Senran Kagura: Estival Versus (Endless Summer Edition)

The Good
Ah, Senran Kagura. I got into this series of games around 2014 (even if I never bought them at the time because I'm cheap and lazy), thanks to me joining a fan forum simply known as "Senran International Academy" (and 3D models popping on the internet). Believe it or not, the forum was partially responsible for getting much of the games here (alongside fan interest). Lo and behold, this year, Estival Versus was released to the Western public in March 2016.

The game takes place after Shinovi Versus. These ninja girls have gotten themselves in a island, and it has dead relatives, and, uh, boobs...aw, to hell with the plot! It only justifies the game's fanservice, but that's not a bad thing. Gameplay is essentially a third person beat 'em up where hordes of enemies and bosses come at ya, and you gotta beat the ever loving crud out of them. Or in easier terms, think Serious Sam as a ninja with boobs. Over the course of several dozen levels, you play as one of several characters armed with knives, hammers, swords, guns and even robots as you raise hell against waves of baddies. It's fun as hell, and when leveling up, you can dish out serious damage on the spot. There are several modes, such as main story mode, side story mode that focuses on the antics of the cast and a special mode that is reserved for DLC missions. Many of these are pretty fun in their own right, and the story chugs along at a steady pace, giving light on the characters and occasionally, their pasts.

The game also includes a diorama and customization mode too, and it's one of my favorite aspects. Wanna make the characters cosplay as your original characters, other anime characters or even the occasional shitposting cosplay? This is the spot. The diorama mode is fun, and it's pretty cool to pose your characters and such and save them as photos. It's not like Garry's Mod in a way, but it's a welcome feature.

Multiplayer can be really fun at times. The best mode, I think, was the Survival mode as it felt intense and a bit of a romp with a bunch of friends. Some of the other modes were pretty fun too, ranging from capture-the-panties to typical deathmatch modes.

The Bad
A lot of factors, personally, I didn't like were some aspects of the gameplay, multiplayer and the limited customization on some ends. The game, to me, regardless of any difficulty, was piss easy to pull off combos. Just mash the buttons and boom, finished. This is not a game for die-hard beat 'em up or fighting game fans, but if you're the kind that likes BlazBlue, Guilty Gear or any other anime fighter on the market, then this might be a nitpick on my end.

Multiplayer was also wickedly unbalanced with many characters being very weak or unintentionally strong, and constant connection issues also led to disconnecting and lag. Customization also didn't have a lot of outfit choices or color options, much of which had to be bought through DLC.

The game also having bouts of deep storytelling and seriousness, while effective for character development, didn't translate very well and kinda felt jarring and out of place to me, personally. Another was that some characters were hardly or almost never shown over the story, leaving only their side stories. It felt unfair in some occasions. Another complaint most people will go on is the lack of deep storytelling or thought-provoking dialogue. There were some moments, I believe, were mistranslated or felt too ridiculous, but I'm nitpicking at this point.

The defining factor that will turn off a lot of people is the usage of anime girls with large breasts and the use of an all-female cast. Many are going to raise question that these elements promote sexism, misogyny or intolerance for women, or that girls are yucky and give those silly boys cooties, but lemme play the devil's advocate here: women with giant boobs and games with all-female casts do exist, the latter being better (or worse) than what SK offers, and it must be said again - this is a niche game. Many other games like Grand Theft Auto and such can do worse things than SK, but everyone passes it off. I'll stop it here, I don't want to get into a rant.

The Bottom Line
This is not a game for the closed minded. It's a niche Japanese game, not a Call of Duty FPS or freakin' Tigger's Honey Hunt. It's Senran Kagura, and it's all about the jiggly boobies and butts this side of Japan. It's fun, and it's a good way to close off your mind and just look at all these boobs.

If any, I don't recommend this game to those with a faint of heart, the overly offended or intolerant, young children, snobbish Jim Sterling types or those that really think Japan deserves another nuke. I do recommend the game to those with open minds and accept the fact that the game isn't meant to be taken super seriously. It's a niche game at heart, not BioShock. And for those that say an all-woman cast is scary, remember that other games with all-female casts have existed in the past, such as the seldom-heard Catfight.

As I write this, there is another SK game in development, Peach Beach Splash. I'll cover the game when it's localized, but it depends. I got a lot more to cover, and this is just the tip of the iceberg.