Idea Factory is really pumping these things out, huh? Hyperdimention Neptunia U: Action Unleashed is yet another non-canon Vita game, following the bizarre idol sim and middling strategy RPG. This time, the Senran Kagura developer is on board, and they splashed a dollop of Dynasty Warriors sauce onto the Neptunia taco. It’s a juicy, crunchy taco, with decent depth to its flavors considering its fast food status. However, it’s still a taco, which means it can be kinda gross at times. But, you eat it anyway, and you order three more. Because tacos are somehow great.

...What were we talking about again?

If it hasn’t been drilled into your head now by all the other Hyperdimension Neptunia reviews we have for your eyeballs, here’s the deal: Neptunia and her crew are anime personifications of game consoles, and in their world of Gamindustri, everything is videogame jokes. Everything. Sometimes it’s funny, sometimes it’s grating and sometimes it’s relevant, depending on which one you’re playing and what year it is.

This time, rather than the broadness of the whole game industry, Hyperdimension Neptunia U makes games journalism (hi!) the butt of the joke. With that, comes personifications of big Japanese game magazines Famitsu and Dengeki, who are working with the CPU goddesses to write a ton of awesome stories. To get material, the Gamindustri journalists send the CPUs on a bunch of missions, in which they kill scores of enemies in dungeons.

Also, for the sake of ratings, the CPUs’ clothing inexplicably gets ripped to shreds during battle. If you're into this sort of fan service you'll have a blast. If it offends you, you will have issues with this game. 

That brings us to the core play. Neptunia U plays very similarly to a Dynasty Warriors title, with light and heavy attack buttons that can be mixed up for different combos. A special button lets you use certain over the top super moves, and this title brings in transformations to give the player a temporary boost in destructive power.

It plays almost as well as a Dynasty Warriors, but it doesn’t underestimate the Vita’s power and try to cram as much junk on the screen as possible. Instead, the waves of enemies are more contained in rooms, and the frame rate is wonderfully stable as a result. It almost never feels like there aren’t enough things to beat on, and everything runs so smoothly there isn’t much room for it to feel stale because the action is so fast and responsive. It’s pure fun, arcade beat ‘em up style.

In some ways, Neptunia U may feel light on content. Tons of missions are available, and the game encourages finishing most of them to advance the plot, but the goals seldom change. The exception here is a few challenge missions, which aim to frustrate the player by hiding the objective and immediately forcing a fail state if the player unwittingly deviates. It’s annoying and doesn’t add much, other than reluctance to bother.

What is cool is many missions have required CPUs, so the player is sort of bottlenecked into trying everyone out. It seems arbitrary at first, but the characters are surprisingly distinct, so being directed to mix up your play style as often as this game does ends up feeling like a bonus after a while.

If you aren’t sick of the Dynasty Warriors style yet (you really shouldn’t be, but 2014 was a bit crowded), Hyperdimension Neptunia U is pretty solid for a non-Omega Force handheld spinoff of a weird JRPG series. That’s a mouthful, but it’s true. And the Senran Kagura team can make a pretty slick action game. You just might want to know what you’re getting into before you start.

Hint: Taking lower level characters into tougher dungeons with a stronger character can really boost them up, as long as you’re really careful about switching. They heal when not in use!

by Lucas White