Which one(s) do I play?

I have not played any of these games, but they look interesting. I was thinking of trying the series, but at this point I have no idea where to start. There's just so many of them, and I don't know how if at all they are connected. I think the "rebirth" ones are remakes? So I put it to the Hyperdimension Neptunia fans out there: which one do I start with, and where do I go from there?

You are correct, the Rebirth ones are remakes and I believe are regarded to be superior. I played a bunch of vanilla Neptunia, and I can't honestly recommend it. It's really rough. I think you should be fine starting with the first Rebirth? It's on Steam?

Start with the first one rebirth . I highly suggest having a walkthrough or wiki up as many of the systems arent explained well

Oh dang really? Thanks for the heads up. How about after that? How many of the other games are direct sequels?

@dtat: Sorry, my phone wrecked my post.

What I meant to say was that like @thebrainninja said, the Neptunia Rebirth games are remakes of the original games. So, you're better off starting there. Neptunia Rebirth 1, 2, and 3 are main series (revisited), while the rest are spin off games (one's a strategy RPG, ones an idol manager game, one's a Mousou/Dynasty Warriors style game) that just do stuff with the characters.

The systems in the game (such as what attacks do what, what an EXE is, DD Drives etc) are kinda poorly explained. So, when I was playing, I had to look up what all of these things did as I was kinda missing ways to make my game easier, or fight baddies better and so on which caused me to get frustrated early on.

I agree with everyone else the first rebirth game is a good place to start. It'll set up the 4 CPU's you'll be seeing for the rest of the series. Afterwards you can keep playing the rebirth games if you enjoy the first one. Of the spin off games I've played I liked Producing Perfection which was a idol sim. Although it is a super basic sim that can get repetitive fast. I was just surprised a game like that ever made it out of Japan. Might be a game to play if you really like the characters you meet in the first game.

@madman356647: Is that strategy spin off any good?

@dtat Never played it.