Ah, Senran Kagura. The poster child of fanservice games for like ten years, created simply because some Japanese man looked at the 3DS and decided 3D boobs should be a thing.
This series is well known for it’s overly busty ninja girls who shred their clothes off in battle. It’s also a decent character comedy with some drama thrown in, but most people ignore that for the T&A the games are full of, which is mostly done via the kinda bad character models in the gameplay as the stories and cgs don’t really aim to titilate for the most part. Of course, anyone playing this series is there for the titillation at least for some part. Which the game’s designers’ know full well, and is likely the reason the next game in the series will be the last because Sony.
This post will go through the entire series, with the games listed in reverse order. So newest release first. I’ll be playing basically everything, including Re;Burst and Burst because Re;Burst actually lessens the fanservice for Burst a lot more then I expected. I basically want to see every unique in game thing Senran has to offer that isn’t mobile exclusive.
At this point, only Burst, Burst Renewel, and Deep Crimson are left.
Burst Re;Newel
Peach Ball
One of two actual erotic cgs in the game.
The pinball game. It’s a mission based pinball game where the girls from Reflexions(Asuka, Yumi, Yomi, Murasaki, and Ryona) get turned into animals(or are turning into them I guess?) because of Haruka. Only way to save them? Pinball. By a complete stranger who just happened to be there which of course is you. Just like Reflexions, you are a character in the story, and by that I mean at the end of every story segment and most of the endings the girls will turn and say a single sentence to you. I hate this entirely. You are a non entity. Stop trying to force the player being part of the world, it doesn’t work and the ninja girls wouldn’t be allowed to let you remember this anyway. The few things that kinda make this less awful then Reflexions use of the non existent insert is 1. If you pretend this game happened first, Reflexions is the continuation and now they aren’t dating a complete stranger! 2. The characters still get to talk to each other so there’s still actual comedy and flow to the little story the game has.
The actual game is pretty simple. During the pinball you have a list of missions on the side, things like hit this piece or go this path x number of times, and each missions has a point reward. Once you get enough missions complete, the next time you hit the girl you enter a minigame which I think are suppose to be sexy or erotic but are kinda just weird. On the third minigame, you instead just hit the girls with the ball on her tits or ass, and then with the flippers themselves. After this, she is cured and if in the story mode, the level is over. For free mode you just keep going into new round with the only change being you might have an item if you kept one in the last set.
As for the actual amount of playing, story mode has 5 levels per girl and 5 girls. So 25 boards, each with 3 missions(hit girl with ball, don’t lose the ball x times and so on) that get you extra unlockables. Free mode is where the main issue I kinda have with the game comes from. The game has only 2 boards. Free mode has an extra minigame at the end of a round that has the girl with scroll tucked in her cleavage. If this happened you get an item, usually an accessory for dressup or a ball. How many unlockables are there in free mode? Around 60. There is no way to force the item minigame, and from what I could tell the best way to get everything was to go for 1-3 full sets, which guaranteed at least 1 item, then reset after the item and play that again. Do that until you get money instead of an item. Then switch boards because the boards have their own unlock lists. I don’t love pinball, I’m mostly indifferent to the genre. I’ve played the game for like 30+ hours because of free mode. Was it worth it? Not really but every time I got a background image I was actually excited, because those were the best unlocks.
So going into the fanservice for a bit. The main source of it in this game is the minigames, which is where the clothing damage and such happen. They also have the best animations in general. This is important, because this has some of the most tame cgs in the whole series. Only two of them are sexual or erotic at all, the rest seem to be aiming for heart warming or cute as the girls interact as friends or reach out to the player. The rest of the fanservice comes in the background for the tables themselves. These are images you paint into the main section of the table, and are the best cosmetic reward the game has. The clothing and accessories for dressup? Outside of the already unlocked animal stuff, nothing new. The images on the table? Probably new(are from the one of the mobile games which I’m not touching) and are mostly on the erotic or at least nice to look at side. The backgrounds have a few of the girls dressup in various cosplay with various states of undress. Problem is that there is no way to actually just look at these backgrounds.
This is the best angle I could find to actually screenshot the backgrounds. There is basically no other way to see these in game beyond playing, unlike cgs or diorama posing.
I tried to. Looked in every gallery, went into diorama mode and found that you could change everything except the boards backgrounds, found the main menu had them applied but you can’t get the camera far enough back to actually look at them. For being the best reward, the fact you can only see them when actually playing(or in the small preview shots) was disappointing. I looked for mods to see if I could apply them in diorama mode, but nothing. Only a nudity mod and a 60 FPS one. No image gallery has the backgrounds either. They are weirdly hard to actually look at.
Anyway, the grind for free mode to get everything unlock was annoying, but beyond that it was an okay game. I don’t feel I should try to analyze much more, I’ve not played enough pinball games to really rate them. This is slightly below or equal to Bon Appetit for me in the series, below all the main games but way better then Reflexions.
Has all the content unlocked. Save should works regardless of how much dlc is installed.
Gameplay: 4/10 Eroticness: 5/10 Story: 3/10
Completion: What it took-
Beating every girls 5 story stages with all three conditions met(some taking 5 attempts or more at), and who knows how many tables on free play. If the game has around 30 unlockables there, at least 70 tables.
Reflexions
At least the art’s still good…
The dating massage game. Only has five girls(4 of which are dlc only and only Asuka unlocks most of the game’s content), and they never interact with each other. Instead they talk at you, the player, which for some people might be great. For me its just awkward. I don’t roleplay main characters, I don’t self insert, so the whole you are massaging them thing is lost on me. It doesn’t help that you are of course mute, so comedy, one of Senran’s stronger points, is completely out of the window based on game style alone.
So the gameplay has three phases of massaging. Their hands, which is innocent and allows you to select which cosplay dream the next phase takes place in. This is probably the most interesting idea, as the girls all take on cosplay personas of the girls you pick in this phase allowing them to act as different characters with the same core traits. Of course they barely say anything other then stock anime phrases so the appeal is kinda lost pretty quickly. Phase 2 is a full body massage with them as their cosplay character. Each part of their body will emit a one of five colors, whichever is the most picked color determines the ending. At the end of the session the colors all mix and you get your final ending color. Get all five to get their “date” ending. Phase 3 is a minigame that ends with them in their sexy worn out poses, which you can skip entirely after doing so many. It doesn’t really matter for the game itself and there’s really not enough variety of games for this to be done five times per session. Up to 35 times per girl minimum to unlock everything.
The story is something to do with dreams and mind control. It’s never expanded on, though I can think of a few things that would have been cool like the mind control villain from the early series or a test for the girls to overcome curses. But nope, its massages and amnesia and that’s it. The game was made for the Switch’s HD rumble feature, so porting this to PC kind of kills its only gimmick worth a damn. No story, boring repetitive gameplay, and honestly the sexy bits are at some of their weakest(unless you really like groping). Only play this if you want to pretend date the very small cast of girls.
Has all the content unlocked. Save works regardless of how much dlc is installed, so base game or all five characters, either works.
Gameplay: 1/10 Eroticness: 3/10 Story: 1/10
Completion: What it took-
4 full runs per girl I think. This one is just tedious.
Peach Beach Splash
They all wear this plain white bikini, save for the three in the one-piece. It gets a bit boring visually.
The truest fanservice game in the entire series, the water gun third person shooter with card game elements. PBS is probably the most straight out ecchi game in the series. From the fact all of the girls are dressed in bikinis in all the cgs(boring white, and samey bikini’s), to the 810 cards with various states of undress and cosplay taken out of the mobile game that are used in this game’s combat. I’m pretty sure clothing that gets see through as it gets wet was also introduced in this game. If you want to see the sexual side of the series, this is the best game(outside of the mobile stuff…)
The cards are honestly better then the cgs just for clothing variety. Well, the ones with clothing.
As for story, it does advance things a small bit from Estival, mainly it talks about graduation or future plans from some of the girls. It also brings up the big final boss of the series thing again, but nothing is really done with that. PBS is the final story entry in the series to date, and it was released in 2017. Since then we’ve got two spinoffs of poor quality and a remake of the first game.
As for gameplay, it’s not fun for me. It’s a really stiff run and gun third person shooter with horde fighting and then usually a “boss”. You have a decent selection of guns and can have 5 skill cards and 3 pets with various abilities. Each character plays exactly the same, the only difference is voice and body shape, and which ones you leveled. Leveling is based on cards, each copy you get gets added to an xp pool you can spend as you please. Guns are probably the most important one, then the Gessen girls since you are forced to use them in the hardest offline mode and are forced to only use the leaders of the four groups against the final boss who is actually hard. Until you start leveling the game will feel often times unfair, but once you get a decent skill deck and some leveled guns it’s actually pretty easy. It just controls badly.
This is mainly with the skill cards, but the lock-on system is crap. Since this is a horde shooter with bosses that are your actual target, you want to shoot the main target but the lock-on system prioritizes the closest target, not the important one. And there’s a lot of targets, and if the target moves too quickly you lose your lock-on. If you use a skill card the game throws the camera the way the girl is facing instead of shooting the effect the way the camera is facing, so you are guaranteed to lose your lock-on. You can fly through the sky and jet forward to dodge and maneuver through the battle areas so you can reposition easily enough, but movement never felt fun to me.
Honestly, PBS is the game you play for bikini fanservice, or mutli player Senran. It really doesn’t do anything else that well. I’m thankful that there was a way to guarantee new cards in the shop so I didn’t have to grind packs or missions for days, but the game itself doesn’t have much appeal after getting the cards, which you could have gotten from New Wave or somewhere on the internet. As the last main entry in the series currently, its not a great endpoint.
Has all the content unlocked that is not linked to online or dlc. All cards, cgs, outfits, and characters unlocked.
Gameplay: 4/10 Eroticness: 9/10 Story: 4/10
Edit 3/18/21- I apparently forgot to buy the final movie and a few songs in the save. Which might explain why I had never seen the actual epilogue to the game before. Kinda stings knowing that 7even will never be, or at least never be what is should have been.
Anyway, the save has enough money to buy the remaining stuff, so I’m not going to update the one here. Just noting that I messed up a bit.
Completion: What it took-
Story mode+ bonus episodes. The tournament mode, and then buying a lot of cards. I cheated the medal count to get all the cards because the only other smart way is online mode or an incredibly slow grind. I didn’t have a full year for this game, so I took the easy way out.
Estival Versus
Beyond the animations for the models, the cgs selection in Estival isn’t particularly horny. A few winners here and there, most of them are to tame or are story relevant for sexy fun times or whatever you would use them for. Which is a bit of a shame, chapter two of the story has a lot of silly horny cgs because they are on a tropical island but the rest of the game mostly ignores that for what is an interesting plot idea.
One more thing real quick is how the underwear works in Senran Kagura. This doesn’t really matter for the other games until Estival and Shinovi, but the way they handle underwear in this series kinda sucks. So you have a bunch to unlock from a gatcha, but all they do is slightly alter the design and color of the bottom. The top’s color changes and that is it. This is because which top a girl wears is actually dependent on their outfit. For example, Katsuragi’s outfit shows between her breasts so they don’t give her a standard bikini, instead giving her pasties. Basically girls are given bras based on how exposed they are, so all the 120+ underwear unlocks consist of is color for the top and coverage for the bottom. It’s not a silly fun as it could be.
Estival Versus introduces what would have been the final boss of Senran Kagura. Shin, the giant youma that destroys entire worlds. Of course you only learn about that thing at the tail end of the game, most of the plot relies on the girls meeting loved ones who perished and are now allowed to hang about until they are satisfied. This only really affects 4 sets of girls, the others are basically just there. Of any of the games in the series, this one feels the most like it could have just dropped Asuka’s and Homura’s groups since its really only the newer teams that have any real plot significance. The time spent on those teams kind of means nothing, though they aren’t given much anyway. Since most of the plot is techincally a mystery on why the girls were whisked to a pocket dimension for a weird tournament with dead loved ones hanging about, I don’t feel there is much to say about any of the specifics.
The entire game is framed as an elimination tournament. Each group have 20 towers, last one standing wins. These are more a gameplay element then a plot one, as most fights have nothing to do with the actual tournament itself. Oddly, despite the game going for meeting past loved ones one more time, I never really felt like it was going for sad. Reflective maybe, but not sad.
So a bit of a tangent that builds on something from Shinovi. Youma are born from good and evil ninja fighting, apparently. So once that is found out, why would any organization willingly allow good and evil ninjas? They actively create murder demons that can destroy the world by competing. I guess it makes sense that the two games that follow that reveal take place in alternate dimensions and are mostly about festivals/rituals to prepare for the giant sky demon. A big part of the solution to the crux of the reason for the ritual that is this game’s plot is that by competing the ninja girls get stronger and should be able to win against the sky evil. Which creates more demons that kill ninjas in packs. The logic of youma and ninjas just does not make much sense to me.
As a game, Estival Versus is the poster child of ecchi games being worse games then the non-ecchi alternative. Estival Versus is mostly a horde fighter with bosses at the end. It quickly just becomes a button masher until the boss shows up, and then you use ultimates or air comboing to deal with the boss. Repeat a lot of times.
It has ideas. Each girl has three forms with different stat focuses. Flash is standard girl, nothing special and no ultimates. Yin is just stronger with ultimates. Yang is the highest attack power, infinite combos, but the lowest defense of the three. So civilian, ninja, and underwear forms, you can change once per level. Each changes up your combos.
The game wants to have an aerial combat focus. A lot of attacks have very clear smashes that send enemies flying, and you have a dedicated get to them command for long aerial combos. There’s even aerial raves which are over the top all out attacks on an enemy in the air. In hard mode I imagine you need aerial combat to not die. In easy you can just infinite combo and use an ultimate on the bosses and just keep going. The game doesn’t reward higher difficulty play enough, so I stuck to easy to keep things quick. This did make things more boring, but also I expect hard just involves a lot more time to do the same things while enemies attack way faster.
The main draw of the gameplay is the jiggle and other animations. Clothes ripping off basically every enemy. Playing dress up so you can go get the clothes destroyed. You can enjoy the game, but from what I’ve read and remember, Shinovi is actually the more enjoyable game. The bosses in Estival are either slow because they stun you to much so you just throw pot shots at them, or you win in an instant using ultimates. I found multiple maps I just jumped and ground pounded the entire time, because normal enemies were to dangerous to fight do to status effects and the sheer number of them, and half the characters were horrible for fighting hordes in any form. It was the fastest and safest way to win, but it was mind numbing. That kind of play is how I feel the entire game kinda feels. Smart play is unfun, fun play gets you killed or beat up and takes longer. I could see someone enjoying the gameplay, it’s just definitely not for me.
Save for PC version of Estival Versus
Save has everything unlocked. Outfits, cgs, underwear gatcha, creative finishers.
Gameplay: 5/10 Eroticness: 8/10 Story: 6/10
Completion: What it took-
Do all levels once, destroy all platforms, and get all creative finishers. Then grind a lot of money for panty lottery.
Bon Appetit
I always read this as Bon Appe-tit instead of tite. It fits with the series better, even if that probably wasn’t what they were going for.
Loading screens are from one of the mobile games.
Anyway, this is the rhythm game about cooking. I see a lot of people call this a cooking game, and no it is not. It’s a rhythm game. You have two tracks and use the bottom arrow keys and WASD to play. There are other buttons that do things, like enter a super mode for points, but they don’t really do anything other then get you some achievements.
Each song is set up into three phases, where the winner of phases one and two get their clothes blown off. Note that you don’t actually need to beat those two phases to win, from what I can tell how well you do in them only affects clothes and if you fill up the heart icon by playing almost perfectly you get the other girl naked, on a platter covered in desert, and some weird ass ass swaying during the match. This doesn’t affect anything, but of course if you are playing Senran then you’ll want to see these.
Beyond that this is a basic Senran Kagura game in progression. Do all character stories(mostly comedies though other games do reference a few of them) to unlock everything. In this game, that means playing 5 songs per character story, totaling up to 110 songs to finish(unless you are doing achievements, then its 200). The game has 22. It can get very old. It doesn’t help that the way the game was released, the characters came in two sets. So when you select one story girl, her first, fourth and fifth songs are all from her side so if you do them in order you will hear the same songs constantly. Only two and three are actually random. I do like most of the music, though I find it strange that very little of it ever comes back. Like, you’d think the music game would have character themes from the rest of the series but it doesn’t.
Of the spinoffs, this is probably my favorite. It has the full cast and does actually advance a plotline here and there. It’s just as repetitive as the other spinoffs, but thanks to a bigger cast if feels less grindy to finish. It’s not amazing, but is decent.
Everything should be unlocked.
Gameplay: 4/10 Eroticness: 6/10 Story: 3/10
Completion: What it took-
Just beat each girls story. So 22 * 5. 110 songs. Thankfully I do like some of the music.
Shinovi Versus
My favorite game of the series, and my actual start.
Gameplay-7
At it’s core, it’s the same as Estival. 3 forms, attacks shoot enemies away to be chased in the air for comboing, ultimates win most fights, etc. Except it’s way more fun to actually play.
It’s mostly the movement just feels way better then what Estival has that makes things feel better. Missions are also shorter on average, probably because the Vita was the focus console. This is actually an issue for me, since it’s actually fun to mow through enemies it’s kind of a disappointment that the longest mission in the game is like 5 minutes at best. Part of me wishes the ultimates weren’t in the game at all since actually fighting the girls in each level is fun until they start spamming them. They break the pace in this game do to each one getting a cutscene. There’s also a lot more clothes ripping them I remember from Estival, like top and bottom each get 2 rips per costume with different attacks and ultimates damaging different parts. For those who like clothes ripping, the only way to do the full set is the final ultimate, which in this game requires you to have 20% HP and 5 scrolls of energy to use. It’s basically never worth it.
The reason it isn’t worth it is that usually if you get that low, you are dead. While I enjoy this game a lot, it is definitely unfair at times. Lots of chaining and paralyzing and such. It’s part of the fun to me, but could definitely be an issue.
Story-4
Shinovi tells it’s story kind of like Peach Beach. Each school gets its own set of missions but they each follow the same overall plot. So when one school fights another, that other school’s story has them fight to. The banter is different(for some reason), but the main plot stays the same. For Hanzo and Gessen, it’s really just introducing Yumi’s team and making friends. Except I’m pretty sure Yumi kills Hebijo and Crimson.
So I’m pretty sure I’m wrong on that, but for some reason I remember Miyabi and Yumi’s stories feeling like they killed everyone else. It was mainly a guess based on the attitudes of the team and how everyone only showed up once. I probably read into the wrong content clues but since I skipped reading everything except Crimson I’m fine keeping that as my canon.
As for Crismon and Hebijo, their stories are fine until the final act, when suddenly the two stories cannot exist together. Hebijo becomes about Ryona and Ryobi’s true intentions and them finally becoming an actual team. Crismon is about breaking Hebijo out of mind control. Crimson is also technically the true end of the game, though playing Estival you wouldn’t think that.
Due to Yumi’s break out popularity the story kind of got switched up after this. So instead of continuing with the become Kagura by fighting youma and becoming a great ninja, the game falls into rituals and contests to become Kagura. This is also the game that explains why the good vs evil thing exists. Apparently ninjas fighting summons youma, including Shin who the shinobi want to summon to kill. Why summon the planet ending horror monster? Because apparently it’s going to show up either way, so might as well have people who can pose a threat. At least Estival is about preppign to fight Shin, Peach Beach is about keeping it sealed/running away from it which is actually the exact opposite of the actual goal.
Ecchi-4
Little. To. Nothing. Beyond the standard jiggling and clothes ripping, there is nothing here that Estival or Peach don’t do better. There is at most 4 cgs of the 48~ that I would call even slightly lewd. Makes a lot more sense on why I never thought of the series as that sexual overall since this game certainly doesn’t focus on that aspect much.
Verdict
Shinovi, Estival, and Peach Beach kind of create this trifecta of the series. Peach has the best fanservice. Estival has the best model fanservice and story(mostly because its linear). Shinovi has the best gameplay. If I were asked which one to start with, I’d go this one. It goes through everyone’s backstories enough to get an idea and is basically the start of the new saga that never got finished. Having the least fanservice means it’s also the easiest one to recommend people to the series that are iffy on titty girls.
Next up when I play a Senran title is Burst for the DS, time to see how the series actually started.
All cgs and missions unlocked. Store bought out, including the gacha panty machine.
Gameplay: 7/10 Eroticness: 4/10 Story: 4/10
Completion: Beat every missions, buy out store. The gacha machine is probably the most infuriating, so I cheated that part.
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