“Senran Kagura: Peach Beach Splash” Review

When I first got my hands on Peach Beach Splash at E3, I was pleasantly surprised with its gameplay.  For what it was, the controls were snappy and responsive, and I actually had a lot fun.  Now that it’s out,…

Yes. There’s a lot of this.

When I first got my hands on Peach Beach Splash at E3, I was pleasantly surprised with its gameplay.  For what it was, the controls were snappy and responsive, and I actually had a lot fun.  Now that it’s out, my opinion remains the same.  Senran Kagura: Peach Beach Splash is some good, wet fun.

What Is It?

Senran Kagura fans should all know what to expect here.  The series itself is about ninjas in training, extremely busty ninjas in training, and while there’s still some hints of shinobi combat, Senran Kagura: Peach Beach Splash is largely just a third-person shooter with waterguns.

That isn’t to say the game doesn’t have a story.  There is one, and in some ways, it’s actually quite serious.  Apparently the Peach Beach Splash tournament is an ancient tournament that bars the use of shinobi skills and replaces them with squirt guns, and the winner of the tournament gets anything they want.

Why Should I Care?

Either way you look at it, you’ll find that the five different story arcs, which follow the main groups of the different Senran Kagura games, take a back seat when it comes to the actual gameplay.

At first, the game will come across like a perverted version of Splatoon, but there’s a bit of unexpected depth in Peach Beach Splash.  It has the same comfortable control scheme you’d expect with most third-person shooters as you have your shooting mapped to R2, and you can use L2 to lock onto any kind of shootable target, and when it’s time to reload, you can hold the square button for some pump action (which makes it look like the girls are jerking the gun off, and it’s absolute hilarity).  In addition to these, you have the triangle button to perform a melee strike in case you don’t want to shoot anybody point blank.

Aside from all that, you also have various cards mapped to the D-Pad buttons that’ll have effects like healing your character, breaking shields, or buffing just about any attribute.  These cards are collected through normal play.

Most of the matches you’ll play will be deathmatches, which is just fine, because they’re by far the most enjoyable method of play.  The point will be to simply shoot the living hell out of the opposition, and since it’s all about fan service, that’s where things get a little pervy.

Knock a girl out, and you can… strip her.  Because Japan.

Earlier it was mentioned that when you reload your gun, the pumping method will make it look like your character is jerking off–this is already on top of all the jiggling chests you’ll see.  When you knock out another girl, you get to finish them off by firing at their face, chest, or waist.  Firing enough at the latter two will result in bonus points and stripping off whatever they’re wearing to protect their privates. Fortunately, rays of light just shine from where those areas would be, so the uninitiated will have to find alternative means to satisfy such thirst.

One method of satisfying such thirst is in the game’s “dressing room.”  Here, you can dress the girls up in whatever costumes and bathing suits you’ve unlocked from crop tops, to see-through blouses, and of course ridiculously small micro-bikinis.  In addition to dressing them up, in typical creeper fashion you can touch and squeeze the girls wherever you want and perhaps enjoy their reactions.  For better or for worse, trophy enthusiasts should know that there’s a couple trophies you can unlock by doing the groping if you’re into that kind of thing.  If you are, you might also be interested to know that a VR mode was just added to the game, so you can further enjoy your multiple waifus.

What Makes It Worth My Time And Money?

As a whole, the single player aspect is rather dull and while the story is enjoyable in some parts, the amount of loading screens you’ll have to go through between performing small tasks are too frequent to make it engaging.  Despite this, collecting and unlocking all the loot from the guns to upgrade cards is both fun and simplistic, giving players at least some reason to play the game alone.

Boobs aside, there’s a lot of fun to be had with Peach Beach Splash.

While veterans of the series will be the main ones truly appreciating the amount of content, characters, and boobies in Senran Kagura‘s fifth anniversary, you don’t even have to have any prior experience with the series to really enjoy what it has to offer.  Players that get over the fan service should find a lot to enjoy in Senran Kagura: Peach Beach Splash, no matter how weirded out onlookers might be.