"Senran Kagura Burst Renewal" Review - Jug Jitsu (Yes, I went there - part 6)

Available for: Microsoft Windows, Playstation 4

Reviewed for: Playstation 4

It was a toss up between "Jug Jitsu" and "Crouching Titties, Hidden D-cups" for the subtitle of this review, but given how the principle characters in this game are all in high school, it felt a little less slimy to use the option that didn't have the word "titties" in it, and the subtitle was already going to be long enough to be an anime game title without an additional 4 words tacked on. But I digress. Welcome back to "Yes, I went there," the series where I play the cringiest-looking dating simulators and/or fanservice-heavy games, have a laugh, and tell you if the laughter if worth your money. If you've been following this series or my writing for a while, you may recall that the last entry in this series was a Nintendo Switch exclusive entitled Senran Kagura Reflexions. SKR was a game about groping...no, sorry, "massaging" an anime schoolgirl named Asuka with your hands and some tools including a vibrator...no, sorry, a "massage wand with a bulbous head" in order to help her remember what she had planned to confess to you. Well, that game was actually a spin-off of the wider Senran Kagura saga, a series of actions games about buxom high school Shinobi (ninja) girls...so evidently the rest of the games were less about "massaging" and more about Japanese schoolgirls beating the ever-living hell out of each other until their clothes explode off. Where am I going with this, you ask? Well, as I often do during dry periods like January, I recently went on Metacritic to see what kinds of low-profile games might have snuck onto shelves without me knowing. As I scrolled, I came across Senran Kagura Burst Renewal (hereafter referred to as SKBR, because for pete's sake, Japan, shorten your titles!), a full remake of the game that started it all. I sat there reading the description and knew what fate had in store for me. So when I got home from work that day, I installed it and prepared to constantly look over my shoulder out of sheer force of habit. In this case, the saga's reputation for over-sexualizing its characters...perhaps made me think it was going to be a far more adult experience than it actually was. I was expecting some serviceable fighting followed by bountiful cleavage shots and possibly the kinds of furious Scum's Wish-esque, saliva-heavy lesbian makeout sequences that would cause my youngest brother to magically teleport into my apartment from another state, suddenly turn 5 again, and, with wide, innocent eyes, ask me what I'm watching. So imagine my surprise when only 2 of the 5 main characters were decidedly lesbian, the plot (yes, I actually mean plot) had a surprising amount of depth, and the gameplay was actually quite good. Look, by now you probably know if you're going to get this game or not, but I'm going to break it all down anyway. With that in mind, I'd like to preface this review with a fair SPOILER WARNING. I will basically be spoiling the plot of this game because I have specific thoughts about it. Keep that in mind.

The premise of SKBR is simple: certain High Schools train the youth of Japan to become Shinobi, while other High Schools train the youth of Japan to become "Evil Shinobi." For our purposes, two such schools are Hanzo Private Academy (where good Shinobi are trained) and Hebijo Clandestine Girl's Academy (the bad guys...erm...girls). Hanzo is home to what is called the "Super Secret Ninja Art Scroll," and the student body of Hebijo wants it. Simple enough, right? Good and evil, good has something powerful, evil wants that powerful something for to perform evil? It's a clear premise that eventually gets some fleshing out, but we'll get to that. The story follows 5 female students of Hanzo Academy. Firstly, there's Asuka, the principle character and fetish delivery service of last year's Senran Kagura Reflexions. Secondly, there's Ikaruga, the dutiful class representative. Thirdly, there's Katsuragi, the teasing older classmate whose sole purpose is to grope the rest of the girls. Fourthly, there's Yagyu, the cold, intensely focused one with a secret caring heart. Finally, there's Hibari, the "cute-but-airheaded" first year who keeps a stuffed rabbit named "Mr. Bunny," loves sweet things, and basically emphasizes the wrongness of Japan's obsession with sexualizing High School girls. But again, we'll get to that. I ended the character summaries with Hibari because it provides an easy segway into one of my complaints about this game's story.
Despite the main character arguably being Asuka, the majority of the plot's momentum actually revolves around Hibari in a truly interesting way. Every anime property that follows tropes has a cute-but-airheaded character whose entire arc revolves around appearing happy but harboring feelings of inferiority or "I'm dragging everybody else down because I'm stupid." This arc is usually resolved with a teary-eyed confession of these feeling and a speech from this girl's friends about the power of friendship that immediately resolves all doubt and restores the girl's confidence. In the case of SKBR, however, this goes a little differently. Most of the points I just laid out are hit upon, but the speech about the power of friendship doesn't mend things. Rather, Hibari fails more and more and causes more and more trouble for everybody as the plot progresses. As this happens, the reassuring words from her friends start to feel more and more canned, and she sinks into deeper pits of self-loathing with each "we're friends, and friends look out for each other!" Eventually she starts to harbor truly self-destructive thoughts, to the point where she wonders if she'd be a better friend if she weren't alive to cause trouble. Hell, the enemy school's entire evil plan is centered around causing Hibari to fail even more and exploiting her obsessive drive to make up for her failures. A key story moment sees Hibari falling for a trick and accidentally handing over the super secret ninja art scroll to the enemy. After this most serious of blunders, Hibari tearfully submits to the torturous fate that one of the rival academy students has planned for her, so deep is her irreconcilable self-loathing. That's just not the kind of character development and progression you get from your usual pink-haired, smiley anime girl with a voice so high-pitched you wonder if the actress is a child. So not only does Hibari have a more solid arc than any of the other characters, but she's also the most crucial character in the story. Hell, not only that, but she becomes the vessel for the messages this story tries to send. She's the character who flips the script on the entire concept of "good" versus "evil" shinobi. Again, hell, not only that, but she's the character we spend the most time playing as! So why in the hell, when the time comes for the final push to take back the super secret ninja art scroll from the rival academy, is she put off to the side? Hibari had so much potential for a satisfying character arc resolution, but she just kind of...gets over her self-loathing. All that build up...all of that time spent having her see the other side...all of that potential...and she isn't even a principle figure in the final push. This is the biggest problem with having a story shared among 5 characters. To put it simply, this game needed more focus. If the game had us playing as just 1 of these characters (any one of them, really), it would've been an improvement. If Hibari had been the protagonist, though, it would've been a massive improvement, as the story would've been so much tighter. We'd be playing as the underdoggiest of underdogs, as a character that some people might've found annoying. We'd be in her shoes, failing at every turn and being targeted by enemies because of this constant failure. And then, we'd see this previously airheaded, cute character become a force to be reckoned with. That's a good story with a lot of forward momentum. We'd be trading this "5 anime tropes fighting evil" story for a "anime trope rises above her circumstances" story. But because of this game's lack of focus, we see a good arc squandered. This story was less than it could've been, which is a shame, because I wasn't expecting as much as I got.
In the introduction, you may recall that I mentioned this plot having a surprising amount of depth, but so far all I've done is talk about the potential that it squandered. While it's true that this game throws out a lot of what could've made it great, it does touch on some surprising points. I went into this expecting it to be your usual "Power of Friendship" affair, and while there certainly is no shortage of friendship-driven power in this story, it takes a back seat. I also came into this expecting it to be all about how good shinobi fight for justice and the evil shinobi fight for money or something like that, but that isn't even remotely the case. There are two major points that this plot establishes itself around, and both of them were actually surprisingly deep (and literally both these points are conveyed to Hibari and only Hibari). The first point is "good turns many away, but evil welcomes anybody," and the second is "the only difference between a 'good' shinobi and an 'evil' shinobi is the employer." I'm not going to go into a deep philosophical rant about these concepts, but I will say that I didn't expect anything quite this deep from a game with such an intense focus on mammary martial arts.
Now, here's where my spoiler warning goes into full effect. I definitely didn't expect deep philosophical themes from SKBR...but what I expected even less was the whole...actually, let me set the stage here. In the final push, each of our principle characters faces off against their rivals for the last time. In these battles, the rivals have an improved health bar and more power. When you beat them, for the first time in this game, it's confirmed that you actually did beat them (no "that was a clone," or "I was only at 5% power yesthatsactuallyathing"). As is often the case in anime properties, the girl you're playing as for that fight gives her rival a thumbs up, acknowledges her rival's power, and asks to fight them again sometime. Then, the girl you play as runs off to further aid in the effort to retrieve the super secret ninja art scroll, leaving her rival behind. I remember the first of these fights. I thought for sure that the rival would then start pondering the error of her ways and resolve to do better, as is often the case in anime properties. But then, the rival stated a rule of Hejibo Academy that was previously unknown to us as players: If you lose to someone from another school, you have to swallow a vial of poison that you carry around. So imagine my surprise when, instead of a bog standard acknowledgement of the power of friendship, I had to watch our 5 friendly leads unknowingly prompt 5 high school girls to commit suicide. I remember thinking, in that first instance, "wait...there's no way they're going to have this girl kill herself," only to hear a goodbye message followed by the sound of a body hitting the floor. "Well..." I thought, "that's.....dark..." I don't really have anything profound to say about that other than to spoil that they all magically come back to life in the end, but it was a bit shocking to experience all the same.

But enough of that nonsense. You came here to know if it's fun to make these buxom Japanese high school girls beat each other's clothes off. Well, my dear, perverted reader, the answer is yes. It's far from a nuanced gameplay loop, but it's incredibly satisfying. I've never played a Dynasty Warriors game before, but I've always imagined that those games play a lot like this does. Basically, you have a light attack and a heavy attack, and different combinations of the two result in special moves. If you've every played any kind of hack-and-slash game before, you'll know what to expect. But what truly makes the combat in SKBR so cathartic is the fact that it plays exactly how it looks. I haven't played many games with anime-inspired visuals, and most of the ones I have played are turn-based affairs. So it isn't like it's a high bar to clear, but SKBR is the most authentic-feeling anime action game I've ever played. What I mean is that the game feels like you're playing an anime. The physics are completely impossible. Enemies get knocked back farther than they should, you dash through the air like you weigh nothing, and it's glorious. Boss fights in particular feel especially anime-inspired. In one early-game boss battle, I ended up knocking my opponent into the air, fighting her in the air, knocking her further into the air, continuing to fight her in the air, rinsing and repeating that process about five more times, then pulling her all the way down from the air (attacking her approximately 10 times per second) into the ground, resulting in a temporary giant crater. I had a smile on my face the whole time and found myself laughing gleefully. If you're going to use anime-inspired graphics, then this is how your game needs to play! That being said, this is definitely a "short bursts" kind of game (step away from the comment-writing area, you pervert!). There isn't a lot of level, mission, or boss variety to speak of. There are maybe 5 arenas total, not a lot of enemy types, and there are basically 5 bosses that you fight over and over as the plot progresses. I played approximately an hour of this game a night, and I found that to be a good way to balance it all out.
Before I move on, there is one aspect of the gameplay that I must touch on, and that's the final boss. To put it as delicately as possible, the final boss of this game can get bent. A boss is supposed to be a test of what you've learned, but with the final boss here, we go from a series of one-on-one fights with human enemies to a four-stage fight with a giant demon dragon monster with the kinds of attacks we've literally never had to adapt to before. It just completely comes out of nowhere, it smacks of terrible game design, and I ended up having to turn the difficulty down for it! Do you have any idea how emasculating it is to have to turn the difficulty down on a game that looks like this?! That's really all I have to say about it, but it's the note that the game ends on, so it stuck with me.

But enough of that nonsense, you want to know about the fanservice aspect of this game...and unfortunately I have to report on it...*sigh* let's get this over with. Firstly, half of the animation budget for this game must've gone to the boobs. The jugs on each of the girls bounce like jello with the slightest amount of bodily movement. Secondly, when you or a boss' health gets knocked down a certain amount, a small animation plays out wherein the character in question flies through the air and pieces of their outfit explode off. This animation can happen as many as 4 times in a battle, and it always comes with watery eyes and the anime "blush line" (you know what I mean, the solid line of red below the eyes). Thirdly, you and each boss can undergo a "Shinobi Transformation" in battle. This essentially just refills the health bar, provides new special attacks, and changes the character in question into a new outfit. But the process involves the girl in question suddenly becoming naked (save for strategically placed white clouds), posing in a compromising position, and having a new outfit slowly appear on her (with a little shake of the hips and chest because Japan). So fear not, perverts. You will see every girl in this game in the buff several times...even poor Hibari, who poses in by far the most compromising of the compromising positions...like...what the actual hell, Japan? Like, I know the age of consent for you is the second trimester of an individual's mother's pregnancy, but do you ever stop to consider how that difference between you and the rest of the world might hurt international sales? Do you ever stop to wonder what inconceivable quantities of cash you could rake in from across the world if you just didn't sexualize children in your intellectual properties? Am I the only one who sees how Japan is missing a clear opportunity for economical world domination?!
But anywho.
Finally, the "dress up" aspect of last year's Senran Kagura Reflexions is in this game as well, and it brings back a quandry from that title: what am I to do when a denial of my biases makes a game more content-rich? Taking a step back here, "dress up" mode is exactly what it sounds like. You have the opportunity to take any of the girls and dress them up in what is essentially an ungodly number of outfit possibilities. Oh, and you can bet there are fetish outfits galore. But as I said in last year's review, it's an entirely optional mode that ultimately means more bang for your buck (step away from the comment-writing area, you pervert!).

With that, we arrive at the technical portion of the review. Like Senran Kagura Reflexions last year, SKBR is a strong technical offering. Unlike last year's title, however,  SKBR actually has gameplay to hold up, which makes the technical strength all the more impressive. The game never drops below a solid 60 frames per second, even in the heat of battle...which is excellent, because if you're going to be put on a watchlist of some kind for playing a game with this concept, you might as well enjoy the concept in a superior framerate. Beyond that, animations are fluid (though as we discussed in the previous paragraph, certain *cough* animations are more fluid than others), the soundtrack boasts a solid mix of rock music and traditional Japanese instruments, the feedback from slicing up an opponent is beyond satisfying, and the voice acting as well as the sound design and mixing are all great. I'll say that, like in the gameplay, there's a little bit more repetition in the soundtrack than I would've liked, and there are more "loading" screens than I'm used to in modern games. However, as I previously stated, the soundtrack is good, so repetition is just more of a good thing. Likewise, the loading times are practically nonexistent, so while there are more loading screens than I would've liked, it isn't as if you're going to spend all your time waiting for levels to load.

Folks, as I said right at the start, chances are good you already know whether or not you're going to be picking up Senran Kagura Burst Renewal. I'd bet money that you didn't need any of my insight to know whether or not you'd enjoy making watery-eyed Japanese schoolgirls beat each other's school uniforms to tatters. There's a bunch that I didn't touch on (step away from the comment-writing area, you pervert!) in this review simply because I believed it would be a waste of time to do so. With that in mind, I'm not going to dwell on this game for much longer. I'll say this: Senran Kagura Burst Renewal is a surprisingly good time with more to offer than meets the eye, and it's well worth your money regardless of whether or not you're some kind of sexual degenerate.

Let us review:

Story issues: -0.3
Repetition: -0.5
Sucky final boss: -0.5
These girls are like 15: -0.5

The final score for Senran Kagura Burst Renewal is...

8.2/10 - Good
Decent work, XSEED Games, decent work