So I kept seeing controversy surrounding the Senran Kagura games and someone I used to hang out online with always took the opportunity to voraciously defend them. Obviously there's the stuff about the sexualization but I kept hearing that behind that there was supposedly a good story with good character development or something. Supposedly this new one that came out for PS4, Switch, and PC is a remake of a re-release of the first one so I went ahead and rented it. Only played like three missions or something but I might play a few more.
The 16-year-old scantily clad anime girls technically aren't all that's there, but I don't really see anything that justifies how the characters are depicted visually.
Okay, the basic concept of the story actually makes sense: There are modern ninjas who work for corporations and politicians, and there are government ninjas, two sides of a coin. That sounds like the basis of a potentially cool anime or something. Then you've got the characters who have an array of personalities and and backgrounds getting into high school shenanigans as part of a secret ninja-training faction of a regular school. So far so good. There are even visual novel segments that do a fairly good job of telling stories to develop these characters with actual themes and stuff. It's probably not Fate/Stay Night or Persona or Utawarerumono, but not really bad either. Mechanically, it feels like Ninja Gaiden on a budget. Not amazing, but an effective button-mashing system (at least from what I saw of this one game). I'm not gonna fault it for being a low-budget game. To its credit, these games tend to be available on platforms where there are no Ninja Gaiden games.
But enemies having their clothes stripped off when you attack them? Your character getting an attack boost in some kind of underwear mode where you do a touch gesture to figuratively rip their clothes off? Really? And they're all canonically high-school-aged (I think one of the girls' grandmother is playable in one game). At least the developers are upfront about it and people can just ignore these games if they want, but is there more here that I'm missing?
TLDR: If it weren't for the character designs and undressing themes, I feel like there might be a good high school ninja espionage visual novel here, but is there some deeper meaning behind those visual themes I'm missing before I move on?
The 16-year-old scantily clad anime girls technically aren't all that's there, but I don't really see anything that justifies how the characters are depicted visually.
Okay, the basic concept of the story actually makes sense: There are modern ninjas who work for corporations and politicians, and there are government ninjas, two sides of a coin. That sounds like the basis of a potentially cool anime or something. Then you've got the characters who have an array of personalities and and backgrounds getting into high school shenanigans as part of a secret ninja-training faction of a regular school. So far so good. There are even visual novel segments that do a fairly good job of telling stories to develop these characters with actual themes and stuff. It's probably not Fate/Stay Night or Persona or Utawarerumono, but not really bad either. Mechanically, it feels like Ninja Gaiden on a budget. Not amazing, but an effective button-mashing system (at least from what I saw of this one game). I'm not gonna fault it for being a low-budget game. To its credit, these games tend to be available on platforms where there are no Ninja Gaiden games.
But enemies having their clothes stripped off when you attack them? Your character getting an attack boost in some kind of underwear mode where you do a touch gesture to figuratively rip their clothes off? Really? And they're all canonically high-school-aged (I think one of the girls' grandmother is playable in one game). At least the developers are upfront about it and people can just ignore these games if they want, but is there more here that I'm missing?
TLDR: If it weren't for the character designs and undressing themes, I feel like there might be a good high school ninja espionage visual novel here, but is there some deeper meaning behind those visual themes I'm missing before I move on?
