I actually like (at least some) IF games, but I wouldn't call them AA or even A. There are so many aspects of them that really scream "shoestring budget".
Yeah, their games are usually pretty well thought out if you ignore the budgetary constraints and other issues, and when they aren't beholden to Neptunia spinoffs (or remaking Fairy Fencer F for the dozenth time), they shine. My main issues with their non-dungeon crawler output is how barren and samey their world/level design can be, combat needing more depth, and the erratic difficulty spikes. 40 hours is around the perfect length for a game for me, but in some scenarios, that honestly feels a bit short. They're partially the antithesis of what I've come to expect of modern JRPG design, and I support that, but there's definitely a lot of things with how their publisher specifically conducts business that really is turning it from a tough love situation to genuinely making it hard for me to want to support them further.
Whether that's:
* Never releasing content in the west (or on PC) that were introduced in the Japanese console versions as free updates. Death end re;Quest 2 did this, and the US Switch version only got the few pages of Rotten's diary and some logs relating to Lydia, but none of the announcer voices that got added, even if they could've done a check to see if Japanese voices were being used if they didn't want to dub this. What difference would it make when their English dubs usually only cover a quarter to half of the dialogue that the Japanese voice track has?
This isn't even mentioning how the Switch release of Neptunia Sisters vs Sisters is getting two additional characters and other content, while PC/PS4/PS5 is left to rot, or the Xbox version (that's coming out after the Switch release) isn't getting any of that content either.
Or the nearly 8 month period that it took for Neptunia Virtual Stars on PC to get the Kizuna Ai or Towa Kiseki DLC story mode content.
Or Neptunia ReVerse simply not coming to PC at all. Yes, I'm aware that the visual upgrades are hardly worth mentioning, and it's simply just an enhanced port of Rebirth 1, but CH was generally good with DLC updates when it came to Rebirth 1 on PC.
* Preorder bonuses or store specific content in Japan that isn't added to their North American releases at least, some of which you usually have to import from Yahoo Auctions to get. It's actually kind of crazy how End Quest (The preorder bonus RPG Maker game that revolves around Iris before the events of the first game) never was even included with the western release, so a chunk of the game's story was arbitrarily cut.
Some of the art for the other stuff in Japan (Such as a small sample of the tapestries that they have) got put up on the IFI Store as acrillic giclées that cost several hundred dollars to buy. One of the ones that were exclusively put up on the North American and European stores (Which means Japan isn't able to buy it, and from what I heard, the writer of the Mary Skelter games mentioned on Twitter that attempting to import the english version of MSF was a pain) was digitally signed by the character artist for the game in question (unlike the other ones), and it costs the same exact price. Buying the tapestry version of said acrillic giclée on their site, and then putting it in a poster frame is what I ended up doing. I will give them this, their collector's editions are really close to the kinds of bonuses that you'd expect from a Working Designs game (setting aside WD's controversial localization decisions).
* Their PC ports. Don't even get me started on this. I'm aware of their console versions already having optimization/performance issues, completely questionable framerate limits on PS5 (SvS and Refrain Chord's PS5 versions being locked at 30FPS when they run way better on an equivalent PC comes to mind), and the Switch versions being especially egregious (not even being able to lock at 30FPS, and often dipping to 10-15, despite the massive visual downgrades in some of them). Not to even mention the lack of any sort of input rebinding.
But in regards to how they've effectively shifted the goalpost from "baby steps" in regards to improving things and having things where they should be, to "this is just a straight port" is honestly insulting, and beta feedback honestly isn't really used outside of game breaking crashes or localization typos. And in regards to the Ghostlight ports, them settling for the Switch versions of the games (With tons of visual downgrades that completely ruin the tone) instead of the PS4 versions that are right there, alongside not adding enough QoL improvements or fixes to their janky ports is extremely disappointing. This doesn't help the fact that they keep the last beta build sitting in the vault for 3-4 months before actually releasing it on Steam, and as far as I can tell, nothing has changed in between that time. DERQ2 and Neptunia Virtual Stars at launch would make The Last of Us: Part 1 blush, I still somewhat have buyer's remorse for preordering DERQ2's PC collector's edition specifically for that reason.
* Questionable character name changes (A bunch of the characters in DERQ2 being named after Salem Witch Trial stuff, or the whole situation with Massacre Pink or Toh being renamed and effectively ruined one of the bigger twists in Mary Skelter Finale), some questionable dubbing decisions (including casting some VAs that aren't suited for certain characters at all), and backing down from their whole "We won't release something state-side if we have to edit things" spiel selectively when it's convenient makes it hard to trust their judgement. They've effectively outsourced some things to EastAsiaSoft, which only publishes their stuff on Nintendo Switch, the recent one being a port (with performance issues based on a port from Ghostlight). Mary Skelter Finale's translation was loaded with typos, inconsistencies (Changing Bread Portal in MS2 to Bread Crumbs in the UI, just to then refer to it as Bread Portal in the tutorial text) or other strange issues, and there were even loaded with typos and inconsistencies that didn't exist in the previous games with the Collector's Edition materials. This is all before even getting to Neptunia. The recent debacle around SvS and having language removed in a patch is funny to me considering they kept the same ESRB rating for DERQ 2 despite bringing back the old glitch models for the PC version. My personal opinion is that people give them way too much credit based on stuff that they'd normally stoke NISA or Nintendo Treehouse to the flames for doing.
Mary Skelter 2 and Death end re;Quest's localizations were fine (Although a bit dry, outside of a scenario with punched up dialogue in DERQ), and I didn't notice any typos, dialogue felt like it flew properly, and there was nothing like memes being added that made it jarring to read through. Straight to the point, no purple prose, no awkward character interpretations or outdated memes. 1-1 in regards to content. That's what I normally expect from them.
* The fact that they don't or rarely do any merch that isn't explicitly Neptunia related. This is self explanatory. Their Neptunia 10th anniversary shirt has really nice soft material and doesn't have vinyl that peels, definitely worth the $25. if they could do shirts (or even just restocking some of their old merch that I missed out on like keychains), I wouldn't have an issue.
More stuff like this please (Before anyone asks, yes, I have tried hunting this down through the usual sources with no avail).
The original Compile went bankrupt from attempting to move towards office software, and mostly being out of touch with what made their old games (Their shmups, Madou Monogatari, PuyoPuyo, etc) successful. I fear the same fate may happen with Compile Heart, not due to their own questionable changes, but due to the publisher that owns them making these decisions on their behalf. IdeaFactory in of itself was a successor to Data East. Niitani (the founder of the original Compile) left CH after thinking that it went corporate, and honestly after reading some of the things on jobtalk.jp, I actually feel like there's not much you can do at this point but to walk away. A lot of those sentiments regarding project management seems true. I think the golden years was around 2012-2020.