There’s a kind of poetic irony in remaking a game designed to poke fun at the game industry, considering all the remakes and reboots already flooding shelves. To both its credit and detriment, Re;Birth1 carries that identity struggle throughout.

Sometimes the in-jokes and references are spot on, while others fail to critique and instead repeat old mistakes. What could have been a new start for the series instead becomes a merely average role-playing game that just doesn’t fit together completely.

It’s lighthearted, and sports some fun, giant-anime-weapon battles, but its lack of challenge causes it to grow stale quickly.

The best part of the Hyperdimension Neptunia games is inarguably the concept: Four goddesses, each representing a different game system, are waging a “Console War” against one another in a cutesy, high-octane anime fashion.

Following this idea, Re;Birth1 is filled with meta, fourth wall-breaking humor, and a good bit of charming self-awareness. Pretty much every character and party member you encounter along the way fits into some sort of anime or gaming archetype — Neptune, who represents the fourth (imaginary) console, is the high-energy, childlike protagonist, while Iffy is a smart tsundere who can get quite flustered at times — and Re;Birth1 actually does a good job of balancing character versus caricature. That's about where "good balance" ends, however.

One cheeky addition along the same self-aware vein is the “remake” system, which changes aspects of dungeons like enemy difficulty and the types of items that appear. It’s good in theory , but in practice, it’s not all that fun to go through old dungeons again just to get new items. I didn’t think grinding was at all necessary, either, so “remaking” a dungeon to increase the challenge didn’t make a whole lot of sense.

Grinding is made unnecessary, by the way, due to the relative ease of combat. It’s of the basic turn-based, open-movement variety, and I found it functional, yet underwhelming.

The only strategy I really needed was to have my healer heal between attacks and kind of brute force my way through things, though a few harder fights were more satisfying. A partnering system that allows one party member to loan her battle perks to another while staying out of harm’s way adds another dimension to battle, but it’s not really necessary, and ultimately, it just made battles easier, not more exciting.

The story and dialogue both suffer from the same identity problems that permeate every other aspect of Re;Birth1, being simultaneously irritating and endearing at times. If a monster was clearly too hard for the area, I realized it before the characters sassily pointed it out, and I don’t need a dozen mentions of the word “tsundere” to realize which characters fit the archetype. Again, the ideas were there, but they were either too shallow or too frequent, rendering them moot. But I also found it adorable and loved playing as a group of dorky girls, at least for a while.

There’s a kind of poetic irony in remaking a game designed to poke fun at the game industry, considering all the remakes and reboots already flooding shelves. To both its credit and detriment, Re;Birth1 carries that identity struggle throughout. Sometimes the in-jokes and references are spot on, while others fail to critique and instead repeat old mistakes. What could have been a new start for the series instead becomes a merely average role-playing game that just doesn’t fit together completely. It’s lighthearted, and sports some fun, giant-anime-weapon battles, but its lack of challenge causes it to grow stale quickly. The best part of the Hyperdimension Neptunia games is inarguably the concept: Four goddesses, each representing a different game system, are waging a “Console War” against one another in a cutesy, high-octane anime fashion. Following this idea, Re;Birth1 is filled with meta, fourth wall-breaking humor, and a good bit of charming self-awareness. Pretty much every character and party member you encounter along the way fits into some sort of anime or gaming archetype — Neptune, who represents the fourth (imaginary) console, is the high-energy, childlike protagonist, while Iffy is a smart tsundere who can get quite flustered at times — and Re;Birth1 actually does a good job of balancing character versus caricature. That's about where "good balance" ends, however. One cheeky addition along the same self-aware vein is the “remake” system, which changes aspects of dungeons like enemy difficulty and the types of items that appear. It’s good in theory , but in practice, it’s not all that fun to go through old dungeons again just to get new items. I didn’t think grinding was at all necessary, either, so “remaking” a dungeon to increase the challenge didn’t make a whole lot of sense. Grinding is made unnecessary, by the way, due to the relative ease of combat. It’s of the basic turn-based, open-movement variety, and I found it functional, yet underwhelming. The only strategy I really needed was to have my healer heal between attacks and kind of brute force my way through things, though a few harder fights were more satisfying. A partnering system that allows one party member to loan her battle perks to another while staying out of harm’s way adds another dimension to battle, but it’s not really necessary, and ultimately, it just made battles easier, not more exciting. The story and dialogue both suffer from the same identity problems that permeate every other aspect of Re;Birth1, being simultaneously irritating and endearing at times. If a monster was clearly too hard for the area, I realized it before the characters sassily pointed it out, and I don’t need a dozen mentions of the word “tsundere” to realize which characters fit the archetype. Again, the ideas were there, but they were either too shallow or too frequent, rendering them moot. But I also found it adorable and loved playing as a group of dorky girls, at least for a while.