Review for Senran Kagura PEACH BEACH SPLASH. Game for PC and PlayStation 4, the video game was released on 16/03/2017 The version for PC came out on 07/03/2018
A few months after its release on Japanese soil, Senran Kagura PEACH BEACH SPLASH has reached the West and all the anxious fans of the saga. Moving away from the hack 'n slash genre to the (or almost) white weapon of Estival Versus, this title offers a third-person shooter gameplay, inside colorful maps in which young shinobi will compete with shots of water guns of more or less improbable shapes.
As happened in the past with Bon Appétit!, Senran Kagura PEACH BEACH SPLASH manages to present serious narrative elements, such as the end of the world and an inevitable fate of death and destruction, lightening them with delusional and almost nonsense curtains and always, inevitably, with some fanservice so shameless that they can't help but tear a smile.
If therefore on the one hand, the over 30 playable protagonists they will have as their purpose the salvation of themselves and of mankind, there will be frivolous quarrels, food whims, ancient rivalries and ill-concealed jealousies. The only way to resolve these fundamental disputes will obviously be to soak the members of the opposing team with their own jet of water, and then finish the unfortunate ones with a rubber duck, the spray of which will be so devastating as to get to undress them or make them cry.
Irony aside, Senran Kagura PEACH BEACH SPLASH presents a gameplay that recalls (a little too much) that of the much better known Nintendo Splatoon, without however aspiring to reach its quality: unable to use their shinobi powers, the skills available to the ninja will be linked to the cards equipped by each.
These are divided into Weapon, Pet and Skill cards and all (in addition of course to the card of the protagonist herself) will be upgradeable by “consuming” the duplicate cards recovered during each mission; it goes without saying that the higher the rarity of the card, the better its effectiveness.
The idea on which Senran Kagura PEACH BEACH SPLASH is based is valid and intriguing, if it were not that everything, from the game modes to the research and enhancement system of the cards, is damaged by lack of variety, which flattens the gameplay and risks leading to boredom too quickly. The main objective in the development of the title was in fact probably the multiplayer, which offers both a co-op survival against hordes of enemies, and 3 vs 3 or 5 vs 5 fights, free or linked to the global ranking.
However, being part of a brand that owes a good 85% of its success to fanservice, Senran Kagura PEACH BEACH SPLASH is, from a purely technical point of view, nothing but a mediocre TPS, which does not encourage challenges with other players once the various narrative arcs and the extra episodes of the single player mode are finished in about ten hours. As a foreseeable consequence, therefore, the online mode is depopulated and without a "buffer" of players to limit the gap between the true fans, armed to the teeth with the rarest and most powerful cards and the newbies, perhaps entered into a match only for an attempt, who punctually end up massacred with no chance of escape.
The gameplay based on the cards of Senran Kagura PEACH BEACH SPLASH is in fact optimal for a single player title, but castra the possibilities of a competitive mode, as the actual skill of the player is completely overshadowed by pure and simple parametry: the best player in the world, equipped with the default deck, will still have zero or almost no hope of victory, if placed in front of an opponent with even an average deck.
However, the story mode is not without problems: beyond the plot events, which will only be of interest to fans of the saga given theabsence of introductions of each character, the game maps are as beautiful as they are small, as is the variety of enemies and bosses at the end of the stage. Each story arc involves the control of different girls, who however will find themselves doing the same, identical things as the counterparts of the opposing shinobi schools. Add to this an allied and hostile artificial intelligence that is simply embarrassing and graphics equal, if not even lower than those of Senran Kagura Estival Versus, in which the massive presence of enemies on the screen justified the aesthetic limits of a title, among other things, also designed to run on Playstation Vita.
This is not the case with Senran Kagura PEACH BEACH SPLASH, which as an exclusive PlayStation 4 should have offered much more. The same fanservice of skimpy and semi-transparent t-shirts and swimsuits, although pleasing to the eye, it cannot be the determining factor for the purchase, given that after the first hours of play it will inevitably lose a good part of its appeal.
Honorable mention toexcellent dubbing and the many possibilities available to customize each character, modifying outfits, hairstyles and accessories in a more than satisfactory editor that will allow even the most demanding to create the “waifu” of their dreams.
Unfortunately, this incredible customization is negatively reflected in the gameplay, as unlike, for example, Estival Versus, the shinobi of Senran Kagura PEACH BEACH SPLASH do not have unique moveset or abilities and each can use any card: devoid of individual strengths and weaknesses, the choice of who to employ in combat reduces girls to mere avatars, also emptying them of that characterization which, apart from aesthetic tastes, made them more or less pleasant to control.
Senran Kagura PEACH BEACH SPLASH is an objective step back from the previous Estival Versus: a repetitive third-person shooter in single player and depopulated and not very technical in multiplayer. Recommended only for true fans of the brand, while for all the curious it is preferable to recover the previous games to pass the time waiting for Senran Kagura 7even, expected in 2018 for Playstation 4.
► Senran Kagura PEACH BEACH SPLASH is a Third Person Shooter type game developed by Parade Games Tamsoft and published by Marvelous USA for PC and PlayStation 4, the video game was released on 16/03/2017 The version for PC came out on 07/03/2018
