You know what, i miss Senran Kagura.
There, i said it, for all its issues the Tamsoft ninja boobular spectacular beat em up series was fun, silly, fanservice extraordinaire, retro fun, and it actually got better as it went on, but then Sony basically becoming more prudish and pushing against these weird niche japanese games that made their console offerings more varied and unique, so the series mostly dabbled in ports and spin-offs, as the discussed new mainline Senran Kagura game, Senran Kagura Seven, become even more vaporware with the producer of the series, Kenichiro Takaki, moving out to a new company, and even moving out to the curiously “permissive” Nintendo of the Switch era didn’t help much.
Yes, technically the last notable entry (there are some mobile title never released out of Japan, one called Senran Kagura Run released last year) is not that old, being the 2021/2022 released Neptunia x Senran Kagura: Ninja Wars, but i think it exists and was released internationally mostly because of it being a crossover with the Neptunia series, itself not doing too hot, as they dabble in lots of spin-offs like the very recent Neptunia Riders VS Dogoos, but also have been struggling with rereleases and not a mainline entry in… a decade, as of now.
So it’s with bosomed heart i finally decided to dig into the Senran Kagura spin-offs, starting off with the cooking/rhythm game that is Senran Kagura: Bon Apetit!, originally released on PS Vita, but since it was digital only even in Europe, i decided to just get it on Steam this time around, expecially since its sold as the “Full Course” edition, meaning has all the content and DLC in one package for 20 bucks MSRP, which is actually reasonable.
Gotta love how they were willing to basically try anything with Senran Kagura, do not ever underestimate the power of horny, as it resulted in them having their own Splatoon-esque clone (which is technically a mainline game for story reasons) alongside a pinball game, a ecchi dating sim that’s also a reflexology simulator, but before all those, they did try their hand at a rhyth/cooking game hybrid, because sure, we can be horny AND hungry at the same time!
I mean, Food Wars exist already, so to add the Senran Kagura cast to the mix of battle shounen cooking bouts and horny fanservice was as simple as one-two-three, and you have a variety of ninja anime girls in often skimpy costumes (and now aprons), voilà!
The story is deliberate spin-off guffaw, with the ninja master Hanzo (not Gordon, not this time) convincing the various girls from the Senran Kagura ninja schools/factions to compete in a culinary competition held and hosted by him, the “Super Dish Gourmet Cook-Off”, with the first prize of the competish being a Secret Ninja Arts scrolls that grant one wish. ANY wish.
No reason explaining any further because i don’t really expect anyone that isn’t already familiar with Senran Kagura and its characters up to even play this, expecially when even Vita there were more “weeb famous” rhythm games like the Hatsune Miku: Project Diva titles, this one (arguably taking place after Shinovi Versus, if you care) is for the fans but also doesn’t/can not ruin or spoil anything of relevance happening in Senran Kagura 1 or 2 or the other sequels. Because it is a rhythm game spin-off, one that clearly isn’t interested in expanding the narrative or world seen in the mainline titles, more in donning the shinobis in aprons and such.
As Master Ninja Hanzo himself implies, this is for funsies and very non-canonical.
Gameplay wise, it’s a fairly typical rhythm game the one developer Meteorise (Valkyrie Drive: Bhikkuni, Ark Of The Ages, Cross Horizon) made here, i’ve red it’s similar to the japanese only IA/VT: Colorful (which also produced), but i wouldn’t know, at least in terms of mechanics there’s not much to say or explain besides “it’s a rhythm game”, but some of the design choices do make for an experience that sours more than it delights.
On the more benign side, to accomodate the fanservice and give the gameplay a competitive angle, every stage is broke up in 3 sections/dishes/rounds, with a bar showing which of the two is having the upper hand/dominating the culinary bout, the loser getting their clothes ripped off partially, in SK fashion, and if you do well enough in the first 2 rounds, you can gather 2 halves of a heart, which will then appear on the note chart if you keep doing well, and hitting that will grant (unless you lose the dominance battle in the final match) you a “Perfect Victory”, meaning you will literally blow away all the opponent gal’ clothes, with convenient censoring in place, of course.
Combo lenght determines the quantity of the serving for each dish/round, with the performance determining quality, which matters in evaluating which dish is superior and by how much, and you can use a “special ninja move” that enhances your combo but can be broken if you miss a note.
That’s about it. Now for the issues.
The 2 note charts set-up in itself it’s not bad, it’s not a problem, but as it becomes a trend, this seeming benign choice works in tandem with questionable ones, starting from the fact the game’s button prompts using the front face buttons on a controller… but then also the d-pad directional arrows, which can be of the same color as the face buttons.
A bit cheap, but not a deal breaker in itself, even if this applies to the 360 controllers and apparently to the Dualshock 4, both supported, but you could also just use the keyboard and mouse, whatever.
Going deeper, the stages’ set-up of 3 round and mid-stage evalutions works for the cooking battle idea, but due to the dominance system/bar and the stripping/clothes destruction systems in place, it also means the final match actually decides the winner, makes sense, but makes one wonder why even bother with this systems at all, especially since they basically make the scoring and grading system… well, moot, as sometimes you can do well by most accounts but fail the showdown, resulting in a weird grade that doesn’t match the stats shown.
Sometimes you do worse than before and still get As because you won the dominance thingie, sometimes you do a run of story mode, get most A and yet the averaged final rating doesn’t reflect that, at all, so the scoring system overall feels random, hence i dunno why bother with leaderboards when even the game can’t be consistent on its own rating/grading system.
But the big, elephant-sized issue is that the difficulty doesn’t work how you’d think it would, and that means here that the difficulty is actually tied to the stage’s music and its rhythm.
Which might sound logical at first, but in reality means a lot of stages can/will become suddendly way more difficult because one of the music tracks is more energic and upbeat in tempo compared to the one that came before or after, so you’ll get ambushed by insane difficulty spikes.
It can also be the other way around, because the game just ignores the difficulty choice/option you selected, so you choose Hard but the track is chill so it’s a lot easier than you asked for, because is not the difficulty you chose that determines the difficulty of the track, that determines how complex and tough the button prompts can be, the track is gonna be super fast or super slow in rhythm due to its own rhythm.
It feels like they did the note chart first based on the song general rhythm and then laid the button prompts later, i don’t know exactly, again, this is not really my field, but it just feels like something is off with the basic gameplay at a fundamental level.
And the way the game handles the “domination/victor bars” (plus the scoring, as discussed before) means that losing a note can spell doom for the entire performance as a whole, forcing you to retry and retry some stages a lot, a lot more than you should, i’d complain about the balance some more but they didn’t even attempt to balance this fucking thing, so some opponents (as the track is tied to the character you face, not yours) are just gonna be insanely hard and you’re gonna hope the RNG doesn’t fuck you over with… like, a match against Rin.
Which is an issue also because even the Story Mode has 3 fixed rivals depending on which shinobi’s story you choose, but also 2 random fights. One of which could be… Rin, her track being an eurobeat style song that’s absurdly tough even on Easy.
I’m not a great rhythm game player, but i eventually had to switch the difficulty back to Easy from Normal because of the fuckin difficulty spikes , not that it matters much, as i explained before, but that brought about a problem i should have seen coming but didn’t: Easy it’s a bit too easy for me, and again, i’m not even a decent rhythm gamer.
But then again Normal can be too fuckin brutal to be actually enjoyable, just plain frustrating, and yet, in a bit of irony, it’s also very lenient in the timing windows for the button inputs, actually a lot forgiving, as often what would be misses are counted as “ok/fine”, so it’s not punishing in this specific regard…. it is in all other aspects, since there’s no fuckin balance to anything, shame because gameplay in itself its fun, the controls work well, but getting pegged on stage 3 of a Story Mode run on the “Normal” difficulty can be – again- brutal, not the Nathan Explosion kind of “Brutal.”, just soul-crushing and annoying.
Honestly one wonders why even bother with tackling the story mode of each characters, as the characters don’t have gameplay quirks to differentiate them from each other, they could have but the budget went to the “perfect victory” sequences of the defeated shinobi covered in cream (actual cream), sweets and condiments, basically body sushi but without the sushi.
Yes, i understand fans of the series are reasonably here mostly for the interactions seen in the story cutscenes, but i’m also a fan of the series, and honestly i say there’s no reward, not for all the grueling difficulty the game expects one to put up with on the standard difficulty mode.
So honestly i dread having to finish story mode with all 22 characters, just why?
For the sake of my own sense of “duty”, i did finish half of them, but just for my own criteria of “beating” this game, not that i needed to in order to review this game, because there’s no point in replaying the story mode, as you just unlock – seemingly at pure random – accessories (including haircuts, shirts, vests, lingerie, etc) to molest-dress em up-customize the girls in the usual Dressing Room mode, and it’s telling the game asks if you wanna go there after every match, as it assumes you would rather do that instead of keep playing the actual rhythm game parts of this rhythm game.
It becomes very repetitive and frustrating without any proper reward that wasn’t in all other SK games, and while repetitivity would be fine, it’s a rhythm game, not a beat em up this time around, the main gameplay loop is so unbalanced, frustrating and flawed that i don’t really wanna play anymore, and i wish i was playing Project Diva or Taiko No Tatsujin instead, to be brutally honest.
I still suck hard at those, but i know why i suck, not because the game RNG decided to throw a “nuke” level difficulty stage after the tutorial.
All the fanservice in the world is not enough to wallpaper over badly conceived gameplay that frustrates way too much compared to what it entertains, even more when Bon Apetit! commits one of the worse sins a rhythm game ever could.
There’s no escaping that the musical tracks are a mixed bag, at best, with a lot of them being very mediocre, to the point some are just remixes of classical public domain tunes, like Mendelsshon’s Wedding March (that one threw me off until i remember one of the dishes of the stage was a wedding cake), which often don’t really fit the characters (in terms of personality or looks), and then you have some other tracks that are actually decent or good, you’ll notice because it’s like night and day compared to the others, like they actually cared to make a theme for that character.
I will say the stories are indeed the best part of the thing, so in that sense the Story Mode runs with each characters have a meaning, but again, it means putting up with a subpar rhythm game full of huge difficulty spikes that come out of nowhere regardless of the difficulty you’re playing on, which in itself makes one wonder what’s the point of getting good at a game like this, and in turn why bother with the Free Mode and the Arcade Mode, which are exactly the same thing, dunno what’s the point of a Free Mode when the Arcade Mode already removes the story interactions.
Sure, Free Mode lets you pick any character to battle as and against (though each character plays the same), Arcade is 6 battles in a row with the score put to the leaderboards, but this is like, the bare mininum of what a rhythm game should offer, and since there’s no real cumulative or long term goal (outside of Achievements/Trophies), or unlocks that matter and aren’t fetish accessories for the Dressing Room (or the story finales’ illustrations and similar fluff)…. honestly after 2 hours i felt done, and i never switched back to Normal difficulty because i simply do not wish nor i have the time to deal with the bullshit difficulty and overall zero balance.
Also, why do not let one pause their run in a Story Mode run, instead of having the player quit mid-match without letting them know the game did autosave and asks you if you wanna continue from the save (the one it didn’t tell me was being saved in the first place), as opposed to NOT saving story mode progress if you decide to quit and save the game after a defeat?
Come on, this isn’t on PS Vita anymore.
Speaking of whcih, in terms of performance, this ports brings the game to a smooth 60 fps performance, which is kinda needed more than ever since it’s a rhythm game, and the upscale graphical resolution to 1080p from the Vita is nice, though it’s clearly running on the same engine and using the same models of the game that came before, Shinovi Versus, to the point the Vita release of Bon Appetit was compatible with all cosmetic DLCs released for that previous game.
Not much to say, it’s as good as a game like this was ever gonna look, though some of the quirks of Shinovi Versus are still present occasionally, here and there you can see even weirder than designed “water baloon as breast” physics that do not physic, partial clipping, sometimes you can even see the “clip joints” of the characters model show for a second, but they’re harmless, funny glitches.
Overall, Senran Kagura: Bon Appetit is not a very good game, or even mediocre, it might be worth a punt for fans of Senran Kagura that are also into hard rhythm games, but only on sale, because honestly if you’re here for the characters interacting and doing the usual SK bullshit and fanservice with a cooking twist..you’re actually gonna love the entirely comedic story interactions presented here, funny and deliriosly, deliciously hinged and shameless as ever, indeed, it’s not surprise these are the best part of the game, despite presentation being low budget as ever.
my favourite one being Murasaki’s, as she enters the competition due to no food being available for delivery (due to the Super Dish Cook Off thingie) in the district, forcing her out of her NEET cave so she can wish for a refrigerator, all of this to be a better prepared shut-in. XD
Or Daidoji (aka fem-Jotaro) entering the contest because she felt disappointed the giraffes and animals at the zoo weren’t willing to engage in a martial battle to the death with her.
BUT you still could just watch the cutscenes on Youtube instead, since this is a rhythm game, and a pretty subpar one that has zero balance, resulting in a lot of frustation even at the easiest setting, due to some insane design choices, like the difficulty of the battle being not really calibrated or tied to the difficulty setting you chose, but instead on the music itself, meaning some tracks are just gonna be way harder due to their faster tempo, regardless of anything else.
which result in some abhorrent difficulty spikes, and in difficulty vacuums, so Normal is too hard for many, Easy is often too piss easy to be satisfying, i don’t wanna even imagine how Hard is.
Unsurprising the priorities are on the fanservice over anything else, as they managed with this set up to have mid-battle cutscenes in order to see your or the opponent strip-damaged, and if you do well enough you can get a heart prompt that guarantees the final blow will literally knock off the very undergarments off your opponent, making them naked due to the sheer energy created by Hanzo’ shouts of appreciation for the food.
Heck, when you get the heart icon the camera shifts immediatly to close ups of the opponent’s bum, by that time already in their underwear, which is also a further but expected-wanted distraction, so it delivers on that in spade, but the gameplay fundamentals are shaky, as the note charts and the music often don’t sync up, this feeling of something just being off exacerbated by what’s simply a capital sin for a rhythm game: a bland soundtrack that has some decent tunes made to fit the character’s you are “battle cooking”, but mostly is unfitting, generic, some tracks just being remixes of public domain pieces that barely have any sense even in the game’s context.
It’s not a fun time, regardless of difficulty, and while the fanservice is gynormic and excessive as always… the experience becomes very repetitive very fast, with the bare minimum in terms of mode offered, and even having the full package with all characters means very little since there’s no difference playing as Asuka or Hikage or Rin, nor there’s stuff worth working torwards in terms of post-game or long-term goals, aside from the reharshed accessories and costumes to play “fetish dress up” in the dedicated mode, and even that was already a regular feature of other SK games.
I do not recommend it, again, MAYBE on sale, and only for die hard SK fans that are some rhythm game wizards or something, i struggle to see anyone else getting much enjoyment out of a subpar and completely unbalanced experience when you could just go play Muse Dash, DJ Max, Project Diva, Groove Coaster, Taiko No Tatsujin, or any other better rhythm game.
Heck, replay Estival Versus, instead, at least the characters have different playstyles there.
Next time we’ll hit the other Swich /Steam SK spin-offs, it’s gonna happen eventually, more than i can say/promise about the series itself, i’ve seen Senran Kagura Run, but it looks like the bad kind of “ass” (it’s a bad omen when your series gets an endless runner mobile game, it is) and since the other smarthphone spinoffs were never released westward, doubt this one will either.
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