Neptunia

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.

Neptunia is a series of JRPGs about Console Wars that were developed by Compile Heart and Idea Factory. Formerly published by Nippon Ichi worldwide, now published by Idea Factory's new International branch.

No, they haven't run out of ideas...

These are the current games in the series:

Main Games:

Remakes:

Spin-Offs:

For further background, see the Console Wars, Play Station 3, Xbox 360, Wii, Sega Genesis,[1] Other Sega Systems,[2] SNES, Nintendo 64, PlayStation[3], SNESCDROM, Nintendo DS, and PlayStation Portable pages.

Tropes used in Neptunia include:
  • Arbitrary Headcount Limit: Only three can fight at a time, with three others that can be rotated.
    • This is increased to 4 in the second game.
  • Badass Adorable: Every playable character.
  • Bishoujo Series: Almost every single important character is a woman and the guys at best get a portrait with a silhouette. And mk2 is no exception except for the three male characters that are the villains.
    • Lampshaded in one mission where Compa says they can recognize the boy/girl they're going to save because he/she is simply an NPC silhouette.
    • Victory/Rebirth 3 and MDN VII subvert this trope more and more, but it';s still largely in effect.
  • Bland-Name Product: The "Dunglemaps" and "AMAZOO.NEP" sites.
  • Break Meter: It only last about ten seconds in the first game, making animation skipping a must to get the most out of it. It lasts much longer in the second game.
  • Breast Expansion: Applies in one way or another to all of the goddesses when they powerup, but is most noticeable with Neptune and Blanc, the latter because her breasts grow up one letter in cup size, and the former because she goes from flat-chested to generous E-cup breasts by virtue of her true body being much older-looking than her avatar.
    • It's notable that the inverse happens with Uni, prompting Nepgear to ask if she was "stuffing them".
  • Boss Dissonance: Comes in both varieties. Some of the dungeons have random powerful Mooks. Unfortunately (or fortunately, if you're going for S Ranks), the bosses are so easy that it's an insult. This trope is especially prevalent in dungeons where you're supposed to find the boss of the dungeon and kill it. Other times the random Mooks are exceptionally weak while the boss is just ridiculously overpowered. Worse yet are easy dungeons that end with a Sequential Boss fight; you've been whittled down just enough to put you out of reach of your Item Skills but still low enough for one phase of the boss to finish the job instantly.
  • Bunny Ears Lawyer: Every goddess is this. Strangely, no one complains about it. Many of the human characters are this as well, to the point the few relatively sane ones stand out. Conversely, Vert tends to be the goddess with the most common sense when the other goddesses need a cool head, while IF and Compa serve this role on the human character side, though the others all get their turns to serve this role.
  • Calling Your Attacks: In the first game, you can even name them! Can't add new spaces, though...
    • Nisa is especially prone to this. She even does this for her regular attacks and lampshades it in her introductory cutscene when she did it as a warning to avoid hitting someone.
  • Color Coded for Your Convenience: Each girl wears clothes that match the company she represents.
  • Continuity Snarl: Due to the multiple dimensions featured in the series, the various spinoffs, and remakes, the continuity is a bit hard to follow, so here's a summary of the various dimensions and their place in canon:
    • Super Dimension is where the original Neptunia and Rebirth 1 take place, with the latter supplanting the former as canon due to the story changes. It is, however, implied to share continuity with the 1st Hyperdimension indirectly due to some of the playable secondary characters who reference that continuity, but the Super Dimension is otherwise in its own continuity. Neptunia U is set in this continuity
    • The FIRST Hyperdimension is the canon of the original Neptunia mk2 and Victory. Now supplanted by the SECOND Hyperdimension of Rebirth 2/3/MDN VII as canon.
    • The Zero/Heart Dimension are from MegaDimension VII, which follows Rebirth 3's true ending and is in the same universe.
    • Gamarket from Hyperdevotion Noire is set in it's own continuity with no apparent ties to any of the established dimensions.
    • The anime combines elements from the Super/Hyper/Ultra dimensions for story elements and characterization, but is primarily set in the same universe as the second Hyperdimension, with the first half of the plot following an altered version of mk2/Rebirth 2 plot, and the second half following an altered Victory/Rebirth 3.
  • Cosmetic Award: Seems to be mocking the trophy and the achievements systems since doing something will already get you a trophy right off the bat. Start a New Game? You already got your first trophy! Finished the tutorial stage? You get a trophy!
    • Indeed, except for a few trophies one must actively pursue, the majority of them are earned just playing the game without any extraneous effort.
    • Taken Up to Eleven in the sequel where before you even have your first fight against Judge The Hard / CFW Judge, you already get three trophies.
  • Date Crepe: In one of the bonus artworks designed by the company, Noire and Neptune do this, as well as Blanc and Vert.
  • Design-It-Yourself Equipment: You get to decide what image appears for some attacks in the first game - you get to supply them yourself.
    • In the second game and the remakes, you can edit your character's outfits and the goddesses' processor units for some stat adjustments.
  • Digital Piracy Is EVIL!: Well, if your Big Bad is the personification of piracy (known as Arfoire), then this trope definitely applies.
    • The DLC 5pb recruitment story in the original PS3 game takes this to Anvilicious levels.
  • Downloadable Content: About $100 worth of it for each game.
    • The remakes were mostly cheaper, though MDN VII came close to being as expensive as the originals.
  • Dub Name Change: Magiquone and Nippon Ichi, who are now named Arfoire and Nisa, respectively. Magiquone is a play on Magicon, the name of a flash cart sold in Japan, whereas in America, the most popular flash cart is the R4 (so they changed the name of the boss so people would get the anti-piracy overtones). NISA is an acronym for Nippon Ichi's American branch.
    • Neptune's nickname for IF goes from Ai(I)-chan to Iffy.
    • In the second game, the villains that are named [Blank] the Hard are renamed as CFW [Blank]. In this case, CFW stands for Criminal of the Free World, and is meant to make people think of Custom Firmware.
  • Early Installment Weirdness: The original PS3 Neptunia was made on a shoestring budget and they really didn't have the game engine most of the later games had, and it had a lot of weird mechanics that made it not very fun to play. mk2 and Victory also had issues with plot holdovers they couldn't use anymore due to real life trademark issues. The Rebirth series was basically Version 2.0 of all their previous work to get away from this trope.
  • Endgame Plus
  • Exponential Potential: You get so many attack choices that you will lose track of around one-fourth of them.
  • Face Ship: Neputnia V has one with Keiji Inafune's face on an airplane.
  • Fan Service: Both games have this from the start. The first one starts with Compa wrapping bandages around Neptune's naked body because... because. Mk2, overall the raunchier, starts with the CPUs getting ravaged by tentacles because... because. Of course, both games have buttloads of non-sexual fanservice as they are, after all, about the console wars.
  • Gainax Bounce: Happens with some of the CGs as we get a slight "boing" when the female character has a nice rack.
    • Even when the character doesn't have much of a rack, this happens. IF even gets some of the "boing" after she falls from running into Neptune.
    • In the gallery, moving the analog stick while viewing a picture causes this.
    • Toned down in the Rebirth remakes, where the 3D portraits for characters were replaced with 2D ones.
  • Gratuitous German: Quite a bit, actually, mostly with Blanc whose attacks have garbled names such as "Todlichschlag" (if they were going for "deadly strike", it would have to be "tödlicher Schlag"), but other characters also get in on it, like Neptune's and Nepgear's Combination Attack in the sequel, "Violet Schwestern" ("violet sisters" or "purple sisters" would be "Violette Schwestern").
  • Gods Need Prayer Badly: Goddesses gain power with belief. Arfoire uses this to gain power again by spreading false overlord rumors and harvesting their fear in the first game. In the second game, ASIC buys support by giving out modchips.
    • This is actually a gameplay mechanic in the form of shares. More shares translates to more faith and power in a goddess. A certain amount is needed in order to recruit the goddess of each land. Slightly modified in the Rebirth games so that the shares aren't a game crippling mechanic if not utilized properly, but still serve a similar purpose.
  • Immortal Immaturity: All of the goddesses tend to act this way, though somewhat justified since some of them have split personas when in HDD form.
  • Improbable Weapon User: The worst offender has to be Compa who uses a syringe that shoots bullets! This is even Lampshaded by IF at one point in the first game, and Nepgear in the second.
  • Fundamentally Female Cast: No guys except as unnamed, silhouetted NPCs.
  • Informed Equipment: Averted. Aside from the rings and bracelets that serve as armor, every equipment change to your characters will show up. Heck, two of the equipment slots are dedicated just for outfits and accessories to customize them.
  • Instrument of Murder: 5pb uses a guitar as her weapon. If she uses a special attack, she will play it. But in normal hits, she will smack the target with it.
  • Kiai: Neptune: CHESTO! (Chest buster!)
  • Lampshade Hanging: It's an RPG that knows it's a video game and pokes fun at video games. There's a lot of this.
  • Lazy Backup: If your three frontline characters die, it's a game over with no explanation whatsoever when you have eight (ten if you include 5pb and RED) characters in your party. The second game also has this problem except you have fifteen characters to choose from and yet when the four on the frontlines die, it's a game over.
  • Meaningful Name: The names of the goddesses (except Neptune) in their normal forms are the names of colors in French.
  • Minimalist Cast: Only playable characters, villains, and oracles are ever shown. Everyone else either never appears physically or is a generic NPC silhouette.
    • The first game lampshades this when someone's lost their child and you're told that you'll know it's him because he's a generic NPC silhouette.
  • Moe Anthropomorphism: The point of the game. Let's just start with the Play Station 3, Xbox 360, Wii and the (unreleased) Sega Neptune.
  • Multiple Endings
  • Name's the Same: This Black Heart is definitely not the son of Mephisto nor a boss from Battle Garegga.
  • New Game+
  • No Fourth Wall: It's a Console Wars game; it's to be expected that they'll smash the fourth wall.
  • Obviously Evil: Arfoire, lampshaded by Ganache in the first game.
  • Only One Name: None of the characters in the game have a last name until mk2, where the oracles who aren't Histoire each get one.
  • Our Fairies Are Different: Histoire, who is technically a Physical God in terms of power, yet a passive one in practice.
  • Our Gods Are Greater: Uhh, duh...
  • Party in My Pocket: Well, obviously! Then again, you can switch out the on-screen avatar, which is actually important in the first game because different characters have different functions on the map screen. For instance, Neptune pulls out a hammer to smash obstacles, Compa rings a bell to attract monsters, and IF uses her search mode to uncover invisible chests.
  • This mechanic was watered down in the Rebirth remakes, so the only changes are the voices and the on map symbol attack weapon animations.
  • Power Floats: Whenever Neptune, Blanc, Vert, and Noire (or their sisters) transform to their respective goddess forms, they always float in the air.
  • Rainbow Pimp Gear: Generally averted with the outfits and accessories you normally get for the characters, but you make some truly outrageous processor combinations for the goddesses, though even the regular outfits can achieve this effect if you go out of your way to select clashing clothing and accessories.
  • Really Seven Hundred Years Old: All of the goddesses.
  • Real Life Writes the Plot: Red Entertainment was absent for several games because her company was acquired and the new owners did not allow her to appear (they eventually relented). Nippon Ichi stopped appearing due to a mass exodus of Nippon Ichi employees to Idea Factory after Nippon Ichi tried to use Loophole Abuse to avoid paying employees what they were owed.
    • This is partially the reason the Rebirth games have somewhat altered plots as compared to the original games. Not only did they want to start over with a better game engine and redo the originals minus any Early Installment Weirdness holdovers, they also wanted to redo the series due to the trademarks they could no longer use from the first versions.
  • Rule 34: For an Idea Factory game, this is perhaps the most popular choice as Cross Edge and Record of Agarest War, despite being much more ecchi, had little to no Rule 34. For example, there are official NSFW dakimakura covers of Noire. That's all we need to say.
  • Saving the World: Both figuratively and literally (figuratively being Histoire who is the "Tomb of the World" and literally being "kill Magiquone/Arfoire and all of piracy").
  • Self-Deprecation: The weakest and least versatile characters in the first game are IF and Compa. They don't even get any sort of Limit Break, something even the DLC characters were given.
  • So Long and Thanks For All the Gear: Uni notwithstanding, completely averted. Most characters who join you never have to leave for any reason, aside from a handful of scenarios which have them leave for one dungeon. In the first game, however, the equipment will reset on the character when they return, forcing you to re-equip, but this is a minor annoyance at worst.
  • Take That: Unsurprisingly, there are a few zingers in here, but it's mostly gentle poking instead of straight-up insulting and no company really gets it worse than the others.
  • The Unexpected: Earthbound Papas will play some of the music in Neptune Victory. It doesn't look like anyone will be complaining about sub-par music anymore.
  • Twenty Bear Asses: Many of the quests involve this.
  • Video Game Perversity Potential: The first game allows players to use pictures stored in their Play Station 3 units for "R/W disc" special attacks -- even pornographic ones. The second game allows Nepgear's CPU outfit to be customized via the Costume Canvas system, and "nude mods" have been made. Have fun.
    • The Steam versions of the Rebirth games can be modded, which includes the character appearances, so nude mods and slutty cosplay are possible to create.
  • Visual Novel: With some H-game references.
  • Vitriolic Best Buds: The four goddesses, even more so in the sequels.
    • IF's relation to Neptune and Compa.
  • Wooden Katanas Are Even Better: You can equip a wooden katana for Neptune which is pretty strong during the early parts of the first game.
    • She starts with it in mk2.
  • You Gotta Have Blue Hair: Let's see, we've got: purple, green, light blue, black, white, brown, pink, and blue. And this is just from the main cast.
  1. ↑ Saturn was made alongside Genesis
  2. ↑ includes background for Saturn
  3. ↑ for the console wars of those generations
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