izigame.me

When I first played this game, I couldn't understand why it got so many good reviews. I have played ReBirth 1-3 and Neptunia x Senran Kagura before this. You could say I got hooked on Nep. So I was expecting this to be really good and it definitely let me down in the gameplay department. That said, I definitely recommend this game.
THE BAD
I want to get this out of the way first. This has the worst gameplay in the franchise. Don't let the videos fool you into thinking its going to be some fun action combat like Senran Kagura. This is jank, and not the so bad its good kind. I hated every single moment I spent in combat in this game. All the other Neptunia games have addicting combat so I am not sure why they ditched the combat from there other games for this mess. Let me just the problems:
* Basic Combos suck - Everytime you attack, you loose AP. When your AP is 0, you have to run around and wait for it to fill back up. The system encourages you to keep switching characters mid combo but that has issues as well. Your combos can break easily since enemies stun time is kinda random.
* Special Moves suck - They waist your special gauge which is also used for stuff like using items (seriously, who thought this was a good idea). They don't do much more damage than your basic combo and they don't have any added stun ability that your regular combos don't.
* Goddess Form sucks - When you transform, the gauge at the left side of your character profile starts draining really quickly. You can extend this by equipping disc but it still drains way too quickly. That means you will not be able to stay in goddess form for that long. Its made worse by the fact that this guage takes a long time to refill. Which basically means you will be saving it for boss battles. Oh and if you want to do your EX move, kiss half your goddess guage good bye so you probably won't be doing that much either.
Outside of combat, there are a few other issues I had. The first is both a positive and a negative which is exploring Planeptune. This is the first game where you can actually walk around Planeptune and its pretty awesome at first. The problem is its really big and has practically nothing in it. You will have some story segments that require you to walk for long stretches of time to a quest marker to start the cutscene. It got old quick. There are also characters that are critical to the story that you never get to play.
THE GOOD
I started with the bad because I wanted to end on a good note. The one thing this game does better than any other game in the franchise I have played is its writing. The story is just incredible. The character dialog is also just really good which is saying a lot because character dialog is what this franchise excels at. And this game references a lot of real world events like Covid, Sega's arcade business, how scummy mobile games are, and how Nintendo loves to file lawsuits. The jokes are genuinely funny and the game does a good job of transitioning from darker moments to light hearted moments without downplaying the severity of the situation the characters are in at the time.
OVERALL
In conclusion, this game has some really bad gameplay but the story is so good that I didn't care. I would recommend if you want a good story.