Senran Kagura: Estival Versus is a hack n slash brawler game for the PlayStation Vita and PlayStation 4. It has a high focus on fan service and jiggle physics. While it is a sequel to Shinovi Versus and Bon Appetit, there isn’t that much of a need to have played those games before this one. The bulk of the content lies in the story mode that has nearly equal amounts of story and gameplay. You will have a few cutscenes before the mission commences and then another story cutscene after. Unfortunately, the game is punctuated by constant loading screens. There is always a loading screen between each of the short cutscenes and even in the middle of a middle of each battle as it loads in the boss. This is distracting and quite disappointing.
In the story, all the members of each of the four shinobi schools have been warped to another dimension. Coincidentally, it is a beautiful beach and this is an excuse for the characters to relax and wear swimsuits. However, a more serious main arc comes into play where Ryobi and Ryona see their dead sister. It turns out that this world allows the dead shinobi to come back to life for the limited amount of time the festival is on. The four schools participate in the Kagura Millennium Festival and must battle each other. In the end, the story has a ton of fluff and is simply an excuse for as many fan service scenes as possible. The story is all over the place with random and wacky things that happen.
As the main story explores various characters’ reasons for not wanting to leave this alternate reality, it expands on their backstories from Shinovi Versus. A few of them are haunted by tragic events that affected their cherished family members, while others are more rational and realize that this could be a trap and wants to leave. Apparently, the reality is currently suspended in time and no matter how long they stay here, they’ll go back right after they had warped.
Estival Versus is a hack n slash and can become repetitive by the end of the game. The square button is used for a light attack while triangle is for a heavy attack. You can chain together these two types of attacks into a combo. In addition, characters can block and counter an enemy’s attack if you block at just the right time. Once you knock an enemy away you can instantly leap towards them to continue your combo at the press of a button.
All characters can transform into their true shinobi forms where they gain stat buffs. They also gain the ability to use ninja arts once a bar is full; these are effectively the same as ultimate attacks as they are flash and do a lot of damage. A new addition is combined attacks if you have a NPC ally with you.
During each mission, you are typically pit against a large number of enemies. When fighting against other characters, the attacks you do will slowly damage their clothing and enough damage will strip them completely. The game has re-balanced all of the characters’ fighting styles. The recovery delay after a combo is really annoying, especially for slow characters. Coupled with a shorter attack range than expected means you’ll be hitting thin air rather than the enemy. The enemy never seems to have these same kinds of problems though. They are able to instantly launch attacks with no recovery frames, stun lock you and shoot off attack after attack. It can get extremely annoying when three bosses are doing this at the same time against you.
There is a lack of staggering of enemies when they power up. This means that you cannot just mash your way through a combo. It can be annoying when the powered up bosses use ranged attacks and you’re using a close ranged fighter, so you are unable to get close to pummel them. This tends to drag out the fights. It’s actually really frustrating that you cannot lock them into a combo as they will spam their own invincible frame moves and due to the animation delay, the combat does not feel that smooth or reactive.
The final boss exacerbates every single flaw the game has; as a result, it feels extremely cheap and unfair. The final boss is constantly barraging you with attacks, never staggers, cannot be combo’d, cannot be launched and has high health. It is a cheap mess of a battle. It doesn’t help that the game’s camera is not the best and can be hard to keep track of your character or the enemy with. Each mission takes around five to ten minutes to clear so they are not long at all. There are collectibles in the form of hidden “festival platforms” that you destroy to unlock more things in the game. These unlocks include additional missions in the Shinobi Girl’s Heart mode. The game reuses a lot of assets from Shinovi Versus. Most notably the same stages, which is disappointing. It still adds in new content and still looks decent.
The main story mode takes around seven to ten hours, after which there is the Shinobi Girl’s Heart mode. This mode has side stories involving all the characters. Each character has five missions which are easier and shorter than the story missions. Each character set takes around twenty to thirty minutes to complete. Playing through all the missions in this mode can become tedious. Yes, it is a lot of content but it is all the same style of missions, thus it becomes extremely repetitive. Then there are the unskippable credits after every set, which means watching then 27 times after every girl’s five missions, this is a bit overkill.
Impressively, there is a free chunky update to the game. The update provides new playable characters, additional Shinobi Girl’s Heart story missions, collectibles and stages, which is quite the meaty addition. While the single player mode will take around 20-30 hours to unlock everything, there is also a multiplayer mode if you wish to battle it out against real players. There is a “Dressing Room” mode where you can select any of the characters and then change their costumes, pose them, and put on accessories. It has a lot of customization option but sadly lacks a photo mode where you can pose them in an environment with other characters.
Overall, Senran Kagura: Estival Versus, despite its flaws, is still a fun game. While the fan service is a big part of the game, at the same time, it is a lot of mindless fun. The combat can do with some improvements as it felt like there was a lot of redundant features and nerfing of move sets. It has plenty of content that will take you up to thirty hours to complete.
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