If you’re guilty pleasure have a lot to do with anime girls fighting it out until their clothes reap apart, then you have come to the right place for our
Senran Kagura Shinovi Versus PC review (which is the 3rd game on the “Senran Kagura” series, and it’s the sequel to “Senran Kagura Burst”). “Senran Kagura Shinovi Versus” was released during on Japan on February 28 of 2013 and later on for the rest of the world on October 14 of 2014 for the PS vita. And it wasn´t until just recently (when a steam version game came out for PC) that PC gamers got the chance to get their hands on this piece of art. And thank the Gaming gods for that.
Anyways, as I was saying. The story revolves around three groups of ninjas who´s participating in a ‘Shinobi Battle Boyale’ (which is a competition on where these groups of ninja will invade other ninja schools), and “if” they defeat all the ninjas of the invading school. Then they earn the right to burn down the invaders school to the ground. The story mode allows you to choose from three campaigns in which each campaign represents each school. As for The campaign itself, you will play with all the characters who are part of the selected school (which is a great way to teach the players on how to use each character in-game, as they all play differently). And once you complete all the three campaigns a 4th school will appear making it four campaigns in total. During the campaign modes you will go through, sections resemble a beat ’em up game until you reach the boss who may vary between having minions or is a regular 1 versus 1 fight.
There are also character missions, on which you select a character and play their personal story, which consists of five stages for each playable character. These will bring more insight on each character’s background and unlock extra content which you then later can buy in the in-game store. You can also change the appearance of your characters any way you want. You can change their clothing, their ninja transformations, their underwear (Yes, this is that type of game) and put up to four accessories to them. Most of the things can be unlocked by playing the game and buying them at the in-game store which also includes a ‘Lingerie lottery’ system which allows you to insert any amount of money to get a random lingerie.
Now let’s go to the in-game mechanics. The tutorial mode teaches you all the basics and advance techniques you need to know, for example. There is dodge, dash, double jumping, blocking, counter attacks, special moves, etc. If you ever played games like “Naruto Shippuden Ultimate Ninja Storm 3“, the gameplay of Senran Kagura Shinovi Versus isn’t that much different from it except ninja transformations which when transforming it will show an in-game cut scene of your character’s transformation. And it will restore your HP and allow you to use your super moves which you can only use while transformed. There is a second transformation called “frantic mode” as well. However, it doesn’t heal you, but in return you don’t need any ninja scroll´s in-order to use it. And the “frantic mode”will increase your damage drastically, but there is a down side to it. Because it will lower your defense quite a lot as it gets rid of most of your cloths.
“Senran Kagura Shinovi Versus” also offers a multiplayer mode, and I did indeed try the online mode. However, due to the amount of players aren’t sufficient enough to enjoy that feature. I can´t really rate that game mode for now. Especially not since there isn’t an offline multiplayer mode for you to play local either, since this game was a port for a PS Vita game. Another problem I had while playing was that the campaign suffered from some rare frame drops problems, which seem to be caused by the limitations of being PS Vita port when there are too many things going on the screen it doesn’t use all the resources available of your computer to play the game so it limits the performance even if you got a high-end computer. Other than that I didn’t experience anything that could hinder the game on anyway.
Credit:
Robin Ek – Editor and co-writer
Pros:
+ Fun combat mechanics
+ Lot of single player content
+ Great character customization
+ Plenty of lewd content
Cons:
– Multiplayer rooms are empty
– Stages gets too repetitive
Gameplay: 3/5
Graphics: 4/5
Sound and music: 4/5
Controls: 5/5
Replay value: 3/5
Verdict: 3.5/5
“Senran Kagura Shinovi Versus” offers enough story and unlockables to keep you busy for over 10 hours on just single player content alone. And that is (in my opinion) more than enough to be worthy of my time and money. So if you´re into a good story of ninja ripping each other cloths apart. Then you should pick up “Senran Kagura Shinovi Versus” as soon as possible!
Title: Senran Kagura Shonovi Versus
Developer: Tamsoft
Format: PC
Genre: Anime/Beat ’em up/Fighting
Resolution: Highest possible for PC
Release date: 2016-06-01
Difficulty: Normal
Spent time: 10+ hours
Average grade internationally: 69.29% Gamerankings.com
PEGI/ESRB age rating: 16+/Mature
Price: 28 Euros via Steam
Bengie Rodriguez
The Gaming Ground
Twitter: @BenjusMaximus
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Tags: PC games, PC review, Senran Kagura, Senran Kagura Shinovi Versus, Tamsoft