Before I talk about the good and the bad about this game, let me start with the most critical bad thing first since I think this is really important to know, so don't just go swiping your wallet all willy-nilly without all the care in the world! Whether you are lucky throughout your entire game or not, there is a chance that your save will disappear. Now this doesn't mean that your save file is corrupted or that it's actually gone, in fact it's still there but it's just... blank.

Your save is stored in a SAV. file that you can open via notepad and you can find this by hold-pressing Windows+R respectively, and typing in %localappdata%. In the Local folder, you can find the file named CyberdimensionNeptunia4GoddessesOnline, where there is the "Saved" folder and "SaveGames" folder. The file that steam uses to read your save is the SaveData(#), where # corresponds to the number in where you placed your save in the actual game. Since it's blank, steam cannot verify the integrity of this file. Should this ever occur to you... there is no way you can recover this save. For this sole reason, I do not recommend this game. Is it a good game still regardless? And the answer is... yes!

With that out of the way, let's talk about the good stuff!

The game 4GO is one of the Neptunia series' popular spinoffs and takes a single-player action RPG, open-world, fantasy theme styled approach that is different from the usual turn-based Neptunia games. Each character has their own unique set of skills, with some characters that are valuable to have in a team (e.g. Vert, Blanc, Neptune).

In the game, you are able to set a team of 4. Every character can hold up to 8 skills, 4 on each sets (2 sets total) that you can set up, and you can swap to and play one of the 12 playable characters during a battle. Every character can animation cancel, dash in and out of attacks, block attacks, parry attacks, and even perform air attacks. This feature makes certain characters kind of... broken (in a good way). As far as I've know of based on my research, Purple Heart is the strongest DPS with animation cancels, capable of soloing bosses. She can dish out millions of damage in mere seconds. I don't have enough experience on most characters on the game, but I also don't think you can go wrong playing her. Just give her Raging Waves + Consecutive Gem and you should be good to go. If you want a simpler DPS, then Uni is an excellent start. I suggest giving her Faith Gem, since a large portion of her damage comes from her ult. Because she's a ranged character, she's easy to use. Blanc can provide her team debuff cleanse, ATK up, DEF up, and heals that heal 100% of max HP. Theoretically she is the best support in paper, but in practice she dies too easily. Vert compared to the former two provides a nice middle ground, being able to provide the team heals while also buffing the team with ATK and DEF and giving her teammates element infusion, giving you that nice boost of damage against enemies with specific weaknesses. Neptune is her own unique mess and the complete opposite of Vert, having less support capabilities in exchange for more DPS. Generally, a good team should at least consist of Vert and Neptune.

The game's combat is surprisingly fun and cool, that's if you're not just brute forcing the game with button mashing. LT and RT buttons give you some room for creativity on your attack strings, and if you do this flawlessly, can help you win a fight unscathed. Hitting LT + LS can let you do fun tricks in combat. You can also block mid air! That's something I usually don't see from games that isn't Devil May Cry, so it's nice to see that feature here. Each character also has a close-up animated ultimate.

There are multiple ways to improve your character. One of them is through weapons, which can boost your physical DMG or magic DMG. Another one is through gear, making your characters extra durable. There is also the gem system, where your character can hold up to 3 gems at once, each with their own unique buffs. I recommend you do research on this stuff, since gems can feel quite expensive in the early game. That way you can plan ahead on what gems you want to give your characters.

As you play the game, items that boost certain stats can be dropped. Make sure to look out for that and check your inventory. Try to not spread your resources too thin and focus it on maxing out one character.

This game has its own new set of dungeons that other neptunia games do not have. This makes the overall feel of the game more refreshing, with new soundtracks and even new enemies.

There are plenty of other stuff I have not mentioned, like familiar faces, and even new friends. Did I mention there are also outfits? Noire looks pretty good in almost all of them.

Now, the bad stuff.

Every game has to have it's bugs, and to no one's surprise, this one is no exception. One of the common bugs that you will likely encounter is suddenly getting stuck to the floor. During a boss fight, this can be quite annoying. This is not a problem for ranged characters as they can just stay up in the air. But if you're using a melee character, you might be in for a bad time.

As you enter the game, you cannot change the game's settings without finishing the introduction. Now this isn't particularly too long, but it could serve as a minor inconvenience should you wish to lower the graphics. Speaking of graphics, that brings us to...

Despite the game's simple atmosphere and looks, the optimization for the game is quite poor. Loading times are way too long, and the some specific maps are too heavy.

See above.

The camera can take a little bit of getting used to, and to some extent is annoying to deal with.

The AI of this game struggle to perform independently, and in dire cases may end up forcing you to play a support role. They can get stuck, and do terrible on what the team needs (such as heals). In many cases they will follow you instead of addressing these concerns.

The cut-scenes of this game are unskippable. Unlike the other neptunia games, there are no instant skips for dialogues but only real-time skips. It's better than nothing, but still an inconvenience nonetheless. If you have happened to lose against a boss then you may have to sit through the entire thing and do it all over again. This also means that crashes are a no-no, and is a worse bite than dying in a dungeon since you would have to sit through the absurdly long loading screen. There are no save points while you are in dungeons, and have to manually save your game in the Cathedral. The game is horrible to play with KBM (keyboard and mouse), so I suggest getting a controller (if you're a long time neptunia fan then you may have this part covered already).


And that's that! Whether or not you want to buy this game is entirely up to you!

If you do want to buy it though, just wait for it to go on sale. It may be one of the best games the neptunia series has to offer, but it's not worth your 30$.

Did you read through it all? Probably not. But since you're here, here's a video of Neptune nepping too hard.