So why is Conquest Ending the best ending?

[Chen]

Is it perhaps because it's the most character development Nepgear gets in the series?
How she's able to eventually stomach slaying each and everyone one of her friends and family, all to save the world. How it pushes her commitment and morals?
Best. Ending.

[fender178]

While the Conquest ending maybe the most rememberable and the best in some people's minds becuase of the dark and gloom it has but it was way to sad for my liking the true ending was far more satisfying to me while there was a tad of sadness during the 1st time going through it and not knowing if the CPUs are going to return or not. Just like in Persona 4/Golden during the final part of the final boss battle where you lose all of your friends and you do not know if they died or not during the 1st time witnessing it. I just didn't like that Nepgear was all alone like an actual true Noire.

[darth.crevette]

Having watched the anime before seeing this ending... I just couldn't take it seriously.

[DubstepKazoo]

Why does anyone like this ending? Am I the only one who thought it was pretty darn tame?

Like, sure, boohoo, gotta kill the goddesses. I'll admit, I even teared up a little when Rom and Ram kicked the bucket. But everyone gets used to the sword... way too easily. It was a total cop-out to have most people do it off-screen. Nepgear's the only character we really got to see the transition in, and it just happened too fast. She didn't break a sweat when she killed Rom, Ram, and Vert, and she offed Neptune with really minimal convincing. Which is surprising, since the Nepgear we knew up until then would have... well, done what she did in the Holy Sword Ending, actually.

Plus, I feel like killing Underling was a really drastic move. Considering their history together, it came out of left field. Underling was nothing more than the Team Rocket to Nepgear's Ash. And when you think about it, what she did in the Conquest Ending really wasn't any more despicable than what she did at LAN Castle in Chapter 5. Plus, there was Nepgear's "I should've done that a long time ago" remark. Like... no. You shouldn't have. She was nothing more than a petty, small-time criminal.

You could argue that these two criticisms I have of Nepgear - getting used to the sword and killing Underling - are just proof that she's going off her rocker, but again, I disagree. She seems remarkably stable and collected when they go fight the Deity of Sin. She never seemed very affected - or at least, not affected enough - by the atrocities she had to commit. In fact, I was hoping that she would just go insane and kill everything. It would be more consistent with her actions than what we got. Instead, yay, the Deity of Sin is vanquished! Kei has gotten over her goddesses' deaths! But not so fast, it's not ALL happy! We have a nebulous "stagnating society" danger to look out for centuries and centuries from now. Never mind that it came out of nowhere in the last five minutes of the game, or that honestly, it wouldn't matter in the lifetimes of any of the characters we know.

Am I just missing something here? Is there a reason people think this ending is sad? 'Cause the only tearjerking moments I noticed were pretty weak, and they petered out pretty quickly.

[RyoZ]

It was definetly one of the most memorable endings, albeit very inconsistent with the lightheated tone the series is known for. I'm a quite a fan of downer/bad endings in any sort of media and it was refreshing to see Neptunia take a stab at it.

Originally posted by DubstepKazoo:

Plus, I feel like killing Underling was a really drastic move. Considering their history together, it came out of left field. Underling was nothing more than the Team Rocket to Nepgear's Ash. And when you think about it, what she did in the Conquest Ending really wasn't any more despicable than what she did at LAN Castle in Chapter 5. Plus, there was Nepgear's "I should've done that a long time ago" remark. Like... no. You shouldn't have. She was nothing more than a petty, small-time criminal.

I found that moment to be quite satisfying myself, Underling was a constant nuisance, like a bug, to Nepgear and co throughout the game. Considering the drastic circumstances that was the Conquest Ending, it made sense for Nepgear to finally take her gloves off and put an end to Underling once and for all.

[mirek83]

The conquest ending is exactly what happened with pc GPU market, don't you think? Go back 20-25yrs and there still are things like 3Dfx, S3, Tseng, Trident, Matrox, Rendition... Now it's only nVidia and AMD that's left... And the latter is slowly loosing. Less apparent, but still on the CPU file, where only Cyrix was a real competition to Intel/AMD.

[ForteDS]

I like this one simply because it also means that IF isn't afraid to burn everything down. All of the sudden there is a perfectly valid ending where things work out, at least in the short term, at great cost. Gives future installments a bit more tension because you know what the devs are capable of, if my reasoning makes any sense.