When it’s girls joking about boob sizes, bathing together, and using a lot of words to say “we need to go here next,” Kojima-length story sequences mean that there’s room for the script to have a hard edit. Hideo Kojima gets away with 20-minute (and much longer) cut scenes because his work is loaded with meaning. It’s an enjoyable enough plot for contriving up reasons why Asuka and Neptune are suddenly BFFs, even if it is overlong in the execution dialogue sequences. What minimal plot twists and turns exist in the game don’t exactly make any of it more profound than this, but it’s enough of a context to justify all the fourth-wall breaking “clever” little nods thrown into the script. In keeping with the Hyperdimension tradition, all of this is a very thinly-veiled allegory, with the invader ninjas representing western game development, and the very Japanese characters needing to get together to repel the invaders and avoid losing their “share crystals” (representing, you guessed it, market share). While previously at war, all the girls from the various factions put aside their differences to take on this hostile power. The world that the various denizens of Hyperdimension Neptunia and Senran Kagura occupy has been invaded by a hostile, robot-powered army that practice the “Headshot” style of martial arts. What matters is that the development teams got the important bits right within their limited budgets, and made something really pretty into the bargain. Taken in that context, the little issues dissipate. It’s certainly not the best game I’ve played this year, but it’s also a fun and frivolous little experience that knows its limits, doesn’t outstay its welcome, and is wildly entertaining while it lasts. It’s not perfect by any means, and it’s not the best Neptunia game.
It happens almost every time.Īnyhow, that aside, I did really enjoy Ninja Wars. And then, because I will be an outlier and give it a good score, a bunch of people for whom this game was never made for will float on into the comments section here to yell at me for the ten seconds it takes to ban them because I scored it above one game or another that they did like. These are all things that generally deliver a game a sour Metacritic score.
The developers aren’t making any great point about anything in Ninja Wars, let alone making a point of the big-breasted women that, for reasons, decide to meditate while straddling a giant peach. It is, after all, a cut-price action JRPG/brawler, with fan service that’s there purely for aesthetic and comic purposes. I already know the way that this game is going to go across the broad media landscape. Related reading: Also released this year is a remake of the original Hyperdimension Neptunia on PlayStation 5.
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