1510: Hidden Ninpo

Been playing a bunch more Senran Kagura Burst over the last few days, and the more I play, the more I like it.

This is partly because of the interesting, well-told story that actually bothers to explore its characters in some degree of depth thanks to some lengthy visual novel sequences, but that’s not what I wanted to talk about today. No, instead, today I wanted to talk a little about how what initially appears to be a simple, straightforward brawler grows more and more interesting to play as you progress.

Senran Kagura Burst gives you five playable characters on each of the two “sides” of the story, plus some secret characters, I believe — haven’t unlocked them yet, but there’s a conspicuous question mark on the character select screen. Initially, these characters all have their own distinct characteristics — from the Hanzou path, Asuka has speedy attacks, Ikaruga has a long reach, Yagyuu hits hard, Katsuragi fights without weapons and Hibari hits lots of times — but they all “handle” fairly similarly. In other words, at the outset of the game you can pretty much button mash and get some good results.

Thanks to an RPG-style levelling system, however, the characters evolve as you play them in several ways. At various level boundaries, they unlock new “arts”, usually in the form of extending their usual combos, but as you play levels in one of two modes — Yang, which is “normal”, for want of a better term, and Yin (or “Frantic”), which sees the girls stripping off all their clothes (and defense) in exchange for a massive damage boost — you build up power in your Yang and Yin stats. Separately from your experience level, you unlock new Yin and Yang abilities as these statistics build up, until eventually fighting in Yin and Yang are as different as… well, you know. Playing a level in Yang sees you chaining together massive combos and getting ridiculous hit counts — potentially well into the thousands if you’re good at chaining knockouts together — while playing in Yin sees you steaming through, obliterating everything in your path. I finished the first boss level in the game in two seconds earlier thanks to a level 30 Asuka with a fully buffed up Yin stat.

The game doesn’t start with these two “modes” feeling different, however; no, it takes some time until the differences start to take effect — initially the only difference is in what the girls are wearing as you fight. But as you gain levels and increase the Yin and Yang stats, more and more depth is gradually added to the game until you’re playing something a lot more technical and interesting than what initially appeared to be a fun but fairly mindless button-basher.

This becomes particularly apparent as you work on several characters at once — the story often forces you to use specific characters the first time you take on a level, and so you’ll get some experience with all of them while undoubtedly finding favourites. Again, initially, all the characters feel very similar outside of their obvious differences in weaponry, but again, over time, they start to become more and more distinct. Asuka, for example, becomes a whirling death machine able to hit lots of enemies at the same time with a spinning attack, then launch them all into the air. Katsuragi, meanwhile, actually changes significantly from her low-level incarnation; rather than being able to launch enemies simply by hammering the Fast Attack button and unleashing a combo, Katsuragi begins requiring Heavy Attacks to be in the mix in order to successfully launch them. This forces you to play Katsuragi noticeably differently from the other characters — and I’m sure the others are different again, and I’ll come to discover their own quirks over time.

The pace at which all this happens is really good, too; you start getting additional techniques and new moves just as hammering “Y” repeatedly starts to get a little tiresome and you start wondering whether there’s anything more to it. It’s not long after that your rate of pressing the attack buttons slows down from the frantic pace it almost certainly begins at, and you start actually counting how many attacks you get in in order to use the moves you want to. In a funny way, it reminds me a bit of Bayonetta, which I still regard as the benchmark of 3D action games — there was never a moment in Bayonetta where I didn’t feel in control of the character, and that, likewise, gradually grew in complexity (and, consequently, in how rewarding it was to play) over time. Bayonetta is probably a superior game with more variety than Senran Kagura, but to get a similar vibe from it is testament to the latter’s satisfying brawling.

Anyway, if you’ve been hesitating over picking this up — perhaps you’re an American holding out for a possible physical release? — then, well, I’d strongly advise you to grab a copy if you enjoy a good brawler. And then help me bug Xseed to bring the Vita game to the West, too.