"Senran Kagura: Peach Ball" Review

It's hard to get a read on the "Senran Kagura" franchise. Equal parts exploitation and satire, the games feature scantily-clad girls as unapolagetically stereotypical tropes. While the games play to base urges of undersexed gamer geeks, they pack in just enough to be taken as mockery of their crass immaturity.

As embarrassing to write about as it is to play, "Senran Kagura: Peach Ball" cruises through a light, inconsequential story mode to get to a core game of surprisingly playable pinball. With two base tables serving as dressing for interactions with the heroines.

The on-table dynamics, while immature and exploitative, are fun to play and as challenging and rewarding as any digital pinball game can be. What's harder to rationalize is the side mode that posts up the characters as objects to be sprayed with water, touched and manipulated at will.

Whether the mode exists simply for its boundaries-pushing shock factor or to serve as a genuine outlet for sexual frustration of its players is hard to say, but  had the developers chosen to cut it, the addition by subtraction might have increased the game's appeal and strength as a voice of mocking immature sexual attitudes rather than encouraging them.

Had the time creating that mode been spent on releasing the game with more tables and gameplay variety, "Senran Kagura: Peach Ball" might have been more of an engaging package than an eye-rolling curiosity.

Publisher provided review code.