimension, so maybe that's why", which would make sense if Neptune (who is not from that dimension) wasn't the one who was most out of character of them all.

Just one such case is that, for around the first 1/4 of the game, Neptune wants to do nothing but laze around and sleep, and is only pushed into action by other people who are fed up with her idleness.

We're talking about the same Neptune who is known for her child-like personality and who would constantly do the most random things in the other games.
(Like that one time when she wanted to ride a roller coaster in Re;Birth 2, but wasn't tall enough to be let in, so she transformed into her CPU form in which she is taller... only to then find out that since she has a more mature personality in her CPU form, she didn't enjoy the ride nearly as much.)

That's the sort of Neptune-like randomness you would expect, and is in stark contrast to her boring, idle personality in this game.
She does explain that she dislikes working (doing quests and such) and doesn't want to do it, but even then, she would still want to do other things, not just sit around and sleep.

Even more out of character...

Aside from Neptune, there is also the case of Nepgear...

While Nepgear herself is actually fairly consistently in-character, what is out-of-character is how almost everyone responds to her and her actions.

It appears that the writers wanted to somehow respond to how relatively unpopular Nepgear was as a protagonist in Re;Birth 2, and so they decided to turn her entire existence in this game into a joke (and I'm not exaggerating).

Every time Nepgear does something, she is treated with either indifference or hostility, even by her supposed "allies" and her own sister.
This makes no sense, as in Re;Birth 2, she was portrayed as a somewhat insecure, but nonetheless reliable and likeable personality, who had a good heart and wanted to do what's best for everyone.
I do not recall anyone disliking her (other than temporarily).

But Re;Birth 3 wants to tell us that nobody likes her - there is even a scene in which Nepgear uses her technological expertise to find an important item in one of the CPUs' homes, which allows the story to advance, but instead of thanking her, the CPUs pick on her because of how much of a nerd she is... it makes no sense.

Plutia

Yes, this one gets its own section.

While there is division in the fan base about whether Plutia is a likable character or not, there is something more objective which is wrong with her presence in this game.

This being that she has the personality of an antagonist, while being treated as a protagonist for some reason.
Throughout the game, she is entirely selfish, and on a number of occasions outright admits that she is only in it for herself - not only that, but she literally commits acts of sexual harassment against not only her enemies, but against her supposed "allies" as well.

Meanwhile, the other party members (in spite of their opposition) do nothing to stop her, even when they outnumber her, and/or are stronger individually as well.

So you're trying to tell me about how evil the antagonists are, while the protagonists have a team member that does all this evil shit uninterrupted by any of them?!
(This is another instance of the protagonists being out of character.)

Plutia's personality and behavior is actually very similar to that of the main antagonist of this game, which makes her treatment as a protagonist absolutely nonsensical.

(And there is no interesting moral conflict behind this either, Plutia literally just gets away with these things without much of a justification from any of the protagonists.)

Plot holes

Finally, plot holes... mostly involving the antagonists.

Re;Birth 3 features a variety of different antagonists - some old, some new.

As you would expect, you end up fighting those antagonists... but not only once... since for some reason the protagonists decide to constantly let them get away (either through some excuse, or even entirely off-screen, without any explanation).

Some of these antagonists, you end up fighting 2 or 3 times, before you finally get to the end of the game... and after around chapter 6 (out of 10) I had to completely ignore the main story arch and focus on the banter between the main characters in order to retain any interest in continuing to play this thing, because of just how ridiculous things got...

They are your enemies - if you don't want to kill them (even though they want to kill you), then at the very least throw them in jail or something, but don't just let them go after defeating them!!
(You know exactly what they're going to do afterwards!!)

TL;DR

Story doesn't make much sense due to plot holes involving antagonists simply being let go without punishment in many cases (only to then attack again), as well as a number of protagonists being out-of-character for substantial periods of the game.

If you've made it this far in the Re;Birth series, you know that their gameplay mechanics are just copy/pastes of each other with very little change, so there's no need to even talk about those.

Plutia

‎

I love Plutia but frick this game

It has the worst pacing, the worst combat (they combined EXE drive and SP into one which is so god damn stupid), the story is trash, the dlcs are dumb, it needs a patch to work and the main villain is boring as shit

I love nepnep and i love Plutia but god i hate this + the post game is just impossible hard to the sake of being hard

Nep Nep Nep

Story:

This one involves two worlds, connecting to the fallen nation by a CPU that went insane and destroyed it through their tyranny. That's pretty much the gist of it, as this is what it was building up. Honestly, storywise, it is one of the worst in the entire series. Makes for some okay humor though.

System:

Same as the rest with slight improvements. Not much to say there, it just works.

Music:

Good.

Art Style:

Good.

Reason to Play It:

It is a direct link into VII, the game with the best story I'd say. With Rebirth 1 coming in second.

Problems:

It failed to balance humor like rebirth one did, failed to execute serious scenes like Rebirth 1 and 2 did. I've said this before in narrative driven games that has sequels. Multiple Endings just hurts it, I mean this game links into VII. Multiple Endings just harms the experience. It is actually a problem most of these game have, especially Rebirth 2/Mk2. It is a thing where is less is more.
--> SP system is horrendous. You have a max of 1000, and it takes forever to build up. Late game you will get Drill which solves that problem, but it still makes HDD Neptune completely terrible to use, since that one costs all 1000 SP.

--> You need to use 100 skill to learn an Exe drive, very terrible and tedious addition.

That's about it, the system was fine like I said.

Overall:

It is an okay game, the characters were good. Though it has a lot of flaws with its story telling, and some with its system.

the game doesnt get updated or the gpu makers dont patch it to work. however its suppose to be done i cant run it

- So fun to play, rating 94/100

just cant get into these games.

Been playing for a few days straight to get the 100% achievement. Suddenly game decides to corrupt my save file because I didn't want to save when it asked. Other than that, Plutia is a pedophile, game likes to crash if you don't save, be it when starting a fight or mid-cutscene, enemies never get inflicted with ailments. Fucking. Trash.

i beat Yellow Heart for 1 hour straight

10/10

smart enough to know its a copy paste.REFUNDED...

This is a late review for those considering this game in 2024.

The PC port of this game has a lot of issues. First, getting the game to work in the native resolution of my computer was a hassle. Then, the game doesn't support Steam controller settings and have to resort to 3rd party key mapping software.

I hope the devs could make an official patch to fix those issues. But for now, I don't recommend this game for those who are not bothered with spending a lot of time research, just to set up the game right.

This is the BEST Neptunia game hands down, being the only one of them with "Overwhelmingly Positive" reviews is a statement to that.

Gameplay wise its your typical Neptunia turn based RPG, you position your character around and try to strike as many enemies as possible, you beat monsters and get XP and material, what makes it fun is the "remake" crafting system present since the first Re;Birth, You collect materials and plans that can change elements of the game, from making better items to upgrading characters to have more skills or HP to changing the enemies to be weaker or strong and being able to outright skip combat with the "destroy symbols" and "destroy symbols gain" plans (Of course you'll have to passively grind Stella's Dungeon for that last one).

However I'd say the gameplay comes second and what shines in this game are the characters and story, this is Videogame: The Videogame, as usual each character represents a console platform however in this one Neptune is sent to an alternate dimension whose story alludes to actual videogame history (E.g. Xbox reception in Japan, Crash of 1983, Sony and Nintendo fall-off which led to the Playstation etc), it's really neat and cute seeing those events be played out by the girls.

The new characters are great, don't let fraud youtubers or reddit prude f--s gaslight you about Plutia / Iris Heart, she is singlehandedly the best character this franchise ever had, the juxtaposition between her normal and HDD personalities lead to funny scenes, she is also the "Neptune" equivalent on Ultradimension, gluing all CPUs as friends. She does torture people and is a sadist, this is done to reflect Sega's spicy marketing approach in the good old days. She however does NOT sexually assault anyone, that's projection from legitimate predators.

The game has 3 endings, unlike the previous titles you do not need to balance the shares amoutn between nations, the requirements are far more easier and simple, if you just watch all events you're more than likely to get Good or True Endings, to get Normal Ending you need to go out of your way and NOT see 5 specific events at chapter 5 and 6 (Cue on more people having the Good / True ending achievments than the Normal Ending one). To then get the True ending you need at chapter 9 to watch 3 eggplant events and watch 5 events localized in some dungeons you might not have unlocked through the normal play. There is a really useful guide that goes through where and how.

About the localization, this is far better than the previous 2 games and does not require a fan patch in my opinion, however it's not 100% accurate specially with Neptune, being able to understand what they are saying I can verify that in some (not many) of her lines it will be translated correctly but there will be a whole ass sentences afterwards which she didn't say and said sentence makes her sound way more mean and assholeish.

There's only 2 examples of bad localization I could spot (Need to revisit the start of the game as I started before I learned japanese), one was when Neptune was referencing "neppit" where in the audio she was referencing something called "fakkin", which I imagine alludes to some japanese forum of sorts, so understandable but eh. The second one was a line where she's just affirming something a character said before but in the text she is for some reason mocking breast sizes (?).

These annoyances aside, this game falls in to the better side of localized content, aside from Neptune everyone is true to their personality, even Plutia's slowness is translated in to looooooong woooorrds. I give the localization an 9/10.

Sadly I think the series peaked at this game, I'm not interested in Megadimension as it doesn't have Plutia, Peashy or any of the cool makers, most of the spinoffs are bad and after being burned out by Cyberdimension I'll only care about future Neptunia titles if Plutia is present (If they ever release more of them).

i like:)

Out of the main line Neptunia game, this one have the weakest story, with the weakest characters and weakest set up. But even then the gameplay and the dungeon is decent. The other two games are far superior and the latest mainline game, Neptunia V-II is definitely a lot better.

Play this game as a set up for V-II.

Nepu~