Senran Kagura Peach Ball

Genre: Pinball

Players: 1

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Review:

Senran Kagura Peach Ball is a Pinball game clearly designed around enticing players to ogle the well-endowed anime-style girls that comprise its entire cast. This is of course a frequent feature of the Senran Kagura line of games, and it’s not the first game like this I reviewed. I’ll repeat here what I said there:

I’m not gonna’ knock the game for being what it is. Hell, I don’t even have a problem with porn games, at least in theory. If someone enjoys a thing for whatever reason, even if I don’t really get it, I can at least appreciate that it’s filling a niche. I mean, I feel like, if you want to look at pictures of attractive ladies, why wouldn’t you just look at, you know, regular porn? But whatevs.

Senran Kagura Peach Ball stops just short of being pornographic, but only just. The girls within it are depicted in various states of undress and even at times nude, though always with their erogenous zones covered. Players are also encouraged to harass and lightly abuse these girls (for their own good, of course), and there’s even a “diorama” mode to pose the girls in various outfits and an “Intimacy mode” where players can “massage” and grab the girls with virtual hands (more on this in a bit). This game is very much a “not for kids” game, all while presenting the thinnest of thin veneers as a pretense.

On that note, the story here takes place at a videogame tournament with a roster comprised entirely of the aforementioned well-endowed women, which is interrupted when one of the girls mistakes an animal transformation potion for hand soap and proceeds to dose herself with it and subsequently spread it to the rest of the girls, transforming them all into catgirls, bunny-girls, and… you get the drift. You’re tasked with healing them by… luring them onto a pinball machine and hitting a pinball-shaped antidote at them.

The entire time this game’s story plays out, I just kept feeling like the whole thing was one of the most asinine and contrived pieces of garbage I ever had to sit through. And I’m someone who will stand by my opinion that a game with a story about a king who goes on a royal bender, wrecking all the stars in the sky, and subsequently giving his puny son the task of rolling up balls of garbage to replace them is pretty darn good, actually. But here, the lengths that the game goes to in order to try to justify its ridiculous premise goes beyond the whimsical and into the realm of “seriously, please, just stop”. Throughout the game’s story mode, the gameplay will constantly be interspersed with extremely lengthy sections filled with this poorly-written, poorly-conceived anime-styled (in the worst way) story, and I can’t imagine who this story is for, since neither the folks interested in ogling girls, nor those who enjoy a fun, silly story will find any amusement in it as it drags on and on.

It bears mention that during a good part of this story, this story will be delivered with plain text on a static background, without even so much as a portrait of the girls who are talking to go with it. What idiot allowed this to happen? In a game designed for players to ogle girls, there are lengthy sections of the game that are text-only and don’t even show you the girls who are talking.

Having said that, there are other sections that do render these anime-esque girls in full 3D, complete with their large, bouncy chests, and I will admit that these character models are quite lovingly detailed and well-animated. As much as it would be easy to dismiss this game as a cheap attempt at making a buck off of its sex appeal, it’s clear that the folks who worked on the visuals put in the effort to ensure its girls were worth ogling.

In the gameplay, these girls continue to be well-animated as they lounge at the back of the pinball tables, moving around and watching the action play out, and reacting to being struck by the pinball. The tables themselves are extremely detailed and lively. Too lively, actually – there’s so much activity going on here that it makes it difficult to follow the gameplay. The pinball machines you play on are not just static, mechanical things, but filled with various cartoony characters constantly milling about or prancing onto the game table, which itself is filled with loud colors and blinking lights to the point where the entire thing frequently feels like a crowded mess.

The game is backed by an energetic and forgettable soundtrack, and all of the dialogue is voiced in Japanese in pretty typical anime-style acting, which would be fine if it weren’t for the fact that this dialogue continues in the actual gameplay, with subtitles in the corner indicating what’s being said… subtitles you have to tear your eyes off the gameplay to read, defeating the point.

As for the gameplay itself, I freely admit that I’m no pinball wizard, but I’ve played various pinball videogames over the years, and this game has some of the worst physics of any pinball game I’ve ever played. Sometimes the ball acts as if it has received a strong hit when the paddle has barely touched it. A few times the ball was struck without even touching the paddle. And when hitting the ball, it always feels like the ball is programmed to respond to these paddle strikes with one of a few pre-programmed trajectories, rather than moving based on any sort of physics at all, realistic or otherwise.

What’s more, the gameplay feels like it’s constantly being interrupted with explanations that don’t really feel like they explain anything, stopping the game to tell you about the different mechanics of the game table in a way that’s far more confusing than helpful, and with such poor timing that these interruptions repeatedly caused me to lose my ball.

At the very least, the tables themselves seem pretty well-conceived, with a good amount of variety within them, and the girls lounging on them makes for a fun interactive element in that they’re frequently blocking off parts of the table, and the way they move around ensures that this is frequently changing. Unfortunately, there are only two tables in the entire game, each with three time-of-day variants that mostly only serve to change their appearance. This game is being sold for $40, and it is a game about pinball that only has two actual pinball tables? Seriously, what the hell?

The game’s controls do make use of the Nintendo Switch’s gyroscopic motion controls, but only to shake the table (and in turn jostle the girl lounging on it into a different position. Beyond this, the controls are fairly standard and there’s not much to say about them.

As for the “intimacy mode”… ~sigh~… okay, look, if this game wants to be a porn game, it should just be a porn game. Using virtual hands to “massage” the girls as they squirm and mutter “ooh, I like that” feels pointless without actual nudity or X-rated content, but still feels dirty to the point where I’d feel embarrassed to play this with anyone else present. But even for those seeking titillation, the controls in this mode are awkward and frustrating, the level of interaction is minimal, and the mechanics and goals of this mode are unclear.

I did not buy Senran Kagura Peach Ball wanting to hate it, nor was I under any pretense of what it was. Like I said, I don’t judge a game for being the game it is or not being the game it’s not. However, Senran Kagura Peach Ball pretty much fails at being anything worthwhile. The visuals here are actually pretty decent, but the game fails at being wank material thanks to both the lack of actual X-rated content and the absurdly lengthy and unnecessary story. However, the game also fails at being a decent pinball game, with poor physics and tiny selection of tables. It even fails at being quirky amusement thanks to how much the story wears out its welcome and how confused and confusing the gameplay is. As amusing as the concept of this game is, I cannot in good conscience recommend it to anyone.

tl;dr – Senran Kagura Peach Ball is a Pinball game where players hit a ball at well-endowed catgirls, bunny-girls and the like who are lounging on the table, with the game clearly designed around enticing players to ogle the lovingly-rendered and well-animated girls (but stopping just short of any X-rated content). Unfortunately, this game is constantly pushing its terrible story at you, the pinball physics are terrible, there are effectively only two tables, and the $40 price tag is just absurd. Also, the sexy content here is enough to make the game feel awkward without being truly arousing. If you want a good pinball game, there are many better options. If you want something sexy, just go watch some porn. This game fails at both.

Grade: D

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