Neptunia: Sisters VS Sisters (Switch) Review

Title: Neptunia: Sisters VS Sisters
Platform: Nintendo Switch
Developer: Compile Heart
Publisher: Idea Factory International (NA)
Release Date: January 24th, 2024 (NA)
File Size: 6.1GB

Review copy provided by Idea Factory International

Well it took long enough, but we not only got another Neptunia game on Switch, but at long last, one that was made internally at Compile Heart themselves (Super Neptunia RPG was by Artisan Studio in Canada and Megadimension Neptunia VII was ported by Ghostlight in EU). And from what I’ve seen, this is not like the prior mere down-ports from PS4 that Compile Heart have done before. There’s exclusive content and even modifications to some of the core game itself to better suit running on Switch. Yeah, actual effort! So how does this game fare? Let’s find out!

The full-3D opening cutscene, with Nepgear as Purple Sister protecting Maho.

Neptunia as a quick reminder originated all the way back on the PS3 and actually was quite different than even its later Vita (and PS4… and PS5… and in a week even the Switch!) remakes/ports. This came out when the current era of Compile Heart was in its infancy, with Compile Heart (well more specifically Idea Factory itself) by far being more known for their “Neverland” series of games like the Generations of Chaos and Spectral Souls series. Those felt like they ended with Record of Agarest War… which just so happened to have also arrived on Switch last year via Ghostlight to boot! Anyway, the series as you’d likely know or at least expect is your typical JRPG series, but the obvious hook being that it’s a self-aware series in a parody of real-life gaming in the world of Gameindustri. Literally it’s the great console wars personified as cute anime girls!

Neptunia: Sisters VS Sisters isn’t actually a mainline game, VII (pronounced “Vee 2”) was actually the last mainline game a long time ago if you can believe it, with VIIR being almost a remake with added VR elements on PS4, but that’s it, it’s been spin-offs exclusively since. The series regardless of game is usually focused on nice light-hearted humor and colorful worlds (well, not exclusively, as VII did start out in a gloomy world), but you get the idea.

“Let’s line up sideways from here on!”

Onto this game in particular. We begin with a fully animated 3D cutscene featuring a battle between our leading ladies vs a new enemy. After a cut-off, we’re actually then brought back two years prior to even find out what started this confrontation. There’s some kind of trouble in the PC continent and the titular Neptune (based on the cancelled Sega Neptune console FYI!) is getting ready to go help alongside her three fellow goddesses; Noire of Lastation (PlayStation), Blanc (pronounced “Blawn”) of Lowee (Wii), and Vert of Leanbox (Xbox). Neptune’s little sister with the long purple hair, Nepgear (Game Gear) is helping Neptune get all set. After some friendly banter, the four goddesses are off, while Histoire (“Eestwarr”), the tiny blonde girl who’s sort of the all-knowing book of knowledge and sort of parental guardian of the group, instructs Nepgear to go investigate something in a region with the other sisters, who are all Goddess Candidates (next in line to rule their respective lands basically),  these include Uni (sister of Noire, based on the PSP), Rom and Ram (twins and sisters of Blanc, based on the DS)… Vert has no sister, sorry Xbox. Anyway, these are the true main characters of this game as we find our leading ladies in an abandoned lab where after getting a hang of combat and exploration, we find a mysterious girl in a capsule, who Nepgear accidentally releases.

This stranger apparently knows Nepgear, but before explaining how, she shoves everyone else into the same capsule and our heroines are put to sleep. Luckily some time later Histiore finds them… but things has gone terribly wrong. We’re brought back to a refuge in Planeptune (Neptune and Nepgear’s home world) and we find refuges playing on things called rPhones (three guesses on its namesake) and that’s when Histoire drops some shocking news; Nepgear and company have been gone for TWO YEARS (yeah, you probably figured that from the opening), and Neptune and the other goddesses were trying, and failed to defeat the cause of the ruckus in the PC continent; Arfoire (“R4”, yes they went there!). Apparently Neptune and Arfoire were sucked into a portal and vanished, and Neptune is presumed dead. However Noire and Vert are still taking care of things in their world, but luckily Blanc is also here to assist Nepgear and company.

Maho alongside Anri and Nepgear fighting a larger enemy, a Crimson Stallion in the first main area.

Nepgear obviously didn’t take the news well, but while getting some air, she meets a stylish girl named Maho, and after hitting it off and beating some monsters in the first forest area, Maho’s friend Anri (“On-Ree”) isn’t too happy and calls Maho back, so you both go back together. Luckily you’re back at the refuge, and it turns out Maho and Anri are investigating something called the Trendi Phenomenon, the breakout of monsters around. Their data collecting device is less than optimal, but Nepgear uses her N-Gear console to integrate the device into an upgraded version. The three then decide to all team up and collect data together. And that’s the real starting point for the adventure!

The gameplay to be more specific is an action RPG where you control three characters at once (but you can have one or two if you wish), and when you spot a monster on the field, you can bump into it to start a fight, or wait for it to turn away from you and you can whack it (from like a foot between you) with the A button, this initiates a surprise attack that stuns the enemies. Once in battle you use Y to do a basic combo attack, but your AP depletes with each attack (you usually have about 10 and attacks use like 1-3 each), so if you spam it too much you’ll find yourself only using one attack at a time with some cooldown time, which isn’t good when you’re left open to attacks. Luckily after a few hits on the opponent, you can swap to a partner with L or R (shown with an orange “Chain” note under your partners’ icons) and then they can zip right up to the opponent and continue the attacks, while your first character automatically recovers AP. And then after a few hits with character 2 you can then swap back to character 1 or 3 for the same deal. Timing these swaps is crucial to winning matches with as little damage taken as possible.

Unique to the Switch version; the characters pose in front of the camera before loading back into the area.

The goddess characters also can transform into their so called “HDD” forms once the left pink bar is full and it takes numerous fights to fill it up. Naturally you’re much more powerful in this state but it doesn’t last long, but you don’t use AP either so you can really spam away while powered up. You can also guard against attacks with anyone if you can with ZR and also dodge while holding ZR and taping left or right on the left stick. But it’s not easy if you’re being pummeled repeatedly by attacks. There’s a menu where you can create discs which you can equip that give your characters numerous passive buffs. You have to pick a genre and an item in your collection (you get quite a few from breaking crates on the field), and you use a scout like Histoire to create the disc for a fee of disc points (usually 500), problem is you don’t know what you’ll really get until you try it and there’s a real timer of varying amounts of waiting until each is finished. One such buff is staying in HDD goddess mode longer for example. It can be fun to try different combinations and see what you get. Try saving before trying to make a bunch (you can only save on safe spots out on the field during dungeons or anytime during “breaks” on the map or in the shop).

Visually the Switch version is quite nice. After watching quite a bit of PS5 footage, I find it’s not that much worse on Switch at all (both seem to run at 30fps assuming I didn’t see footage just recorded at 30fps…) with one visual difference is how the Switch version handles loading of distant objects. You’ll notice rock formations pop into a more detailed version on Switch as you approach them but don’t on PS5, that sort of thing. But the biggest change is how battles are handled. On every other version you fight after a split sec of a transition (same area but the characters are rearranged when beginning a fight), when fights end, you just stay where you are and just continue running with zero transition. On Switch however, Compile Heart made it so that all fights now fully transition to a fixed singular area via a loading blur, and when fights end, your group poses for the camera and the leader does a cool walk with the background being blurred as the screen transitions back to the field (these are actually skippable too). It’s legit flashier this way and I kind of really like it this way. Loading’s super quick so you’re not waiting long at all.

Histoire explains the origins of the Trendi Phenomenon name to a puzzled Rom and Ram.

Audio-wise, it’s great! The English voice-acting is really wonderful. Only minor gripe is the usual case of only certain cutscenes are voiced while most others are quiet textboxes. In classic Neptunia fashion normal cutscenes are these sort of vaguely animated portraits and honestly wonderfully convey emotion when needed. The music is quite good. I really dig the first forest theme in particular. Overall it’s wonderfully done. Now there’s the slight elephant in the room regarding an incident with the ESRB and how Idea Factory handled an error. See, they forgot to arrange for a “Language” descriptor in the rating. Despite the T rating being otherwise unaffected, this caused a dilemma. Presumably because the game would need to be re-rated all over again (it’s expensive if I recall), Idea Factory instead opted to make edits themselves, specifically editing out any swearing. Problem is, while some lines were re-recorded, others are pretty terribly cut or spliced in editing instead. I’ve indeed heard at least one example compiled by TCRF in-game and they’re indeed really rough and indeed unchanged/fixed on Switch. You’d think they’d at least redo the edits to fix the quality of the cuts/splicing, but alas, it was not to be.

I assume that at the time this originally happened when the original PS4 and PC versions released, they didn’t think they’d be revisiting the game so they took the cheap way out rather than just do the right thing and pay up. Of course, the game eventually came to Switch and very soon to Xbox consoles (the sense and logic of the latter being up for debate…). Problem is, the cuts remain. My assumption is a desire for parity. Possibly a contracted one with Sony or something, I’m only guessing, because they easily could’ve had a win by releasing the new versions (or at least on Switch with the exclusive content at that) uncensored to make it the definitive edition. But my other theory is that despite them having to pay to get each new version rated, it’s very possible (again, I’m guessing) that the ESRB offer a deep discount for unchanged ratings between versions, after all why pay the full amount for the same rating the Switch version you already got for PS4? Again, I’m just guessing, but I’ve been thinking about this a lot so I wanted to offer my own theories on the situation as it’s been a sticking point for the fanbase and regardless of your overall thoughts on the concept, the way it was handled was undoubtedly sloppy and honestly taints a great game otherwise. It’s a shame. Luckily the sequel Neptunia Game Maker R:Evolution (out today on Switch even!) does have the “Language” descriptor so clearly they kept this incident in mind. HOW this issue happened at all is anyone’s guess. We’re all human, and humans make mistakes, it happens.

The main menu showing your active party and a variety of options.

Overall I quite enjoyed my time with the game. Does the rating issue really affect the game? Not really. Sadly some lines do evidently appear to be repeatable battle dialogue but you’ll be too busy fighting enemies to really notice it if I’m honest. Hell the earlier example in a cutscene I saw, I only noticed it BECAUSE I knew about the edit and I actually had to record and listen to it a few times via headphones to even catch that the edit was, well, unedited. So under normal gameplay, you may not even catch the edits if you don’t even know what the lines were. So keep that in mind maybe?

You’ll Love:

• The world of Neptunia is always a joy. The characters and English voice-acting (when available which it is here) are a wonderful delight. You easily get invested in the characters and the humor if you don’t mind quirky, fourth wall-breaking humor (some call it “meta” humor), then you’ll have a wonderful time with this aspect alone I feel.
• The action is pretty cool. Figuring out when to swap characters in combat is satisfying.
• Music is also quite nice, though seemingly from my research some tracks are recycled from prior games. That’s good or bad depending on your taste for said tracks I suppose.
• Graphics actually hold up and the framerate even more so. Megadimension Neptunia VII and especially Super Neptunia RPG this is not. Basically a locked 30fps from my experience. I think the move to Unity really helped here as again, even Compile Heart’s own ports of other games on Switch also really suffered in performance. So I believe it was the tech/engine, not the dev.
• Has screenshot and video capture support as well as cloud save support for NSO users.

You’ll Hate:

• Some cutscenes can drag a bit, but also again they’re more often unvoiced but with so many, I can see why.
• The combat while decent and fun, does feel clunky. Slow but I can’t tell if it’s a responsiveness issue or something but something feels off. Same goes for whacking enemies in the overworld, there’s no feedback to it, could’ve swore there was in other related games prior. Weird.
• The edits obviously. But what can you do? It doesn’t really affect the game that much at all really. Just a shame it happened at all and with better care and attention it could’ve been prevented or even fixed, you know?

8/10