REVIEW

Senran Kagura: Peach Beach Splash Review

by Jake Stewart, October 1st, 2017

Like the other entries in the series, Senran Kagura: Peach Beach Splash is full of laughs, charm, and literal boatloads of fan service. While the heart of Senran Kagura can be seen in this title, the gameplay ultimately feels dry and shallow. There’s a lot to love from this series, but this entry feels like one of the lower points, and suffers from many technical issues.

Peach Beach Splash takes on the form of a third-person multiplayer arena shooter, but still offers a fairly long single-player option. A lot of titles that go into this genre often pay little mind or complete abstain from the single-player, but the campaign is fully fleshed out in this title. With 5 different stories to choose from, there is plenty to experience in this game.

Peach Beach Splash follows the Shinobi girls participating in a water gun tournament to win “whatever they want.” The story itself doesn’t play a huge role in the progression of the game, and instead just sets the setting and the “why are we shooting at each other?”

The characters are as charming and entertaining as ever, and are the main pillars of enjoyment for this game. Senran Kagura never takes itself too seriously, and often makes the girls personalities (and sexualities) completely over the top. The interactions between missions are some of the best parts of the game, as the dialogue is always lighthearted and entertaining.

If you’ve played a Senran Kagura title before, then you’re probably aware of how excessive the NSFW content is in this series. Blasting girls with your water gun sends them flying with some pretty suggestive screams and poses. The girls are always groping each other, boobs are always bouncing, and swimsuits are always small enough to hardly be considered clothing. If you’re into this sort of thing, then great! Senran Kagura’s fan service has been one of its main draws in the series and it really owns it. If you’re not a fan of this sort of thing, chances are you’ll be a little put off from the suggestive content.

The gameplay consists of shooting at waves of enemies until ultimately another girl joins the fray as the boss of the round. This cycle is how most of the missions go, and can ultimately get pretty tiring. The enemy hordes pose little threat, and holding down RT and moving the camera around will be plenty strategy enough to mow them down. The shooting feels mindless, and not in the good way. Senran Kagura: Estival Versus consisted of mindlessly slashing down foes, but the deep combat and interesting weapon types added a lot to the experience. Most weapons in Peach Beach Splash feel the same, and hold the game back from achieving the fun that its predecessor had.

On the bright side, the aesthetic is as good as ever. The music is lighthearted and somewhat reminiscent of a Nintendo title. The animations are smooth, girls are cute, the stages are colorful, and the models look great. The textures on the map itself are lackluster, but the obstacle layout and color palette help keep them from looking uninspired.

The multiplayer mode helps make up for the AI’s downfalls, as most online players aren’t quite as braindead as the AI are. Featuring some gamemodes exclusive to multiplayer such as the lovingly titled “Capture the Bra,” allows the multiplayer to feel fresh rather than just more of the single player battles. These rounds are high on intensity, and bring back the quick-paced and difficult battles that I was robbed of in the singleplayer from the broken AI.

Senran Kagura: Peach Beach Splash ultimately is one of the weaker entries in the series, and doesn’t quite catch the momentum that Estival Versus had. There is plenty of characters, dialogue, cute moments, and fanservice to keep the game afloat, but the gameplay doesn’t quite hit the mark. With inconsistent framerates and glitchy AI, a few patches could raise the score for Peach Beach Splash.

I spent my time playing this on a standard PS4, so this may be less of an issue on a Pro or a Slim model. But, the framerate was horribly inconsistent throughout most matches on both singleplayer and multiplayer alike. The FPS drops didn’t make the game unplayable, but being as it was a shooter I found a lot of difficulty in being able to aim. Because of the constant drop in frames, the auto-aiming was almost a necessity in order to land shots.

Along with technical issues, the AI in this game are rather poor and often seem lost during battles. When fighting the other girls, they would often get stuck on walls, continuously fire at nothing, or just sometimes not respond when fired upon. The AI run aimlessly into each other and fire randomly into the air, hoping some sort of deity will guide their shots. The battles between the girls were my favorite parts of Estival Versus, so it’s somewhat of a bummer that these encounters are being held back by some minor yet fatal technical issues.