Nothing but a D:Evolutuon.
With over a dozen games across the series, I consider myself a fairly new fan, having only played about the last four or five entries. That said, I've appreciated certain moments, characters, gameplay elements, and the charm each game has often brought with it. The references have always felt fun, and while that part remains true for Neptunia Game Maker R:Evolution, this might be the entry that sees me leaving the series behind.
Game Maker R:Evolution breaks away from the central cast in favor of following the adventures of Older Neptune, who first appeared in the true ending to Neptunia Victory: Rebirth 3. Here, she's hopped into a dimension largely similar to her own, thanks to a dimensional jumping notebook that is also a prison for Croire. Upon her arrival, Neptune immediately loses the notebook, and attempting to retrieve it is the backbone to this whole tale.
As she begins her search, she encounters a strange game created by a trio of goddesses all based on failed gaming consoles. Pippin, Jagaa, and Reedio, they then quickly and extremely oddly place Neptune in charge of their company to create games to make them compete in a world built on competition. The more sales of your game dictates the power you have in this world. It’s very similar to what has come before, just with a slightly different context. This is the crux of nearly every Neptunia game.
Despite Game Maker R:Evolution being in a different dimension, familiar faces do appear as nearly every major character across the series is here in some capacity, largely unchanged or altered from what we are already accustomed to. In fact, if not for a few lines of dialogue and conversations between Neptune and those she knows in her dimension, you couldn't tell the difference between this world and the Gameindustri we all know and love, especially as several environments are reused from previous outings.
Being placed in charge of their business, especially after only just meeting them, as well as needing to find her notebook, a feat that Neptune largely forgets about for what feels like weeks at this point, is the bulk of the game's opening few hours. You're introduced to a few systems that make up one side of the game's overall gameplay that feel like slight alterations to systems we've had before, only changed in small ways to serve the game's narrative and world.
Game Maker R:Evolution follows the same structure as the game's before it. You have the visual novel conversations between the cast, a system devoted to powering up your characters, and the JRPG side to introduce combat and exploration. These components make up each and every entry, often changing them to suit the needs of the story.
The system to power up your characters is through making games. Here, you'll have an area to make a small little street corner of your own. This is where you make little buildings that reflect the types of games you want to make. As you upgrade these areas, you'll hire additional workers and make better games. Each worker has a specialty that makes them better suited for different games. From shooters to action and anime, each game disc can also be equipped to your character to boost your power. This is a nearly identical system present in previous games of crafting an item, having it take a set time to build, and then equipping it to add a series of perks and bonuses to your stats. Again, this is what Neptunia games do, they often color their systems around the story but do little to really bring something new to the forefront. And considering that the difficulty of the game is largely easy, this system feels like it is not truly needed here.
Neptunia has had several different combat systems across the series spread out across a wide variety of gameplay styles, characters, and even crossovers with other similar games, such as Senran Kagura. However, the combat present across Game Maker R:Evolution is just not fun, engaging, or well thought out in any capacity. Combat feels weightless, and the lack of enemy variety doesn't help matters. While Sisters Vs Sisters was comically easy, that too is present here as combat rarely offers up any challenge whatsoever.
Combat feels more limited than it has ever felt. Each character has access to two combo attacks, a special attack, and a transformation ability. As you attack, a combo icon will appear, requesting that you select the character that is ready for the assist. You'll essentially spam this and bounce around the battle as you pull it off. You'll attack, use your special, and that's about it.
There just isn't anything special here, especially as combat does not evolve into anything meaningful apart from some Game Discs you'll craft to add blocks and dodges, but these rarely play a factor whatsoever and can be entirely ignored. This causes the JRPG aspect to feel incredibly simple and incredibly repetitive, which has been an issue in the last few entries, but here it feels far more noticeable.
New to Game Maker: R:Evolution is Neptune’s bike, a utility that allows you to speed around the map. The issue? Not a single location is built for it. While it's nice to be able to jump, considering the multi-level terrain that makes up the bulk of the locations, areas are not designed in a way to really let you take advantage of it, apart from a few actual racing events. The fact the bike has a boost is also a choice that makes zero sense for the bulk of the main environments. Since most of these locations were built for previous entries that didn’t have the bike, then it starts to make a whole ton of sense.
While the artwork and models for each of the characters are typical of the series and fairly good, everything else from a performance and presentation aspect is just a complete miss. I've read reports and reviews of the PS4 and PS5 versions where the game would struggle to even maintain a steady framerate. On the Nintendo Switch, I don't believe the title even hits 30fps once. The game feels sluggish and combat causes the game to feel like it's hitting around 20fps at all times, not once feeling good. I will say that it feels a bit better playing portable due to the lowered resolution, but all in all, it feels as if the game has zero optimization done to run it even remotely well.
Neptunia: Sisters vs Sisters was the first title in the series to really disappoint me, and yet Game Maker R:Evolution hands down disappoints me further, making me question if this series is even for me anymore. Its combat and level design are barebones and empty of anything remotely engaging. While the visual novel charm of its writing and characters are as good as they have always been, it's not a strong enough outing for the game's flaws to not be front and center.
Developer - Compile Heart.
Publisher - Idea Factory International.
Released - May 14th, 2024.
Available On - Nintendo Switch, PS4/PS5, PC, Xbox Series X/S (TBA).
Rated - (T) - Fantasy Violence, Language, Suggestive Themes.
Platform Reviewed - Nintendo Switch.
Review Access - Review code was provided by the publisher for the purpose of this review.
Jeff is the original founder of Analog Stick Gaming. His favorite games include The Witcher III, the Mass Effect Trilogy, Hi-Fi Rush, Stellar Blade, Hellbade: Senua’s Sacrifice, and the Legend of Heroes series, especially Trails of Cold Steel III & IV.