SuperDimension Neptune vs Sega Hard Girls Guide

Superdimension Neptune vs Sega Hard Girls guide

This is a mostly complete guide for Superdimension Neptune vs Sega Hard Girls for PS Vita and PC.

I got sidetracked and it’s not quite as complete as I would like, but as always with my guides, feel free to leave any questions or comments in the Comments Section below and I’ll update. All info should be valid for both Playstation Vita and PC versions of Sega Hard Girls.

Welcome to SuperDimension Neptune vs Sega Hard Girls!

Missibles Warning

Yes, this game has missable Medals and Baseballs required for trophies. It’s not a big deal unless you’re aware of it, but be mindful. Specifically Panique Cave and floors 1 and 2 of Toyopolis need to be re-explored after certain events (adding the bridge in Megadrive Panique Cave and adding floors to Toyopolis).

Other than these, and the fact that a New Game Plus is required to perform certain actions (including the Delphinus trophy) this game is extremely light on missable content and very stress free!

Is it Good?

I’ll have a full review coming on this site soon. But it’s the best side game so far (almost as good as a Rebirth series game I would say), though it has some flaws. I’d recommend it for any fans of Neptunia or big fans of Sega Hard Girls for sure.

I have a playlist on Youtube with a nearly complete English playthrough already if you want some impressions and gameplay.

Updates

Guide Index

Return to the Neptunia Mega Guide, which links guides and info for all games.

SuperDimension Neptune Vs Sega Hard Girls Walkthrough

Prologue

This whole arc is unfailable and totally linear, just keep going to visit every Event! space and see what happens. You’ll literally be unable to screw anything up for a while other than losing a fight. It’s more or less the tutorial.

Ignore the countdown timers on the quests, the number advances one every quest you complete, and at this point it doesn’t matter in any way shape or form.

Arc 1

After you get your first new party members after IF and Segami you’re in Arc 1 and you’ve finally found the non-linear part of SuperDimension Neptune vs Sega Hard Girls. You’ll be able to explore the four eras, Mega Drive, Game Gear, Sega Saturn and Dreamcast.

The countdown timer matters more now, but trust me it’s really nothing to worry about.

Minor story/gameplay spoilers
Time will simply loop again like Majora’s Mask after the counter goes all the way down, but unlike Majora’s Mask you will lose zero progress at all and just continue right along. Any quests you failed will be open again.
Only thing to note is that if you stop each Era’s arc just after getting the “clone” for the Sega Hard Girl and the Neptunia Goddess, you’ll have just enough time to get all characters in Sega Hard Girls before the first loop! A nice goal but if you mess up it seriously doesn’t matter.

You’re done with Saturn era, I recommend Game Gear next as it requires no boss fights to get both characters. Mega Drive era gives you one character “free” and you fight a Magic focused boss before getting the other, so it’s next easiest. Dreamcast has a physical focused boss before you can collect either character.

A good route to take is Game Gear until you get both clones, Mega Drive until you get the first clone, then Dreamcast, as Dreamcast’s EXE skill is pretty strong for this point in Neptunia v Sega Hard Girls.

Like most Neptunia games, party experience is shared (but not split, everyone gets 100% XP payout) so getting all the characters early benefits you and keeps levels even.

Note that due to the non-linear nature of Superdimension and lack of “recommended level” listings, you’ll occasionally bump into enemies stronger than you might expect. Of particular note are Toyopolis and Afburner Lava Tube at this point in the game. When in doubt, save!

If boss fights give you trouble, remember to grind up Fever and SP before the fight, start with an all out Fever attack (use 3 characters’ turns then have the 4th activate fever), I usually have IF spend most of my Fever points. Try to have at least one character constantly defending just in case, ideally the Boss’s favorite target (you can’t intentionally draw aggro, so you just have to figure out who they like to hate).

If you’re certain of how much damage you can do to a boss with Fever, you can also try to save a Fever for when the boss’s HP is around half then hopefully KO them in one go with an all out Fever in an attempt to avoid Desperation Skills from bosses. Though honestly none of the bosses that gave me grief were notably harder with their Desperation Skills since they had powerful AOE even before them.

Don’t totally ignore side quests either, as they make the final boss easier, unlock Observation Level (adding more to the shop and more) and unlock even more side quests.

At the end of this arc, the game’s core gameplay will start to make more sense and questions will be answered. And more questions will appear.

Arc 2

This is arguably the hardest part, as you’re sorta limited by bosses at various points. Your biggest goal here for this era is to s

Story/gameplay spoilers
unlock the “real” versions of all 4 goddesses and all 4 Sega Hard Girls

If you have trouble with bosses, here’s an extremely high damage exploit you should be able to use by this arc (found by Walt the Dog).

The hardest era here is Sega Saturn, and the Game Gear era is basically without resistance so go there first. There’s major boss fights in Mega Drive and Dreamcast as well, if you want to avoid fights the Dreamcast fight comes earlier.

If Game Gear’s story quests don’t appear, try completing some Game Gear non-story quests first. Usually you don’t have to do any side quests to unlock main quests other than in the prologue arc, but I had to do a few to get Game Gear’s stuff to appear.

Just focus on side quests, exploring areas, reading Chirper events to unlock more items in the shop, formation grid things, plans and the like, progressing the story as you like. If you hit a roadblock don’t be afraid to reject the quest (almost all quests can be ditched at Histoire and just played on a later loop with zero penalties) and try a different story branch and come back to it later.

Arc 3

Once again you’ll be forced through Saturn Era first because of a certain whiny not-actually-protagonist. You’ll fight a boss here, but she’ll probably be easier than the first time you saw her anyway.

The only particularly hard part of this arc is the Mega Drive era fight, which is pretty much the hardest part of the game in fact! Be well prepared and take on all other story missions before Mega Drive.

 

WIP, more info later.

Endgame

Once you’ve completed all four Era’s segments, you can go back to Dreamcast Era and something’s a bit different. Segami will have a Chirper Event on the library screen now. Ignore her if you don’t want to go through the True Ending first.

In fact, even if you want the true ending, make sure you get the Normal Ending by accepting the Time Eater quest and beat it up. You can get the Normal Ending and still do another loop (without NG+) to go fetch the True Ending for two endings in one playthrough, now that’s efficiency!

Until you want to start NG+ and/or see the ending, just finish up quests. I strongly recommend finishing at least the Skill/Class/Class Cap unlocking tasks first before doing a new game plus, as this is your best chance to grind those. See #Lily_Rank and Breaking Class Cap for info on those.

If you beat Iris Heart the Time Eater probably isn’t a big deal, especially if you take the time to grind a bit or at least unlock all your class caps first.

New Game Plus/Postgame

Don’t forget to re-equip everyone. Like all Neptunia games this for some reason totally unequips everything for everyone at the start of NG+ so you have to set everyone up again as you get them if you need the best stats. Though to make sure you lose against the Time Eater to start the very first loop (instead of getting the bad ending) you might want to intentionally unequip anything with good defense, and spam Charge skills to let it have lots of turns.

Several “superboss” quests are unfortunately only available after a New Game Plus, even if you get the Normal End then continue in the same time loop they won’t unlock. This includes a boss required for the platinum trophy. So if you want to fully explore the game you really have to New Game Plus.

You’ll have to redo all the story content again, but this gives you a shot at the Bad Ending (see Endings). It’s a good chance to listen to the Japanese/English voice track if you like to see what you missed, but pressing Square to skip everything is okay too (you’ll be sorely missing the L2 to instant-skip events from MegaDimension).

The Superbosses are hard as you’d expect, but if you want Platinum you need level 99 anyway, so see Lily Rank for how to grind all your relevant stats.

Gameplay Guide

This is an RPG and it’s based off the Rebirth engine, but don’t think it’s all identical either.

Story

The story progresses as non-linear missions in a greater, linear three act structure. The game has a time-travel narrative and, in homage to Chrono Trigger, can be beaten early at almost any point with powerful enough characters.

Quests

Combat

The game is a turn based RPG sort of line the mainline games. Some standards return like our main stats, symbol attacks, surprise attacks if enemies bump into you from behind/while you’re trying to symbol attack, and back/side hits still deal more damage.

You can run in combat by holding R at the edge of the battle area. Oddly you can’t switch characters mid-combat, and IF or Segami are required to be in your party.

Turn Bar

While the game is turn based, the combat system is a fair bit different. You now have a turn gauge that fills with each action, instead of turns ending after any one action.

Your turn only ends once the meter is full or if you manually end it. Ending a turn without rising the gauge at all leaves the gauge at “guard”, where you’ll take less damage and your next turn will come extremely soon after.

Normal attacks increase the gauge a tiny bit, enough to hit enemies 6 times after moving once. You can actually move after performing an attack, though each attempt to move will increase your turn gauge moderately. Your circle of movement in any secondary move actions is the same as when you started your turn. Ideally you want to position yourself so you can hit multiple targets without moving if one dies before your turn ends.

You can hold the attack button to perform a Charge Attack, similar to an EXE Finisher from the mainline games. Charge Attacks add major delay and use the whole rest of your turn gauge. Despite this, they always seem to do the same amount of damage no matter how much turn is left, so if you want you can perform as many normal attacks as you can then Charge Attack with your last sliver of turn, though this will result in maximal delay of your next turn.

The Turn Gauge ties heavily into the delay-based turn system all Neptunia games have–each time you increase the turn gauge you’re also increasing your delay, so be mindful of that. You’ll see real time updates of your next turn’s order in the top left of the battle screen.

Transformations do not count against the turn gauge.

Max Uses Per Turn

Normal attacks – 8. If you move before attacking, only 6. Each additional movement costs 2 attacks worth of Turn.

Skills – 2. Though the first skill use only uses about a third of your meter, a second SP skills, surprisingly, have no more Turn Meter usage than a normal skill. Transformations do not use Turn at all.

Items – 2. Just like skills, the first item use will use a moderate amount, then the second will consume a greater amount, forcing your turn to end.

Charge – 1. No matter how much meter you have left, Charge will do the same damage but still immediately end your turn. Using Charge early should only be done to conserve turn delay or finish off a target (since killing with Charge adds more SP than a normal hit)

Guard – 1. By it’s nature, guarding ends your turn. In addition, you can only guard if you have:

  • Done nothing but hit Guard this turn.
  • Moved, then guarded, performing no other actions.
  • Performed up to two normal attacks, without moving, then guarded.
  • More generally, as long as the turn bar is still blue, you’ll guard if you press R.
SP

SP works basically like it does in Rebirth 3/Mk2, except executing skills no longer gives you SP, and there’s no Rush attacks to tactically give you more SP per hit, you just get what you get.

Everyone has 1000 max SP and never gains more. Transformations cost 200 and characters never start battle transformed. Transformations aren’t persistent either.

Best I can tell SP healing items are never sold in stores (or if they are it’s extremely late game) so don’t waste them.

Fever

Fever is your EXE Drive replacement, and slowly fills up as a secondary gauge in combat. Once full a star spawns, which you can collect by jumping into it on your turn. Fever charges slowly but is maintained between battles. Naturally it’s meant to be saved for bosses.

During fever:

  • All stats go up 10%.
  • Enemies’ turns are completely skipped.
  • EXE Skills can be performed for ~25% of the EXE meter.
    • There’s enough Fever to perform 3 EXE attacks if you don’t use much Fever between attacks.

As a note, “map bosses” common in other Neptunia games are initially absent but will eventually start showing up midway through the story, and they’re still not a common sight. Bosses after story missions are rare too, so don’t feel too bad about using Fever if you ever feel the need, it’s not needed all that often.

Skills

You have to manually equip your skills like in Mk2 (I think?), which can be a little annoying but it’ll be a while before you learn enough skills to max out your initial three slots. You also get one class skill, one Charge Attack, and one EXE Drive skill. EXE Drives and Charge Attacks don’t actually use SP, but can’t be used from the normal skill menu.

Skills use a large amount of your Turn Gauge and as always cause moderate/high delay. Usually you’re good for up to two skills per turn, depending on your other actions on that turn.

Some skills appear to be passive effects, haven’t translated these yet.

Formations

Rather than freely placing your formation like in most Neptunia games, formations are now handled by special Formation Grids that Chirper characters will give to you after reaching certain conditions (usually story/sidequest progress). Formation Grid lines also affect which characters are “linked” for Lily Boosts and Lily Rank binding.

Formation grids are mostly useful for their side effects, however. Each Formation Grid has a passive bonus. Most of these are not worth using except the Storm Charge in most cases to improve Lily Ranks and Limit Breaker or other stat boosters for boss fights.

  • Formation V
    • Default formation with no effects
  • Double Line
    • Strength/Vitality +100
  • Cross Knights
    • HP + 1500
  • Top Three
    • Reduces Critical Hits you’ll recieve
  • Storm Charge
    • No listed effect, but connects all 4 party members to each other for Lily Ranks
    • Greatly improves both Lily Grinding
    • Use this grid at almost all times you don’t direly need another buff.
  • Slasher Rush
    • Intelligence/Mental + 100
  • All Attacker
    • Physical Endurance + (???)
  • Delta Triangle
    • Strength/Intelligence +100
  • Rush Guard
    • Vitality/Mental +100
  • Frugal T
    • Transformation SP down
    • 20% less SP used on skills while transformed. Cost of transforming is not affected
    • Paper Mario/Toad reference
  • Power Shift
    • Strength +300
    • Probably what you want for most bosses if you’re not super confident (sorry magic users)
  • Frugal SP
    • 20% less SP cost for all actions, in and out of Transform status
  • Gem Hunter
    • Gem frequency up
  • Limit Breaker
    • Break the Damage Limit (which is normally 9999)
    • Obvious Final Fantasy reference

Lily Ranks

Lily Ranks strike again! Max Lily Rank is 5. Lily Ranks seem to affect Charge Skill damage, but much more importantly they unlock skill slots and classes too!

Lily Ranks with a character’s “leader” will unlock the fifth skill slot and third class after the “real” character has been unlocked. Skill slot is unlocked at Lily Rank 4, Class is unlocked at Lily Rank 5.

IF is the “leader” you have to get Lily Rank 5 with for the Neptunia characters and Segami. Segami is the “leader” you need Rank 5 with for IF and the Sega Hard Girls characters.

Lily++ Skill is direly important, as either side of a pair having Lily++ seems to double the rate at which Lily Rank is raised. With both sides of a pair using Lily++ only 15-20 fights should raise a Lily Rank to max (and up to 4 pairs are being raised at once with Storm Charge). Don’t even look at Lily Ranks until you have Lily++ on most characters.

Grinding Lily Ranks should be done lategame, after you get to either Observation Level 26 or enter the third story arc (unsure which) you’ll unlock Symbol Gain. This lets you earn drops (and Lily) with a properly timed Symbol Attack (attacking an enemy on the map). Make sure you have Storm Charge and Lily++ for everyone you can, as above. Neptune will require slower grinding as her Lily++ is on her third class.

Grinding is best done in Toyopolis, first the first floor, then go higher as you start to symbol crush enemies (check every 5 or 10 levels). Level 50+ should symbol crush most things on floor one, 70+ should do for floor 2 and 3. Run the whole circle around the level and the first enemies you beat up should respawn around when you loop back, making this go a lot faster than you’d think.

Note you’ll basically be doing your class, level and lily grinding all at once, so many sure you check your menus often and swap out characters after ranks hit 5 and swap classes once a class hits 50. To kill an extra bird with the same stone, make sure Fever is at 100% and make sure to grab the Fever star and then run any time you miss a Symbol Attack. You’ll get progress towards the 100 Fever achievement at the same time.

If Lily Rank is maxed (you’ll get the Paradise Trophy) and you only want to raise Level and be a bit more lazy you can use the Forest God in Dreamcast Virtua Forest instead. It gives an extreme amount of XP, but poor class XP and only one fight’s worth of lily rank.

Classes that learn the lily++ skill:

  • IF
    • Not sure but it’s easy to get, one of the first two classes
  • Segami
    • Hammer Lord, first class, level 11
  • Plutia
    • Witch, Second Class, level 6
  • Neptune:
    • Kangaroo, third class, level 16
  • Nepgear
    • Knight, second class, level 18
  • Dreamcast
    • Time Fighter, second class, level 13
  • Megadrive
    • Skill Buster, second class, level 9
  • Sega Saturn
    • Mage, first class, level 7
  • Game Gear
    • Berserker, second class, level 18
  • Dreamcast
    • Dream Warrior, first class, level 18

Classes

Neptunia is now a class-based RPG! Classes are very important and determine part of your stats and what skills you can use.

Class diversity is encouraged because once you learn a “common skill” you can equip it on that character at any time, even if you’re not using that class. So some characters will be sorely wanting for skills until you level up certain classes (Mega Drive in particular has a very very poor starting class skill-wise)

Each character has three classes, one they start with, one earned once you unlock the “real character” instead of the clone, and one earned upon reaching Lily Rank 5 with Segami (IF, Sega Hard Girls characters) or IF (Segami, Neptunia characters) See Lily Rank for more info.

IF and Segami have special DLC only classes. Not sure what they do yet.

Full class and skill list soon. WIP

Breaking Class Cap

You need a few things to break class cap: The real character in question not a clone (so complete their story in “arc 2” first), a quest that unlocks at said point in the game, some rubbish item drops, and a special boss drop from the Turtle or Phoenix bosses. If these bosses don’t appear, talk to everyone on the map and progress the story, they should appear mid-late way through the second arc as Chirper events.

Turtle Shells are needed for all Neptunia Characters (including IF) and Pheonix Wings are needed for all Sega Hard Girl characters (including Segami). Start with the Turtle first as it’s easier and some decent XP for your Phoenix run.

Just use the ingame quest drop locator to find the other items if you don’t have them, they’re common drops.

Turtle

At level 45 you should be able to easily handle it with or without fever. It’s in the far reaches of the second area of Gold Axe Ravine in Game Gear era, once a Plan has been obtained from a Chirper character.

If you’re having trouble here, you might be trying too soon. Magic attacks seem to do a bit more damage, but really just buffing IF as far as she’ll go and using a few Heaven Demon skills in Fever should kill it or leave it near dead. It doesn’t hit all that hard, so you should be able to build fever simply by wailing on it after expending your Fever.

Make sure IF gets the kill with her Noble Thief class active, as it may drop two shells. I only had to fight it 4 times (with one no drop kill) to upgrade everyone.

Phoenix

I think I was not much more than level 50 here?

Phoenix (predictably) regens health on it’s turn, and it’s a lot. Unless you are ridiculously overpowered, you will not be able to out damage it’s regen, so your strategy has to be to kill it before regen happens.

What you need is IF and a party of Physical attackers (I used Dreamcast, Neptune and Nepgear), full fever, full SP, the Power Shift formation grid, and the best weapons you can use. Don’t forget to equip your highest-stat classes, though having IF on Noble Thief can really help for the double drops.

On turn one, do NOT use Fever. Have your first three characters transform (if applicable), move around behind Phoenix and hammer it as hard as possible with your best skills (not sure which debuffs or status effects work if any), and have someone buff STR on IF with a STR Booster or other. Have your fourth character smack Phoenix, then collect the star and pass the turn to IF.

If all goes right, IF should be the first Fever user with 100% gauge used, but it’s not a huge deal if you have to eat 5% to swap (but it does mean you cap at 3 EXE attacks instead of 4). Have IF use two Heaven Demon attacks (her EXE) while transformed, right at the back of Phoenix.

If this doesn’t deal at least half the boss’s HP, you’re in trouble. But just hammer it with your strongest attacks and see how far you can get it’s HP to go down before it starts regenerating to give yourself an idea of how behind you are. Three Heaven Demons from a level 50 IF with a decent Class Level and good gear really should nearly kill it or kill it outright.

There’s some tricky things you can try like Neptune’s turn delay skills or Uzume’s turn order changer to get an extra bit of damage in before the Phoenix, but none of these really have the potential to totally deny the Phoenix a turn. If the above method doesn’t kill it, there’s only so much you can do without getting better levels/gear.

Characters

IF

IF is your standard majorly overpowered Protagonist this time around (much more so than Neptune has ever been). Retaining her incredible AGI and ability to use both magic and physical attacks, she now has a buffed transformation state much like the CPUs and generally has stats well in excess of what she normally would have as a Maker.

IF’s overpoweredness may become rather annoying if you don’t like it, as either she or Segami are required to lead your party and participate in all battles.

Segami

Despite being a deuteragonist, Segami is not nearly as overpowered as IF. Instead of a universally buffed transformation state, she has the ability to transform into any one of the Sega Hard girls and copy their current skills. This is very situational unlike IF’s transformation, and I rarely use it, instead using Segami for her inherent traits and just bringing along whatever other party members I like.

Plutia

Hampered by a very bad first class, Plutia has good magic damage but won’t get many useful skills for a while. Usefully her normal attacks are magic

Neptune

Physical attacker. Her Spy Skill is useful in cheaping out bosses you’re having trouble with, but it’s a painful, slow and obviously cheap method. Her AG/turn delay skill helps too.

Nepgear

Physical Attacker.

 Uzume

Pretty balanced physical attacker. Good Int stat she can’t really use.

Mega Drive

Magic attacker with good AOE attacks.

Sega Saturn

Impressive single-hit magic damage on her normal attacks.

Game Gear

Switch magic/physical attacker based on class. Good status effect passive skills and item drop skills, but sorta weak in general. Standard “Jack Of All Trades” problem I guess, she’s an interesting character but just lacking enough in effectiveness to be noticable.

Dreamcast

Dreamcast is a fairly standard but highly effective physical attacker.

Trophy Guide

Story Trophies

These are basically unfailable as long as you continue to progress the story and perform all main quests, or do other basically unmissable actions.

  • Superdimension Neptune VS Sega Hard Girls (Platinum)
    • Acquired all trophies.
  • Start Your Engines
  • NEPTUNE Joined
  • NEPGEAR Joined
  • PLUTIA Joined
  • UZUME Joined
  • MEGA DRIVE Joined
  • GAME GEAR Joined
  • SEGA SATURN Joined
  • DREAMCAST Joined
  • TIME EATER
  • Time Traveller
  • Normal End
    • You saw the Normal Ending.
  • Bad End
    • You saw the Bad Ending.
  • True End
    • You saw the True Ending.
    • See Endings for info on getting all 3 endings
  • Battle Rookie
    • You finished your first fight! Aw.
  • FEVER!
    • Fever Time activated.
  • Toypolis Unlocked
  • Toypolis Second Floor
    • Okay, you have to actually watch side quests to do this one
    • Also, the Mythril Ore you need here is from M/J Box in Mega Drive, progress story to unlock
      • Also, it’s dropped by “Missile Golems” because…localization error
  • Toypolis Third Floor
  • Console Collector
    • You chatted with all the Sega Hard Girls.
    • You have to talk with them on the “Chirper”/world map after the character themselves joins, not just unlock them
  • Did I Catch It?
    • Get a baseball
  • Class Change
    • You performed a Class Change.
  • Mission Master
    • You cleared  100 different missions
    • This should be very easy by post game

Grind Trophies

Everyone’s favorite trophies. These are all the trophies that require any kind of special instruction.

  • Up Up !
    • You activated Fever Time 100 times.
    • Not going to happen from normal gameplay.
    • Fill Fever meter, get the star, then immediately run from an easily escaped fight. This counts as a Fever use but won’t consume fever meter.
      • A bonus of this method is you can use “times escaped” in Play Data in the Library menu to roughly approximate how many times you’ve used Fever, which isn’t otherwise shown.
  • Maximum Damage
    • Deal a 100,000 damage point combo before an enemy turn resets the combo
    • Don’t worry much about this one until hitting 99 (and you’ll probably already have it on accident)
      • If you’re having trouble, fight the Final Boss with Fever and make sure to use lots of powerful skills
  •  Unstoppable
    • Get a 100 hit combo before an enemy can get a turn to reset the combo
    • See Above, just be sure to maximize hit count on skills
  • Battle-Hardened
    • Fight (start, not end) 100 battles
  • Ultimate Fighter (Silver)
    • Fight (start, not end) 500 battles
    • This should come naturally while Lily/Level grinding
  •  Medal Collector
    • Get all medals in all areas. Just use the tracker in the menu and it’s not too hard once all areas are unlocked
      • Note that intermediate stages of Toyopolis (before floor 2 and 3 are made) count as different floors for this and Baseballs. Not sure if that affects this trophy but ideally make sure you clean up each floor immediately once it unlocks, then again after the next floor if needed
  • Historians
    • Your investigation skills reached level 25
    • Simply clearing a ton of missions should get you around this level even in a single playthrough, around the time you beat all of the main story missions
    • Observation Level raises even after a new game plus, so if you NG+ early you can still get it, and go way beyond the max level a single playthrough would get
  • Master Catcher
    • You caught all the balls.
    • There seem to be 42.
    • Insanely hard! I missed this in the Japanese release. Try not to get all medals in an area until you’re sure you got the baseball (a couple of areas don’t seem to have them?)
    • More info as I get it.
  • Level MAX
  • Counter Stop
    • All your characters reached 99.
    • See above
  • Paradise
    • All your characters maxed out their Lily ranks with all other characters
    • See above
  • Hey, Ladies!
    • One character maxed out a Lily Rank (level 5)
    • See the Lily Rank section
  • Millionaire
  • Delphinus (Gold)
    • Defeat Delphinus (see Delphi Eggplant section for now)
    • Delphinus has lower magic def than physical def
    • The Charged Dreamblade method should work well
    • You’ll need a New Game + and want to be level 99. More info soon

Baseballs & Medals

Endings

Bad Ending

Beat the Time Eater the very first time you fight him. This is effectively New Game + only, think “fighting Lavos with just Chrono”. Just do this last after everyone is level 99 (or at least 80+), roll into a New Game + by beating the Time Eater normally, then save and make absolutely sure you beat the Time Eater the first try.

To make this easiest, try to make sure all 5 skill slots, all 3 classes and all class caps are unlocked before doing NG+, and do your grinding before NG+ as well, it will be much harder to grind before the Time Eater. To ensure you get all of your characters before Time Eater (but you really only need your main party of 4), take only the per-era story quests until receiving both “clone” characters, no side quests and no extra story quests, and you’ll always have enough time to get all eight characters before Time Eater time.

The fight is basically the same as the True Ending fight, except he’s tougher. Which is why you want a quite high level.

Normal Ending

Look in the bucket—I mean, start the “Time Eater” quest from Histoire and win at basically any time in the story that it’s available.

If you get this ending, you can choose to be dumped back into a new loop in the same “cycle” you triggered the final boss from in order to continue and get the True Ending or just play more of the game.  You can also choose to trigger a New Game Plus if you like, but there’s usually no reason to do so unless you don’t care about the True Ending…but really want to start over.

True Ending

Finish the Story Missions in each era (anything without a monster/item requirement) and eventually Segami will show up with an Event on the Library map. She’ll then add an Event to the library map (the very first tutorial map) which will now lead to the final boss. Simply beat the boss here for your true ending, if you’ve unlocked the True Ending the fight should be entirely possible.

Sega Hard Girls Ending

This isn’t really a separate ending, but a lot of people are confused. See, in Japan there was a poll for whether the Neptunia girls or the Sega Hard Girls would get a special group photo CG in the ending. Neptunia won, but after release they said aw the heck with it and had Tsunako make an ending CG for the SeHa crew too.

It can be viewed in the Archive on a file with True Ending clear data (so, in NG+) at the library’s Archive, after the free DLC has been downloaded.

Item Collection

Dragon Soul

Costumes

Costumes are a bit limited in this game: The Sega Hard Girls are required to be On Brand™ at all times and thus have no cosmetic items, and the Neptunia girls have pretty limited options (other than hair accessories) even compared to the other Neptunia games.

DLC

As always Idea Factory International has done a fairly poor job of translating the DLC. But also as usual, it’s really nothing essential. You can find it for the US store here.

Charge To The Future Arcade is the most/only important one, it’s a free not-quite-ending CG, as mentioned above it’s an extra post-True Ending CG of the Sega Hard Girls.

Dengeki Bracelet, Hall of Fame Ring and Historic Bookmark are your standard free cheat-lite DLC that every Idea Factory game seems to have. They’ll make your early game some degree of easier though the game is designed reasonably enough as-is. If you don’t like a challenge go ahead and use them.

EXP Expert, Fever Gauge Plus, Item Insurance, and Money Maker are all straight-up cheat codes for $1 each. Woo. The only ones even relevant for shortening grind are  EXP Expert (which would save a lot more time if you didn’t have to grind for Lily Rank anyway, making it near pointless) and Item Insurance (which really isn’t a big deal especially if IF is using Noble Thief). Don’t recommend these at all unless you really really want it easy, really don’t like grind, and don’t have any moral objections to paying for cheat codes.

IF’s Gust of Wing and Segami’s Astral Brave are new classes for IF and Segami. Not sure what exactly they do yet, but they’re certainly not essential.

FAQ

  • I’ve never played Neptunia before but I love Sega Hard Girls, am I still good to play this game?
    • Yes, Neptunia side games are always set in their own “Dimension” and don’t depend at all on having played the prior games (though knowing characters’ personalities can help a bit)
  • How long is this game?
    • About 20 hours to beat it if you’re sorta quick. Maybe closer to 30-40 for completionism.
  • Are Lily Ranks annoying in this one?
    • Not really, see the Lily Rank section. IT’s mostly about playing it smart and knowing when it matters.
  • Do I need the DLC?
    • No. (but the Sega Hard Girls one is okay to get and free)
  • How hard is this game?
    • Standard Neptunia difficulty, which is to say fairly easy. A couple story bosses are oddly difficult, and some strategy is required here and there. But it’s easy to grind or strategize your way to victory with a little effort/thought.
  • How stressful is this game?
    • There’s a couple missable items only required for achievements, and a New Game Plus means even they’re not a huge deal. Just be mindful and check the Baseballs section. Otherwise, no story content is missable, and choices you make have no major outcomes. Just enjoy yourself and don’t worry.
  • Is it good?
    • It’s the best Neptunia side game IMO, it has it’s flaws but overall it’s about as good as one of the Rebirth remakes.
  • Is it coming to PC?
    • I don’t know for sure, but Neptunia games usually come to PC 6-12 months after releasing on Playstation platforms these days.
  • Where’s Dragon Soul?
    • It’s in the Mega Drive/Sega Saturn Troll Ruins depths, only dropping from a Virus infected Dragon Knight.

Import Guide

Below lies the original text of my import guide. Since I haven’t had time to finish my english one, you might find it of use for now.

As usual I’ve imported the latest Neptunia game and decided to make a quick guide for my fellow importers.

If you want a description of the game in general, check out my Import Impressions post. I’ll keep things clinical for the guide.
See also:

  • A Japanese wiki, not fully complete but with Google Translate you can learn a lot.
Map Movement

In order to fully explore maps you’ll need to use the new traversal methods: Swinging on ropes, crawling through crawl spaces and running and jumping across platforms. If an area seems inaccessible, look for one of these methods to get through.

Note there are minor differences in how the protagonists act on the map. Segami has a delay in her jumping animation, making her worse for platforming sections (of which there are few that are timing sensitive). Segami’s map attack has slightly better range, helping you symbol attack enemies or destroy breakable objects.

So basically use IF for trickier platforming, otherwise Segami is slightly better for symbol attacks/destructible objects.

If you’re moving when you start a symbol attack your character will slide forward a bit while doing the attack animation. This is actually very dangerous as the game will register you as bumping into the enemy while trying to symbol attack before it registers the hit, so you get surprise attacked instead of you getting the drop on them. Try to stop moving before you start a symbol attack.

Gameplay Structure

Missions

This game is a little unique in every way.  The general progression revolves almost entirely around a mission structure similar to other Neptunia games, though missions are now almost all you do. Your base “levels up” and you get access to more missions, more Chirper requests, more shop items and more Plans  as you level up the base (plans no longer require MB or crafting).

Normal Missions

SuperDimension Neptune vs Sega Hard Girls japanese menu for normal missions

Most missions are standard fetch/kill quests, and pressing Triangle over a quest at the quest screen will tell you where to go. The yellow line is the location, the line with no icon means you can find the item in destructible objects on that map (I think) and the monster icon/name means that monster drops that thing.

Drop rate is pretty high in this game and items are only used for missions, not crafting, so fetch quests are less painful than usual.

2015-12-03-215346

The above message, with no yellow location listed, means there’s no existing area that has your target enemy/item.

Usually upon taking these quests you’ll unlock the location they can be found at, or you’ll be given some other means to locate the target. If you really can’t find the item, you can always manually abort.

Story Missions

2015-12-03-215308

Missions with no monster or item icon are “story missions” and will either end with an event or story boss. It’s required to do so many of these per era to gain the two characters per era, so prioritize these. At a certain point you may get very hard story mission bosses in one era and have to go do other missions instead.

Unlike mainline games, Story missions almost never end in a boss, but a few do–and they’re occasionally real doosies.

The Time Limit

Now, the most important part of how this game works is a huge story spoiler. Basically there’s a time limit and you’ll see why it’s here for yourself not much more than 5 hours in probably, but I’ll still toss the explaination in a spoiler tag.

The best advice I can give before you reach that point is don’t stress yourself out about the countdown timers on missions at all.

Story/mechanics spoiler
So the game works in a time loop sorta like Majora’s Mask. Once the countdowns all reach 0 the Time Devourer AKA our Final Boss shows up. You WILL lose the first time…and it turns out…it doesn’t matter much.

Losing to the Time Devourer simply restarts the cycle, but all of your progress except missions you didn’t complete is kept. Your inventory, levels, and characters are kept. Completed missions stay complete, but failed missions flow back into the mission pool again.

As you fail missions (either manually abandoning them or by running out of time), the Time Devourer will gain random buffs such as new attacks, STR+200 etc. Don’t worry about these too much, as your first few Loops are going to be basically “impossible” meaning a restart will be required.

You can fight the Time Devourer any time you please after the first loop ends, much like Chrono Trigger. But it will be a long time before you can stand a chance at winning so just do missions and play the story instead. Just like in Chrono Trigger just because you CAN grind your characters to beat the final boss “early” doesn’t mean it’s reasonable…and it’ll probably take longer grinding in the early areas than it would to just play the game normally instead.

SuperDimension Neptune vs Sega Hard Girls japanese menu

This is the quest to go to fight the Time Devourer.  Ignore it unless you want to end a Time Loop early, there’s no penalty for losing this fight. If you take this quest you can’t cancel it, you just have to fight (and probably lose). Talk to IF after taking it to start the fight.

Bosses

There are some events where you can pick a side between a Neptunia or SeHa character and you must fight the one you don’t side with. I’m not sure if the choice matters much story/gameplay wise. These fights appear after you get the copy of the character usually.

Don’t forget you can use the Weaken Enemy plan at any time, and it works on bosses and seems to have no negative side effects at all.

Sega Saturn

Sega Saturn is the really dangerous fight–despite being a 3 star mission, she’s by far the hardest fight I’ve had that isn’t the Time Devourer. You’ll want to gather all the Copy characters and do all the other story stuff before even trying here. I recommend a full party of at least level 40 (I did it at 45), full Fever and SP meters, and the best equipment you can buy for your battle party.

The Saturn fight is basically a damage race, she will deal incredible damage (5000 per hit often to multiple targets, often multiple times per turn) and you basically need to KO her before she even acts. Try using a full Fever meter and spamming Super IF’s EXE drive, then everyone else can go all out with skills to bring her down.  She takes around 280,000 damage total to go down.

As always, keep your characters at a fair distance and immediately revive anyone who’s KO’d. Try not to let Saturn have too many turns in a row (end a character’s turn early if they have nothing important to do). She attacks with magic only so high Mental Defense stats could help, but ~900 Men didn’t seem to help much. One of Plutia’s classes has an invincibility spell with a wide AOE that’s good for a turn or two extra, it costs 500 SP and only protects from one attack per character though.

After winning the first time, you’ll get another story mission in Saturn where you have to fight her again. It’s basically the same fight but with less HP, so fill your Fever meter again and you should have an easy time. After this fight the story seems to begin a new chapter if you’ve got all the other “real” Sega Hard Girls.

As a note, you could fight Purple Heart instead, I’m not sure if the outcome or difficulty is any different. When I tried Purple Heart she didn’t seem significantly easier to beat.

SuperDimension Neptune vs Sega Hard Girls japanese menu
For reference, this is the mission that is the oddly difficult Saturn fight.
Dreamcast

Dreamcast will fight you at least twice, and is never any harder than one might expect compared to the resistance you’ve met before. She fights you before her copy joins you, but you shouldn’t be too worried. See the above general tips for combat and Sega Saturn if you need help with general boss fights.

Game Gear and MegaDrive don’t fight, for some reason. Perhaps they fight later, AFTER joining.

Iris Heart

In a Game Gear quest of all times, Ms Mary Sue herself (Plutia) decides to be ah asshole and attack the party. Fortunately the plutia in your party can still be used for this fight. She’s hard, but not harder than Saturn was; she takes longer to KO your party and seems to have less AOE attacks. You know the drill by now, start with Fever, keep characters alive, you should be fine. Just don’t let this fight get the drop on you and you should be fine.

Game Gear Boss Rush

(need a picture for this one)

Not actually sure what’s going on in this one, but you’ll fight 4 Chao looking monstrosities, then 4 Deoxys looking things. A Fever + Super IF’s combo will instantly waste one wave of them. The main difficulty in either fight is the number of enemies, so just work them down one by one or use AOE. I assume they’re weak to different elements, I forgot to check.

Final Boss

If you’ve beaten all other quests, the Final Boss is significantly weaker and his massive self-heal every turn is disabled. At around level 60 I was able to somewhat easily beat the final boss with a Fever to start with (I always spam Super IF’s EXE drive as often as possible).

Note that the final boss has some AOE so spreading out, as always, is a good idea. It also has an (effectively) One Hit KO move that dealt around 32k to one party member. Expect to heal/revive no matter how strong you are. Keep your whole party alive and either spam SP skills (now is the time!) or build up a second fever. If you’re around level 60 this shouldn’t be a big problem, at least if it’s turn-by-turn regen is disabled.

Delphi Eggplant

This is the hardest boss in the game by far, but honestly isn’t too hard as long as you manage your team right. This fight should be performed only after getting your whole team to level 99 and ideally get all the Ultimate Weapons for at least your chosen team. Your classes should be max level too by now. Obviously stock up on items and fully heal SP and charge Fever, this is the last real fight in the game after all!

This fight isn’t very complicated as long as your team is strong enough. Even at level 99 with ultimate weapons, physical attacks are too weak for this fight. Also use the Break Damage Limit formation grid (the last one on the list) as your magic users should easily do over 10,000 damage. Physical attackers won’t have that problem because they probably won’t be strong enough.

Make a team of magic users and make sure you can debuff STR and MEN. I used Plutia, Saturn, Mega Drive and Segami (transformed into whoever I needed at the moment).

Then buff your whole team with the AOE +INT/MEN buff item (don’t bother wasting skill slots on buffs when you have items to do it.) After she’s debuffed spam skills and EXE attacks (I recommend Plutia since she’s the only magic user with a transformation). You shouldn’t really have a problem as long as you maintain buffs/debuffs. Delphi Eggplant doesn’t actually hit that hard if you’re using the Ultimate gear, so just worry about dealing enough damage and keeping SP up. Heal if you have to of course, but a proper team should take it down before that’s necessary.

If you’re a bit weaker/dont’ have the ultimate gear, be sure to use multi-hit attacks to charge Fever as often as possible. Fever will be your key to dealing enough damage between her turns so she can’t heal over your damage.

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Author: SerTapTap

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6 thoughts on “SuperDimension Neptune vs Sega Hard Girls Guide”

  1. “If you beat Iris Heart the Time Eater probably isn’t a big deal” — not true for me. I beat Iris Heart, but now I can’t beat the Time Eater. The Time Eater is Strong against absolutely everything, and I can’t do anywhere near enough damage to outrun its healing, even with four EXE attacks.

    I finished all the quests (except the impossible-on-first-run Troll Ruin one) via multiple loops. I assumed that going back in time would prevent the Time Eater from eating the quests and gaining strength; is that actually true?

    All my characters are at level 58, and class levels are between 20 and 28. What level am I supposed to be at to fight the Time Eater? I sure hope I won’t have to grind all the way to level 90. Grinding is tedious, even if it is simple with “Symbol Crusher GET!”.

    1. I went ahead and used the “cheat” method, to avoid the stupid grind, but I’m still curious to know what the proper level is for facing the Time Eater.

    2. 58 seems slightly low for having completed all quests, but entirely possible…are you sure you’re fighting the right boss and finished all the quests? Just because here aren’t listed quests doesn’t mean there aren’t more, do another loop (lose to the quest-list time eater) and see what else there is. If you actually finished all stories the time eater should be very manageable unless you’re doing something really wrong. If it’s regen is extremely high that’s usually because you havent’ restored enough history. Make sure you fight the boss by talking with Segami to trigger the true ending version if that’s what you’re after.

      I don’t actually know whether unfinished quests still buff time eater if you challenge him early but it shouldn’t really matter.

      What characters are you using? Spamming IF’s EXE (only) from behind should bring it extremely low even if you’re fairly underleveled. Heck, if you can beat the pheonix for class caps I think you can probably beat Time Eater unless you’re crazy unlucky or happen to be using an extremely bad setup or something.

      1. Also there shouldn’t be any impossible quests first loop. There are NG+ only quests like Delphinus but they don’t appear. I think you’re talking about that confusing ruins quest that opens up AFTER you take it or something. If it’s a quest in the troll ruins just take it and look for new events, it should open up I think. I got stuck on that in my Japanese playthrough because I didn’t know what it was.

  2. Hi, Asuna Kagurazaka here.

    Would you mind crediting me as Walt the Dog for the exploit you mentioned in Arc 2? Asuna is a joke name that I’m gonna switch out when my two months is up. Thank you. 🙂

    Also, you may want to bring up that even getting Dreamcast’s copy first in Arc 1 can make things easier until you can get Mega Drive’s second class as Dreamcast’s EXE Drive is so OP that while it may take a couple uses without the Charge skill, the move alone should be enough for early-game bosses. I personally didn’t find the first Dreamcast boss all that hard even doing that ASAP and doing next to no side quests at that point when I was doing the Korean version.

    1. Oh, sure, didn’t know what to reference you as, this is why I stick to SirTapTap whenever possible.

      I’ll make a note of that, though I’d still do Game Gear first (it’s free real estate). I found Mega Drive and Dreamcast roughly equal in difficulty though and you can do all 3 without a loop.

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