Neptunia Riders VS Dogoos (Switch) review "One of the worst anime-stylized motorcycle arena battlers you're likely to play this year."

Since the release of Hyperdimension Neptunia on the PlayStation 3, the various characters that “lead” the world of Gamindustri have appeared in quite a few games. Typically, there is an RPG element at play, but that’s not always true. Consider, for instance, Neptunia Riders VS Dogoos. This brand-new release is a motorcycle combat game, believe it or not.

As the story goes, several goddesses wake up in a strange dimension. They have developed a sudden love for Dogoos, those blobby enemies familiar to any players who have been following the series since its inception. So deep does that love go that they would even sacrifice their lives in order to ensure a future of peace and harmony for the gelatinous critters. Fortunately, one of the heroines quickly snaps out of her daze. She spends the rest of the game finding her friends and helping them see the light, while they all race around on motorcycles.



The concept makes a little more sense in the game than it does on paper, but that’s a low bar. All you really need to know is that your job is to ride your motorcycle around fantasy battle arenas, gathering up around 100 Dogoos in each stage without letting the other drivers steal too many of them. Once you have enough of the blobs swirling around your bike, the stage abruptly ends. Then you can move onto the next one, until finally you have cleared all 15 of them. A final scene plays and the credits roll.

Arenas are divided among five worlds, each containing three stages. That means there are five basic arena templates. Each environment features its own hazards or points of interest, such as rolling boulders you should avoid, low gates you must shrink to pass beneath, or fountains of chocolate that launch you to a higher tier of cake. Yes, there is a stage where you race around on giant desserts. That’s the kind of game this is.

The bike you control is capable of small hops and generous drifts. In fact, you’ll want to drift quite a lot. Doing so expands the radius of your magnet that attracts Dogoos to your bike. You can also boost for short distances, which is good when you want to avoid a hazard, such as a blast from a rival cyclist. And you can launch the occasional attack of your own, either with a projectile or a closer-quarters charge. To clear the later stages, you’ll typically need to go on the offensive for most of the round’s duration. There’s not a lot of time—or need—to play defensively and strategize.



Broadly, the gameplay feels like going through the battle arenas in that old SNES classic, Super Mario Kart. There’s not quite as much depth here, and only a little more variety, which is frankly disappointing. The arenas here are bland, packing very little visual punch. Only the bike and girl models seem to have received appropriate attention, and by now, those were probably already sitting around on a hard drive somewhere. This does not feel like a high-effort enterprise.

When you lose interest in the races, there is a photo mode to occupy your time. Over the course of the game, you can acquire various accessories and dress your girls in them. They obtain afro wigs, cat tails, bandanas and so forth. Then you can pose them in one of the settings and move your camera around them and snap pictures. This mode is bound to cater to someone, but it lacks sufficient depth to remain interesting for long. There’s also a “library” where you can listen to music from the game, or revisit story segments you have witnessed.

As for the story goes, expect the same sort of inane banter the series has always offered, except less of it. There are in-jokes for long-time fans. The characters make their obligatory remarks about share prices and goddess forms and such, but it feels like a pale imitation of past greatest hits. The overall plot is only mildly diverting and lacks the comedic punch delivered by the mainline games. The funniest recurring joke seems to be that some of the Dogoos have human bodies with long limbs and boobs. Ha ha?



On a side note, some players may own multiple consoles and therefore have questions about which version they should get. The short answer is, “Probably none of them.” But let’s assume you plan to acquire it somewhere. In that case, you should know that on Switch, I experienced a single crash that booted me out of the game. When I booted it up again, I simply had to reattempt the stage and then everything went fine. The game runs well enough in general. It doesn’t seem to require more powerful hardware, and the style of play is going to be a bit on the jerky side regardless of framerate concerns. Still, I would suggest that you go with the PlayStation version. That’s because Nintendo has apparently blocked the release of optional swimsuit DLC. Admittedly, I would not buy that DLC, were it available to me. But I also don’t love it when a developer’s vision is compromised.

If all you’re looking for is another game featuring Nepgear and Blanc and most of the other recurring characters, you’ll find what you crave in Neptunia Riders VS Dogoos. If, in addition to that, you want a deep or satisfying game… keep right on looking. There are worse ways to spend a few hours, certainly, but there are also much better ones. This side project is for hardcore fans only. The best thing about it might just be the fact that at least it got localized. You don’t have to hassle with the expense or inconvenience of an import, only to find that the prize wasn’t worth the effort. So, at least it has that going for it...

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Staff review by Jason Venter (January 30, 2025) Jason Venter has been playing games for 30 years, since discovering the Apple IIe version of Mario Bros. in his elementary school days. Now he writes about them, here at HonestGamers and also at other sites that agree to pay him for his words.