Remmie

I have to admit, I didn't enjoy the first Hyperdimension Neptunia much. I liked the characters and the setting, but the game mechanics were just terrible. So it was with great trepidation that I bought Hyperdimension Neptunia Mk2, hoping that it would just be a LITTLE better than the first game. My expectations were too low, Mk2 completely scraps the old mechanics of the first game and remakes them from the ground up, creating remarkably enjoyable gameplay to go along with the characters and setting we all love. Battles are much more dynamic; characters can roam the battlefield based on their movement stat and set up positional attacks, or block enemy movement. Everything feels much smoother, you won't be jamming L2 to skip attacks all the time like you probably did in the first game. Enemy encounters are also no longer random battles; enemies roam the map and you can choose whether to engage them or not. Random healing has also been done away with, items can be used at any time provided the character has enough AP. The new characters are all fairly likable, and there's plenty of time given to the old characters as well. The Lily System is a teasingly pseudo-lesbian meter of how much the other characters like the protagonist, Nepgear. It can be raised by fighting alongside characters as well as viewing events in towns. The system allows you to pair two characters together, with the back-row character providing passive bonuses to the character in front. Combo attacks are also available between certain paired characters if their Lily Rank is high enough. Lily Rank (along with character levels, items and money) carries over to New Game+, so if you don't want to worry about it too much in your first playthrough; you can always just see everything you missed in your second. There are a large number of possible endings, 7 in total, with 2 of them being significantly different from the others and one of them being a non-canon hidden ending that is surprisingly serious and dark in an otherwise cheerful game, no doubt one of the reasons this game received an 'M' rating (that, and a particularly perverse slimeball of a boss). Overall, my only complaint would be that the game is on the easy side overall, with the exception of the optional S-Rank Colosseum fights in New Game+. Those will really push your characters to their limits. If you liked the first game there's no way in hell that you won't like the sequel, it's an improvement in every way. If you didn't like the first game because of the gameplay but you enjoyed the characters, you may want to consider giving this one another chance.