Hello gentle readers, and welcome to the SwitchArcade Round-Up for May 21st, 2024. In today’s thrilling Tuesday edition, we’ve got a couple more reviews for you to enjoy. I take a look at Neptunia Game Maker R:Evolution first, then head into some very strange waters to give you my thoughts on PO’ed: Definitive Edition. After that, we’ve got a few new releases to check out, and then the usual lists of new sales and expiring discounts. Let’s get to work!
Reviews & Mini-Views
Neptunia Game Maker R:Evolution ($49.99)
Some games are more enjoyable than they really should be, and that’s where I’m at with Neptunia Game Maker R:Evolution. It’s a mediocre action-RPG with some tepid management sim elements fused into it, all wrapped up with the usual Neptunia writing and meta-humor. The story this time around sees Nep becoming the president of a game maker, leading a motley crew of “Failed” Goddesses named Reedio, Jagaa, and Pipih. Jagaa is always going on about “doing the math” or something. They need to increase their Share to get their strength back, but as if the game business weren’t hard enough, they also have to deal with F-Sha, who is trying to eliminate the Failed Goddesses and their cursed game. Something like that. It’s all a lot of silly nonsense, as usual.
The combat is as basic as it gets, with a couple of buttons dedicated to strikes, one for magic attacks, and the ability to swap between your different characters on the fly. By doing this at the right time, you can chain attacks and perform powerful team moves. That’s really all there is to it, and if you’ve played any of the prior action-RPGs in the Neptunia franchise it’s probably sounding very familiar. You’ll explore dungeons, and they feel as budget as they probably are. You’ll also have to manage your company, which amounts to upgrading some things now and then and picking what kind of games you want to make.
So yes, nothing very fancy here. Quite normal by the recent standards of the Neptunia series, and very much a game that is satisfied to preach to the choir. If you’re in that choir, come and get it. This is a good port of the game. If you’re not, nothing here is going to change your mind. I don’t mind playing Neptunia games here and there, and I’m well past expecting them to make any real ambitious strides. And that’s a good thing, because that certainly isn’t happening in this game.
Idea Factory and Compile Heart have a little lemonade stand that works for them here, and I’m not going to knock them for it. Neptunia Game Maker R:Evolution is yet another Neptunia game, and it doesn’t have much going on that we didn’t see in the last couple of action-RPGs in the series. The story is amusing if you’re into meta-humor, and while the whole thing feels like it was made on a meager budget, it’s fine for what it is. This Switch version is more solid than some of the other Neptunia ports on the platform, so if you’re a Neptunia fan looking to take th