Hyperdimension Neptunia



The first game in the Neptunia series, JRPGs featuring moe anthropomorphisms of the 7th generation consoles in a humorous take on the Console Wars.

The game starts off with a battle between the three goddesses (Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, and Wii) versus the fourth goddess -- Sega Neptune, the personification of the Sega Neptune that never came to be. Following her loss, Neptune loses her memory and gets turned into a preteen loli. An unknown force then sends her out on a mission to stop the piracy monsters running rampant in the gaming world. To do that, she needs to find a book that holds the secrets of the world... and hopefully win the three other goddesses to her side for good.

Along the way, she gets to meet up with other various people who are the moe personification of Gust, Nippon Ichi, Idea Factory, and Compile Heart. 5pb and Red Entertainment are also available as DLC characters.

Sadly, the game was plagued by issues cause by the complete lack of a budget. Luckily, however, it sold well anyway, and kicked off a series of games that still runs to this very day.

There is also a manga that details the events following the normal ending.

"Jade: I'm a member of the Guild. I live on Leanbox, but I don't follow Lady Green Heart...
 * Absurdly High Level Cap: There's a total of four DLC updates that bump up the level cap in 200 and 300 level increments. Eventually, the level cap can be upped to 999!
 * Ape Shall Never Kill Ape: During the events on Leanbox where the trio agrees to help the Parliment with the Basilicom, IF specifically states the party will not get involved in missions attacking other humans.
 * Bribing Your Way to Victory: For a small fee of real money, one can pay to get a few stat augmentations for various characters. These are large enough to make the game a breeze.
 * The Cameo:
 * Calling Your Attacks: Darjeeling Rotation! Turbulence Candy!
 * Character Blog: All three goddesses have one. They're mostly just Seinfeldian Conversation material, such as Black Heart going slightly cat-crazy and White Heart discussing how tangerines "kick ass".
 * Cool Ship: In the opening sequence, we see a jet plane while Neptune is being shown. Fans would assume that since this is an RPG, this is what people are gonna be using as a mode of transportation even though you don't travel on the world map.
 * Cut and Paste Environments: One of the letdowns of the game is that you see backgrounds from Record of Agarest War, Trinity Universe, and Ar tonelico. You also see monsters that were seen in Cross Edge and Trinity Universe.
 * Death as Comedy:

Neptune: ...Why're you telling me now? What's up with this?

Jade: I... I'm into girls... like... Lady White Heart.


 * grack*

IF: ...And that's that. You finished him off.

Neptune: Oops. Well, that was for ruining the moment."

"Neptune: Oh, yep. Death flag triggered. I kinda guessed he was one of those gonna-die-NPCs when I met him. Is he okay?
 * Did You Just Punch Out Cthulhu?: You may have goddesses on your side, but several party members are just regular humans and only two of them have any serious combat experience. The game's backstory reveals that humans beating up an evil goddess has happened at least once before and the road to Celestia was sealed off to keep bad humans from attempting it.
 * Don't Try This At Home: Said by Gust in a scene where she mixes a bunch of different energy drinks together.
 * Duel Boss: Neptune vs. Arfoire later in the game.
 * When you are trying to rally a goddess under your banner, they will join you only if you beat them in a one-on-one. Green Heart, despite her passiveness during her arc, packs a bloody punch and can kill you in two shots.
 * Emoticon: Histoire seems to really like using this in her fairy mode.
 * Empty Levels: Anything past Lv. 99 can feel like this, as you get only one point per stat and no increases to HP or AP. The exception is Item Skill points, which increase by two and can help up the activation percentage rates.
 * Genre Savvy: What does Neptune say when she discovers Jade dying?

IF: H-How can you act like that when someone is dying? Compa, can't you do something?

Compa: I wish I could, but I can't do anything about a triggered flag or a bad ending route he chose..."

"Neptune: What's up? A favor? Ask me anything! Oh, but no touching. Got it? No touching!
 * The Glomp: Neptune does this to Noire in one scene. She does it to Compa many times, too.
 * Gondor Calls for Aid: Neptune wants the other goddesses to help, but they don't want to. She has to beat the crap out of them again to make them help.
 * Gratuitous English: The initial names and descriptions for the trophies in the Japanese version had started out in English, but none of them seemed to have been proofread, so you get garbage like "deAtearmine" coming up. For reference, here's the trophy list for the Japanese version, and the list for the English version. Now, the English version's trophy list has superseded the Japanese one; anyone playing either version will see the English version's proper trophy list rather than the Japanese version's garbage one.
 * The Gods Must Be Lazy: The goddesses spend more time on their personal affairs and bonking heads than actually running their lands. Vert averts this later in the game by going out and actively fighting monsters.
 * Guide Dang It: It's an Idea Factory game, which means an incredibly obscure undocumented system must be used to reach the Golden Ending.
 * The game fails to mention that Neptune dying in battle has a hidden penalty and that if she dies too many times it can permanently lock you out of events -- !
 * Have You Seen My God?: Planeptune's Basilicom is understandably upset when Purple Heart doesn't show up when the goddesses start arriving.
 * In-Series Nickname: Compa, and later Vert, call Neptune as Nep-Nep.
 * Vert later calls IF Iffy (Ai-chan in Japan), which flusters IF to no end.
 * Thunder Tits for Green Heart, as coined by White Heart.
 * Ganache is called "Solicitor" by IF or "Mr." Solicitor by Compa.
 * Jerkass: Ganache. He assigns the task of finding a rare ore to the party, and confines them in an abandoned building set to explode. Afterwards it turns out that was only a diversion, as stated by IF when Chian's factory is being sieged by Avenir robots.
 * Large Ham: Nisa, the self-proclaimed justice loving super heroine of Gamindustri.
 * Limit Break: Neptune's "Neptune Break" as well as Nisa's "ZHP Legend!!"
 * Lost Forever: Anything that only appears in a story dungeon, including monsters.
 * Menstrual Menace: IF assumes Arfoire is doing this the first time they fight.
 * Mood Whiplash: Jade's final moments are filled with this.

Jade: Don't treat me like a pervert when I'm about to die."


 * Never Trust a Trailer: The game advertises that you get to play as the goddesses in the middle part (or at the very least, early-middle part) of the game.
 * Nobody Poops: Averted in one instance where Nep-Nep nearly misses out on Nisa's introduction by spending most of the preceding battle on the toilet.
 * Averted in another cutscene where Neppermint admits to being a little too excited about a visitor.
 * Face a foe who's a significant number of levels above you and Nep-Nep might start the fight by requesting a change of underwear.
 * No Ontological Inertia: Averted in all of the endings.
 * Obvious Beta: Admittedly due to its nearly non-existent budget.
 * One-Time Dungeon: All dungeons that are part of a story scenario.
 * One-Winged Angel: Arfoire.
 * Palette Swap: Many of the monsters use this.
 * Rank Inflation: Most of the dungeons have timers on them. The faster you finish the dungeon via beating the boss, finding the secret treasure, or getting lucky with item drops from random encounters, the better your rank will be. This always often leads to a Bragging Rights Reward when you beat the record times of other players.
 * Restored My Faith in Humanity: Nisa spends one series of events chasing down a pair of bandit brothers. When she saves them from a monster, the duo realize it's not such a Crapsack World out there, pull a Heel Face Turn and decide to help others for a change.
 * Saving the World
 * Scripted Battle: The first "battle" in the game is Purple Heart vs. the three other CPUs.
 * Skinship Grope: It's implied Neptune does this to Compa during one of the events when she invites her for some Bathtub Bonding, but nothing is shown except IF describing it.
 * The Syndicate: The Guild. Divided into two groups; Moderatists, who are criminal only in that they don't worship the goddess of their world but are otherwise completely normal people, and Extremists who are willing to resort to violence over pretty much anything.
 * Thanking The Player: In both endings, the main trio directly thanks you for getting them through the game.
 * Theme and Variations Soundtrack: Each landmass's theme is remixed for the landmass's dungeons as well as the battles within said dungeons. The title theme has also been remixed and used in various cutscenes.
 * Transformation Sequence: The four goddesses every time you have them transform in the middle of a battle. Fortunately, you can always skip it by pressing L2.
 * Transforming Mecha:
 * True Final Boss: Arfoire becomes significantly stronger if you face her after recruiting all the goddesses.
 * Victory Pose