Just finished the "Conquest Ending" of Neptunia Re;birth2

I finished Hyperdimension Neptunia Re;birth 2 with normal ending in the past September. I wrote about it saying "I was surprised and oddly satisfied with the ending." Since then, I play the game every once in a while to get the other endings.

I read in a guide that the best ending to get first is the Conquest Ending as it requires all characters Lily Ranks to be low while most endings require the opposite with one character or another. Making this ending impossible on New Game+. So I went for it!

It was too grindy to get the requirements for this ending!

First I had to unlock ll the CPUs and Human characters by making each Nation shares reach %50. The hard part is that Nations compete with each other for shares. A quest that increases Planeptune shares must take shares from another nation (Lastaion for example.)

Luckily, I found a way to farm shares!
I got all the Ending conditions in four days.

The Conquest Route (Spoilers)

Arfoire: the Deity of Sin is going to be revived and the heroes don't have a plan to defeat her. Nepgear, our heroine remembers a rumor about a cursed sword that can defeat her. After finding the sword which appeared just like any weak weapon. The heroes are told that it must first slay someone of the CPU lineage to gain power.

What comes after is very sad. The CPUs knowing that their best bet against Arfoire is the sword, they began fighting each other to power-up that cursed weapon.

It's really dark...

The whole situation of the route/ending is sad. It also feel pointless because they did defeat Arfoire in the Normal Ending without dealing with all of this. It kinda reminded me of what the Death Note did to Light Yagami in that anime. Power Corrupts!

Though I have to say, every CPU and CPU Candidate motivation for that sword felt different. It didn't make it less sad though, actually it was agonizing in Rom and Ram's case...

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For now, I hope the other endings are light-hearted to soften the blow Re;birth2 did to my heart with the Conquest Ending.

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The screenshot is from the ending. Taken by me.

By the way, I wrote a post about Nepgear back when I was playing the first game if you want to check it out~