After 11 years since the last Japanese release, the Neptunia series finally has a new game that continues the story. After too many low and average quality spinoffs (with some good outliers), the series is finally back on track. The game is called something impossible to comprehend in English as usual, “Chou Shin Jikuu Game Neptune: Unlimited”. I won’t translate this and instead call it “Neptunia Unlimited” for the sake of brevity.

Instead of being a ‘reaction’ post, where I watch the trailer they posted on 2026/03/19 9PM JST and comment on it, this is more of a westerner style of post that I’m sure that most people can relate and perhaps agree. If you disagree, that’s fine too, it’s okay to be wrong, you’ll live and so will I.

Disclaimer: I’m not the best gamer in the world, nor I’ll claim to be. And while I am a fan of this franchise, I’ve also invested into making the new independent Neptunia Wiki so you might think I’m a little biased for having invested something personal on it. I can assure you that is not the case.

A Japanese Game Made for Japanese People, And That’s It

One of the trademarks of the Neptunia franchise is that it’s primarily made for its home market and anything else feels like a bonus. Other japanese companies used to be like that too, like Spike Chunsoft and Atlus, but after they made games for other markets and were successful due to their quality, they are slowly changing that.

Danganronpa 2×2, coming out this year too, has already posted a video with English Voice Cast (where everyone from a decade ago is reprising their roles, several of them are also in Neptunia in English). Atlus after being bought by Sega became a global company where they actually push releases at the same time globally, and with dual audio. It was slow, yes, but we got there, no more waiting 6 to 8 months to play a game that everyone wanted. Platform exclusivity be damned, I just want to play your game.

Yet… Neptunia Unlimited is only gonna be available first in Japan, with no specified date for an English release, with audio or not. You’d think they had enough time to know that this sort of thing doesn’t really fly anymore and yet, here we are. It definitely feels like we’re still in 2000s, but it shouldn’t be. It sucks if I’m honest.

Everything Is Fine?

After a long time waiting, they decided to release the trailer, and last year, on the 15th Anniversary, they showed a bunch of things, almost nothing related to the game itself. Sure, merchandise and the like is always good, but it alone can’t do much. It needs to be backed up by something else, like a game.

And since the game is for the Japanese folks first, I assume they are completely okay with this amount of waiting. Not to say that I’m impatient, I’ve been waiting for GTA6, for HL2 EP3 (that never came), and waited for other cool games that did come out after a long time. But there’s this weird thing where they pretend that we had a game that continues the story just a few years ago, which isn’t the case.

At the very least, the game is coming out this year in Japan, and it’ll be multiplatform, meaning you can just play it on console when it launches, instead of making us wait for ports several years later, so we know what to expect.

Expected Changes

The game is introducing new Goddess characters, as it is expected. Anyone that has played this franchise knows that they make secondary characters to go along with the plot when desired. That was the case for the CPU Candidates, for the Ultradimension CPUs, for the ZeroDimension CPU and villain, for the Sisters vs Sisters CPU Candidate and so on. This means that a new cast for a new era is not surprising and I believe that this is the best approach.

Compile Heart and Idea Factory caused issues for themselves by making characters named after companies, because if they want to use them again, they most certainly need to ask for permission, because that’s how it works, even if Japan is a bit more laxed about it. This is probably why we had the “letter-Sha” characters, because they can be used again, and have done so with Game Maker R:Evolution, without explicit permission.

This is an expected change as the company tries to figure out what is best for them and perhaps even more, what is possible to not cause issues. Gust and Nisa (NIS America) are never coming back because of licensing and other corporate issues, but it doesn’t stop them from making legally distinct versions of said characters. They didn’t do this because they didn’t want to do this.

Another expected change is the character design. The main artist, Tsunako, has improved her work to the point that it’s absolutely clean (and possibly one of the reasons why people played games in this franchise and others like Date a Live), but since this is a completely new era, it needs new designs. I’ll be honest for a moment, I never liked the NEXT Forms, introduced 10 years ago with Megadimension Neptunia VII, they all look over-designed. The new versions are much better, looking better and more simple in comparison.

Some might say that the characters are no longer ‘sexy’ or ‘fanservicey’ because of platform demands and other stupid shit that people say. It’s very possible to make a sexy character without showing skin. Mythra from Xenoblade Chronicles 2 got ‘censored’ in Smash Bros for Wii U/Switch and that only made her hotter. The new designs for Neptunia look both better and hotter for the superpowered versions (HDD) and look both cute and tasteful for their human forms. It’s not difficult to do better designs, people. So what the character isn’t showing as much skin as before? They can still look great and be sexy, it’s not a mutually exclusive thing.

What’s The Next Step?

Okay, we’re getting a new game, mainline too. What happens after that? Are we gonna get another decade of pointless spinoffs that are gonna be for experimentation? Are we gonna see old characters getting redesigns and their own focused game? Is the series finally taking a break from making a game per year (in Japan) since 2017? Are we getting new merch for characters that eventually became fan favorites, despite being hated on release?

There are too much questions that my ‘westerner’ brain can’t answer, and this company doesn’t really care about them. Most likely, they’ll see what people outside of Japan post with and don’t really do anything because if that was the case, they would have made a mainline game much earlier.

But since they don’t really care about outside of Japan, hopefully if the sales are better outside of Japan, they might look into international waters with a bit more care. Which comes to my final point…

Cater to Your Fans by Being Yourself

There’s something unique about any franchise, and that some suits don’t really understand: You do your own thing, and people will like you for that reason.

Capcom tried to get the TPS people with Resident Evil 6 (released in 2012) and it failed miserably. Sales figures for the game were 15 million units in September 2025, which is impressive, until you realize that it took them 13 years and ports for every system under the sun, plus discounts and reduced prices to get to that figure. Resident Evil Requiem was released in February 2026 and only 4 weeks later, it sold 6 million units. It’s a much better game, obviously, and the sales figures show it. Capcom took a lesson to heart, people play Resident Evil because nothing else plays like it, story or gameplay wise.

There’s a lot to learn with everything, good and bad, and this is one of the things that I really really wish it happened to Compile Heart. I don’t want them to cater to the ‘dirty westerners’ by reducing fanservice or whatever some people say, I just want them to make their game available for more people at launch, so we can all play it together. My money is not the same as the Japanese yen, but it’s still money, and you’d be a fool to deny it this way.

I don’t want them to compromise their vision for their games, only that they make sure they understand that others also play their games for what they are, so instead of excluding them, embrace them. They wouldn’t be here if it wasn’t for what you did right (and wrong most times). There are people that will defend that piece of shit Neptunia: Riders vs Doogos and it’s dumb 40 USD (!!!) international price tag, because (probably they don’t know any better) they do give a shit about the series. So why isn’t the company caring about these people? Again, just make it available to everyone at launch, instead this staged rollout kills interest.

Closing Words

I like this franchise but I can only tolerate so much jank thrown my way. And believe me, I love me some jank. I love NFS ProStreet. I love Mass Effect 1. I love older games that also come with their issues. Nothing is perfect and I’m not looking for perfection.

What I look for is a good time. Life is already too hard to cope, so having a little escape is always good, because it keeps you (mostly) sane. And if I was gonna be a Neptunia only fan, I’d probably have died of hunger, because my god(desses), there’s so much mistakes and misfiring here. I wish I was this mismanaged because they still get some success despite making the crappiest shit you can imagine.

And while this franchise is definitely interesting, I think its heyday came and went, so this could be a new fresh start, not a soft reboot but a new era for the franchise. I just wished they would invite the intentional fans along for the ride instead of making us wait for it.