Neptunia: Sisters vs Sisters Review (PS5)

It’s time for the Little Sisters to be in the spotlight!

It hasn’t even been half a year yet and I already have a handful of firsts! One said firsts, as you can guess, has to do with the Neptunia series. I never played a Neptunia game until this year with the release of Sisters vs Sisters. I always saw it in Idea Factory’s catelog and ever so often I see someone talking about it and/or recommending it, but never did end up trying a game. That is, until now.

Neptunia: Sisters vs Sisters starts out with a little teaser to come, with the characters (which those new will find out are the Goddess Candidates or little sisters) fighting a new Goddess while also protecting a new character. Maybe this is the Sisters that this game’s title refers to? Well, we are brought back a couple chapters back to the beginning where mostly everything is doing fine. There has just been a bit of an emergency at PC Continent that the four Goddesses had to attend to and some monsters that their little sisters have to investigate. Since Sisters vs Sisters focuses on their little sisters, particularly Nepgear being the main character, we follow them. While they were investigating, they find a hidden research facility. Of course, they decide to look around and they end up finding seemingly a new Goddess with a grey color scheme asleep in a capsule. Nepgear ends up accidentally opening the capsule, waking up this new Goddess, and after saying some cryptic things pushes Nepgear and the other little sisters into the capsule. They all are put to sleep while this potentially new threat runs free.

By the time the little sisters are found and woken up, it has been two years. It felt like a blink of an eye for the little sisters, but for others it was a difficult time that must have felt longer. While the little sisters were investigating the research facility, the four Goddesses come into contact with Arfoire, their longstanding enemy that can’t seem to take the hint, and a rift threatening to everyone up. Sadly, PC Contintent and Neptune ended up being lost with Arfoire escaping to wreck havoc. Not only that, but soon after this happens a phenomenon, dubbed as Trendi Phenomenons, starts happening where large amounts of monsters suddenly appear without warning. These outbreaks are also called Trendi Outbreaks. This also marks the rise of rPhones. Due to everyone being locked inside for their own safety, everyone starts looking to their phones for entertainment and this…well…ends up taking shares from the other nations. Which ends up weakening the Goddesses and thus creating a loop for the past two years.

Planeptune was hit the hardest, with no Goddess to take over it quickly became overrun by monsters. With Nepgear finally awake though, the tide can finally turn. So, it’s up to you to reunite everyone, take back Planeptune, figure out what the new Goddess is up to, find out how to stop the Trendi Phenomenon, and kick Arfoire’s butt for the umpteenth time.

We also get some new characters from the PC Continent!

Sisters vs Sisters’ story is pretty lighthearted with a dash of darkness. I quite liked the story and I did find it interesting. There are some mysteries and I did like how you can easily figure it out through the (obvious) foreshadowing. That doesn’t mean there aren’t some twists that you won’t see coming, but almost seems obvious once it’s revealed. There are also some optional sub-events you can check out. I’d say a good half of them are dedicated to referencing events that actually took place, like Shenmue 3 releasing and PETA getting mad at Animal Crossing, though Neptunia doesn’t really shake any feathers unless it involves piracy (and sometimes it didn’t make sense like Neptune and Nepgear going from not knowing Shenmue 3 released one second to already played it and expressing how they liked it in the next second). I couldn’t really tell if it was their real opinion or to not make anyone mad.

For those that never played a Neptunia game before, like me, I can confirm that you don’t need to play other games to understand this one. All you really need to know is that Neptunia is a big reference to real companies, developers, publishers, and even characters in different games. It’s also important to know that the characters are based on consoles that the companies produced, with the Goddess (or big sisters) being home consoles and the Goddess Candidates (or little sisters) being handheld consoles. I have read that the only thing you’re missing is having a connection with the characters and knowing how they normally interact, but honestly, it’s not that bad. It’s kind of written like those stories where the characters already know each other for years. The game does a pretty good job in introducing you to the characters, both in the script and in the characters’ descriptions, and the world. I also did find it easy and quick to pick up on how the characters interact. The only thing I was confused on was where PC Continent was and what Arfoire represented (piracy).

Also piracy looks like a cute bunny goddess =3

The gameplay in Neptunia: Sisters vs Sisters has you switching between visual novel segments for the story and dungeons where your team of three will be traversing to defeat enemies and get to where you need to go. You’ll find treasure, breakable boxes, and can either ignore enemies or fight them, with you stunning them if you manage to hit them when their back is turned. Combat is basically a hack and slash system with turn-based elements to give you limitations to make sure you’re not going too crazy. You attack with combo skills and each skill costs Action Points (or AP). AP does automatically replenish, but if you don’t have enough for a skill you can’t attack. Luckily, you have two other characters that you can freely switch to with their own AP. Even better, once you get to the end of a combo you can switch to another character to do a chain attack, which gives you a bonus to your damage and you don’t have to worry about having to stop attacking. There is also a Tactical Gauge that lets you do a Tactical Skill once it’s full or use an item; as well as a Goddess Gauge that slowly builds up as you attack and take damage and lets you transform into a character’s Goddess form once full. There’s also the EXE Drive attack, which is a special, powerful move that a Goddess can do either when they’re in their Goddess Form or when their gauge is at least halfway full.

There is also some customization, and I’m not just talking about party composition, equipment, and the costume accessories. As you level up, you gain access to new moves and another combo set you can do in battle. You can set what moves are in your combo sets and in what order. You can also develop discs, which are basically games from what I understand, to give bonus abilities like extra experience, the ability to jump between combo sets, and being able to extend combos. I found it easy to forget about the discs, but basically you’ll set out to develop a certain genre, select a developer to aid in development and give a guaranteed ability if it’s a genre they specialize in, an item to speed things up, and just wait until it’s done.

However, there was something about the combat that I can’t quite put my finger on that makes it just serviceable. It has good systems, but how it was implemented made it go from good to serviceable. I think it’s a mix of mashing being a valid strategy and not being able to dodge until the character finishes their animation and goes into their idle animation. The last one is probably mostly why, especially considering a lot of enemies attack fast. Unless the character is already seconds away from going into their idle stance, you’re out of luck. There is a disc that lets you combo cancel to dodge, but I think this should be part of the combat from the get go. I also ended up wishing you could use items when the Tactical Gauge was halfway full. It also doesn’t help that the tutorial is pretty bad as well.

This game is also easy. It was actually easier than I thought it would be. Depending on what you’re looking for or in the mood for, this could be either a good or bad thing. There are some difficulty spikes, but it mostly was when I had to battle 2+ Mecha Doll enemies (as they easily stunlock you), the enemies that resist magic attacks, and one of the battles with a new character that attacks fast and hard. I was around the same levels as the main campaign bosses (including the last boss) and it was so easy I didn’t even have to use Goddess Transformation. As long as you’re fighting every enemy you come across in your first runthrough, you’ll be more than fine (and you’ll still be fine if you skip over certain enemies).

The dungeons are also pretty much copy and pasted, so if you’re expecting each area to be unique you’ll be disappointed. Aside from the visuals (like an open area in a forest or inside a cave) and some layout differences, you’ll be going through more-or-less the same dungeon over and over. Personally, I ended up not mind it much with this title, but I know there are others where the lack of unique dungeons and layouts are a turn off.

With the rise of the rPhone, you can guess that social media would make its way as a system in Sisters vs Sisters. The social media app is called Chirper and here you can see characters chirping (?) and you can like your friend’s posts while ignoring the posts with red text. Here you can also pick up side quests that are basically fetch quests or killing a bunch of certain enemies. You don’t have to do these, but they do reward you with items and disc developers. There’s also this aspect where you can gain back your shares from rPhones, with you starting out with a measly 1% shares for the Goddesses. It’s actually really easy to gain shares back as you not only get them back by just progressing through the story, but by completing side quests (even if you only turn in the ones where you happen to already have the requested items) or by liking chirps. It’s actually harder to give rPhones shares funnily enough.

In addition to the main game, there is an Arena where you can aim for the top rank or use the training feature, a limitless dungeon that unlocks before the last dungeon, and three endings that are dictated by the Share split. Once you finish the game, you can also go into New Game+ where you can absolutely steamroll everyone as you go through the story again.

Neptunia: Sisters vs Sisters has both English and Japanese voice acting, but I do recommend playing with Japanese voices. I did find the English voice actors okay, but a lot more lines are voiced in Japanese (I also feel the Japanese voice actors fit these cute characters more). Only the most important events are voiced in English where all but the optional sub-events are voiced in Japanese. Not even the dialogue spoken while exploring and during battles are dubbed and they are very easily missed when unvoiced (and still easily missed when voiced). Considering these often have some important tidbits, it’s even worse. So, I really recommend playing this game with Japanese voice acting.

Verdict

Honestly, I liked playing Neptunia: Sisters vs Sisters. Yes, the combat was serviceable and it was easier than I expected it would be, but I was interested in what the game presented. This may be because this was my first Neptunia game, so this was all new to me, but it was fun seeing all the characters interacting with each other and I did find the story interesting. Not to mention that it was the perfect time for me to get into a lighthearted JRPG with a hint of seriousness.

Sometimes you just want a lighthearted JRPG and Neptunia: Sisters vs Sisters definitely delivers. It also felt like it was a good introduction into the Neptunia series. As long as you’re fine with serviceable combat and it being generally easy, I think it’ll be worth picking up Neptunia: Sisters vs Sisters.