Senran Kagura 2: Deep Crimson Review

Oh, Japan, you've done it again! Only from the Land of the Rising Sun could we get an idea like this: a beat-'em-up from Marvellous Entertainment about student ninjas. Who happen to be attractive teen girls. Who also have obscenely large breasts and end up in varying degrees of undress correlating to how much damage they've taken. Ah, Japan...

Senran Kagura 2: Deep Crimson (named as such for the colour your face will turn if you play this in public) might seem like it's aimed squarely at the young male demographic who spend their lives with their hands wedged firmly in their pants, but describing it as such would do it a disservice. The series is supported with an intriguing backstory and cast of characters: the action is framed around five students of the Hanzo Academy for shinobi (“Ninja” for those who never played Shinobi) who fight the evil Hebijo Academy, and each of them are playable: Asuka is the everyman, Ikaruga is the more mature member of the group, Katsuragi is, basically, a pervert who gropes her friends, Yagyū is the protector, and Hibari is the immature 'baby'. This wide cast of characters to play as keeps the game feeling fresh, and their distinct personalities provides an extra level of emotional investment in their stories, which become clearer as the game progresses.

The core of the game is the beat-'em-up component. Senran Kagura does a fair job as a beat-'em-up, due to the core gameplay feeling fluid and responsive, and also for the fact that one can rack up incredible combos, which makes combat a gleeful exercise. The problem with these games, though, is that they can feel very repetitive after long periods, but cannily, Senran Kagura keeps level lengths within its story mode short, which keeps the pace of the game exciting. An added bonus to this format is that players will feel more encouraged to visit stages and beat their scores, which are measured in the old Japanese standard of letter grades. Doubly pleasing is the ramping up of difficulty levels to compensate for brevity – many stages are rounded off with boss fights that will definitely take most players out of their comfort zones, so it's essential that you pay attention to the tutorials.

The gameplay never really feels special despite being a fast and furious affair. Not to say this is a bad game: but all levels start to blend into one after a while, despite the game's more salacious content trying to convince you otherwise. The game is functional, and combat is technically spectacular looking with its fantastic combos, but after a few hours, you'll be thinking, “Okay, what now?”. It eventually becomes – and this is damning for a game like this – just like every other beat-'em-up you've ever seen before.

So, if the game itself isn't all that impressive, what's the appeal, and why would Marvellous have made a sequel? The story and characters are so rich that you feel compelled to play through the game for their sake. The gang is brought to life with full Japanese voice acting, long dialogues (ranging from 2 to 5 minutes at a time, fleshing out character motivations and backstories) and cutscenes. Because the characters at hand here feel more three-dimensional, playing through the beat-'em-up sections suddenly feels less like a grind. It's not dissimilar to Tekken 6's Scenario Campaign, which, at a base level, was an uninspired yet technically proficient beat-'em-up duct-taped together with a fascinating story that furthered the franchise. Senran Kagura is rare because the story feels like a pillar to the whole of the game: rip it out, and this whole thing falls on its face.

However, we can't sit and pretend like Senran Kagura isn't visually fascinating. The game is packed with attractive college student characters, who are admittedly very nice to look at in their many, many outfits, even if it does make you feel like a dirty old man. On a less wrong-feeling note, the game is pretty in a less sexual way: presented in 3D, but still 'drawn' in a beautifully distinct anime style. The anime-style presentation bleeds through to the battling sections where your attacks leave trails as your enemies go flying through the air – there's no real strain to be realistic here, nor should there be, which makes the game so much more enjoyable.

On the note of the more sexual content: the character's breasts jiggle at the slightest provocation, they are scantily-clad from the get-go, many of their outfits are fetishised, when you lose health, you lose clothing down to your underwear (as do the grunts you beat) and when you finish a level, win or lose, you can use the stereoscopic 3D of the 3DS to get a “better view”. What this content means to you is up to you: I'm certainly not going to go on a meandering grandstanding rant here either way. I will say that the content fits the game's context: it never really feels too exploitative or too much, bar the stereoscopic segments, which veer towards feeling voyeuristic and a little wrong. The rest of it, though, is fair game, and feels more tongue-in-cheek and fun than anything.

To its credit, Senran Kagura has a lot of surprising extra content that will beef out the title if you're the type to get easily bored. There's extra costumes to unlock, special missions to buy, and the core five characters can all be levelled up, which adds a little depth. The most encouraging extra comes in the form of Yoma's Nest, which is a hard-as-nails survival mode. Players are tasked with progressing through a series of missions where there are no opportunities to heal, and any loss means having to start over. This mode hits harder than the story mode, providing a more fun, yet compact experience that players will find themselves going back to.

Senran Kagura 2 is hard to talk about. It's a technically decent beat-'em-up with some technically indecent material within. Not that it's overly lewd, but if you stripped that away, this game wouldn't be even a fraction as appealing. As it is, though, the schoolgirl angle lends a goofy charm to proceedings that makes the game all worth it somehow. If you disassembled this game, the parts at face value should not have equalled an appealing package, but somehow, Marvellous Entertainment made it work. Thanks lads, you guys are the breast – I mean best!