The strengths of this game lie in the character dialog, which can be a bit long-winded at times but also very funny, and then exploring the 2D environments. Some of the areas have a bit of platforming action, or puzzles which involve getting to a hard-to-reach place or collecting items within a specified time limit. NPCs generally don't have much to say, especially if you already completed their quest. Some of them will just say "..." The battle system is a strange one. When Neptune is alone, you'll trade blows with the enemy and maybe use an item on occasion. It's fairly ordinary, if simplistic. But when you get additional party members you'll be able to learn a variety of elemental attacks. Combine that with some key abilities (like HP regeneration) and pretty soon you become overpowered and can button-mash your way through every battle, including bosses. Setting up your formations/actions outside of battle is what is important, unfortunately these get reset to defaults when characters leave and re-enter your party so you'll need to re-configure everything several times throughout the game. On a side note, I had to enter the game settings on every launch and turn gamepad/controller support on, and then back off, for it to really be off (because I wanted to use joy2key instead).
In a nutshell, if you imagine what the JP Sega Saturn game Tactics Ogre might look like if it were remade by the developers of Hyperdimension Neptunia, you'd have this game. It has some elements that seem bizarre, and some that can be frustrating, but on the bright side it gives the player a lot of choices in how to build their party, grow character stats, configure skill lists, and so on. If you like micromanagement and customizability, it's there, but you can also opt-out to a large extent. The battle system is reminiscent of chess, where the placement of units is heavily emphasized, and it's required to think ahead several moves to ensure that you don't put yourself in a bind. Characters can be revived if they die, so there's no need to aim for perfection. While each round has a separate movement and action phase, units move around during the action phase as a side effect of linked attacks. This can be taken advantage of in order to avoid enemy attacks, expand your own attack range, or setup area attacks that can hit multple targets. Enemies can be captured and added to the player's party, and rare items may be obtained by stealing them during battle or by doing huge extra damage to defeated enemies. There are also prizes to be earned by meeting other conditions (eg. 50 hits in a combo, dealing 10k damage, defeating 10 of a certain enemy, etc.). These things aren't required to advance the game. The game has several difficulty levels, and when I purchased this on GOG it included the extra areas and loot from the "DLC." When beginning a new game it's possible to choose which extra loot you want. Some of it will make you insanely powerful for the early part of the game (hence I declined nearly all of it when I played) but it's a crutch that can be leaned on for those who are staunchly opposed to grinding.
