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.