Senran Kagura: Shinovi Versus
TLDR: Senran Kagura is the by product of a game developer who figured out you could play Dynasty Warriors one handed, so modded it with Ikki Tousen skins so he could jerk it with the other hand.
Overview: Senran Kagura is a fast, action packed beat em up where schools of Ninja Girls beat the pants off of eachother. Literally beat the pants off ofSenran Kagura: Shinovi Versus
TLDR: Senran Kagura is the by product of a game developer who figured out you could play Dynasty Warriors one handed, so modded it with Ikki Tousen skins so he could jerk it with the other hand.
Overview: Senran Kagura is a fast, action packed beat em up where schools of Ninja Girls beat the pants off of eachother. Literally beat the pants off of eachother. As a character takes damage, their clothes blast apart like they were made of toilet paper. What could have been a fun concept in a good game actually ends up bogging down the battles. It's relatively short, taking only 45 minutes to beat it, and about 12 hours to finish the game.
Gameplay: The game is a simple beat em up with light and heavy attacks, high combo strings and 3-4 specials per character. Its extremely fast and very fluid, especially in 60 FPS. Even thought he combo lists are limited, it still feels fun even if it does get a little competitive. Theres a big list of characters, and 2-4 player battles can be made of different squads allowing for some diversity between matches. Another plus is that the hard mode is actually really challenging.
Visuals: The game runs standard Chibi renders of characters that are fitting of the handheld games they came from. It looks good and plays out smoothly, but it's obvious where the money in this game went. Jiggle Physics. Seriously, the bouncing boobs were given more attention than basic walking animations, to the point where they act more like paper bags floating on a draft than actual breasts.
Audio: The soundtrack to this game is about what you would expect. Japanese sounding wood blocks and flutes, pretty much any song that didn't make it into Naruto: Ultimate Ninja Storm. On the bright side, the soundtrack has a few upbeat songs that let you know when a cut scene just isn't important, allowing you to skip it immediately (which will be explained momentarily). Despite the overall generic music, there were a few tracks during the final battles that genuinely hyped me up, and the voice acting was overall well done.
Story: So the plot to this games is about as generic as it can get. One ninja school gets challenged to battle by another ninja school, and for whatever Anime-Ass reason, the losing school gets their Dojo burned down. This eventually becomes a battle of Good and Evil; a life and death for all of humanity because, well, ANIME. Half the plot you can skip because it's just more generic anime tropes and the music tells you when the scene is just going to be boob talk or some awkward lesbian innuendo. In the final scene one of the characters, after a life and death battle is legitimately: “let's go take a bath. Even you, my enemies should join!” I shouldn't even have to explain why that's groan city. However seeing the characters trying to argue about good, evil and honor while little chibi faces cover their gazunkas is pretty amusing.
-That being said the overall themes of good and evil, fighting for equality are campy that they actually come off as endearing, cheesy as they may be. And as much as I hate to admit it there is decent character growth and development through the short playtime.
My biggest gripe with this game is the insane amount of fanservice. While I understand that its a theme (i guess?) of the game, I don’t enjoy being stopped mid combo to see tig ol bitties popping out of a shirt as often as they do. Maybe 1 or 2 times in a fight would be fine but the amount currently in the game is exhausting. You break your enemies clothes two times during a fight, they transform, and then there are two more layers to break through, not to mention transformation and layer breaks on the player character. So that's 10 combos interrupted within the short span of a 2 minute fight. If you could disable the special animations the game would be much more fluid and enjoyable.
Other:
-The main reason to continue playing after the story is hard mode, which is surprisingly challenging. Other than that, each character has their own set of side quests to power through or you can rack up money to buy new clothes and hair for the characters. Not my thing but it's a reason to keep playing.
Overall if you like beating the ever living crap out of enemies, lighting fast boss battles and 3000+ combos, then this game may be right up your alley. Provided you can look past the the jigglies, you have a fun campy beat Em up that's worth picking up on a sale.… Expand
Senran Kagura Shinovi VersusYour Score0 out of 10User Score
