Hyperdimension Neptunia Re;Birth1

I originally wrote this off as "yet another one of those weird anime games", but I ended up buying it anyway, and I'm glad I did. I got used to the typical JRPG quirks surprisingly quickly with some help of the settings menu and PCGW. The music is amazing, and the writing is silly but great, with a variety of humor. The gameplay is nothing out of the ordinary, but there's nothing wrong with that. The game does a great job of making your attacks feel like they have some impact behind them, something a lot of games sadly don't do. If you don't mind (or indeed, enjoy) some of the suggestive character art, you should consider picking up this game.

As far as the gameplay goes, it's pretty simplistic, Turn based, with 3D movement, combos, skills, etc. Nothing to brag about. The storyline though, is something else. It has soo many witty one-liners, Fourth wall breaks, and references, it'd make Peter Griffin and Deadpool look like Drax. It's very charming in it's own regards, but can really only be appreciated if you're a veteran in the world of JRPG's. Even then, some things might go over your head. My only complaint about this game in particular, is that this game has only 2 ending routes. This leaves very little in terms of replayability. As a result, I'd only advise anyone to revisit this game, if they first played it with out much knowledge on what this game may reference. To be fair, however this IS a remake of the first game in it's franchise, and it does add tons more routes in the later installments, thus fixing the aforementioned complaint.

Objectively speaking, this is at best a mediocre game. The turn-based combat, while fun and simple, is extremely repetitive and you will either be farming weak mobs of enemies who pose no threat or fighting surprisingly hard boss monsters in drawn-out battles. Besides turn-based fights there's very little else to do in this game. There are collectibles of a sort and you can customize your characters with different weapons and equipment, but 99% of the game is about wandering the dungeons and grinding mobs. As objectively mediocre as it is, there's just something about this game that I love. I find the characters funny and lovable, the style and humour are great, and there's so many little things like the voice lines in battle and the weird and imaginative monsters that make me love this game despite its flaws. It's not for everyone but if you like cute characters, lighthearted humour (with many many meta-jokes and references) and simple fun gameplay that doesn't require you to think too much then maybe check it out. Also helps if you like Anime I guess.

There's really only one strategy that works on the harder boss fights in this game, and that's to spend a ridiculous amount of time grinding levels beforehand. I refuse to play along. Life is too short for grinding. Which means I won't be finishing this game.