If you are looking for an in-depth look at this game’s story, characters, and features, please read SG Gaming Info’s review of the PlayStation 4 version of Idea Factory International’s Megadimension Neptunia VII. While this review won’t go in-depth on the above-mentioned topics they will be mentioned, the main purpose of this review is to talk about the performance of the PC port.

For those who don’t know much about Megadimension Neptunia VII or the Neptunia franchise, the games are loosely based on the video game industry with the game’s four key characters: Neptune, Vert, Noire and Blanc being humanoid versions of consoles. Neptune represents Sega (in particular the Sega Neptune an unreleased Sega console), Vert represents Xbox, Noire represents PlayStation, and finally Blanc represents Nintendo. The four key characters each rule their own nation as CPU goddesses, as leaders of nations the four characters have the ability to use shares (their nations faith) and activate HDD mode, a mode that greatly increases their power. Each goddess rules their nations differently and the style of their nation is similar to the real world versions of the consoles they represent.

Megadimension Neptunia VII contains a massive story split into three parts, 1) Zerodimension Neptunia Z Twilight of the Desperate CPU, 2) Hyperdimension Neptunia G the Golden Leaders, Reconstructors of Gamindustri, and 3) Heartdimension Neptunia H Trilogy Finale: Into Legend… The overall story told in the game is about just how important consoles are and how you shouldn’t abuse them, the game primarily focuses on the greed of both developers and fans. Megadimension Neptunia VII is also the darkest Neptunia game to date with the game exploring some dark tones, although the dark tones are balanced out with the franchises trademark innuendo and video game humour.

Gameplay wise the game is straight forward, to progress in the game players must explore dungeons, and take part in battles using the game’s turn based combat system. Megadimension Neptunia VII contains two new noticeable features in the form of road building and investment. Road building is an odd if not borderline useless feature that involves you building roads to gain access to a dungeon, and Investment involves using your money to improve the commercial, industrial and public relations of each nation, levelling up each section offers new purchasable items, additional development items, and special events.

Now as I said combat is turn based, but how does it work. Well like most modern JRPG turn based combat systems it involves action points, and performing attacks until you use up said action points. Combat in Neptunia VII primarily relies on its combo system, which allows you to perform multiple quick attacks to fill your EXE meter, multiple power attacks to do damage, and multiple standard attacks that help slowly decrease the enemy’s defence. Combat also features SP and EXE skills that drain either your EXE meter or a particular character’s SP meter. You also have the opportunity to transform your character using HDD mode or NEXT form. It is worth noting that some characters cannot transform.

Combat also includes some new features. These include formation skills, break parts, multiple heath bars for bosses, and giant battles. Formation skills involve moving two or more characters to certain positions and attacking together. Break parts involves breaking a piece of a monsters equipment to do additional damage. Finally, giant battles, which are infrequent once you get past the first story, involves fighting a giant monster, these monsters can only be fought using SP and EXE skills, and like all bosses hey have multiple health bars.

Ok, that’s enough of a quick look at the game. Let’s talk about the PC port. My opinion on the port is relatively mixed. Now, my PC would be considered a low/medium powered PC, and so I could only push the game to 720p, although the game does support 1080p. However, even though my computer isn’t that powerful I was able to run the game at its highest graphical settings. Now as I said my opinion was mixed, so let’s explore the issues.

My first major issue was with the game’s frame rate. Performance wise the game’s frame rate likes to jump between 20-50 fps, with the game running at its worst when exploring dungeons and fighting. Exploring the dungeons was an unpleasant experience as the frame fluctuations creating a feeling of motion sickness, although it is worth noting that turning depth of field off did greatly reduce the fluctuations.

My second major issue is the controls. If you want to play Megadimension Neptunia VII with a mouse and keyboard, I wish you good luck, as the control scheme makes no sense, for example turning the camera requires you to use the Numpad instead of the mouse, and action buttons are tied to the likes of O, K, I, and L. If you wish to have a trouble free experience, I recommend using the Xbox 360 controller as the game seems to be built around the player using this input device.

Conclusion

The PC version of Megadimension Neptunia VII contains the same content as its PlayStation 4 counterpart, but on PC, the game suffers from some performance issues.

Score: 6.5/10

Pros	Cons
+ Same gameplay as the PS4 version	– Frame rate fluctuations
	– Almost unplayable without a controller

Developer	Publisher	Genre	Rating	Platform	Release date
Idea Factory	Idea Factory International	JRPG	16+	PS4, PC (reviewed)	Feb 12, 2016 (PS4), July 5, 2016 (PC)

*A review code was provided by the game’s publisher.*

For more information on Megadimension Neptunia VII, visit http://ideafintl.com/nep-v2/.