Buy Senran Kagura: Peach Ball

For a series that started out as a side-scrolling brawler, the Senran Kagura franchise has taken some wild turns over the years. The series did the expected evolution from 2D to 3D brawler, but the mobile version, New Wave, turned into a card battle game. Bon Appetit! essentially pitted the shinobi against one another in an Iron Chef-type competition where rhythm determined how well you cooked. Peach Beach Splash was pretty much Splatoon as you used water guns to shoot at your opponents, and Reflexions was a dating sim. Based on all of this, a foray into pinball with Senran Kagura: Peach Ball should come as no surprise. What is surprising is that this would be one of the best digital pinball games ever if the developers hadn't skimped on content.

For a game whose spin-offs all had off-the-wall tales, Peach Ball certainly ranks up there as one of the craziest stories yet. As a way to make a living, Crimson Squad member Haruka works at an arcade, and while most days are quiet, this one sees loads of activity due to a big fighting game tournament. As luck would have it, several of the shinobi are there to experience the game or go after the tournament's cash prize. During the tournament, the contestants start to exhibit animal traits, but luckily, Haruka has the antidote in the form of the Peach Ball, and she enlists your help in turning them back to normal by getting them near a pinball table while you play.

After going through some very lengthy visual novel style cut scenes, you're taken to a ball selection screen. While most of this is aesthetic, your pinballs are assigned a weight system, so you can determine if you want to play with either a heavier ball or a lighter one. Once you make that choice, your ball goes through a launch sequence and is unceremoniously dropped into the field.

You'll be dropped onto one of two tables, and their layouts are generally similar. Except for the bumpers and flippers, the lower half of the tables is clear and features a decent amount of open space. That seems normal except for the fact that it often gets populated with destructible objects, which crowd up the space so you can only get clear shots about half of the time. The top of both tables contains a large looping ramp as well as a smaller ramp that leads to a creature that'll grant bonuses if you arrive there at the right time. The shinobi you're trying to save sits in the top middle of the screen.

The differences between the tables are significant. Peach Land has an amusement park theme and a few special targets. Hit the ball so that it goes down the right return chute, and you'll hit a bunch of teacups for bonus points. Hit the ball so it goes down the left return chute, and you'll hit a Ferris wheel three times, which causes the giant shinobi to get dizzy and fall down, giving you a wider target area to hit. Meanwhile, Spooky Shinobi Park produces a ton of coins on the field to collect and bank when you hit specific purses. Periodically, a target appears, which takes you to a separate playfield where you hit other targets or play impromptu rounds of badminton for bonus points.

Like many pinball tables of the last few decades, there are quests to complete, but unlike those other tables, there are a flurry of quests one can receive at any time. Some tasks are rather easy, such as using a power-up when granted, bopping the girls with your pinball, hitting a specific ramp X number of times, or hitting a score milestone. Along the way, you'll trigger special fever times where multiball is active, or you'll trigger big point multipliers to run up the scoreboard. The completion of each quest fills up a meter, and once that hits a key milestone, you'll be sent to a minigame for more points and the ability to knock down the girl for a bigger target area.

The end result is a pinball game that is fun and frantic. The light touch in regards to adhering to realistic pinball physics means that drops to pits are very rare. Triggering and completing objectives and bonus modes is easy enough to do that it's common to do this by accident. Compared to other video pinball games, this means that scores are astronomically high and hitting something over a billion points is almost expected. It is too bad that there are no online leaderboards, or else you'd see loads of entries with scores that max out the 999 billion-point limit.

For all of the things the game does right, it commits one big sin: lack of table variety. The two tables are designed well when you consider how the game favors ridiculous high scores, but that just makes you wish you could see that same design philosophy carry over to different tables, especially considering how you have to play through five levels per campaign track. The three different day settings per table is nice, but they don't provide any meaningful change to the tables, so the choices are merely aesthetic. With no expectations for new tables considering how the Japanese version only received more aesthetic material for DLC, fans will probably dislike this the most.

Beyond the story mode lies a few other modes. Free mode is essentially the campaign, except you can choose which table and shinobi you want to play with. The game doesn't stop once the shinobi is transformed back to normal, making it perfect to grind for cash if you turn on the assists. The cash can be used in the shops to get some cosmetics, like different ball styles and voices for the menu, but the big thing people go for are the costumes and accessories, which can be seen in the gallery mode and in the pinball tables.

As far as sound goes, there's plenty here that fits the game's theme and the series' overall vibe. The music is bouncy but not silly. Both tables have some lighthearted material playing, and the vocal tune that plays when curing the girls is more inspiring than out of place. Surprisingly, the game is light on actual pinball sound effects, so those familiar chimes when hitting bumpers and other objects are all but absent. The game does a great deal of talking, so at least one character is constantly saying words of encouragement or commenting about how they're losing strength. The vocal track is completely in Japanese, so some of the jokes will fly over your head since you have no time to check the subtitles while the action is going on.

Graphically, the game is quite robust. Both of the tables are wildly colorful, and despite the lack of anti-aliasing, the characters and other elements sporting the cel-shaded anime style look rather clean. This is especially true of the shinobi who take front and center on every table. Animations are also very smooth, and as many people would expect, the game is flush with lighting effects and a few particle effects that look absolutely wonderful in motion.

There is one drawback to the game's bright colors, and that's the ability to locate the ball. Until you start unlocking more ball styles, the color of every ball you can select is either too dark to see or is similar to what's on the board. It isn't easy to spot the ball when it drops on the board for the first time unless you know where to look, and it becomes even more difficult once other objects start to fill the board and you launch into a rail with a fast exit. About the only time you can easily see the ball are during multiball sessions, since each one takes a different color, and during fever time since the environment darkens, making the spheres more visible for as long as fever time lasts.

As stated in the beginning, Senran Kagura: Peach Ball is hampered by a lack of content. The five different storyline paths are fine, but the presence of only two tables hurts the game. The two tables are designed well, even if they're similar to one another, and the ease with which one can achieve high scores makes it encouraging for both pinball newcomers and veterans alike. At the moment, you need to be a huge franchise fan to pick up this title, but if you're a pinball fan who doesn't mind the overly suggestive look and the ridiculous story, Peach Ball is worth checking out if it goes on sale.

Score: 7.0/10