ayrnieu

Hyperdimension Neptunia is published by NIS. If you were already reaching for your wallet when you saw "is published by NIS", but are now taken aback by the abysmal metascore of this game, let me tell you, NIS fan to NIS fan, that your instinct was correct: you will love this game. The dub really is stellar (and the Japanese option doesn't have its own subtitles). The item mechanics might raise the "you must be at least this tall to ride" bar, so to speak, but are very fun and especially fresh if you've been guzzling potions after every fight since Final Fantasy 1. The combos are spectacularly powerful even very early in the game (give Compa an XXXX combo that ends with a Bonus: Combo Link sklll, such as I'll Do My Best. Scaaary.) IF's battle-comment about her sleeves, it never gets old. Normally I'd say that User Scores (divided between people whose anger at having wasted money on a disliked game drove them to post, and between people eager to put a smiley-face next to their investment of time and money) are thoroughly trumped by the more serious Critic Scores, but here we have another dynamic: users don't buy games that are obviously not to their tastes, but reviewers still need to try to review such games. And the petty, nasty, I've-never-even-heard-of-"OS-tan" appeals to the reviewer's own ignorance, the OMG-the-cutscenes-are-2d appeals to the reviewer's own bad taste? Those actually make me feel like my purchase was especially lucky; I think: it's a very good thing I wasn't persuaded by these reviewers!