I miss Senran Kagura, I really do. Surely the "full 3D" quasi-musou games range from meh to terrible, but I still pine for some brainless button mashers with over-the-top characters. Even Kenichiro Takaki, creator of Senran Kagura, couldn't get back the same vibe with Valkyrie Drive (which ended up being terrible in its Vita incarnation), and the recent crossover between Senran Kagura and Neptunia is another poor attempt at the genre.
But now Shade throw their hat into the ring with the help of D3 Publisher. Shade is a small studio similar to Tamsoft: the quality of their output varies greatly with publisher and director, and the biggest difference between the two is that Shade never really got past average games. The first two Bullet Girls are flawed but fun, Bullet Girls Phantasia is meh, Kandagawa Jet Girls is meh once again, and Gun Gun Pixies remains the worst game I've played on the Vita and the worst game published by Idea Factory/Compile Heart.
So...yeah, things don't bode well....
The story is simple: Tsumugi, our resident protagonist, gets isekaied into an alternative take of the Sengoku period, where she meets Iyo, Komimi, and Hagane, three ninjas that will help her in defeating the Demon Lord. Should they fail, the world will end, no pressure. And this being the Sengoku period, Oda Nobunaga is here as well.
Only Tsumugi is playable, with the other three girls being there for special moves and nothing more, though one of them is always present on the battlefield with Tsumugi. Tsumugi does get dfferent weapons as the game progresses but those don't change the moveset, maybe attack windup-times but nothing you could really feel, let alone something that would make you change how you play. You have your light attacks, your heavy attacks, your jumps, your dodges, your air attacks...everything you'd expect from a third-person action game is there. Tsumugi starts off with a barebone moveset, so barebone that you need to unlock both ground and air fast wakeups. This happens within the first two hours of the game, and after that there are more techniques to learn (like a charged heavy attack) but you'll never make use of them due to how the game is structured.
Missions always have the party kill groups of skeletons and onis until they reach the local boss (a bigger skeleton or a bigger oni). All maps have some treasure chests scattered around to increase your item count or unlock one of the many illustrations in the gallery, and in later missions those chests are behind platforming challenges.
A handful of missions are one-on-one (or better, four-on-one) fights against a named NPC.
Mobs are mostly harmless and can take quite the punishment for the kind of obstacle they are; there is a lock-on, but it doesn't switch automatically when your current target is down, and it's one of those autolocks that always goes onto the least threatening enemy, so it's better to freestyle normal encounters. Enemies also really, really like to mob onto Tsumugi which makes dodging difficult, and in these situations it's always best to rely on special attacks to break free.
Special attacks are linked to one of the three shinobis, who also represent one element: fire for Iyo, thunder for Hangane, and ice for Komimi. The game never outright tells if there's an elemental circle but elements do have secondary effects...or effect, I only noticed fire inflict burn damage over time. Ice doesn't freeze enemies nor thunder stuns them, and the same applies to Tsumugi. The shinobi's special attacks have different areas of effect, and Komimi's attack is the most useful because it's a nice, round area; Hagane's is a very narrow straight line and Iyo's should be directly against whatever you are locking on, but it gets blocked by every other enemy.
Special attacks can be triggered in two ways: circle (playing on a PS4) triggers the attack of the shinobi currently on the field; L1 plus square/triangle/circle is a shortcut to one of the three. Why this? I really don't know. You can also switch between your three companions with up/down on the d-pad or with L2 plus a face button. Again, I don't know why the double selection method. Controls cannot be customised, you can only choose between three presets.
Execution of special attacks is immediate, but they won't hit right away: Iyo/Hagane/Komimi have to first teleport near Tsumugi, start their attack animation, and then the attack comes out. Hagane is the worst offender, as her attack won't do damage until she fires her extensible arm, the arm reaches full extension, and she then she applies electricity to damage targets. If there are any targets around her arm, of course. Iyo teleports slightly behind Tsumugi and any obstacle will block her kunai. That's why Komimi is the best of the bunch, her attack comes out fast and is not blocked by anything, plus she makes enemies fly, allowing Tsumugi to dodge out from sticky situations.
Battles against bosses quickly degenerate into getting as close as possible and hammer the attack button to charge special attacks, then furiously use whatever meter you have to trigger them, hoping to do some decent damage. Really, enemies are way too sturdy, and that's not because they are difficult to fight, but because they are boring to fight. Every boss type has two/three attacks, with plenty of windup time, and are almost immediate when they actually trigger. There is no variety, and at times the target lock decides to disengage for whatever reason, moving the camera to the ground thus hiding everything from your sight. Get too close to walls and such and the camera will clip right into the larger enemies. Some special attacks aren't masked out and again they will hide what enemies, or even you, are doing.
To dish out more damage Tsumugi and a shinobi can trigger a Devoted Heart, basically a timed power-up where Tsumugi has her weapon imbued with that shinobi's element. Does Tsumugi does more damage in this state? I think, there are damage numbers on screen but they don't seem particularly higher, like standard attacks do 10 points of damage, powered-up they do 12. They have more visual flare, and that's the biggest difference.
All shinobis also have one special action: Iyo uses items (bombs, mines, decoys, health potions), Hagane has a grappling hook, and Komimi...can throw stuff. Usefulness during battles: minimal. Iyo's items see some use, but to use them you need to have Iyo with you, press R2, select where the item goes (this doesn't pause/slow down time, but you can just press R2 and the item will be placed where you are), wait for Iyo to teleport out and back in with the item, wait for her to get to the designated position, and finally wait for her to place what you want to use. Of course Iyo can get hit during the process, and depending when she's hit, you either have to redo the whole thing or the item is dropped in a different place.
Urgh.
Hagane's grappling hook is used to get items on ledges and for the few platforming sections the game has. Platforming is not terrible, but not exactly something you want to do either...if you've played previous Shade games, it has the same feeling of those, but it's a tad better in the responsivness.
Komimi's action lets her move around items Iyo deployed, but it's not exactly easy to do that during battles, so her action is only used during Bubble missions. What are Bubble missions? They are short missions, mostly platform-focused, you unlock by getting closer to a shinobi. How do you get close to a shinobi? By killing enemies when one of them is with you on the field. Getting close to a shinobi will also give Tsumugi new techniques and cutscenes that will explore how the characters interact.
And last, the technical side. Samurai Maiden runs on Unity, and once again Unity is used without any kind of optimisation. The game looks like a Vita game, with barren, unsaturated, repetitive, and uninteresting environments. I think the game is capped at 30fps on PS4 and despite everything there are still framerate issues against some bosses.
Loading times are way too long for what needs to be loaded, and adding insult to injuring, cutscenes have to load in between. You know, cutscenes with two character models, four/five animations total, one image as a background, text and audio, like the PS4 cannot stream new text and audio files.
Of note is the English translation, which is all over the place.
You can chat with characters on the title screen, and one of Komimi's lines is "I'm the student of Tamamo-No-Mae, the King Of Beasts", with the Japanese voice saying "dai onmiouji", or great exorcist. Were "exorcist" or "onmiouji" too much for our feeble western minds? Well no, because the game uses "onmiouji" a lot.
In the Japanese dub, Tsumugi explains school grades to the three shinobis: she's a JK (joshikousei, high-school girl), and there are college and grade school girls. The English translation goes on explaining that Tsumugi is Gen Z, then there are Millenials, Gen Y, and Boombers. Why exactly? I though this was due to avoid sexual undertones, but then there's a scene with Tsumugi placing her mobile between Hagane's breast to recharge (long story), with no rewordings in the English translation. The level of fanservice is in line with Lollypop Chainsaw, probably even less, and that was Mature, Samurai Maiden in Teen, or Z and C for Japanese CERO ratings respectively.
Yeah, Samurai Maiden isn't particularly good. Mediocre I would say, below average but not quite into terrible territory. I'll see it to the end but I doubt I'll replay all missions in all difficulty modes or even get all the S-ranks...and the S-ranks need a paragraph of their own, but that will be in a later post.
But now Shade throw their hat into the ring with the help of D3 Publisher. Shade is a small studio similar to Tamsoft: the quality of their output varies greatly with publisher and director, and the biggest difference between the two is that Shade never really got past average games. The first two Bullet Girls are flawed but fun, Bullet Girls Phantasia is meh, Kandagawa Jet Girls is meh once again, and Gun Gun Pixies remains the worst game I've played on the Vita and the worst game published by Idea Factory/Compile Heart.
So...yeah, things don't bode well....
The story is simple: Tsumugi, our resident protagonist, gets isekaied into an alternative take of the Sengoku period, where she meets Iyo, Komimi, and Hagane, three ninjas that will help her in defeating the Demon Lord. Should they fail, the world will end, no pressure. And this being the Sengoku period, Oda Nobunaga is here as well.
Only Tsumugi is playable, with the other three girls being there for special moves and nothing more, though one of them is always present on the battlefield with Tsumugi. Tsumugi does get dfferent weapons as the game progresses but those don't change the moveset, maybe attack windup-times but nothing you could really feel, let alone something that would make you change how you play. You have your light attacks, your heavy attacks, your jumps, your dodges, your air attacks...everything you'd expect from a third-person action game is there. Tsumugi starts off with a barebone moveset, so barebone that you need to unlock both ground and air fast wakeups. This happens within the first two hours of the game, and after that there are more techniques to learn (like a charged heavy attack) but you'll never make use of them due to how the game is structured.
Missions always have the party kill groups of skeletons and onis until they reach the local boss (a bigger skeleton or a bigger oni). All maps have some treasure chests scattered around to increase your item count or unlock one of the many illustrations in the gallery, and in later missions those chests are behind platforming challenges.
A handful of missions are one-on-one (or better, four-on-one) fights against a named NPC.
Mobs are mostly harmless and can take quite the punishment for the kind of obstacle they are; there is a lock-on, but it doesn't switch automatically when your current target is down, and it's one of those autolocks that always goes onto the least threatening enemy, so it's better to freestyle normal encounters. Enemies also really, really like to mob onto Tsumugi which makes dodging difficult, and in these situations it's always best to rely on special attacks to break free.
Special attacks are linked to one of the three shinobis, who also represent one element: fire for Iyo, thunder for Hangane, and ice for Komimi. The game never outright tells if there's an elemental circle but elements do have secondary effects...or effect, I only noticed fire inflict burn damage over time. Ice doesn't freeze enemies nor thunder stuns them, and the same applies to Tsumugi. The shinobi's special attacks have different areas of effect, and Komimi's attack is the most useful because it's a nice, round area; Hagane's is a very narrow straight line and Iyo's should be directly against whatever you are locking on, but it gets blocked by every other enemy.
Special attacks can be triggered in two ways: circle (playing on a PS4) triggers the attack of the shinobi currently on the field; L1 plus square/triangle/circle is a shortcut to one of the three. Why this? I really don't know. You can also switch between your three companions with up/down on the d-pad or with L2 plus a face button. Again, I don't know why the double selection method. Controls cannot be customised, you can only choose between three presets.
Execution of special attacks is immediate, but they won't hit right away: Iyo/Hagane/Komimi have to first teleport near Tsumugi, start their attack animation, and then the attack comes out. Hagane is the worst offender, as her attack won't do damage until she fires her extensible arm, the arm reaches full extension, and she then she applies electricity to damage targets. If there are any targets around her arm, of course. Iyo teleports slightly behind Tsumugi and any obstacle will block her kunai. That's why Komimi is the best of the bunch, her attack comes out fast and is not blocked by anything, plus she makes enemies fly, allowing Tsumugi to dodge out from sticky situations.
Battles against bosses quickly degenerate into getting as close as possible and hammer the attack button to charge special attacks, then furiously use whatever meter you have to trigger them, hoping to do some decent damage. Really, enemies are way too sturdy, and that's not because they are difficult to fight, but because they are boring to fight. Every boss type has two/three attacks, with plenty of windup time, and are almost immediate when they actually trigger. There is no variety, and at times the target lock decides to disengage for whatever reason, moving the camera to the ground thus hiding everything from your sight. Get too close to walls and such and the camera will clip right into the larger enemies. Some special attacks aren't masked out and again they will hide what enemies, or even you, are doing.
To dish out more damage Tsumugi and a shinobi can trigger a Devoted Heart, basically a timed power-up where Tsumugi has her weapon imbued with that shinobi's element. Does Tsumugi does more damage in this state? I think, there are damage numbers on screen but they don't seem particularly higher, like standard attacks do 10 points of damage, powered-up they do 12. They have more visual flare, and that's the biggest difference.
All shinobis also have one special action: Iyo uses items (bombs, mines, decoys, health potions), Hagane has a grappling hook, and Komimi...can throw stuff. Usefulness during battles: minimal. Iyo's items see some use, but to use them you need to have Iyo with you, press R2, select where the item goes (this doesn't pause/slow down time, but you can just press R2 and the item will be placed where you are), wait for Iyo to teleport out and back in with the item, wait for her to get to the designated position, and finally wait for her to place what you want to use. Of course Iyo can get hit during the process, and depending when she's hit, you either have to redo the whole thing or the item is dropped in a different place.
Urgh.
Hagane's grappling hook is used to get items on ledges and for the few platforming sections the game has. Platforming is not terrible, but not exactly something you want to do either...if you've played previous Shade games, it has the same feeling of those, but it's a tad better in the responsivness.
Komimi's action lets her move around items Iyo deployed, but it's not exactly easy to do that during battles, so her action is only used during Bubble missions. What are Bubble missions? They are short missions, mostly platform-focused, you unlock by getting closer to a shinobi. How do you get close to a shinobi? By killing enemies when one of them is with you on the field. Getting close to a shinobi will also give Tsumugi new techniques and cutscenes that will explore how the characters interact.
And last, the technical side. Samurai Maiden runs on Unity, and once again Unity is used without any kind of optimisation. The game looks like a Vita game, with barren, unsaturated, repetitive, and uninteresting environments. I think the game is capped at 30fps on PS4 and despite everything there are still framerate issues against some bosses.
Loading times are way too long for what needs to be loaded, and adding insult to injuring, cutscenes have to load in between. You know, cutscenes with two character models, four/five animations total, one image as a background, text and audio, like the PS4 cannot stream new text and audio files.
Of note is the English translation, which is all over the place.
You can chat with characters on the title screen, and one of Komimi's lines is "I'm the student of Tamamo-No-Mae, the King Of Beasts", with the Japanese voice saying "dai onmiouji", or great exorcist. Were "exorcist" or "onmiouji" too much for our feeble western minds? Well no, because the game uses "onmiouji" a lot.
In the Japanese dub, Tsumugi explains school grades to the three shinobis: she's a JK (joshikousei, high-school girl), and there are college and grade school girls. The English translation goes on explaining that Tsumugi is Gen Z, then there are Millenials, Gen Y, and Boombers. Why exactly? I though this was due to avoid sexual undertones, but then there's a scene with Tsumugi placing her mobile between Hagane's breast to recharge (long story), with no rewordings in the English translation. The level of fanservice is in line with Lollypop Chainsaw, probably even less, and that was Mature, Samurai Maiden in Teen, or Z and C for Japanese CERO ratings respectively.
Yeah, Samurai Maiden isn't particularly good. Mediocre I would say, below average but not quite into terrible territory. I'll see it to the end but I doubt I'll replay all missions in all difficulty modes or even get all the S-ranks...and the S-ranks need a paragraph of their own, but that will be in a later post.
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