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Compiled Heart has once again graced the world with another spinoff game in their Hyperdimension Neptunia franchise. While mainline titles in this long-running JRPG series have slowed down in recent years, the Neptunia girls have been branching out as they’ve starred in nearly every genre under the sun with their myriad of spinoffs. This latest title, Neptunia Riders vs Dogoos, sees the main Neptunia girls riding motorbikes and trying to collect slimy dogoos throughout various stages. Is this title worth your time? Or should Neptunia fans wait until the next spinoff? Let’s dissect the game and come to a conclusion ourselves!
The gameplay of Neptunia Riders vs Dogoos has the player and an AI-controlled ally drive around stages on motorbikes to collect 100 dogoos on the ground before their opponents. Aside from basic driving mechanics like drifting, the player can attack opponents with physical and ranged attacks to steal any dogoos they have collected.
This of course leads to a fun and hectic gameplay loop as the player keeps their eyes on their dogoos counter and boosts toward opponents to slap whatever slimes they have collected out of their hands. This gameplay loop is further complemented by various fun gimmicks spread throughout the game’s stages.
While the gameplay is fun, it would be remiss of me not to mention some of the clunking gameplay mechanics, notably the ability to launch negative dogoos which give you bad status effects from yourself to your opponents. Because this mechanic must be charged with the ranged attack button but cannot be charged while moving too quickly, it feels next to impossible to actually hit an opponent with it unless you waste time that could be better spent actually gathering dogoos for your own team.
Each stage in Neptunia Riders vs. Dogoos features several different Dogoos to collect, each with unique abilities, such as allowing the player to guide short distances or shrink to pass through small gaps. These power-ups are very appreciated as they keep each stage from feeling identical as the player races around. However, the game is never truly able to take full advantage of them due to its biggest flaw: the short length.
Neptunia Riders vs Dogoos is a very short game, even with cutscenes the game only totals three hours in length, slightly longer if the player tries to complete each stage’s time trial challenge. Because each stage, of which there are only 15, takes at most 3 minutes to clear it feels like the game ends before it ever truly begins.
The game also features a time trial mode where players can attempt to complete each stage within a short amount of time to add an extra reward to the shop, this helps adds some extra game time to the title but not really enough to give it the flavor it truly needs.
Perhaps if each stage lasted longer or if there were more of them to allow the developers to experiment more with each dogoo’s gimmick, then the game could have been truly special. As things stand though, what we have here is some fun gameplay without any substantial level design.
While the appeal of the game is naturally to see the cast of Hyperdimension Neptunia riding around in motorbikes, fans of characters other than the main goddesses won’t have much to look forward to in this title. As characters like the little sisters, Compa, and If are nowhere to be seen in this game.
Aside from the main story mode and stages, Neptunia vs Dogoos features a shop menu full of accessories to dress the few playable characters up in. While this feature is nice, in practice there isn’t much use for it as its near impossible to see these accessories during actual gameplay. Making them less a fun thing to wear and more pure bragging rights for beating a specific time trial.
Perhaps foreseeing this complaint, the developers included a photo mode option on the game’s title screen for players to play around with. Like many other aspects of the game though, there isn’t much to play around with here.
Every aspect of Neptunia Riders vs Dogoos feels too short, lacking in content, or just not well-planned. It’s hard to imagine even the most diehard of Hyperdimension Neptunia fans being satisfied with the title, especially when there are plenty of other Neptunia spinoffs they could be playing instead.
Overall, while the base gameplay of Neptunia Riders vs Dogoos is fine, the short length of the game and lack of depth makes it hard to recommend at its current $40 price tag. Fans of the Neptunia franchise who are craving a new title would be better off picking up 2023’s Neptunia Game Maker RE:volution if they can. Plus, that game has Ram which makes it instantly great.
Neptunia Riders vs Dogoos
Bottom Line
While the initial gameplay loop of Neptunia Riders vs Dogoos is fun enough, the lack of content and depth make it hard to recommend to fans until it goes on sale.
