izigame.me

This is my opinion on SvS after 100% completion, which took 30 hours.
As a disclaimer, I played every Neptunia game that's on Steam (except the VR version of VII). I absolutely adore the series, especially the earlier ports. Some of my following criticisms of this entry might be applied to previous games in the franchise, or even unrelated games. However, what makes these faults stand out in this game, is that there is nothing to overshadow them. There is not enough fun in playing this game to brush the negatives away and simply enjoy your time, like how it’s with some other games. You’ll see a lot of the word “fun” here, as that’s the most I want in a videogame, which this game, unfortunately, cannot provide me with.
I’ll start with a mini rant. I'm honestly baffled with how high the user rating for this game is, considering its content. "93% Very Positive" at the time of the review. Have people never played a good Neptunia game previously? Or, perhaps, the games they've been playing recently were of such poor quality, that their bar dropped to such lows? We’ve already had some crappy spin-offs (Super Neptunia RPG, Virtual Stars), which were poorly received, and now this game does the similar things wrong, albeit in a different genre, and it’s somehow 90%+ rating. Judging by this perception, I’m a bit worried for the future of the franchise. If this is “Very Positive”, what “masterpieces” await us further, I wonder…
The actual review starts here. I’m mostly going to talk negatives, because positive things don’t really come to mind, except that it’s a Neptunia game. TLDR is the conclusion.

Writing

The story is a bit atypical for the franchise – slightly moodier with less humor overall, it’s more serious. I, personally, think that more humorous approach suits the franchise better, since it has always been this way and characters’ personalities fit it more. I’m not going to comment on the coherency of the plot, since it’s a Neptunia game.
What I can have a word on, is the side stories (blue points on the map). These are comedic unvoiced scenes. I remember how fun it was to witness those in the Re;Birth3, they really helped to know the cast more. Here they are written like modern tech trivia – they depict the impact of SNS, gacha, online vs single player games, mobile vs consoles vs PC, etc. These don’t bring out the characters’ uniqueness and are simply not fun to read. Goddesses do represent console manufacturers, but usually, the allusions to the real gaming market have been subtler. It’s not particularly exciting reading the conversations about how their mobile or arcade businesses failed. I want to see Noire and Blanc, not mascots Sony-chan and Microsoft-chan.

Characters

The inclusion of Higurashi and Shanghai Alice is simply a marketing choice. They don’t serve almost any unique purpose, and could’ve been replaced (with minor changes to the story) with regulars like IF and Compa, who barely have any screen time. There are other two new characters – Maho and Anri, and they do play a major role. Maho has a typical upbeat gyaru-like speech pattern, so be aware, in case that style annoys you. You can play as Higurashi and Alice in NG+, but there's absolutely zero reason to do a 2nd playthrough.

Gameplay

One word – boring. It is a rinse and repeat “press X 4 times, press LB, do that again, win” type of gameplay, which I wouldn’t mind if it was fun, like in the beat ‘em up spinoffs in the franchise. Here it’s marginally better than in Virtual Stars. The fun factor is on par with Crystar, although a bit different but just as unsatisfying.
The game has poor balance – it becomes easy because you level up too fast, especially when you defeat every mob on the map, which I usually do in RPGs.
You aren’t able to perform actions smoothly – like doing a combo, guarding the next moment, going around the enemy and hitting them, like in Tales of Arise, for example. Instead, it’s clunky and unresponsive – you do a combo, enemy staggers you, you do it again. Guarding isn’t swift, there are no counterattacks and you begin to just long-range everyone in the end. Even to stop a combo line prematurely, you need a disk for that, more about those in the next paragraph.

RPG Elements

I wish there weren’t any. Not a single one of them except monster’s magic/physical resistance works here. Elemental affinities are useless – you can kill everyone no matter which element your attacks are (cause you’re usually 10 lvls above the enemies anyway). The disk system is atrocious. You can equip 4 of them to every character, like an accessory with a skill to it. However, all skills are superfluous. A single useful skill there is the ability to dash amidst the combo, which you should’ve been able to do in the first place. They don’t even affect stats, neither do they stack. Why bother adding them then? These disks are also the only thing you can craft. You can’t craft, for instance, a powerful sword after getting that rare drop from some boss. There aren’t any drop materials, enemies only drop healing items, and rarely, equipment.
The Lily system has been butchered. It grows automatically for each character as you level up. You can pair anyone with anyone and there is no bonus combo attacks related to it, such as a combined EXE Drive. All they offer is some buffs akin to the disks, but a bit more useful – increased defense, for example.
Side activities don’t belong. There is an arena (wave fights, colosseum type), 30 or so fights. The rewards are completely lacking. The enemies are copy-pasted anyway. I’d rather have 10 battles with 10 unique mobs for special rewards, rather than a moustached doggo for a bottle of Nep Bull, which a have a max amount of anyway.
The quests are bad – go to some place to meet an NPC, he says something, quest complete. Or go to this place and bring this item, which only appears this one time for you to take. Like someone took an apple, put it on the table in front of you and said: “Give me an apple”. The killing quests are just as annoying, cause the mobs span randomly, so you go in and out of the map to spawn a needed one.
Lastly, I don’t know who thought it was a good idea, but the party consist of 3 people. How many Goddesses is there? 4. How many sisters? 4. I thought they made that mistake 12 years ago when the first installment in the series came to be, realized it and did 4-party for the subsequent games. Guess I was wrong.

Map design

Embarrassing copy-paste. It’s either this cave or this forest. Sometimes the cave’s floors are the same. The maps are too tiring to navigate, every corner looks exactly as the previous one. And they made a needlessly huge Planeptune location, for you to walk for 2 minutes looking at nothing to reach the next blue checkmark with a side story on the map. For some reason you need to walk to play some of them.
There is also a different dimension map, where you need to solve “puzzles” by going to some part of the map and clicking a button or moving a block to some place. At some point there was a heavy block that prevented you from going further and a button right beside it. These things are just a waste of time.
And then there is a Neptral tower, where you have to traverse 100 floors for an achievement, killing a boss every 10 floors. What are the floors in between? Some parts of forest, cave, dimension maps. Walking, walking, and more walking…

Conclusion

I’m very disappointed with Sisters VS Sisters. It was fun the first couple of hours, but at that point it was all the game had to offer. The story is unbefitting to the usual Neptunia cheerfulness it’s known for. On the other hand, it’s the only reason to play this entry, as the other departments are completely lacking. The game is filled with unnecessary RPG elements and does them all wrong. The combat is unresponsive and not fun. Too much walking on the same maps.