Review: Neptunia Riders VS Dogoos Is a Strange Motorcycle Game

Neptunia Riders VS Dogoos feels like an idea entirely born out of a poorly fleshed out concept in the previous Neptunia game. In Neptunia Game Maker R:Evolution, Neptune inexplicably has a motorcycle. So now, let’s make an entire Neptunia game about motorcycles!

Since that’s where all this seemingly began, let’s remember how well that motorcycle worked in the previous game. In short, it did not. It was an optional element to dungeons and every time I attempted to use it, I found it frustrating to use. Handling was awful, especially at high speeds, and the dungeons were rarely, if ever, built to accommodate a motorcycle being driven through them.

Not a great start for Neptunia Riders VS Dogoos then. However, what makes this game different is that the motorcycle is the point. As a result, the handling has been tweaked (mostly) and the levels are much more suited to being driven through. However, it’s also a conceptual oddity that strays a long way from the rest of the series.

Neptunia Riders VS Dogoos places you in the wide socks of Uzume, the Neptunia universe’s personification of the Sega Dreamcast. She finds herself waking up with no memories and an undying love for Dogoos – imagine Dragon Quest slimes with dog faces. However, she quickly realizes how weird this love is and snaps herself out of it, jumps on a motorcycle and heads out to find the other games console goddesses to see how they’re holding up. Spoilers: they are all also weirdly enamored with Dogoos.

If that all sounds mildly unhinged, that’s because it is. The storyline of Neptunia Riders is bizarre, but at the same time it fits perfectly with the weird gameplay. The focus on motorcycles may trick you into believing this is a racing game. It is not. Instead, imagine the battle maps from Mario Kart crossed with Katamari Damacy. Yes, it’s an odd combination but I cannot think of anything more fitting.

Your average level works like this – you and a partner character must gather a specific number of Dogoos. To do this, you drive around a map on your motorcycle, and every Dogoo you drive near will be absorbed into a floating mass that follows the bike around. A rival team made up of Dogoos transplanted onto disturbingly buff human bodies will also be trying to do the same thing.

It’s not clear why we’re collecting so many Dogoos, however. Some levels try and justify the concept as “we need to take the Dogoos away from our friend so she’ll snap out of it” while others don’t even bother trying. I respect that though, since any attempt to explain any of it logically would fall apart under scrutiny. This is not the kind of game for logic.

However, while there is a bizarre yet fun concept here, the execution in Neptunia Riders VS Dogoos is not great. Just like the motorcycle mechanic in Game Maker R:Evolution, the motorcycle handling is stiff and unwieldy. This is better than the previous game, but this is mostly because the maps are so vast you can mostly hit accelerate and not think much about precise steering. The bikes simply aren’t that enjoyable to control. As someone who enjoys a racing game or two, it was disappointing to find these bikes lacking the oomph I expect from a virtual vehicle.

Where it seriously falls apart is the drift mechanic. This a real shame because drifting serves two purposes. The first is because drifting is inherently cool. The second is to widen the capture circle around the bike, allowing you to vacuum up more Dogoos. However, this is some painfully limp drifting. It’s really just a brake with extra steps, as your turning circle drastically increases but your speed also plummets. There were countless times I attempted to swerve through a cluster of Dogoos with the intention of being cool as heck but ended up grinding to a halt. Let me feel those tires squeal! This is unacceptable!

The other mechanics in Neptunia Riders VS Dogoos outside of the driving don’t hold up well either. This is a vehicle battler, after all, so of course there are ways to attack the rival team. This causes your opponent to drop off their clumps and into yours, although be warned as they can do it to you too. The main two methods of attack are a melee attack and a homing shot. The Dogoos you collect can also be used to attack your rivals. There are many flavors of Dogoo that can be channeled into different abilities such as slowing down your opponent.

In theory, at least, because I couldn’t make any of this work in practice. Melee attacks have indistinct animations that seem to hit wherever they feel like, while the homing shot seemed to leisurely drift towards your opponent before fizzling out. As for the different Dogoo abilities, I never used them because they didn’t seem to work, even in the tutorial when I was explicitly being told how to use them. I wish I knew how the tutorial eventually registered what I was doing but sadly I do not. As such, I never touched the mechanic again for the entire playthrough.

What makes all this worse is how messy the game’s visuals are. The levels all blur together due to bland visual design, and within larger areas it can feel like you’re driving around in circles because of how samey it all looks. The worst issues arise with the game’s inconsistent draw distance, since Dogoos and your opponents can sometimes pop into existence without warning. Even when you are able to see them, the Dogoo mass surrounding an opponent is often indistinguishable from groups of Dogoos on the field. It also proves difficult to tell your partner from your rivals, as the chaos of everything means the only distinguishing feature is the color of the capture circle, which is also often obscured.

There is some charm in Neptunia Riders VS Dogoos, mainly within the character interactions. The story is nonsense but it’s the fun kind of nonsense. The kind where even the writers appear to be aware of how silly it is and are embracing it. The lengths that the various goddesses are going to in order to show their love for their new Dogoo "friends” is legitimately funny at times. One character is brought to her senses by reminding her of the existence of pudding. On top of that, the voice cast were clearly having a great time with all of this.

In other words, it’s a Neptunia game. It’s a clunky mess of a game where every mechanic is half-baked and each level is painfully repetitive. But it survives on the strength of how much it revels in its silly character interactions.

Overall, Neptunia Riders VS Dogoos is a strange game, and not necessarily in a good way. The concept is fun but poorly executed thanks to muddied visuals and unsatisfying driving mechanics. Fans may enjoy the character interactions but may still be put off by how much of a departure it is.

Neptunia Riders VS Dogoos releases for the Nintendo Switch, PS4 and PS5 on January 28, 2025.

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