Focus in All the Wrong Places | Senran Kagura Shinovi Versus Review

From the moment I finished downloading my review copy of Senran Kagura Shinovi Versus, I knew I was in for an interesting ride, to say the least. This is because the game’s icon on the Vita home screen is a close up shot of a character’s breasts. This wasn’t just an attention-seeking move by the developers to stand out from the other icons – it’s actually a representation of what the game focuses on entirely. It’s not like Japanese developers have never done this before, but the cardinal sin of Senran Kagura is that this focus on exposing the female characters takes center stage rather than making a fun game.

Senran Kagura tells the tale of four rival shinobi schools. Each pride themselves as the best, and they’re all in a constant battle to prove which school houses the deadliest shinobi. The story is broken up into two different options: Shinobi Girls’ Code, which is the main story featured in the game that puts you in the role of various shinobi girls; and Shinobi Girl’s Heart, which is a short story mode telling unique stories about each character. To put it bluntly, both forms of story modes are a joke. Rather than pitting you against another school and telling epic stories of rivalry and struggle, the story mode instead takes the absolute lowest route possible by providing characters with motivations similar to a teenage boy looking at porn for the first time. One character, Katsuragi, sets out on a mission to – and I kid you not – find the biggest breasts possible to fondle.

Wait, what?

Combat is initially pretty fun, and it’s best experienced in short bursts. Attacks are flashy, and it feels like a simplified form of Dynasty Warriors, which is perfect for a handheld hack and slash game. Once you get past the first few encounters, though, the monotony starts to kick in. The game does a poor job of creating different scenarios that help make battles more memorable and entertaining and instead relies on the same formula over and over again. Most levels start with fighting against groups of grunts, and once you fight through these small groups, a girl shinobi will appear as the level’s boss.

These boss battles take an unusual turn. Once you start doing enough damage to the rival shinobi, their clothes will begin to rip apart and show more skin and cleavage. Oh, and don’t worry about missing these happenings, because the game will show a cutscene revealing the newly exposed areas. This happens every single time you do enough damage to an enemy, and while it first starts off as just slightly off-putting, it soon becomes an unnecessary distraction from the combat.

Each shinobi girl has the ability to regain health (and clothing) by initiating their shinobi transformation, which equips each girl with new clothes, refilled health, and allows them to use their special moves. There’s actually a bit of risk and reward here, because if you want to use your special powers, you’ll have to transform into your shinobi form; however, doing so will expel your ability to regain all of your health. The game isn’t difficult by any means, but I found myself relying on simple attacks in the normal forms and only transforming when I came close to death.

Combat is fun at first, but it loses steam too quickly.

When not battling, you’ll retire to one of the shinobi dojos. Here you can choose a mission, practice your moves, watch cutscenes and look at pictures, buy items, and customize the look of your shinobi girls in the dressing room. The latter feature hosts a lot of customization options for your shinobi’s appearance, and lots of items can be unlocked through playing story modes.

Senran Kagura is actually an impressive looking game on the Vita. Character models look great, the the game runs smoothly, too. Most cutscenes feature either a static image or limited animated interactions between the girls. The opening cutscene of the game is fully animated, and it made me excited to play Senran Kagura, but no cutscene in the game ever came close to being as epic.

Any positive aspect of Senran Kagura Shinovi Versus is quickly betrayed by its decision to focus on showing you jiggling breasts and butts rather than presenting a fun game. Constant cutscenes showing clothes being ripped off brings the fluidity of combat to a halt, and the inability to present diverse battles to switch up combat makes each mission all too similar to the last. The subject matter is highly questionable, but it’s even more upsetting that this focus held back Senran Kagura Shinovi Versus from becoming more than just a interactive wet dream.

This review is based on a review copy of the PlayStation Vita game Senran Kagura Shinovi Versus by Tamsoft, distributed by XSEED Games.