Neptunia x SENRAN KAGURA: Ninja Wars Review

I have never actually played any of the games in the Neptunia series - which is kind of surprising considering I like anime characters and there are 14 titles in the series already. When you look at the series on Metacritic the average score seems to be around 70% with the odd game being as low as 44%. I am really curious to see if this title will be one of the better ones or if it will be a disappointing entry in the franchise.

Neptunia X Senran Kagura: Ninja Wars (Ninja Wars from here on out) is a crossover game between the Hyperdimension Neptunia series and Senran Kagura franchises. Ninja Wars takes place in the Illusory Dimension on Gamindustri World; this is the same location where many titles in the Neptunia franchise take place. 

Gamindustri World is made up of four different landmasses, each with its own goddess leader. The four goddesses are represented by different heart colours; Purple Heart (Neptune), White Heart (Blanc), Black Heart (Noir), and Green Heart (Vert). When the girls aren’t using the goddess powers they are shown as their regular selves, and are dressed slightly more modestly than the goddesses are. Either way, there are tons of boobs for anyone who loves fanservice! These four characters from the Neptunia series make up one of the two big warring nations in the world known as Heartland and the other being Marveland.

The Senran Kagura characters that make up Marveland are Miyabi, Asuka, Homura, and Yumi. They use the Honeypa Style, which means their abilities are done by the Action Technique. Just as the members of Heartland and Marveland are about to start fighting, a mysterious airship shows up firing cannons at the castle. A silver, mechanical ninja transports off the airship and asks you all a serious question (you can tell it’s serious when it’s all in capital letters): choose Happiness or Destruction. Whichever answer you choose will end up with the goddesses battling the unwelcome visitor and his friends.

Cue the battle tutorial; here you will learn all the techniques and powers used while fighting. Similar to other games of this type, you have a quick attack, a shuriken and ninja star throwing ability, and a dodge ability. I appreciate how you will inflict more damage if you can attack your enemy from behind. This is not the honourable way of fighting, but if it works, then why not. Main issue here is the camera gets messed up when you try to run behind your enemy. I was constantly having to take control of the camera myself, with the second thumbstick, just so I could see what I was trying to attack.   

After finishing your battle with the Steeme Legion soldier, air sirens start blaring. A start screen appears in the sky and a voice introduces herself as the master of the Headshot Style, Yoh Gamer. That mechanical soldier you just fought was a “present” from her. Yoh declares a Super NINJA War to find out which style of martial arts is the strongest in the Gamindustri world. So our four ninjas from Heartland decide to team up with their enemies from Marveland to take down Yoh and her army of mechanical soldiers.

A good chunk of the game is just visual novel style segments, with little animations such as blinking so they aren’t totally static. The problem is these talking segments last for a ridiculously long time. Some of them lasted for over 30 minutes and didn’t even tell you anything important - they were commenting on Neptune making silly comments and the goddesses making fun of her. I just wanted them to stop so I could get back to the hack and slash action parts.

When you finally get back to the third person hack and slack parts, you get to choose which of the four goddesses you want to use. You choose one to be the leader and one other as their partner/backup if they are defeated. At any time during these action segments you can switch between the two characters that you chose so you can use both of their abilities. The 3D versions of the characters look nice, and having the colour of the swipe from their weapon match their name was really neat. For the audio of the game, the voices are only available in Japanese. The soundtrack reminds me of music I have heard in ninja themed anime like Naruto and it fits quite well.

As much as I wanted to really like Neptunia x Senran Kagura: Ninja Wars, I really can’t say that playing this game has sucked me into the Neptunia universe. The story was just super silly to the point where it was just getting annoying. Every enemy wanted to recruit the other ninja in the game to work for them, so it definitely didn’t feel bad or threatening like an enemy should. Spots like when you are in the different towns feel rushed by having the people in town look like 2D chibis that talk with speech bubbles. You don’t walk around, you just choose who you want to from a horizontal line up.

If you are looking for a game with tons of fanservice with scantily clad women with huge boobs, Neptunia x Senran Kagura: Ninja Wars may be the title for you! Personally I need a good story to motivate me to keep playing, especially with huge visual novel sections that last for 30 minutes.