Safe move for IF, perhaps too safe!
User Rating: 7 | Hyperdevotion Noire: Goddess Black Heart VITA
Hyperdevotion Noire is the first time the series touches strategy rpg. It does this very well and the level design can get very creative at times but it can also get very tedious. If you like strategy rpg's like Shining Force and Jean De Arc then you might really enjoy this game but the lack of other rpg elements still will damage the overall experience. Then again, rpg elements in Neptunia games like running through towns and stuff never really existed anyway but at least the dungeon crawling made up for it. Now the core of the actual gameplay...well...the only gameplay is through strategy battles. The battlefields are laid out similar to chessboards. You move a number of spaces but for some reason, the enemies ALWAYS get more spaces! As you can tell from the emphasis I put on the word, this feature is excruciatingly annoying and can set the matches to unfair levels of difficulty. Luckily we still can level grind but man the fights are sooooo slooooooow! The characters' stats are dwindled down to basic arithmetic numbers so at least the fights don't take too long. Luckily we still have an adorably quirky and zany storyline to keep our attention. The story takes place in....another dimension parallel to the alternate dimension that Neptune went to in Rebirth 3. Confusing, ain't it? One of the DLC girls thought so too and confused the terms for the world by accident! "Gamindustry? Don't you mean Gamarket?" lmfao This was a joke of course! Neptunia is full of fourth wall breaking moments and the humor that propells the series is still intact too. And we move to Noire Sim mode. Don't let the name fool you, all you do is play secretary, manage reports for Noire and buy her stuff. Doesn't sound very fun, huh? :( It's not and your only reward is more cutscenes that go unvoiced. I ended up doing this Sim Mode anyway for completionist purposes. So...as a diehard fan of Nep Nep, I had to buy this to complete the collection for Vita. But as a game itself, turns out strategy rpg's still aren't my thing. If they're your thing then for 30 smackers, what could go wrong? 
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