Nights of Azure 2: Bride of the New Moon (PS4): Baby Steps Forward

I wanna say at some point in 2016, I saw a trailer for a game that was being produced by Gust. If you don't know who Gust is, that would me you probably don't play the Atelier franchise with almost the heroine like addiction that I seem to. While they are known for item creation RPGs, the trailer depicted a much more faster paced action game with hack n' slash combat, over the top super movies, and what seemed to be good soundtrack. Gust is a competent studio, so I gave this a purchase with little thought.

It was not a very good game.

So I didn't immediately rush to pick up the sequel when it came out, but during the summer months I had a relative dead spell where I didn't have any immediate new releases to get to, and I saw that gamestop of all places had it ridiculously marked down (not a good sign). But as poor as the previous was, I was able to see it through to the end, and felt with nothing else to do and only 20 to spend, why not give the sequel a try....

NIGHTS OF AZURE 2:
BRIDE OF THE NEW MOON(PS4)

Nights of Azure 2 picks up in the distant future from the previous iteration of the game. After the last battle with the Nightlord banished away eternal night, the world was not as saved as people hoped as during the night monsters called fiends surface and terrorize humans, leaving the sun as their only defense and forcing the world to never truly know restful sleep.

A holy order known as the Curia task of their best agents, a woman named Aluche, to take her friend and now-priestess Liliana to be a sacrifice to one called the Moon Queen and to become the fated Bride of Time. An upset and distraught Aluche proceeds with her mission to accompany Liliana where the ceremony is supposed to take place, but they carriage never makes it. They are attacked by fiends and in Aluche's efforts to protect her friend, she is slain in battle.

Sometime after, Aluche awakens to find herself under the care of a Curia researcher called Camilla Alucard (yeah, that's not fucking on the nose). Using sciences shunned by religious practices, Aluche now lives again as an artificial half demon with purple blood, like the last holy knight to fight the Nightlord. Leliana is missing and leads point to a nearby ruined city and with no other course of action, Aluche pursues to try to find and save her friend. 

Okay before I even get started with the actual review: Carmilla Alucard? Really? You named a fucking character Carmilla Alucard? Come the fuck on. I mean she's not a vampire so it's kind of misdirection I guess, but she does deal with blood transfusions for the half demon character. You could have named her Elvyria D. Edgelord and that would have been about as a subtle. Sheesh. 

So Nights of Azure 2 plays pretty similarly to the previous iteration of the game with some subtle differences, so while I never gave the first version of the game a proper review, there is going to be some significant carry over here so you could see this somewhat as a double review.

At its core, Nights of Azure 2 is a mission based hack and slash spectacle fighter with some RPG elements and splash of Pokemon monster collecting to go with it.  Functionally how it works is you start by accepting missions at your base of operations (the same hotel from the first game) and then go out into the surrounding map to try to complete your objective, be it slay a certain monster, number of them, find specific items, etc.

The rub is that even though Aluche's new half demon status grants her significantly more strength, it does require regular blood transfusion and digestion to maintain, essentially forcing her into a state of vampirism to stay alive. So when you leave the hotel, you only get a short amount of time to complete your goal. So with a clock constantly ticking, you have to quickly navigate the map as efficiently as possible, while simultaneously battling monsters to increase your experience and gain blood so you can level your character and thus allow you to fight for longer stretches. 

If the time expires during the mission, you only get the experience for the monsters that you defeated none of the rewards for completing the quest. This forces you to try it again the next time you go out, the problem is with each chapter you only have a limited number of nights to get your main story quests done, while side questing along the way. If you fail to get everything done by the time the moon goes dark, you get a game over.  I've heard people complain about the time mechanic in this one but honestly outside of the first chapter or 2, I never really felt pressured by it. I've completed story missions with plenty of moon phases to spare, and then ultimately those carry over. You could do more side questing later.

Like the last game, on top of using a combat system with light, heavy, and special attacks to combo and chain, you can still summon demons that you collect called Servan to fight alongside you. Some of these can be used for support and some of them have attack properties. But a handful of them also have some situational map purposes such as burning down an impeded path or using one's flight to jump to a higher level and open a new route. So while it is good get some some strong one's leveled up, you will need to occasionally rotate some out from mission to mission.

How it differs from the first Nights of Azure game is now this time you have a number of support characters who can fight with you as well. It wouldn't be a Gust game if it literally wasn't barfing cute anime girls at you with every given opportunity but it did add an interesting new ripple to the game. If you are going to give me all these characters, at least they are letting me get some use out of them.

Because of the breadth of characters to choose from, the game now also features an affinity mechanic that plays a factor on character specific side quests, cut scenes, and possible ending outcomes. So if you want to unlock more of the content, you are going to want to jump around from character to character. To its credit, some of them have some pretty unique moves that make them all pretty interest to use. But as it is with games like this, you will find one or two characters you will want to stick with be it for their moves or story.

Once you are back at your hotel base, you can speak to your supporting party members to finish up any specific side quests you did for them to watch new interaction scenes with them, and then head to the lab to level up. In the lab you basically have two forms of experience. Your regular XP you use to level up your skill tree for stats, weapon abilities, and other passives. You also have a blood XP that is used to level up your Servans. Once they level up to a point your "evolve" them which basically makes a stronger version of the one before, and sends it back to one.

Now before I get into the complaints with the game, I would like to stress that I do generally enjoy games that Gust puts out  (most of them are Atelier, but shut up). So the real crux of the review is did they learn from their mistakes from the previous title to make Nights of Azure 2 a better than the first one? Nights of Azure was functional and did had some bits that I liked, but there was a lot of room for improvement.

Well, there are some story bits that are still pretty cringe worthy. First of all leveling your character. Much like the last Nights of Azure,  Azure 2 had to contrive a reason for when you are leveling your character, the process requires Aluche to be clad in a scantily white set of bridal lingerie. They did this in the first Azure as well. Whenever she successfully raises a leave she has this pleasured moan animation that she does to complete it. It's super awkward.

There are some useful skills on each tree, but stick to one weapon or the game becomes a grind.

Then you have a number of "pool" scenes. Since they highlight that this hotel has a pool, they basically have a significant number of character interactions take place at the pool to justify the characters getting into swimwear. And holy crap, if the level up bridal lingerie was racy, then the swimsuits are a step over that. I don't think even girls with perfect bodies would have the courage to wear some of the suits the characters in this wear. I love me some fan service as much as the next guy does, but these are so over the top it borders on comical.

They do this, I feel, to really hammer the point that Aluche is gay. The first Azure game also had gay protagonists. That's fine, I get that it's a consistent theme since the first game and as I played through I started to piece together that the affections between the main characters were clearly more than friendship. But at least to that sense, it felt more natural as the story progressed on. Azure 2 would have been about as subtle if they just said: "Aluche got a massive girl boner because Carmilla wore her bathing suit". It feels like it had to be crammed in because the last story did.

Speaking of cramming things in, this game expects you to do an awful lot with very little time. I did a fairly significant number of side quests and used a decent amount of my allotted time to explore the maps to try to find better paths or where certain monsters or treasures were. And when I would get back to the base, I would be awarded with affinity from the character I used. Each character has about 6 hearts to fill, but after playing through the entire story, I don't know if it's even possible to to max out every character's possible affinity rank. I feel you must be able to to get the good ending, but I don't see how.

This is something I bring up a lot of games of this nature, but the combat still kind of has that weightless floaty feeling the first one did. It is better this time around but the recoil from enemies taking damage still jerky and unnatural, and it ruins the entire feel of the combat. It also really doesn't motivate me to learn how to properly combo since stun locking enemies into the longest slew of attacks I can muster basically traps them into place. It also negatively impacted my Servan usage since I basically didn't need them. I would wait for my special counter to finish and then mow groups down with it. It just didn't have that visceral recoil that I get when I play Bayonetta.

The skill tree branches on a few different paths, and it's mainly to beef up the various weapon types as you play through the game, but honestly I just stuck to the route of the base sword and it really didn't seem to affect my experience in any tangible way. The first Azure title was not very difficult to get through, and this one really isn't either. So long as you occasionally remember to spend your points at base, you should pretty easily clear the game.

It's visual design is.... fine. I guess. It's an anime game so I don't know how much I can say about it. It's pretty consistent with the games they tend to put out, but it looks like it would be just as at home on the PS3 than a PS4. But I have to figure if they aren't going full bore on the details of the characters or environments (which admittedly can feel samey), you would figure to get a must smoother and consistent frame rate.  Perhaps I am remembering wrong but Azure 1 had a pretty solid 60fps all game. I don't think Azure 2 is that smooth at any point.

I generally like the soundtrack in Gust games, and Azure 2 is no exception. Much like the boss battles of the Atelier series, this series is known for blending synthesized fantasy classical blended with contemporary rock and metal. For lack of a better expression, it very much is "video game music" but it's not bad. It didn't shake me like Persona, Doom, or Undertale did, but it's definitely a credit to the games favor. And for certain story moments, you might recognize updated arrangements from the previous Azure title, and I appreciate consistency like that.

But the sound design overall in this one is not great. There are inconsistencies throughout the game. There will be points where the voices will just cut out during scene (Japanese language). During combat voice lines will sometimes surge up and sound effects of attacks will mute during special moves. Some song volume levels are much higher than others. It's strange and feels very unpolished, which honestly wouldn't surprise me with how fast this company pumps games out.

It's story is still somewhat nonsensical. They do not have a lot of build up to who exactly the final boss can be. I think in both games they make an early appearance and then never again until the actual last boss battle. It makes it a little hard to get motivated when I don't really know what it is I am fighting. I actually finished the first game not realizing that was the final boss. It adds characters and gives you new locations, and it does constantly warn you of the impending doom, but yet as I play it it never feels like the stakes are getting raised. The tension level remains consistent from the first to last stage.

But Gust does do some story things right. They are very consistent in their lore. In Atelier games, in sequels major characters in one title will be minor characters in another, showing a change in the timeline and growth. Azure 2 does this as well as one familiar support character references and tells of the events of the previous game, which culminates with a major character returning to join the party. I won't lie, despite my lukewarm feelings to the first one I got happy to see them again, and was even more happy when I got to use them too. So the story must have done enough to leave some kind of lasting impression.

I find myself somewhat mixed on Nights of Azure 2. I affectionately refer to it as "anime trash" because that is absolutely what it is. But for a game that I didn't think was that good to get a sequel, and for that sequel to be good enough to see the story through does say something. I definitely can say that they did make improvements so it certainly is a better game. But at the same time it just so decidedly average.

Azure 2 is an ultimately unoffensive title. It pushes no boundaries and doesn't really shake up any established game mechanics. It's visual design is pretty anime and it has a relatively decent soundtrack. It's not a horrible game, but depending on what it is you are looking for you can find so many better options in that same vein. It's vanilla ice cream. It's perfectly fine as it is but it feels like it's begging for so much more. Tighter story, more weight to the combat, better implementation of its mechanics, better sound design.

I want to say that I paid close to 20 or 30 bucks for this game. That's probably a fair price because despite showing improvement, there is still quite a bit wrong with this game. That said, the ARE showing signs of improving, so I am not totally ready to write this one off. I wouldn't tell anyone to take a chance on this one, and it is a game that can be very easily forgotten after you've played it. Roll the dice on it if something about it speaks to you, but otherwise I wouldn't give a recommendation.

Carmilla Alucard.
I'm still mad about that.

The Witch and the Hundred Knight (PS4): A very Disgaea take on Zelda.

Since I no longer work at Gamestop (thank god), I don't have the luxury of getting to try things before I buy them anymore. I sometimes check redbox to see what they have on hand, but some of the things I spy on aren't available. As luck would have it, some of my my neighboring libraries have much better video game budget than the one I work at and have a pretty new and put to date selection of gamery to pick from.

This one I had seen for a while, but I never jumped on because Nippon Ichi software can be a real hit or miss for any game that isn't Disgaea. Sometimes I've gotten burned on them, sometimes I've found a gem that ended up being underrated. But I'm a sucker for anything kinda anime RPGish so since I had the ability to play this for weeks for free, I took a stab at....

THE WITCH AND THE HUNDRED KNIGHT:(PS4)

(Played in 2016)

In this adventure we are set in the world of Medea, your prototypical fantasy realm that is just on the verge of some technological advancement. In this realm exists a large, but incredibly toxic swampland that is surrounded by forested area. Within this swamp resides Metallia, and arrogant, cocky, and downright mean woman with her robotic servant Arlecchino. 

Metallia is a self proclaimed Swamp Witch and although she is not recognized in any official capacity by the realm's other witches, she is fiercely powerful and practically bursting with magical potential. She has been at war with the forest witch at her borders, but Metallia has one major weakness in that she physically cannot leave her swamp without becoming severely weakened. So to combat this, she summons a small familiar she believes to be the Legendary Hundred Knight (you) to swing the battle in her favor. Despite being smaller and weaker than she believed, she sets him out upon the world to find a series a pillars that will allow her to spread her swamp, and thus her ability extend her reach and power upon the world.

So I'm not gonna lie. Despite being a protagonist? Holy shit Metallia might be one of the villainous characters in a game. Now I know that Nippon Ichi does a pretty good job of weaving a tale despite managing to be pretty tongue and cheek with its story, but it was incredibly hard to get into the role of working for Metallia because she quite literally has zero emotional compass. She lashes out with vulgarity, violence, and unfiltered fury, (a girl after my own heart really.).

But you don't actually ever really play as Metallia. You control the Hundred Knight, You are given the option to give your character a name in the onset of the game, but Metallia promptly ignores it. Throughout the story you get the choice to make a couple of decisions to either agree, disagree, ignore or question something you've been told, but from what I understand there are only a few crucial decisions that can really effect the ending of the game. So in my playthrough of the game, I found myself questioning everything I was told because despite being on Metallia's side, I found her reasoning for things questionable.

The visual novel story elements are in place, as is standard for most NIS titles.
From what I know, we never get this question answered.

So I expected this game to be a JRPG or some kind of tactical RPG because that tends to be Nippon Ichi's entire wheelhouse, but surprisingly it ended up being a top down action adventure game. As cheekily described by article title, The gameplay of this game feels reminiscent of the classic of the traditional Legend of Zelda series or the original Blood Omen: Legacy of Kain. Top down, hero center, slash baddies. Generally the objectives are a simple get to the other end of the level. You don't have to do it in one go but the end mission rewards tend to be better if you do. But as you travel you will continually bust open pillars that allow you to return to base and cash in on the XP you've earned to that point.

Now it wouldn't be very Nippon Ichi if they didn't take a relatively simple system and over-complicate it. So generally your weapons follow a kind of rock paper scissors system to them. They vary between slashing weapons, smashing weapons, and magic weapons. Typically these fall swords, hammers, and staves, but the thing to really make a note of while you play is what type of damage the weapons do. For example you might find axes instead of hammers which are still super slow and damaging, but do slashing damage instead of smashing. So if an enemy is completely immune to slashing damage, your shiny new axe amounts to jack shit.

You can equip up to three different weapon sets so you basically get a 5 combo attack based on your varied weapons so you can focus one type of damage, or mix and match if you like. But from my experience most of the baddies of an area usually all have similar damage resistances per area so I found it most effective to set each set to a specific damage type. In addition to this, most items are marked with a 1-5, so as long as you have your weapons placed in numerical order, you will get an increasing damage buff per swing. You are going to be flooded with gear often, so make sure you go through and makes sure you have the best stuff equipped at all times.

But because of the nature of the Hundred Knight's summon, you only get so much time away from Metallia, so every level is timed more or less by this Giga calorie system. How it works is you have a counter on the top of the screen counting down from 100. It decreases faster as you recharge your stamina, use specials, run, or take excessive damage. It constantly depletes to heal you so you have to pay attention to it because if it drops to zero you have significantly reduced stats. There are multiple ways to restore it such as using your bonuses received from smashing baddies to restore it at pillars along the map you uncover, eating food items, or eating baddies on the screen (yes, you can eat enemies).

There is a limited amount of space for the rewards you get, since Hundred Knight isn't the smartest thing in the world, he eats them to keep them safe till he gets back to Metallia. So the loot you collect is stored in his stomach. You only get so much space in your stomach and you lose it even faster if you eat enemies, so when your stomach gets full you have to use a Bowel Dump to get the garbage out of your stomach. (I am not making this up, god I wish I was. -_-)

NIS's knack for hilarious flavor text is prevalent in this game as well.

You also as you play along the game start to gather various familiar summons for you to use in the levels. These vary in use to helping you in battle, destroying obstacles to allow you to continue, triggering far away switches, or utterly decimating bosses. Most of these I found myself not using unless the level required me to use one to proceed. The main exception was the trapper which sometimes net some interesting items of upgrade or sale. It wasn't till the end where I got this massive Tower summon that I could drop two off that fired off homing magic shots. Since magic is the hardest attack attribute to deal damage with, these were game breaking.

There is also a job class system sort of. Hundred knight will unlock about 8 different attack styles or classes that will affect your base stats and also provide different effects. Honestly the one your start off with is your most basic and balanced so I found little reason to switch off of it at any point. You can also set two sub categories for additional boosts at reduced experience, so its always good to have multiple set. I tended to prefer the Ninja class because it basically let me continue to run at incredibly reduced stamina and Gcal depletion. Cap it off with another attack or defense for your 3rd and you have a pretty solid build for most of the game. If it stops working switch them up or go to an older level land grind some of the others.

Ninja and Wonder Knight were staples, The third can fluctuate as needed.

These might have been more effective than I gave credit for, but I rarely used them.

Following its Disgaea lineage, TW&THK also features its own Item world of sorts in some kind of alternate reality rouge-like tower. It features a story of the characters you've met so far but in some form of alternate timeline/reality version of them. It's the only place where you actually get to play as Metallia as some kind of last ditch summon for big damage, but given the item I sacrificed to get in there all of the baddies in there for like 50 floors were completely piss weak. The main reason to go in here is this is the location where you can get materials to upgrade your items and weapons at the shops outside the tower. I literally didn't figure out this out until near the end of the game, and it doesn't really do a whole lot to explain it to you. It would have really come in handy for some of the later stages.

There is also a karma mechanic in the game as well that primarily comes from trying to take over NPCs homes for bonus items. If the karma meter gets too high NPCs will get hostile and try to kill you. They never do much damage, but you can't harm them so you'll need to go back to base to reduce your karma. It's not really a difficult thing to manage so there is little real effect to it that I found.

At the level of difficulty the tower I was in, I never really needed to summon Lia.

That is more or less of the core mechanics of the game. Despite all the additional mechanics this game tends to throw at you, its play tends to be pretty straight forward for the most part and the mild confusion at new controls are worked through relatively quickly. There is one level where you can smash baddies in groups of 6, so grinding for levels never really ended up being a problem, and the game as a meaty play to time to it. For most of its primary functions it has solid mechanics.

Graphically, and this comes as somewhat of a surprise to me, TW&THK is rendered with 3d models which I've found Nippon Ichi to rarely do. They aren't really fantastically rendered models and this was PS3 game so I'm willing to give somewhat of a pass on it, but they still don't look too great. usually though the camera is so far away from the models that you really don't get a sense of the level of detail for them anyways.  Story segments are done in the traditional visual novel style of gameplay this producer has stuck to for most of their games.

Sad this is, this isn't even as close to as bad as this game can get.

Speaking of, MAN some of the story segments of this game can get fucking wordy. Because of the very tongue and cheek nature of the writing, some of it can be pretty hilarious but some of the exposition seems to drag on for what feels like forever. This is exceptionally bad at the onset of new chapters. I have had live streams where if I let the dialogue run until it was completely spoken no joke some of these segments can go up to 30 minutes.

Another ridiculous thing TW&THK does is for some stupid reason, the game rolls the credits after you complete each individual chapter of the game. Thankfully its skippable, but for the life of me I cannot understand whey the developers felt that I needed to see it between each chapter. Perhaps they felt that this game was going to bomb so they wanted to make sure the credits got seen at least once before the player eventually quit. Or perhaps they felt they did such a great job with that text roll they thought it was the most enjoyable experience of the game. It's completely stupid and I have no idea why they did it this way.

The cast of characters for the most part generally likable. Although admittedly it might take a little warming up to some of them, I don't think there was a character I liked from the moment they were introduced in the game but as I played through a chapter or two I needed up liking them a little more as I understood them. The only character who I really struggled to like through a good portion of the game was Metallia herself because she's such a rotten bitch. For an early spoiler, in the 2nd chapter f the game she does defeat the forest witch, but as she's weakened the forest witch exclaims not to kill her because she is actually Metallia's mother.

Metallia's response to this basically equivalates to a "So fucking what? Who cares?" and places a hex on her. Not just a normal hex though, she felt the best way to curse her mother was to turn her into a mouse, jack up her pheromone production to 11 and the summon 3 large horny rats so her mother can give her "lots of brothers and sisters." God fucking damn, Metallia, jeeze... To be fair, the game does have that moment where it boomerangs and I suddenly wanted Metallia to get her way and fucking kill everyone, and I felt it does an adequate job of explaining her selfish nature. I give Nippon Ichi this, they are always good at weaving a tale.

Remember kids, this is the story's "heroine". Not the villain... maybe.

The hands down biggest complaint I have with this game is that the camera and its controls suck an entire bushel of weewees. The camera spin is incredibly slow, and you can only raise and lower the angle of it so much, so it always feels like the camera is too close to the action and is never really positioned in a way that you can easily see what is coming. On top of that, the fucking environments are always in the fucking way. So if you are going to be exploring a set of forest or a town with really tight alleyways? You get to eat shit. Enjoy looking at the tops of trees or buildings as enemies you can't see wail on you. Its retarded. There should be no reason I can't pan the camera higher up to get a better lay of the land in this style of play.

One last niggling complaint that I have is this game is very unclear about the process of getting the proper endings. There are 3 possible ones. One of them is Meh and its made by a very simple decision near the end of the game, where you basically have deny a mission 3 times to which you get a pretty shitty monologue. I youtube'd that one. The next ending is the "true ending" which might have been one of the shittest unfulfilling things I've ever seen. I was legitimately pissed because while it is an ending epilogue, its a real "Ha ha, fuck you". To get the best experience, you have to get the "bad ending" which is done by finding and defeating 3 optional bosses in levels you have previously gone through. The game does little to indicate this so I ended up missing them completely. There is a surprisingly little amount of online guide for this game.

That being said, after I was done with initial checkout of this game, I looked around to see that it was dropped to 20 bucks new at some stores. This is because its out of print so I had a agent further out into the state get me a copy of the game because I prefer the physical. I enjoyed it that much that I felt I needed to own it so I can finish it at my leisure. I still haven't completed the bad ending yet but I do intend to. I could absolutely sit down with this game for another 20 hours or so, but it is possible to get all 3 endings if you saved in the right places on a single run. It's not a very difficult game.

Every so often, one of these prolific companies that pump out games will release an underrated nugget that is worth playing. I definitely feel that The Witch and the Hundred Knight falls under that category. It's certainly not a game without its flaws and I wouldn't blame anyone who put this game down because of the tone of the narrative or wonkiness of some of the mechanics. It doesn't do anything to break the mold but it was a enjoyable game to play and it did enough to make me feel I needed to own it. From what I've heard there is a sequel in the works so perhaps they can polish this up somewhat. This one is hard to find physically but is still available digitally so if you are looking for something that's a little different yet familiar with a story that doesn't take itself too seriously, I would say its worth a play.

Seriously, Metallia should have killed everyone at Walpurgis. 

Senran Kagura: Shinovi Versus (Vita): It's actually about ethics in ninjitsuism.

Right, So then. I bought this Vita because I totally wanted a Vita, and not because I'm not a spineless individual with no willpower who couldn't resist the urge of a new Persona 4 spin off, even if it was a dancing game.  But regardless of what ever sound reasoning I had used to purchase the system, I now own one and needed to buy some games for it.

I kept picking this game up and snerking at it because it looked as fan service-y as the cover made it appear, so I never gave it an honest thought. But I did catch a couple of seconds of the footage of the upcoming PS4 version of the game, and surprisingly I got more interested in the game. Dragon Quest: Heroes let me know I could like the hacky-slashy brawler "warriors" style grind if it was done properly, so why not actually give this game a shot before I spend on a full priced PS4 version of the game. So I wore a long coat, hat, shades, and scarf that covered my face and waited for the store to empty out so I could pick up a copy of......

SENRAN KAGURA: SHINOVI VERSUS(Vita)

So I'm late to the party on this one so I'll try to summarize as best I can. This edition of the game is a sequel to Senran Kagura Burst, which I believe is the 2nd game in the series on 3DS.  The premise of this universe that there are a number of academies that students attend like normal students, but a select few are chosen in secret to be trained as Shinobi.

Each school has their own philosophy as they train their shinobi to follow specific paths, Hanzo Academy representing good (and where you find series protagonist Asuka and her team), and the Hebjio Clandestine Girls Academy which allows their Shinobi to travel a darker path of evil. During the course of the story, the Hebijo team issues a challenge to the girls of Hanzo to a Shinobi Battle Royale, where the winning team earns the right to burn the opposing school to the ground.

But during the early confrontations, a third academy makes themselves known. Gessen Girls academy was founded by a rogue Hanzo instructor who is technically a good ninja, but does so to the extreme of trying to purge the evil shinobi, as opposed to striking a balance and co-existing with them. With all these players in place, it becomes an all out battle royale of ninja girls with individual motivations for fighting to save their school.

Okay, so plots really don't get much more anime than this. Three different schools training ninja girls out of high school students. It's absolutely as ridiculous as it sounds. The stories are somewhat delivered in visual novel style that Japanese developers love. If you think Disgaea you would have an idea of what I am talking about. In a number of scenes you will see the rendered character models with a couple of animations to deliver certain queues home. These are only in the main school story quests where this happens though. The character quests have no rendered models and are just done with text.

There is actually a massive abundance of story in this game. Because when you choose a school to play as, you get to also chose a character. When you go into that schools story mode you then get to opt to play through an individual characters story which helps explains their motivations and character traits {sometimes}, or you can play the school story mode which you could consider to be the main story of the game.

The character stories are typically a lot more tongue and cheek the main story. For example, Katsuragi is Hanzo's heavy hitter using big walloping melee kicks. The problem is, she is also the team's pervert. So in her personal story mode, you find that one of her primary motivations is to be the best at sexual harassment of all the schools. But her teammates have become so used to her groping their tits that they don't react and its not fun for her anymore. So she goes out to find other girls to fondle. It ends with her finding another character as perverted as she is and they have this epic rivalry form to see who can out grope each other. This is an actual story plot line in the game.

But when you play the main school story, while that personality is still there you find out both of her parents are shinobi who are current rogue and on the lam. They have been protecting Katsuragi from the shadows but things have finally caught up with them, so Katsuragi strikes a deal with her pursuers that if her school can be successful in the Shinobi Battle Royale, her parents can go free. It is a lot more serious, and more believable motivation for the characters. Which makes the whole thing feel bizarre that both these angles come from the same character.

Literally the reward for beating Katsuragi's character story. It's deep and meaningful.

The problem with this is there amount of characters in this game are fucking bonkers. Each school has 5 playable characters all of them with different kinds of weapons. So that means for me to get through the entire games story mode, I have to play through 5 characters individual stories (roughly 5 to 6 levels each) AND their schools story more for another 5 or so levels three different times. Not only that but I believe I saw that there is a returning 4th team that also becomes playable as well. How much time do you think I have, Senran Kagura?!

Levels in this game are usually broken down into two specific types. Either A: Get flooded by waves of generic baddies for you to dispatch a la Dynasty Warriors before fighting the specific rival of said level, or B: the level is just the specific rival straight up in a one on one fight. Sometimes after dispatching a wave of baddies I have to run to a new area of the map, but it doesn't feel like there is any real reason for it other than to do it. Platforming as not really been a factor in this game in any real capacity, so to that extent its kind of a let down. It's really just arenas to smash enemies. Dragon Quest Heroes did this same thing.

Thankfully, movement and combat is fast. which is a must for a ninja game.

So when I play an action game of this variety I have a few simple pre-requisites. Is the combat fast and fluid, does it have skillful combos or just button mashing, and is the combat fun to do? The first of these is most important because I'm playing fucking ninja girls, so if the combat is slow then this game is already a dud. Thankfully this game is every bit as fast paced as it should be. Even the slow hard hitting characters still move with a relative speed about them so they aren't so much unplayable. Although they do tend to be my least favorite to use.

The comboing however is more up for debate. When you start as a new level one character, your combos are pretty limited. Basically you mash your light attack to set up a heavy and if you time the heavy right you blast a number of enemies away. But as you begin to level, your attack types change a little and it alters the combo somewhat, landing your heavy in a different part of the lights changes the finishing heavy. You also have an ability to flurry after a heavy which basically lets you dash after an enemy or enemies you knocked away to follow them with another face paced aerial combo. It's a little tricky to get used to but when you figure out how to do it, its fun as hell to keep the nonstop wave of punishment going.

The combos extend as you level, but the core structure doesn't change all that much.

That's not even including the Shinobi Transformations every girl can do. At one point you can tap the L button and your Kunoichi will go into a magical girl style transformation which basically changes them into a slightly different version of their previous outfit. Their health is restored and recovers slightly and the combo attacks change. For someone like Asuka, this can be game breaking. She has dual wielding katanas, and basically the transformation gives her these tornado attacks that rip enemies asunder with a near endless combo. In addition to the changed moves, you can also unload your special attacks for big damage. But be wary because the enemies can do this to.

Here is the problem I have with the combat though. Despite playing with a number of characters each with their own different types of weapons, the combos never really feel like they change all that much. Sure, some characters weapon speed and movements change so you have adjust for that, but ultimately you are spamming your quick attacks until you are ready to blast them off the ground and quickly follow up with your aerial rush. I don't know, the game feels like it is begging for more special type moves to use, something to make the combos feel different with each character. Thankfully keeping your chain alive is fun, and that's ultimately what kept me going.

Dragon Quest: Heroes manged to pull this off by allowing you to use the two buttons to switch up your combos, but you also had special moves you could use for situations that change the pace of the fight. The Bayonetta series gives you different weapons, and using them feels like it changes how the game plays from weapon to weapon forcing you to change your strategy and combo to accommodate for it. Senran Kagura doesn't seem to do either of these and I feel the combat can feel a little samey as a result of it. It doesn't make it bad, but I do think it will affect the game's longevity. 

Alright. So let's just get this out of the way. If Dead or Alive: Extreme Beach Volleyball is considered too fan service-y, then Senran Kagura is pretty much is that level squared. You can beat an opponent by wailing on them till their life bar goes down, but as you fight them parts of their clothes (mainly covering their tits and ass) will continue to fly off in a ridiculously fan service-y close up. If you deal enough damage their clothes blast off of them so they are fighting in their underwear. They will go into a frenzy mode with nonstop chains but now take increased damage. If you can hit a special in that state, it will blast off their remaining undies and leave them character censored but nekkid.

This is also reflected in the following cutscene if one exists, where the defeated kunoichi will continue to banter with their foe as if they were fully clothed with chibi versions of their faces covering the naughty bits. I have to admit that I find it hilarious and creepy at the same time. I can't deny that there is certainly an audience for this kinda thing, but it certainly does make a case for why women might want to be represented better in games.

This is the worst review I've ever done.

It doesn't stop there either. In between missions you can go to the shop to buy unlockables (where the shopkeep also has her own jiggle physics that can be used with the touchscreen) where you can buy alternate costumes of the girls for their ninja transformations. So yes, Asuka ended up dressed like a maid pretty much the moment I had access to it. Shut up, don't judge me. But to push the fan service even further, there is a "Lingerie Lottery" where you can bet an amount, shake for your fortune, and then get a poorly textured new set of undies for your girls to have revealed when they get their clothes blasted off. Ok, so maybe that is a little much.

You have a multitude of costume options as well that you can start changing pretty much from the word go so that also helps. The only thing I can think of that seems to have pretty crappy textures are the undies from the aforementioned lingerie lottery. They just seem poorly textured and look low rez in comparison to the rest of the costumes. but since the goal is usually to stay clothed, it ended up not being a major issue for me. Otherwise the game looks decent visually. There are a number of different environments to fight which each have their own nifty aesthetics, but ultimately where you are fighting doesn't really affect the pace of the battle and the platforming is minimal. The character options are good and they do a pretty good job of making so many characters unique from one another.

There are 98 of these to collect. Because the game really wants to drill home that I'm a creep.

The music I feel kinda of torn on. Usually my reviews break down either A.) an amazingly well complimentary score. or B.) unoriginal lifeless music to fill the dead air that you probably won't remember. Shinovi Versus seems to fall in the middle of these two areas. I couldn't hum a note of the combat music because I'm to focused on the battle to listen. The main theme is pretty anime rock so that was good. There is some wonky character story music that comes up kind of often that you could consider notable I guess, but its not good. Music really isn't this games strongest selling point. 

There are a couple of small issues that I have with the game. First of course is the story. Now I'm not about to sit on here and shit on the game for having a goofy sense of character stories where its basically just an excuse to treat the player with another fan service-y image like one of the girls deep throating a polish kielbasa or something (I'm not entirely sure that's not actually in there). That's just what this game is so I expect it at this point.  The problem I have is if you are going to do the visual novel thing, the dialog and text have to be quick and punchy and entertaining. To go back to the Disgaea example, they are very good at this. Get your plot out, follow it with a joke, get me back into the game.

It does suffer from the problem of too much fucking text sometimes. There is actually a massive abundance of story in this game. Because when you choose a school to play as, you get to also chose a character. When you go into that schools story mode you then get to opt to play through an individual characters story which helps explains their motivations{sometimes}, or you can play the school story mode, which you could consider to be the main story of the game.

One of the biggest storytelling problems this game has, and more so in the individual character quests is some of the story dialog takes place during the level. So trying to catch the small text in a game where there are lots of character models flying around an a relatively high speed while at the same time trying to pay attention to my HUD and execute combos more often then not means I am missing a portion of the story when it is delivered. Thankfully the character stories tend to be less important so I don't as much worry about missing them.

Shinovi Versus makes the mistake of giving me literally whole screens of text. Just barfing un-narrated text at me without any character animation (or sometimes even a character on screen) of exposition. This is not a good way to do because eventually eyes gloss over and you just start skimming the text or skipping it entirely. In a story mode, that's a problem. Persona 4 Arena/Dancing all Night did it that way and as much as I love it, that's not a good way to deliver on the story. Lost Odyssey did this even worse and those screens were actual very important story exposition. It needs to be quick and punchy.

Sometimes you will get like 15 of these in a row, which is horrendous.
And apparently, modesty isn't much a value in this series.. 

The other issue I had is that I felt that the game was a little too easy. Now you can increase the difficulty before you start a level so I think for the remainder of the game I am going to do that now that I know the controls. But if the combat starts to feel a little samey and levels are too easy then that is just a recipe for disaster. I think out of the levels I have played I only really struggled with one particular fight and even then I haven't lost. 

What could be the game's biggest saving grace is the one mode I haven't played yet. Shinovi Versus features an online multiplayer mode. I know, I know, I bitch about multiplayer games all the time because online gamers are the scum of the planet. But this is case where I think it would give the game the challenge it needs. You can play versus in one on one battles or two on two teams. And there is also a co-op panty raid mode (I'm really starting to hate writing about this game) where you basically are on a race to collect them as they fall from the sky.

The moment you unlock this, there is no reason not to spam it.

I find myself thinking about the anime High School of the Dead when I think of something to compare this to. That show had a simple zombie premise, and interesting cast of characters, and really fun and dramatic combat sequences. But then in the middle of of all the fun action, there would be a super close up of a upskirt crotch shot, or slo-mo bullet time sequence going through a pair of boobs. Why? The show was good enough on its own, it didn't need the fan service breaking me out of an action scene to let me know boobs and vaginas exist.

And that's what I feel about Senran Kagura: everything about this series from what I can tell works great, plays great, and looks great. But if all the fan service that is in there was removed, I don't think it would impact the quality of the game without it being there. It would probably add some legitimacy to the story and situations playing out. Thankfully the majority of the cutscenes in battle are skippable so you can just mash X to get right back into the fight.

Senran Kagura: Shinovi Versus was my first taste of this installment. I got the game used and played it for a number of weeks. That's usually a pretty good sign as far as its play-ability goes. But I would be lying if I didn't feel like an absolutely creep while I played it. This is game that has literally no shame about what it is and proudly flaunts that fact. If you are looking for a game that is going to give you serious character development with a rich storyline in a complex universe? It might be in there somewhere, but Senran Kagura probably is not what you are looking for.

But if you are looking for a fast paced hack and slash brawler that doesn't take itself too seriously, that plays very competently and is fun to plunk down short term plays with, then Shinovi Versus delivers on that front. For all of the ragging of this game I did in this review, ultimately I enjoyed the time I spent with it and will probably go back to play more when I have time to kill. If they develop more on polishing the storytelling, game modes, and tweak combat some more I might be pretty excited to try the PS4 version of the game when It finally comes stateside. So if you are upset Dead or Alive Volleyball 3 isn't coming to the U.S. then maybe Senran Kagura: Shinovi Versus will scratch that itch for ya.

Now I feel I should play Beyond Good and Evil to balance this out.