A screen at the beginning of Hyperdimension Neptunia: Producing Perfection implores you to “please enjoy it without thinking too hard,” and it’s a fitting warning. The idol-making simulation features cute anime-girl personifications of modern gaming consoles, but its ham-fisted attempt at fanservice and shallow gameplay corrupt that premise and turn what could have been fun and lighthearted into a dull, pointless venture not worth thinking twice about.

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I bet you do.

I don't think you can produce your way out of this.

Neptunia starts off with a promising and cheeky idea: Four goddess-like Console Patron Units, or CPUs, rule the realm of Gamindustri, each representing a major gaming console (one of which is fictitious). A suspicious idol group called MOB48 — a play on real-life J-pop group AKB48 — has usurped the CPUs and taken the “shares” of the Gamindustri people’s love. More shares means more power, so the girls decide to become idols themselves to win back the hearts of the people. The key, of course, is you: an average student getting ready for a summer gaming marathon.Everything goes downhill plotwise when you — immediately assumed to be a straight male — arrives in Gamindustri and meets the CPUs. When I (playing as a character I dubbed “Dude”) chose the Xbox personification Vert as my idol, much of the conversation focused on her figure. “My soft chest acted as your landing pillow, I see,” was her response when Dude apparently fell from the sky and landed on her; she later introduced herself formally as “the one who possesses the most voluptuous breasts in all of Gamindustri.” It’s cool that she’s proud of that and stuff, but it was definitely a little off-putting that she went straight to that. I mean, the conspicuous and incredibly unrealistic jiggle physics made her voluptuousness absolutely clear from the get-go.Dude wasn’t complaining about becoming her producer, however that job isn’t all that exciting if you’re over the whole boobs thing. Day-to-day Producer Mode simulation activities come in a few varieties: “work,” which increases your fanbase, “lesson,” which ups your stats, “relax,” which reduces stress, “move,” in which you travel to one of the four Gamindustri nations, and “concert,” which I’ll get to in a second. The “strategy” here is to keep stress low in order to increase gains from working or learning and to have the majority of the shares before 180 days have passed, and it took me maybe three hours and 80 game days to get there without really trying. As advertized, it requires almost no thought.Concerts are the most active part of Neptunia, but they actually require very little effort and become really tedious. Your only task as producer is to set the stage, pick outfits and accessories for the idols, and move the camera around. I got far more points when I just changed the camera angles wildly rather than trying to be more realistic or artistic, and after a few concerts I basically button-mashed my way to idol status. Choosing the CPUs’ outfits before the shows was fun, but that didn’t have an effect on my performance and seemed like it was meant to titillate.The only thing keeping me from zoning out entirely during Producer Mode was the dialogue, which can be cute and funny. There are a lot of gaming references — for example, Blanc, the Nintendo personification, describes her nation Lowee as a place that everyone in the family can enjoy, while Sony-based Noire brags about her superior hardware. Additionally, the CPUs have younger sisters that represent the handheld versions of their respective consoles, and they’re adorable when you get to talk to them. My favorites were Ram and Rom, Blanc’s sisters, who represent the two screens of a DS and are a little feisty.Unfortunately, even the dialogue is bogged down by casual sexist language and a distinct male gaze perspective. Whether it’s “Vert’s rack” or Dude thinking a group of CPUs should be called an “idol harem,” it takes away from what could be cute and lighthearted. Fanservice on its own isn’t really an issue, but fanservice in Neptunia completely drives the plot — it doesn’t really make sense that a group of goddesses would need the help of a “cut-and-paste stereotype,” in CPU Neptune’s words, who is only sticking around because they’re hot. They turn into objects rather than real characters. Not only is it objectifying, it’s condescending.Neptunia isn’t too bad, however, until you open Viewer Mode. It pulls up a full-body model of the CPU of your choosing, who you can then touch in different places to provoke a response. The rear touch pad is used to, well, touch her rear, which might make her jump; touching her elsewhere will get you an enthusiastic “Hai!” or a coquettish block. You can also set one of the CPUs to be your alarm clock, a strange and seemingly random feature. If Viewer Mode is your thing, then go for it, but I found their responses to be pretty creepy.