Neptunia Game Maker R:Evolution

As the resident Neptunia fan, I always look forward to the next game from Idea Factory.

- Andrew Duncan

I first got into the series when Megadimension Neptunia VII was new (the VII stands for “Victory 2”), and as a heck of a coincidence, the latest game is a continuation of that 2016 classic! Now, the series has hardly been stationary since then, in fact there has been a steady stream of games released, but they don’t all follow one story and are usually quite standalone. It’s a topic in a couple of them, including VII, but Neptunia is a multiverse, which allows for new and interesting ideas using familiar protagonists. Neptunia GameMaker R:Evolution, while not an entry in the main series, does follow the adventures of a character we met in VII.

R:Evolution sets its sights on a character known as Older Neptune (AKA Adult Neptune), who is a dimension-hopping bug collector. She comes from Ultra Dimension (the main games take place in Hyper Dimension) and travels with the aid of a pixie named Croire who she stuck in her bug book.

Croire is a mostly unwilling participant but is antagonistic, so I guess that makes it okay to use her powers for insect hunting. Anyway, Neptune arrives in a world where everyone develops games, and through shenanigans winds up agreeing to help three people out by becoming the President of game company Victory. From there, she’s embroiled in a conspiracy by a mysterious group to create clone games!

Her co-workers at Victory are named Pippih, Jagaa, and Reedio, and are collectively known as “the Failure Goddesses”. In the lore of Neptunia titles, the people in charge of nations are super powerful Goddesses, and said rulers are styled after consoles from the real world. For instance, Blanc is the Nintendo Wii, and her twin sisters are the Nintendo DS. Well, the Failure Goddesses are based on the Apple Pippin, Atari Jaguar, and the 3DO, even going as far as Jagaa constantly saying “Do the math”, the tagline used by Atari for the console.