Of course, not every single place is accessible at first and some of them won’t be accessible at all without your help! While many locations open up on their own as the story progresses, some locations can only be accessed after you engage in some “route building” (also known as making the player spend money). Getting from place to place in VII is as easy as selecting it on the world map, and having your character do the rest. But it’s still essential! To that effect, things aren’t terribly different here than they are in any other Neptunia game… or in any other version of this game (see, I can be meta, too). Okay, okay, maybe exploration isn’t the only thing in this game. Exploration! I’m talking about exploration. Staying true to itself, VII is all about one thing.

On top of this, the bizarre way in which the Neptunia both ruthlessly mocks and endearingly celebrates the world of video games, while perhaps slightly dated in some ways, is still incredibly entertaining and never fails to put a smile on my face. By splitting up each of the game’s core characters for a good 1/2 – 2/3 of the game, each CPU, CPU candidate, and Gold Third member get plenty of time in the limelight, meaning ample time for character development. While the original Neptunia crew is written just as well as ever (i.e., lots of inside jokes), I think that the application of the game’s new characters-primarily Gold Third-is what continues to impress me the most. I don’t think that it matters how many times I end up playing this game I’m never going to not like this story. And things only go from bad to worse when the mysterious group known as Gold Third shows up in Nep’s original timeline with the intent of de-throning each and every CPU. Gone are the vibrant cities, happy people, and cheeky fourth-wall-breaking jokes and in their place are nothing but ruins, giant monsters, and, most importantly, Uzume-a tough-acting girl with a heart of gold which, for some reason, has the ability to use HDD Mode (a skill only possessed by CPUs and CPU Candidates).

find themselves thrust into a macabre facsimile of the Gameindustri they once knew. After finding a broken-down console with a familiar-looking orange swirl on it (one guess what that’s supposed to represent), Nep and Nep Jr. Megadimension Neptunia VII once again follows the purple-haired heroine herself (no, not Nepgear) in what is still one of her craziest adventures to-date. Hey, that’s no way to treat a new friend!

Neptunia vii alien squeed