Neptunia: Virtual Stars

Neptunia and friends have been on many quirky and memorable journeys and their latest has them join forces with real-world VTubers.

The Hyperdimension Neptunia series of games seems to enjoy moderate success with its various spin-offs. Even if the results are less than stellar, enough people seem to buy the games to warrant new entries. Thus, we have arrived at Neptunia Virtual Stars, a mixture of the CPUs fans have come to know and love, and real-world—yet virtual—guests, all wrapped in a third-person action shooter. Is this the spin-off that finally gets all of its pieces aligned properly? Find out in our Neptunia Virtual Stars review.

That said, nearly everything about Neputnia Virtual Stars just feels like half-assed fanservice for the sake of fanservice. The gameplay – while somewhat competent – feels undercooked, the story is flat out boring, and the presentation doesn’t do much to salvage the first two. The inclusion of VTuber content is dim bright spot, but it’s not bright enough to bring this game up to any sort of recommendation. Prospective players should just skip this one, and Neptunia fans deserve better...

Should you play Neptunia Virtual Stars? Unless you’re a fan of the quirky Goddesses, I’d give this one a wide berth. Sure, shooting a range of weird and wonderful enemies is fun for a while, but if third person shooting or hacking-and-slashing is what you’re after, there are way better games to do that in. Ultimately, its annoyances far outweigh its pros, and there’s not much here worth sticking around for.

The goddesses are back for another spin-off. Neptunia Virtual Stars sees them getting involved with the creation of content with the help of numerous VTubers.

There are plenty of anime games out there to choose from, most of which follow a fairly similar RPG style and minimal cutscene animation. While it’s nice to feel like you’re experiencing the story, as opposed to just watching it, most games start to blend together, like the Is It Wrong To Try And Pick Up Girls In A Dungeon… series for instance. Neptunia Virtual Stars sets out to try and break away from the crowd. Without an anime to be based on, this game is unchained from needing to fo...