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Senran Kagura thread: I dance for the honor of evil!

Picked up Shinovi Versus on Steam, first time with the series. Logged a good 5 hours or so into it over the past 2 days.

So far, it's fun. Can't shake the feeling that this is like one of those doujin games where they put a lot of work into creating a fun combat engine, but didn't bother with any other essentials like "level design", "enemy ai", "pacing", "variety" etc. compensating with a dearth of (mostly similar and aesthetic) content.

The combat IS fun though. I particularly love the floaty, ethereal feeling of jumping and air dashing around. It's a great hook in its own right, and it's definitely one of those games where just moving around and hitting stuff feels good. I'm just hoping the game gets some variety and challenge later on, 'cause I'm getting burned out on whacking near-defenseless mooks and dumbass cpu controlled shinobi over and over.

The story...Hmmmm. Seems good. Setting has some potential (I'm down with anything Order Vs Chaos themed, Dungeons and Dragons ftw). Characters have some potential. There are some nice ideas floating around in here. I'm having a hard time connecting with anyone or anything, though. Maybe if I had played the first one... Or maybe my standards are just waaaaay too high at this point for story telling, where if something doesn't feel "magical as fuck" to me, I have a hard time caring. Gonna give it more of a chance though.

I don't find the character designs or art style particular hot/memorable, though it's not bad. Except Miyabi's hairstyle, which gets me hard. #TomboyFetishMasterRace

tl:dr: fun, not great so far, but fun. Can't feel myself speaking negatively about it in any way.
 
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You're basically playing a better musou game, so the challenges more stem to "defeat the enemies with this character's playstyle" and less of "defeat tough opponents." Like, I think there might be challenge levels, but I am only going by Estival's game design, not Shinovi because I haven't had a chance to play that yet.

And remember, "tits are life, ass is hometown"
 
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Yeah,I wanna know too,personally I'm a bigger fan of Dynasty Warriors because it has actual interesting level designs and layouts I remember,and those games usually have bonus objectives like "escape" or "capture bases" or "set traps" that stop it from being super repetitive.Not that I hate this game,I just think it's way more repetitive,despite having better gameplay.
 
Personally I think Dragon Quest Heroes is a better musou :P

but I mean SK as far as I know has VS modes, which a lot of other musous lack
 
BrandX+ said:
Kinda curious what you mean by "better musou" game
You don't have to annoyingly ensure that your keeps aren't going to be lost.

Combo Porn.

Regular Porn.
 
BrandX+ said:
Kinda curious what you mean by "better musou" game
StairwayTDC said:
Yeah,I wanna know too
well, I havent played too many Musou games lately, the most recent being Gundam Reborn, but I can say that one major improvement Senran Kagura has is that all of the characters feel different from one another and have their own playstyles to make them feel much more unique from one another than the different characters of Musou. the best way I can describe this is compare nearly every character in a musou game, and they all have very similar light attacks, and very slight variations on heavy attacks/combo finishers. with Senran Kagura, you can have two characters who fight with very similar weapons, for example, Ryobi and Mirai, but they both play differently enough that you cant play either the same way. Ryobi is a close range with special moves dedicated to long range attacks, whereas Mirai's kit is mainly used to attack enemies at a long range. Another example is Daidouji and Yozakura, both use very physical movesets, but they play differently enough that you can't say they are the same.

things like the combos are also what sets Senran Kagura apart from Musou. with Musou, if you're good enough, you can stunlock enemies if you keep dash cancelling during a combo, while in senran kagura, you have more to your disposal than just some dash combos, such as aerial combos, dual raves, having the choice between burst or frantic mode, and much more.

these are just two of the main things I would say make me feel that Senran is a better style of 3D enemy beat-em-up gameply than what the Musou games are known for. I also feel the same way about Sengoku Basara games.
 
Kinda wanna catch up to Senran Kagura so I can play Estivial Versus for the Summer (joke? Maybe)

Kinda sad I missed the boat for physical copies of Deep Crimson and Shinovi Versus though
 
I'd rather have limited physical over the risk of some other localizer giving us plenty of physical but altering it beyond reason.
 
So should I get Senran Kagura 2 Deep Crimson and Shinovi Versus or is it safe to jump right to Estivial Versus?
I mean I played the first one to completion at least
 
Deep Crimson is just a sequel to the main game, so you can put that on hold.

Shinovi I think introduced the Gessen girls and the new Hebijo girls, and Estival has a lot of characters already established, so I'd recommend playing that.
 
well, it's still 40 dollars digitally, and it's only 2gb.

its worth the price.
but if you want to get the physical version of Estival, get it NOW.
before it's too late.
 
just 2 from what the wikia implies.

Kagura, and Naraku. also, Ikaruga's brother makes his playable debut.

and since Estival is post Ikaruga brother, then I'd say play Shinovi and deep crimson., then play Estival.
 
dont forget tits.
they're life.
and ass.
that's hometown.

but in my book, there's one more thing.
legs.
the road less traveled.
 
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also, I love the music for Estival Versus.

mainly because my favorite Hanzo girl's, Ikaruga, theme got upgraded from "cool character" to "giga level boss theme nigga"
and for Renka's theme having ACTUAL taiko drums added into it.
because taiko drum fighting needs to be in more things.
and because taiko drums are fucking hype.
 
So if anyone wants to binge on Senran Kagura as hard as I hope to this summer.
Amazon is selling Senran Kagura 2: Deep Crimson Physical copies again, for $18.
That's more than 50% off, and I guess they discovered another shipment.
I'd act immediately if you're interested, because I don't think they'll restock.
 
Shinovi Versus frustrates me. It feels like it could be a really amazing game, with some really nice points, but everything else just feels so annoyingly half assed. Like I said, they got the combat engine right, but the environment is terrible.

Also when you no-damage a boss with one beat down combo, and then the following cutscene tells you that your character was gravely injured and the boss has barely been scratched...and then this predictably happens 4 more times in a row with each of your party members. I swear this is one of the most hilariously immersion breaking things I've encountered in years. Makes me wanna punch a baby.
 
I'd rather have character variety to feel vastly different from one another than to have more detailed environments.
like, if SK had more detailed environments but less character variety, I would definitely not like it anywhere near as much.

and that's just dumb story bits. like, in Estival, you're having heart to hearts with people wearing NOTHING but god rays over their nips. it's great.
 
I can just tell you that Estival Versus, has so much of everything added into it.
how much of everything?
tumblr_inline_o4idb9MtbR1stpcr8_500.jpg
 
So does that mean I should skip Shinovi Versus and go right to Estivial right after I beat Senran 2 or should I wade through Shinovi to get used to all the new characters
 
SanoBaron said:
I'd rather have character variety to feel vastly different from one another than to have more detailed environments.
like, if SK had more detailed environments but less character variety, I would definitely not like it anywhere near as much.

When I say "environment" I'm talking in the broader sense of everything you put into the game beyond fundamental mechanics. Enemy variety and designs, ai, level design, structure, difficulty balance, etc. Basically, the only thing I like about the game is the basic feel of combat, everything else feels half assed. It's barely enough to make me enjoy it enough to not ask for a refund. Barely.

I'm not really getting the character variety, personally. Outside of a few oddballs, most characters are only differentiated in terms of slightly different normal attack timings and ranges. It's not like PSO2 or something where each weapon not only has that (and to a far greater extent), but also a huge variety of special attacks with different utilities, i-frames, etc.

SanoBaron said:
and that's just dumb story bits. like, in Estival, you're having heart to hearts with people wearing NOTHING but god rays over their nips. it's great.

Yeah but I was told the story is actually good. So far it seems okay but it feels like generic shonen stuff. I have a ton of little writing nitpicks and overall I'm not feeling it.

Not a bad game. I'd give it a 6/10 or maybe a 7/10 at best. I'm glad I own it and will probably return to it from time to time, but I can't really recommend it without many caveats and criticisms.
 
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when I mean character variety, at least in Estival's case, I mean that a lot of characters in SK feel different enough with their normals and special attacks to where they dont feel like you're just playing the same character over and over.

this is also coming from a guy whose most recent musou game was Gundam Reborn, where a lot of mobile suits really all feel the same across the board aside from some gimmicks a select few have.

like, again, my Ryobi vs Mirai comparison would explain my feelings towards the different feel of the characters. but another comparison would be Ryona and Kafuru in Estival. they both are gun kata characters, but they play much more differently with one being a more close rang character and the other being a heavy zoner. like, Yumi is probably one of several characters you can't just mash with because she does abysmal damage and you have to learn how to utilize her moveset in order to not get swarmed.
 
I dunno, maybe my standards are just too high, but the character differences feel more like "ryu vs ken vs akuma" as opposed to "ryu, guile, gief, bison, etc."

I shudder for other Musou games if that's true though.
 
well, it's a musou like.
that's gonna be a thing that becomes regular for these kinds of things.
like, another game that does it well are the modern Sengoku Basara games.
 
BOTH OF THE ORIGINAL SENRAN KAGURA GAMES ARE 50% OFF ON THE E-SHOP!

THIS IS NOT A DRILL, PEOPLE!
 
>not having those since day 1.

I keep forgetting just how niche this series was until estival. Honestly though, get those if you can since it does paint a noticeably different picture of the world for the series than the newer games do.
 
Jutsei said:
FIFTH!?
THIS GAME SERIES IS ONLY FIVE YEARS OLD?!
IT FEELS LIKE IT'S BEEN AROUND FOR LONGER
I KNOW, RIGHT?
 
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