I'll be blunt - this scent smells like a woman's floral-perfumed skin after a dip in a heavily chlorinated swimming pool. It's basically muguet soap and musk oil diluted in pool water. Ginseng NRG was released in the late nineties, around the time I graduated from high school, and at that time it was something I seriously considered wearing. I considered it, and passed. Why, you ask? Hard to say. For one thing, it's not particularly exciting, or groundbreaking. It smells "fresh," and "clean," and "soapy." Typical nineties fare, especially with its hint of sweetness, thanks to all that musk. I guess I liked its perkiness, that hit of natural ginseng blended in with bitter citrus and soft amber. It's nice.
It's also a "sporty" frag (hence the "NRG"), the sort of thing that lasts three hours max, maybe a little longer after a rigorous, sweaty workout. At that time, I wasn't a "sporty" guy. I'm actually a hell of a lot sportier now, in my thirties, than I was in my late teens, and given my penchant for couch-potatoing with popcorn and movies, that's saying a lot. But no, in the late nineties I was not a "sporty" dude. I was naturally stick thin and led a fairly (moderately) active lifestyle, just doing day-to-day chores, so working out and then dousing myself in transparent, citrusy colognes wasn't on the schedule.
This is a youthful scent, and as Tania Sanchez says, it smells very soapy, and perhaps a little generic (she made a good GNR joke in The Guide), but it's altogether a solid offering from Jōvan that I'll continue sampling every time I pass it at Walmart - nobody buys this stuff. If you intend on buying it, get it while supplies last - rumor has it Coty discontinued NRG, and I expect to see inane price increases in the near future.