by Stephen DeckAlso available on Windows
Review written by Stephen Deck; originally published 06/21/2021 on Teacher by Day, Gamer by Night
Neptunia Shooter is a short little bonus for Nep fans that was released on Steam in 2019 and then ported to PlayStation 5 as DLC for Neptunia ReVerse. What you see is what you get here; it’s a 2D pixel art bullet-hell shooter reminiscent of old school NES shooters. As such, it gets pretty hard.
The isn’t terribly long with only six stages. At the end of each stage is a boss; IF, Compa, the other three CPUs, and Arfoire as the final boss. The nice thing about the PS5 port is that you get a level select screen, so if you suck at this game as I do, you can just pick up where you lost once you get game over. The 8-bit-esque graphics and sprites look nice, and the sound design is decent, but you can definitely tell that this is a game that costs less than a fast food cheeseburger and started life as an April Fool’s joke.
Despite being short and extremely simple, Neptunia Shooter is fun. Each boss you beat except for the final boss adds that character to your roster, and you cycle between your characters each of whom has a different weapon. Neptune shoots to the right, IF shoots to the left, Compa shoots below, so on and so forth. It’s not what I’d call a good game, though. It’s a fun time waster especially if you’re a fan of the Neptunia series, but this is a game that would work far better for short burst play on Vita on Switch than on a console like Playstation 5 or a PC in my opinion because there’s just not much meat to it. In short bursts of like ten or fifteen minutes, though, there’s definitely some fun to be had.
