The guild hall that gives the quests out usually has several on offer at a time, but don't mistake that for choice. “Go kill five of these,” or “go find three of those” is often all the explanation you get, and when you've just killed or found a bunch of each 10 minutes prior, you can only conclude that Victory is simply wasting your time with an arbitrary chore. The quest system is similarly shallow, offering you story-advancing tasks without ever establishing any connection to the plot. Even in these so-called “dungeons,” the way to the exit is clearly marked on your map and is never more than a few 90-degree turns away, making them no more nuanced than the characters who explore them. The only places where you actually control an avatar of any kind are the combat areas, which feature visible, often non-aggressive enemies that you can completely avoid by just running in a straight line. Both towns and the world map are reduced to nothing but menus, and where to go next is always conveniently marked with a bright pink icon. This isn't nearly my only gripe with Victory, but it's certainly my biggest: the entire game feels like it was designed around getting you to the next interminable dialogue scene as quickly and conveniently as possible. This could almost be forgiven if these scenes served as occasional asides to the combat, but infuriatingly, the opposite is true. Neptune, the story's protagonist, cares for little else besides eating, sleeping, and occasionally playing video games, and her travelling companions aren't any less one-dimensional. Mind you, that's not necessarily wrong or offensive – it's just plain boring. Even calling these entities “characters” is a stretch, as they're more like moe delivery systems, created for the sole purpose of being adorably vapid while wearing something frilly and/or fetishistic. This of course makes it seem like something straight out of left field when characters start cursing at or bathing with one another. I honestly don't know who writes this stuff, or who it's even written for, but conversations in Hyperdimension Neptunia Victory are nothing but non-stop conveyor belts that deliver a seemingly infinite supply of quips and cracks usually reserved for playground banter. The problem is that it's all you'll get, and you have to suffer through a metric ton of terribly inane dialogue to get it. Any long-time follower of our fair hobby is bound to get a few chuckles and “oh I see what you did there” moments out of the story. It stops short of using actual console names (Lastation sounds an awful lot like.) but all the references are there. The entire plot isn't so much a thinly veiled metaphor about the game industry as it is a straight-up animated dramatization of it.
Play The story isn't without its charms either, especially if you've grown up with video games and have sat, as I have, with a bag of popcorn in hand while watching the always-entertaining drama of the console wars pan out over the years.
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