playing neptunia vii hot off the heels of the rebirth trilogy highlights how terrible this game is. where do i even begin?

- i already had issues with rb1, mostly because of the absurd grind required. "oh but it's not that bad!" diehard fans would say. sure, i guess, if you know the game insides out and can tolerate wailing on punching bags just to get through the game because the difficulty curve is stupid then yeah i guess it's acceptable to you. still bad. what does this game do? triples down on it. awesome!

- the overworld sucks. random encounters are not why i played these games. on top of that, dungeons ♥♥♥♥ too now! unless i missed it, normal enemies dont respawn until you leave, and some of the dungeons here sprawl across several maps, making it incredibly tedious.

- add on top to that, symbol attacks ♥♥♥♥ to pull off. lost count of how many times i still got back attacked while mid swing at an enemy. awesome!

- the combo system. i appreciate trying to add layers to a game but it just sucks? especially early. oops sorry you changed weapons, it got stronger but you can't do the combo path anymore. very cool idea!

- you don't even heal on level up. please go back to town. alleviated by characters finally being able to heal out of combat (lol, 4 games in) but then you just chew through consumables. which sucks early. maybe it gets better later on. i do not care to find out.

- removed the basics that there were save points before bosses. awesome. love dying and wasting my time grinding and trekking back.

i think it's pretty awesome that, 4 games into a series that got progressively better even if it was never truly "great" (let's be honest, most people play these games for the characters, not the gameplay), they decided to just regress to something as equally bad as 1. stellar job compile heart.

if you intend to play these games i suggest you stop at rb3, it doesn't get better than that.

playing neptunia vii hot off the heels of the rebirth trilogy highlights how terrible this game is. where do i even begin? - i already had issues with rb1, mostly because of the absurd grind required. "oh but it's not that bad!" diehard fans would say. sure, i guess, if you know the game insides out and can tolerate wailing on punching bags just to get through the game because the difficulty curve is stupid then yeah i guess it's acceptable to you. still bad. what does this game do? triples down on it. awesome! - the overworld sucks. random encounters are not why i played these games. on top of that, dungeons suck too now! unless i missed it, normal enemies dont respawn until you leave, and some of the dungeons here sprawl across several maps, making it incredibly tedious. - add on top to that, symbol attacks suck to pull off. lost count of how many times i still got back attacked while mid swing at an enemy. awesome! - the combo system. i appreciate trying to add layers to a game but it just sucks? especially early. oops sorry you changed weapons, it got stronger but you can't do the combo path anymore. very cool idea! - you don't even heal on level up. please go back to town. alleviated by characters finally being able to heal out of combat (lol, 4 games in) but then you just chew through consumables. which sucks early. maybe it gets better later on. i do not care to find out. - removed the basics that there were save points before bosses. awesome. love dying and wasting my time grinding and trekking back. i think it's pretty awesome that, 4 games into a series that got progressively better even if it was never truly "great" (let's be honest, most people play these games for the characters, not the gameplay), they decided to just regress to something as equally bad as 1. stellar job compile heart. if you intend to play these games i suggest you stop at rb3, it doesn't get better than that.