Cooking with Rhythm | Senran Kagura: Bon Appetit Review

If you’re not familiar with the Senran Kagura series, it’s become famous for, well, its cast of characters and their ability to shed their clothing in various situations. Sometimes, this focus on sexuality can make the game worse by not focusing on the game, itself, but for Senran Kagura: Bon Appetit, the rhythm gameplay is solid enough, but it’s held back by too few songs and its repetitive nature.

This time around, the Senran Kagura girls are gathered together to participate in a cook off in order to win a scroll which grants any wish. Each girl has their respective story mode, but their stories are mainly told through text and are more sexual innuendos than substance. There’s definitely humor found there, but it’ll be highly subjective, to say the least.

The cooking challenges themselves are actually a rhythm game in the vein of PSP’s Rockband Unplugged and other similar titles. A mixture of the directional and face buttons will appear on the screen, and you’ll have to press the corresponding buttons in time. Unlike Rockband or most rhythm games, there’s only two planes where notes can come from. Bon Appetit can initially become tricky from this, because while there’s only two note planes, notes can be thrown in incredibly twisted patterns that may leave your thumbs in a knot.

There’s three different sections in each song in which your dishes will be judged. Whoever has the upper hand with their dish will win the round, and the losing cook will have part of their clothes ripped off, revealing more of their body. Your objective is to keep your meter as full as possible by messing up as little as possible during each song.

If you’ve managed to complete a perfect “super dish” on the last round your opponent will have all of their clothes taken off, and they’ll be dressed up as a dessert, only being covered by whip cream, chocolate, and other dessert toppings. It’s a form of humiliation for the loser, and you’ll be able to view the loser in a full 360 degree environment.

Once you’ve become more adept at the rhythm combos, it actually become a little too easy. This stems from one of the more disappointing aspects of the game – there’s just too few songs available. Since each story mode involves you battling against the same characters, you’ll have to play their songs over and over again. This makes it easy to remember some of the more difficult note combinations, and it just becomes too monotonous playing and hearing the same songs over and over again. The songs included in Bon Appetit won’t be anything you’ll know, but they’re catchy enough to not become too annoying.

Depending on your viewpoint of the subject matter, Senran Kagura can either be a fun over-the-top rhythm game or a poor excuse to see half – or sometimes more – naked girls. Regardless of your stance, there’s definitely something addicting about the rhythm game, though the lack of an expansive track-list makes replaying the same songs over and over again monotonous. That being said, it’s a solid rhythm game that’s only 15 bucks, to boot.

This review is based on a review copy of the game Senran Kagura: Bon Appetit by Meteorise, distributed by XSEED Games.