Senran Kagura is finally among us: Peach Beach Splash, the most ecchi spin-off that there is starring the moe shinobi there are. Do I need to add more?
Senran Kagura: Peach Beach Splash. Or, as the protagonists pronounce it, picci bicci splescioo. Try saying it a few times in a row. Feel it in your mouth, how it fills it. What do you feel? From this alone, I believe, you can begin to understand if this game is for you.
Senran Kagura: Peach Beach Splash is one spin-off of the Senran Kagura saga. Born in 2011 on 3DS with an episode never released from Japan, the series revolves around various groups of young shinobi girls. The main chapters are horizontal scrolling actions. However, for this new game, exclusively for PS4, the saga totally changes register and turns into an arena tps with both single player and multiplayer modes.
The protagonists of the various games will find themselves in a tropical paradise to participate in a clash between shinobi, the Peach Beach Splash (PBS, for short). Their weapons (and their clothes) however will remain in the drawers, since they can only fight with water guns covered in the most skimpy costumes, Intrigati?
When a girl with a gun meets a girl with the liquidator ...
As we said, the game totally revolves around clashes in the arena, with a setting from third person shooter. Choosing the weapon and some skills (which we will see in detail later) we will dive into one of the about ten arenas available. The modes of confrontation are mainly two: hordes of generic enemies, butcher's meat for our jets of water, or other shinobi armed to the teeth. The other variants, including some boss fights, will be harmless and rare diversions in the sequence of clashes that are all the same. The longer battles will take no more than 3-4 minutes, while the simpler ones will be solved in less than a minute.
In the arena we will have to rely on automatic aim of our weapon. In fact, although it is possible to aim manually, the game offers a totally automated system. Coordination is therefore not a fundamental requirement in Peach Beach Splash. Each of the ten weapons (pistols, rocket launchers, sniper rifles, submachine guns, garden sprinklers…) will have two firing modes, suitable according to the situation.
We may also take short or long shots, or take off with our jet pack. This last movement depends on the type of weapon equipped: some will allow us to perform sudden vaulting but of low height, while others will make us flit over the arena slowly but with a lot of control.
However, both shooting and dodging will consume ours water reserve. To reload it just hold down the square button, obviously times vary from weapon to weapon. It will therefore be essential not to find yourself dry (literally) if you find yourself in the midst of the crossed fires of multiple enemies. It will also be possible to perform physical attacks, but these are unbalanced moves (in negative) and which will often leave us exaggeratedly exposed.
Taking damage or being hit by our allies will charge a bar called Soak Gauge: arrived at 100% we will get it for a short time an infinite reserve of water that will allow us to shoot and flutter non-stop.
Let's now see the modalities that the game offers.
Senran Kagura: Peach Beach Splash… ah, is there even a plot?
Let's start by talking about the single player. There will be three variants available: story, paradise episodes and V-road challenge. There story mode It is divided into four story arcs in which we will follow the events of the various shinobi groups (Gessen, Hebijo, Crimson Squad, Hanzo), once these are completed, a final narrative arc will be unlocked. In total we will have 55 missions, each preceded and followed by a curtain that will bring the narrative forward. Each group will have their own internal headaches to solve.
- paradise episodes instead they will be blocks of five missions, introduced by a handful of lines of text. The protagonists will find themselves grappling with small situations completely disconnected from the plot. In both modes, there are no major gameplay differences, except that the paradise episodes are quicker versions of the story missions. All missions can be tackled on three difficulty levels: the rewards will improve at the same rate.
The narrative is very light, if not trivial. The proposed entertainment will be liked only by fans really interested in discovering the new entanglements between the various girls. For them there will also be many references to previous works and certainly appreciable returns and surprises. For everyone else, however, it will be just an exaggeratedly slow introduction to ignore.
We finally have the V-road challenge. These will be tournament challenges in which we will have to overcome without interruption five deathmatch clashes: in practice, a singleplayer version of the clashes that await us online. If, on average, the story and the paradise episodes are very simple, in the last tournament we will be forced to have an enhanced shinobi team. For sure it's the funniest mode.
Tear off that costume ... uh, I meant: tear off that bag!
And there are many upgrades. As we said at the beginning, our shinobi will enter the field with a weapon and various skills. All the girls' equipment will be in the form of a playing card. In addition to the preferred liquidator (they are all available immediately) we will have to equip nine skill cards. These will summon small allies or allow us to perform powerful attacks or even to heal, enhance the companions or inflict malus on the opponents.
Cards are obtained through sleeves, donate to us at the end of each battle or buy them (after unlocking them through the various single player modes) in the shop through the zeni, the game coin also obtained with the clashes. All duplicates found with packs will turn into experience points that can be spent to upgrade weapons, skills and characters (which will see their life points increase, the only statistic present). Obviously, the rarer a card, the higher its EXP value will be. In total there will be more than 800 cards to be found. The cards will make a difference in more advanced encounters and are the real center of the game, although initially they don't seem that important.
We will then find ourselves in a virtuous circle of clashes and unpacking. If the story and the paradise episodes will be a bit stingy in this sense, the final battle of the last tournament of the V-road challenge will allow us to farm very high quantities of zeni and strengthen our girl in a few hours.
Senran Kagura: Peach Beach Splash, I sketch you if you sketch me ...
A powerful shinobi is what we're going to need to throw ourselves in multiplayer section of the game, as you will fight with your deck. In fact, also due to the fact that the teams will be composed without taking much account of the power level, trying to start your experience with the game directly online will mean going to certain death. More advanced skills and upgraded weapons are heavily more effective than anything you have initially and we will be destroyed with no chance of return. Newly arrived players will be put off by more powerful ones and won't show up for a while. Because of this vicious circle, multiplayer is therefore more of an arrival point than a departure point.
The game will allow you to try your luck with one survival co-op mode, in which five players will have to withstand ten encounters with five waves of enemies each. Every five waves we will be rewarded and we will be able to change our cards to adapt them to the situation. The final fights will be of a very high level and without a ready and upgraded team it will be impossible to advance.
With regard to the competitive version (both free and classified) the game will propose four modes classic, declined according to the ecchi style. It starts from classic deathmatch in which only the KOs count; there will be then a variant in which we will have to perform a finisher on the opponent, after you knock her out, to get the point. Capture the flag will become Capture the bra, but the game structure is the same. The same for King of the Hill who will obviously be called Queen of the Hill. By winning and playing with skill we will earn points and rise in rank, thus obtaining various rewards.
Online fights shed light on what it is the true nature of the game: a tps to arena caciarone, fast, without too many pretensions, in which, however, you can still excel if you can understand the mechanics. Unfortunately, we will not be able to know which mode and which arena will be assigned to us, so any tactical choice of weapons and abilities will be castrated. A game of this type, of course, doesn't even pay too much attention to balance and some weapons, therefore, will be useless online.
The setting from tps causes the variety among the protagonists is also lost: no longer having a set of attack moves, as they carry a water weapon, one will be worth the other. The physical attack move will be different visually (each of them will use the preferred weapon) but the effect, in addition to being of little use, will also be little different from one character to another. They will therefore only be an avatar to choose from among the dozens available: an obvious consequence, but still unpleasant.
Senran Kagura: Peach Beach Splash… sì, ma le oppai !?
All this riot of confrontation takes place within a valid graphic sector, although not very original or varied. The arenas, very colorful, will be just a background that we will not pay too much attention to. On a technical level, the game is not particularly surprising, but it keeps a stable frame rate even in the most hectic situations in which ten characters, with their jets of water and visual effects of the activated abilities, will crowd in front of the camera. The same can be said for the sound: given for granted that the voices of the protagonists are either adorable or a piercing wail, depending on your taste, all we can say is that theand background music are appropriate to the context with their cheerfulness.
But we get to talk about what really matters in this game. Le oppai. The protagonists with their large breasts (but also the lovers of loli will have some satisfaction) propose themselves in a great cel shading and the softness and wobbles of the shinobi shapes will please (er…) the fans. This spin-off pushes the limits of ear and fan service to the most unimaginable extremes, leaving very little to the imagination.
In fact, after having knocked out an opponent, we will be able to execute a finisher in which, thanks to a rubber duck, we will have to spray a jet of water on the face, on the breast or on the southernmost areas of female intimacy to tear off the costume. A slight shimmer will cover the most sensitive spots, but it comes to minimal censorship. Even the few anime sequences, the countless illustrations (real reward of the heaven stories) and the cards themselves will do their duty. We will also be able to groped the girls and give them a kiss after having "convinced" them to let go. Useless at the level of the game, but it would have been strange not to be able to do it.
Unfortunately, the girls will arrive on the island wearing the same simple white costume. The possibility of changing clothes will therefore be very welcome: we will be able to make them wear even more opaque clothes that will destroy themselves as they suffer damage, as the series has been accustomed to for some time. The purchases will take place in the inevitable shop, loaded with clothes, accessories, haircuts, music, voices and more.
Senran Kagura: Peach Beach Splash, who should buy it?
This spin-off it is clearly a fan-service work, but it turns out to be anyway an interesting, albeit somewhat limited game. If you are looking for a dynamic and unpretentious arena tps, with a distinctly Japanese style and an RPG system that pushes us to farm non-stop to accumulate EXP, we might consider this Senran Kagura: Peach Beach Splash. Although it was decided to delay the publication of the review to be able to test the online well, on the first day we struggled slightly to find players, but we believe that over the next few weeks there will be many more people ready to embark on multiplayer battles. Last note, the game is entirely in English, not that the level is particularly high. Thanks to Marvelous for giving us a copy for review.
7.4 Ecchi is lifePoints in favor
- The magnificence of the oppai
- Dynamic and fun in its simplicity
Points against
- No difference between the many protagonists
- Slightly limited content
