Re;Birth 3 is an abosolute trash fire and I love it.

So, after about two weeks, 100+ hours and a lot of fanservice, I've finished the Re;Birth trilogy of the Neptunia franchise. There's Victory 2 left and I'll get on that Soon^TM, but if I ever write that god-forsaken crossover fic, it will end there unless Victory 2 proves interesting enough.

Alright, down to the nitty gritty. Spoilers abound for Re:birth MK3, I ain't holding back. Go play it, it's fun. But like, play the first one or something first. We good? Awesome sauce.

So, Victory changed a lot of mechanics with the battle system. One the one hand, you no longer have to farm mobs every time you leave a dungeon to fill up your EXE bar to spam your EXEs. That's because your EXE bar is now tied into your SP bar directly and is charged via the same method as the old EXE bar.

Needless to say, this is interesting. On the one hand, you don't have to piss around for half the game waiting for your EXE bar to go to 4 so you can nuke things. On the other hand, this makes spell use a considerably tighter affair, since if you spam them too much, you can't use your EX combos OR your EXE skills.

I assume this was because the late game in the first two games was quite literally rush attack spam then exe spam. It got quite repetitive.

Also they nerfed Combo Link to be a level 3 ex combo rather than a level 1. On the one hand, Combo Link was hilariously broken, since you could charge your EXE bar in like a turn with enough of a combo, since it's based on amount of hits and not damage (The entire reason why Rush attacks exist, other than to provide a third method of whacking things.) on the other, I loved abusing it, so it makes me sad. It's still really good on Neptune and Blanc the Tanc though.

Moving on from the combat, the story is quite significantly different (Remember that spoiler warning?) with a bunch of new characters on both sides of the spectrum that end up all standing out in their own ways. Whether it's Pluta the sadist who is somehow on your team, Copypaste the EXTREMELY LOUD, Anonydeath the Extremely Gay, Arfoire the Butt-Monkey (Fallen from grace as the Big Bad in the first two games, reduced to transforming into a giant eggplant to fight Neptune... I'm fuckin' serious.) or Mr. Badd, who turns from devious traitor to seemingly insane monster fetishist to a caring father of mutated children. Like out of the Seven Sages, I was actively rooting for Mr. Badd by the final fight against him and I was so glad he could retire to spend time with his daughters. (They get cured in the True Ending too!)

In terms of returning characters, Neptune is as Pinkie Pie as ever with her meta-humor, Nepgear is the biggest butt-monkey of them all which is sad to see from such a previously confident if shy protagonist, but that's what you get FOR DOING THE FUCKING CONQUEST ENDING YOU CUNT.

Ahem. The Ultradimension versions (Oh right, Neptune gets sucked into an alternate universe version of Gameindustri. Key plot point.) are fun and I like their redesigns, but I miss Blanc's pure white attire. I dunno, I just found it more charming. Luckily you get a nice shrine maiden-esque blue outfit for her soon after recruiting her, so it's kinda similar.

Gameplay wise, they're all the same. There's some new EXE skills with Neptune and the two new CPUs (Plutia and Peashy) but honestly, they already took too much effort with the old system. Now they require BOTH party members (Or all 3/4 if you're using one of the bigger skills) to have the appropriate SP to pull it off. This is very irritating to deal with in boss fights, when you're already balancing your SP, damage, health and the enemy's guard, so I just never bothered with it when possible and stuck to the more standard ones...

When I could, anyway. Ya see, this game introduced "Challenges", that give you bonuses like Plans, stat boosts and general fun stuff like that for accomplishing various tasks. From using skills to tanking damage to being healed, there's a lot of challenges. One of these is "Use 100 Skills".

Your solo EXEs are locked behind that. And this game in particular has a LOT of DLC characters. The main game has 10, 3 of which are unlocked right before the final dungeon. IN THE TRUE ENDING. The other 18 are DLC characters, including IF and Compa, two mainstays in the previous two games (As in, they join your party super early on.) along with every other obtainable character in the other two games. (Not counting the Hyperdimension versions of Vert, Blanc and Noire, as their Ultradimension counterparts play exactly the same.)

Keep in mind that at most, you have 4 slots in your party, with four back slots for backup party members. Combine this with the excessive need for Coupling based EXEs (unless you want to spend an hour with each character repeatedly spamming skills) and you probably see the DLC characters as more of a nuisance than an actual help. Oh and their weapons are fucking absurdly priced for when you can acquire them too. Combine this with an astonishing lack of Credits even when you have Credits Up on at all times*, and you're left with a pretty frustrating experience of feeling massively underpowered, even when you're in your literal physical goddess form.

*Pro tip, never hit hidden blocks while Dungeon Change is on. I swear to god, if you somehow hit a block that has a Plan in it, you will NOT get it and as it's only programmed to be retrieved once, if you miss it then, you're fucked and have to get it on your next playthrough or reload to before you hit it. Thankfully none of these plans are required, but Jumping Star is a great utility and required for some optional dungeons and can be easily missed and Item Drops are good for farming cash with, along with being useful IN GENERAL in a game where there's no inventory limit.

So, I liked some of the changes to the battle system, despised others and generally have mixed feelings towards the game. So why the fuck do I like it so much?

No I'm serious, despite the annoyances with crashes after boss fights (Because the game went past 2gb of memory and just freaks the fuck out like that. Thank god you can patch it.), questionable gameplay changes, either a lack of or overabundance of characters and a general feeling of being overwhelmed, why do I still recommend this game?

This is probably the shallowest reason I can give, but the humour is top notch. Every single character had one moment that left me in stitches. At least, all the major ones. For all the flaws that I've complained about with the gameplay or whatever, I thought the writing was as good as ever, if not even better. Simple fact is that these games have a fantastic world filled with hilarious characters.

It's a petty reason, but if I wanted to quit, I would have quit during Chapter 2 of the first game. Nothing is as bad as the end of Chapter 2 in the first game. I'm serious, I got through that and I could tolerate anything else this had to throw at me. It's why I bothered to get the True Ending in this game, after all.

(Not that it was particularly hard. Yes, you have to unlock a bunch of random dungeons to go see some memories for some arbitrary reason, but that's much easier than manipulating shares by farming quests for 2 hours.)

So yeah.

I like trash.