Neptunia: Sisters VS Sisters Review Summary

A surprisingly good story, cute Live2D visuals, and Nepgear as a strong protagonist are undercut by simple combat, repetitive dungeons, and frequent ladder and box bugs.

Surprisingly Good Story: Many reviewers found the story unexpectedly good, catchy, and refreshing, with an interesting plot twist. It is considered excellent and enjoyable.

Cute and High-Quality Live2D: The Live2D art is widely praised for being cute, fantastic, and exquisite. Characters have expressive motions that enhance cutscenes and dialogues.

Explorable Planeptune Hub: The Planeptune hub is awesome, alive, and detailed, with multiple districts and the Planeptower skyscraper. Players can free-roam and explore the city and its interiors.

Nepgear as Protagonist Shines: Nepgear finally gets her time to shine as the main character, and her determination is a highlight. Players appreciate her rare moment to lead.

Fun and Addictive Gameplay: The gameplay is described as fun, addicting, and interesting. It provides an enjoyable experience overall.

Simple and unsatisfying combat: Combat is criticized for being overly simple, stilted, and lacking depth. Many reviewers find it mediocre and not engaging, with little learning curve or variety.

Repetitive dungeon design: Dungeons are frequently described as repetitive, with copy-pasted layouts and minimal variation. Exploration becomes boring and painful due to the lack of interesting gimmicks.

Ladder and box bugs: A common bug causes characters to get stuck or glitch when climbing ladders or pushing boxes. This often requires alt-tabbing or restarting the game to fix.

Characters locked to New Game+: Some characters, such as Shanghai Alice and Higurashi, are only playable on a second playthrough on PC, but are available normally on Switch. This limits the roster for first-time players.

Boring and monotonous gameplay: Gameplay becomes repetitive and dull, especially during long sessions, with a rinse-and-repeat feel. Many find it a nightmare or like pulling teeth.

Real-time action combat: Combat is action-oriented and real-time, departing from traditional turn-based systems. Players engage in fast-paced battles with combos, skills, and tactical elements.

Character switching during combat: Players can freely switch between party members during battle, enabling dynamic combat strategies. This mechanic is central to the combat system and allows for chain attacks and other tactical options.

Planeptune city hub: Planeptune serves as an explorable hub area where players can roam freely on foot. It is the first game in the series to allow free exploration of the city.

New Game+ unlocks characters: New Game+ offers two additional playable characters and carries over progress. This incentivizes replayability and rewards dedicated players.

Chain attack and combo system: Switching characters after a combo triggers chain bond effects that increase damage. This encourages players to master combo timing and character rotation for higher output.

Poor overall optimization: Many players report performance issues, with high resource usage and poor optimization on PC, even on high-end hardware like RTX 2070 Super.

Ladder and crate stuck bug: Players report characters getting stuck when climbing ladders or pushing boxes, with high FPS causing softlocks. Workarounds include alt-tabbing or limiting framerate.

Lack of graphics and display options: Players complain about missing graphics options, only three presets, no VSync toggle, no deadzone adjustment, resolution only up/downscaling, and no 21:9 support.

Framerate issues in specific areas: Low FPS and drops occur in Planeptune outside the tower, visual novel scenes, world map, level selector, and indoor areas.

Mixed performance reports: While some players report stable performance and good runs on modest hardware, others experience significant issues, indicating inconsistent optimization.

For Neptunia Fans Only: Many reviewers emphasize that the game is best suited for existing Neptunia fans, whether longtime or newcomers who enjoy the series. They recommend it for those who appreciate the characters and lighthearted JRPG style, but caution that others may not enjoy it as much.

Not Recommended for Newcomers: Reviewers advise against using this game as an entry point to the series, recommending that newcomers play earlier titles first, such as Hyperdimension Neptunia MK2 or Re;Birth2, to fully enjoy the story.

Wait for a Sale: Many suggest buying the game only during a sale, as they feel it is not worth the full price. They recommend waiting for a discount if you are not in a hurry.

Gamepad Strongly Recommended: Several players report that the game is not optimized for keyboard and mouse, and strongly recommend using a gamepad. They suggest the store page should clearly state this requirement.

Negative Reviews Despite Fanbase: Some reviewers cannot recommend the game even to die-hard Neptunia fans, citing disappointment and a preference for other titles in the series. They express a lack of interest in purchasing future Neptunia games until a mainline entry is released.

Community fair range: $25.00 - $40.00.

Game completion: 30.0h.

Story completion: 20.0h.

Endgame: 35.0h.

Early impressions are slowed by a slow, confusing story opening and empty, repetitive exploration, but the game becomes engaging once the plot gets going and later content improves. Some players find the action combat fun from the start, making the overall profile a late click rather than never or immediate.

Friction: Slow, slightly confusing story opening; Empty, boring open world with backtracking and tedious encounters; Repetitive and uninspired dungeon design; Combat lacks depth and becomes repetitive in later stages; Unclear in-game tutorial; Many unvoiced scenes.

Unlock drivers: Plot getting going and hooking the player; Story improving after a slow beginning; Dungeons becoming less repetitive later; Combat getting better later in the game.

Neptunia Meta-Lore Veteran: Story-first: reads visual-novel scenes, tracks lore callbacks, and progresses for narrative payoff. Motivation: To follow Neptunia's ongoing story and its meta-commentary on game-industry history. Stance: buy.

Action-Combat Systems Tinkerer: Optimizes combos, character switching, and loadouts for damage, survivability, or skill efficiency. Motivation: To master the action combat, AP economy, and party-building options. Stance: buy.

Character-First Anime Fan: Casual and character-focused: enjoys visual-novel scenes, cosmetics, and light combat rather than hard optimization. Motivation: To see favorite Neptunia characters, cute animations, and charming interactions. Stance: buy.

Steam Deck: The available feedback points to a mostly seamless Steam Deck experience. Users report the game runs fine and one user completed it on a Steam Deck. The only technical friction found is an isolated crash and a missing controller vibration toggle; an anti-cheat/Denuvo complaint is speculative and does not describe a current error. Several reviews are off-topic narrative comments rather than performance reports.

Neptunia series spin-off: The game is part of the Hyperdimension Neptunia franchise and is a spin-off rather than a mainline entry. It is a canon spin-off with a smaller scope than mainline titles.

Story continues after Neptunia VII: The story is set after Megdimension Neptunia VII and continues from its events. It is positioned after VII but strongly feels like a direct sequel to Re;Birth2.

Deluxe edition includes swimsuits: The Deluxe Edition includes swimsuit costumes for four goddesses and candidates, along with some items. The swimsuit outfit may be unobtainable without the Deluxe Edition.

Switch exclusive playable characters: Maho and Anri are playable only on the Nintendo Switch version. The Steam version lacks these characters compared to the Switch release.

Achievement completion time: Completing all achievements takes about 30 to 40 hours. Achievement completion requires viewing both normal and true endings.