You might have heard of or played the other Hyperdimension Neptunia games before, but I would bet that they did not prepare you for the challenge in Hypderdimension Neptunia: Producing Perfection. While the previous games were RPGs, Producing Perfection is a simulation game where you need to turn the gals into pop idols.

If you’ve seen them before, you will probably recognize the "CPUs," Neptune, Noire, Blanc, and Vert in both their normal form and their "Hard Drive Divinity" forms (HDD). For most of the game, they prefer to stay in their normal form with their normal clothes. In their HDD forms, they wear significantly less. It’s like their sexy form. The more you play, the more new items you will unlock for them to wear, so you will be able to customize their appearance as you wish.

I love the fact that the voices are in English with on-screen text. You will need to read the text for a lot of the game as your character does not speak, but it is nice to be able to listen to the CPUs and actually understand what they are saying. Of course, if you want to hear it all in Japanese, you can choose that as an option. I do feel there is a lack of song choices to have them perform. I would have liked more than the few songs, but then since you’re supposed to make them a star, it does make sense to stick with one song until you make it popular. I just got a bit bored of playing the same concerts.

Apparently there are some problems in the Gamindustri world. There are four planets, Planeptune, Lastation, Lowee, and Leanbox. Each CPU leads one of these planets because they have the most of that planet’s "shares" as voted on by the people. Usually these four are competing with each other for the planet’s shares, but recently a lot of pop groups have come together and won over the population with their music. The CPUs decide that the solution is to become pop idols themselves and win back control of their planets. To do so, they pull you out of the real world and into theirs to be their producer. You will be allowed to choose which of the four girls you will produce first when you start up Producer Mode.

Each CPU has a different personality, so you’re going to need to deal with them slightly differently. For each though, the daily routine is the same. The majority of the mornings, you will choose how your CPU will try and improve her popularity for the day. You can choose to Work, which then gives you the choice of four different options. You can choose Lessons, which then gives you five choices. You can also choose to put on a concert, if your stats are high enough. Some of these options can be done daily, but others take time to re-arm. Each choice will change her stats, but they can also raise her stress a little or a lot. To lower that stress, you can opt to Relax for the day, which then gives you 3 different options. Refreshing will lower the stress, but you will need to use Interaction a lot more than you think. You need to increase your friendship with the CPUs and the CPUs' friendship with each other, so Interaction is important. Anyway, make sure to keep your CPU's stress from getting too high. If it hits 100%, you lose. Make sure your CPU keeps her stress down, plays well with the other CPUs, and eventually you’ll win back the shares they need.

After you’ve unlocked some things in Producer Mode, you might want to play with the other modes. Unlimited Concert lets you continually put on shows. This can be a helpful way to work on getting the highest ratings you can during shows to help you in Producer Mode. Viewer lets you get up close and personal with all the idols that you have unlocked. The game considers the normal and the HDD version different idols. You will need to turn your PS Vita sideways and figure out the controls from there, which was a bit odd to me, but it does give you the closest view of your idols. Finally Config lets you change up game settings.

There isn’t an option to set the difficulty in Hyperdimension Neptunia: Producing Perfection, so you’re stuck with it as is. Personally, I found it a bit easy. You’re given 180 days to make your CPU a star. Even on your first run through before you figure out what you really need to be doing, I still don’t think you will have trouble winning. Granted, you might get bored before you do win, as it is quite repetitive.

The one thing that I did find a bit difficult was figuring out what would please the crowd the most during a concert. In the beginning, it was pretty easy to get an excellent show every time, but once the crowds got bigger, I couldn’t figure out just the right combination to make the crowds happy. I could get satisfactory, but not higher. Otherwise, it wasn’t very difficult to come up with the best things to do each day. I did find that when you want to relax, the 3 day vacations lower stress a lot, but it seemed like the day off lowered stress almost as much and gave you interactions. Once I skipped the 3 day vacations, I had more time to use.

Since you have all the time you want to make your decisions, it’s not hard to get the hang of the controls in most areas. You can use the touchscreen and the side buttons to make your choices, so use whichever is most comfortable for you. The one place that your timing matters is the concerts. You will need to listen to the cheers of the crowd and try to figure out when to trigger which stage effect and how to center the camera, zoom in/out, etc. and you need to do it with the correct timing to get the maximum effect. As I said, that’s the one thing that I had difficulty with, figuring out the timing during concerts. I had a habit of zooming in wrong and getting stuck at the wrong angle sometimes.

While I was really looking forward to playing Hyperdimension Neptunia: Producing Perfection, the experience didn’t quite live up to my expectations. Each day, I could choose one option and it felt like I fell into a rhythm of doing the same things as soon as the wait time was up. Things change a bit based on which CPU you decide to interact with and when, but it just didn’t feel like there was as much plot as I wanted or expected from a game that has traditionally been a full RPG. Hyperdimension Neptunia: Producing Perfection is an interesting simulation game, but unfortunately there’s just not enough to keep you going back for more.