One of my secret joys in life is reading reviews of games
like Dead or Alive Xtreme or Senran Kagura and laughing at how hard some people
try to convince others why they should feel bad for liking something. In this
case I’m obviously talking about gratuitous fanservice. You won’t find any
finger wagging or high and mighty lectures here, however. I play these types of
games because I genuinely LIKE them and want to review them honestly. Today’s
pervy anime romp is Senran Kagura: Estival Versus for PS4.Game Details
- Publisher: Marvelous Entertainment
- Developer: Tamsoft
- ESRB Rating: “M” for Mature
- Genre: 3D Beat-Em-Up
- Pros: Tons of content; tons of fanservice; fun gameplay
- Cons: Some characters aren’t fun; story dialogue; a bit repetitive
- MSRP: $40
I’m not super familiar with the Senran Kagura series though
I have watched the anime. Basically, there are different schools around Japan
with secret all-girl ninja clans. At first the ninja girls all fought each
other, but then became friends. Or something. In Estival Versus all of the
major characters in the series – some 30+ of them – get magically transported
to a mysterious island where they have to participate in a competition against
each other. The island also just happens to be bathed in permanent summertime
warmth, which gives the girls an excuse to wear skimpy swimsuits pretty much
constantly.
The gameplay in Senran Kagura Estival Versus is a fairly
basic 3D beat-em-up similar to the Dynasty Warriors series. You have just a
couple of attack buttons and string them together in various ways to execute
different combos. Most of the enemies you fight are hordes of mostly mindless
grunts, but you do occasionally also fight against other main characters in
more difficult battles. Each of the 30+ characters has different weapons and
abilities and they all play fairly differently from each other. Some are more
fun to use than others, though, so being forced to play with a specific
character during story missions is kind of a drag if you don’t like their
style. Once you beat a story mission you can go back and replay it with any
character you want, though.
Since this is Senran Kagura, however, there are various
things that spice up the gameplay a bit. As you beat up generic enemies they
lose their clothes until they’re just in their underwear or a bikini (because
you’re fighting all girls, of course). Main characters will also have their
clothes rip during battle and if you do enough damage they’ll even end up
totally naked save for those cursed magic anime light beams. Each character
also has a couple of transformations you can activate during battle as well.
First is their shinobi battle mode where they, of course, strip and don a new
skimpy outfit of some sort. Their shinobi mode makes them more powerful and
gives them some new moves. The second transformation is to simply change into a
swimsuit. Why? Because of reasons!
The fanservice pervades pretty much every aspect of the experience. Even the start menu has jiggling breasts and it only gets more lewd from there. Expect lots of bouncing boobs and jiggly butts, near nudity, and girls in all sorts of embarrassing positions, and that’s all just in the course of the normal beat-em-up gameplay. If you’re so inclined you can also play a dress up mode where you dress up the girls however you want and position them around in diorama scenes. It is all pretty shockingly over the top, but fans wouldn’t want it any other way.
The presentation is surprisingly good overall. The graphics
are pretty fantastic as all of the character models look great and the
animation is really smooth and well done. The backgrounds don’t look especially
good, but your attention is usually focused elsewhere. Estival Versus also has
pretty great sound all around with tons of voice work (I’m assuming from the
real Japanese voice actresses, I dunno) and an excellent soundtrack. If you buy
the Endless Summer special edition of the game you get the soundtrack on 2 CDs
and it’s actually legit good.
All in all, Senran Kagura Estival Versus is a solid Dynasty
Warriors clone with extremely pumped up fanservice. If you like either or both
of those things, it is actually pretty enjoyable. Sure it can get repetitive
and you get sort of numb to the fanservice after a while, but then you just
switch to a new character and things get a lot more interesting again.
Obviously, if you don’t like musou-style games or are vehemently against
fanservice you won’t like Senran Kagura, but then again you probably wouldn’t
be reading a review about it anyway. For fans of Senran Kagura and ecchi anime
in general, Estival Versus is exactly what you’re looking for. Check it out.
