Indeed, one level would be absolutely indistinguishable from the rest had they not swapped the background image, and on top of that there is next to no difficulty curve to help you tell them apart, as though the game isn’t certain it wants to be too much of a game at all– or it’s at least confused about what that means for its execution.
Thus, a level begins, enemies appear, you smash them to pieces in the most gratifying sense, more enemies appear, and you smash them to pieces as well and the cycle repeats for the entire game with few exceptions. The game is certainly a brawler in the truest sense, but it deviates from pure one-button mashing by including a wonderfully satisfying combo-system that has you lifting foes into the air and slamming them back down over and over again, if you’re quick enough to hit the buttons. Mirroring the aesthetics, Senran Kagura Burst!’s gameplay is a quality one-trick pony: Regarding the core combat, its controls, the sound and visual effects, and how these things interplay, it’s hard to find any real flaws. The game is closer to 8 or 10 hours, though, and that is far too wide a plane across which to stretch this aesthetic punchline if the gameplay does not prove itself a viable support. An opportunity only missed due to the game’s length: Were it but two hours long, “Look, boobs!” would not have the chance to lose its novelty and we would be left with an extremely focused and interesting (if only for its novelty) package. Occasionally the game flirts with the idea of taking itself seriously and fleshing out the characters further (which would cast a vaguely interesting light on its visual design, at least), but no sooner does that happen than the game shoves such things into a figurative closet to avoid dealing with the consequences of sincerity. Interestingly, such a strong, unwavering dedication to figuratively pushing the player’s face into virtual bags of flesh has a strong normalizing effect indeed, churning butter would lose its novelty if you grew up in a society of the Amish, and the world of Senran Kagura is the ultimate Amish society, only instead of churning butter they talk about, touch, and utilize the existence of the female breast.Īs you might expect, this is a small bag from which to draw your tricks, and “Look, boobs!” is really about as far as this trick ever goes in an aesthetic sense.
All of them (good gals and bad) have exceptionally large and well-proportioned breasts, and they make no effort to hide it: Almost incessantly do the characters joke around about their physical endowment by sexually harassing each other (measured by the standards of reality, anyhow), name-calling (“Calm down, jugs.”), or making frequent reference to the usefulness of having bigger boobs (“I can hide the key in my chest!”). To contextualize: The story of Burst! follows a group of ninja warriors (“shinobi”) who secretly train in the back rooms of a regular school in order to protect the world from the devastating powers of the dark shinobi. It’s clear from any trailer that the game has a tight visual design and aptly-programmed physics that cooperate swimmingly with the game’s goal of tremendously exaggerating everything to do with boobs– it’s just not totally clear what the point of it all is. In its quest to visually showcase a particular part of the female anatomy, Senran Kagura Burst! succeeds. It is, a touch regrettably for some, chiefly to do with the boobs. This, after all, is how I was first intrigued.īut another curiosity quickly follows exposure to the game’s aesthetic: Is it actually well-designed, or does its merit hinge solely upon its ability to assail you with large boobs? The anime-inspired (directly, in fact: there’s an anime in existence of the same name without the “Burst!” tagline) brawler seems to be on the radar of a handful of folks who probably stumbled upon an eccentric screenshot or video thumbnail that proudly displayed the game’s fascination with large, round breasts. Without the existence of the 3DS eShop and a publisher like XSEED, North American audiences would probably never get to fully experience Senran Kagura Burst!.
“Apparently, within 30 seconds of thinking about a possible game decided that one of the things people want to see the most in 3D are breasts.”