Neptunia Riders vs Dogoos

I have to give it to the Neptunia series, it's certainly not afraid to experiment. Starting life as a JRPG back in 2010, it made a splash largely thanks to its embracing of the -tan craze of the time, wherein a character would represent a console or technology. With the Tron-like costumes and attractive bevy of characters, it's managed to keep the games coming for 15 years, and now we have another new genre - the Katamari-esque Neptunia Riders vs Dogoos.

The Neptunia gals have become unnaturally obsessed with dogoos, which look like the Slimes from Dragon Quest. But with dog features. The bosses have buff human bods with a dogoo on top, which is disturbing for many reasons. Uzume has to free her friends from their dogoo stupor so that they can join the quest and catch 'em all!

The basic gameplay relies on you taking your player of choice (you'll unlock 6 in total) on their own motorbike into 15 dogoo-filled stages where you'll automatically attract dogoos to your ride (in Katamari style) and you must collect the most to win. To vary things up a bit, you can fire detrimental dogoos at your enemies to slow them down, while using positive dogoos to enhance your own performance. Between stages you can use the points earned to change your clothing and upgrade your bike. Rinse and repeat.

Customisation is fun, with some nice nods to the larger culture. *Cough* Akira. 

As is usual for a Neptunia outing, the game piles on the charm through its character interactions, general silliness and humorous dialogue. If you're already a fan of the series you'll no doubt enjoy seeing your favourite characters again. If this is your first foray into the series, you'll likely feel very lost indeed.

As for the gameplay itself, it's fun for a while. The arenas are large enough that you can build up some speed and get some enjoyment from the riding action - the problem is that it'll all be over in a matter of minutes, making every level feel like a tutorial rather than a full-fledged game. Despite this, it still feels repetitive, as regardless of the style or layout of each arena, you're just doing the same thing - the mechanics simply aren't deep enough to provide the variety you need to make the game a challenge to master. I often found that I'd win a level by ignoring everything else and just charging at as many dogoos as I could. I didn't need a strategy, I just needed to be the fastest and was rarely bothered by other players.

You'll often see little of your rider and just a jumble of dogoos...

I managed to complete all the main stages in around an hour, and as much fun as it is to customize the girls and their bikes, I never felt compelled to come back to it. At absolute best, this is a score-attack game that works very nicely on the Switch where you can dip in and out as you feel the urge. Sadly, that urge wasn't very strong.

In terms of presentation, this maintains the high-level of adorable, wacky charm that the series has become known for. It makes you feel happy to just see your old friends again, getting up to gonzo adventures and bantering beautifully. The gameplay is smooth enough, the graphics attractive, smooth and functional, but never particularly impressive, it all just feels a bit - and I hate to use the word - "mid". 

When this inevitably goes on sale, it might be worth picking up if you're a fan of the series, but at full price there just isn't enough gameplay here to warrant an investment, and that's a real shame as I think at its best, Neptunia can be incredibly entertaining. Kudos for the experiment, but this one needed more time in the lab.