Hyperdimension Neptunia: Producing Perfection is an idol management simulator spinoff developed in collaboration by Tamsoft and Compile Heart. While Compile Heart is responsible for the mainline Hyperdimension Neptunia games, Tamsoft is mostly known for their work on the Senran Kagura games.

Coming from this, both series are well known for their fanservice laden experiences, mostly showing off the breasts, buttocks, and overall majority of the ladies’ bodies without angering the censors. What I found in Producing Perfection was a unique game that didn’t rely solely on the tits or the asses, but rather the career and relationship building between idols and their producer.

The story is very simple, idols came into the world of Gamindustri and quickly got wildly popular, specifically a group named MOB48 (a literal parody of the real Japanese idol group AKB48). This normally wouldn’t be of significance to the CPU’s and their governance, but the rising popularity of the idols made the CPU’s themselves lose power, thus forcing them to become idols themselves.

It was a rather odd experience for me, as I went into the game thinking I would see heaving breasts flopping all over the place at every corner – but this wasn’t the case. I even picked Vert, the CPU of Leanbox, hoping to see some really ridiculous breast physics – but the only time you see anything remotely close to the veritable “fanservice” most people buy these games for, is in the concerts you can perform.

I’d say concerts make up a fraction of what the entire game is about – probably ten to twenty percent, unless I’m wildly overjudging the relationship and career building portions of the game. You see, when you first start out as the producer, you have to pick your first CPU (whether it be Neptune, Noire, Blanc, or Vert) and see to building her into a proper idol. This comes with a lot of learning.

I got through dozens of days focusing on power leveling Vert’s stats as much as I could, balancing out her stress levels with frequent time off and unwinding in the form of playing video games (her favorite hobby). After awhile, I started to wonder why my percentage of fans was not going up – I was stuck at a measly 25% percent of the shares in the game.

Your popularity in the game is measured in the form of shares, a new form of currency that the CPU’s previously never factored into their power in Gamindustri. The new idols came in, cleaned house, and gobbled up all of the shares, so naturally it’s up to you, the producer and your idol to gather up enough shares to beat the new idols.

This was also one of my gripes with the game, as the majority of your time in Producing Perfection is building up your idol’s stats and their relationships – but you’re never really told exactly -how- you’re supposed to become the #1 idol in all of Gamindustri. That’s literally the only core goal of the game – to become the number one idol at any cost, they just don’t tell you much at all.

By the time I realized that I absolutely had to go to other regions to study and perform concerts there, only to gain more popularity – I was already nearing the cutoff point in the game’s story, which is 180 days. After 180 days, if you don’t have enough shares, you get the bad ending.

I won’t go into spoilers here, but you can imagine how disappointing it would be to get the bad ending, especially after not knowing how to get around the 25% percent cap in shares that occurs if you stay in your own region for the entirety of the game. If you’re low enough in shares, one of the other CPU’s will even offer to make a duet, which led me to believe you could coax the other two into forming the quartet in the same way.

Despite the shortcomings of the game’s career and relationship building, I sincerely kept wanting to progress more with Vert to see what would happen next. There was a good amount of unique content for her to say and do until a good two thirds into the game’s core story – after that the fun, unique content stopped and the filler sadly came in to stay. This made me really sad as the majority of the content before was fun and rewarding to see; it made you feel like you were actually getting close to the CPU’s.

As far as the sound production goes, literally every bit of dialogue is spoken by the CPU’s, which can be both a blessing or a curse, depending on how into the girls of Hyperdimension you are. I played through a good portion of the game before realizing that you could toggle on the original Japanese voices, which naturally got me way too excited.

The English dub is ok, but it felt a bit weird hearing extremely fanservice-y lines of dialogue coming through an English voice. Call me weird, but I just didn’t dig hearing a woman say “Big Broooother” in English. The music is mostly just filler background and dialogue, unless we’re talking about the songs you can perform at the concerts. There are five in total, a number that will quickly make you sad as the concert songs are extremely fun and catchy.

The writing is very, very catering to the fans of the Hyperdimension games, but honestly I think even non-fans of the series can come into this game and have fun. I’m not a huge fan of the Neptunia series, and there were still enough jokes and such that even the casual to moderate gamers can get and have a good laugh at.

For example, with Vert being a big gamer, there was a time when she stayed up for a long time trying to kill a rare spawn in an MMORPG. After she passes out, you have the option to help her by taking over when the spawn finally appears – if you do, it can either make her upset or happy. There are lots of situations where common tropes from the Neptunia series or just games in general come into play, and they’re usually fun.

Now let’s move onto the visuals – Producing Perfection is essentially mostly 2D, the only 3D segments are the concerts right? This is one of the other gripes I have with the game, the environments for dialogue and such are just boring and plain. I understand that the focus of these portions are on the idols and the faceless producer, but it would have been nice to see more variety. Once you’ve done every type of training, work, and relation, you’ve literally seen the majority of environments, and they never change (unless you move to another region, but that quickly gets old fast too).

The idols themselves look wonderful, although the only times they change is when they go into their HDD form, which changes both their appearance and their personality (except for Vert, because reasons). When you take the idols out to a concert, however, you can completely customize their outfits, giving you the opportunity to swap out between four different types, providing for very unique outfits. My only issue with this is that these changes are only reflected in concerts, and never in the core of the game’s dialogue and such.

There aren’t that many locales that you can perform concerts within, but each one has a very unique theme and style going for it. Sometimes you can even spice things up with the various abilities you can toggle in each concert, one unleashing a stage gimmick, which varies from stage to stage. Again, the live concerts you can perform are the bread and butter of this game and ultimately the culmination of all your efforts as a producer, but there just isn’t enough.

Now I’ve only played through the game fully as Vert, but I did dabble a bit in a second playthrough as Neptune, and I was happy with the change up of dialogue and such. However, the main gripes I have with the game seem to be re-occurring here. By this I mean the repeated static backgrounds, the lack of unique dialogue after a certain point, and the lack of more songs to perform at concerts.

I think Hyperdimension Neptunia: Producing Perfection is a fun, rewarding idol management simulator that brings you that much closer to the goddesses of Hyperdimension Neptunia. I think if you’re looking for a fun idol simulator, you’ll have a good amount of time with this game, however it doesn’t really do anything different from other games within the genre.

Lastly, if you’re looking for serious fanservice (in the form of boobs or butts), you’re not going to get it here. Consider getting Hyperdimension Neptunia: Producing Perfection if you’re a fan of the main series, or idol simulators in general.

Hyperdimension Neptunia: Producing Perfection was reviewed using a code provided by NIS America. You can find additional information about Niche Gamer’s reviews/ethics policy here.