😺 Senran Kagura: Peach Ball - REVIEW - "A mediocre Pinball Game Dressed Up in Furs" 😺 #GameDev #IndieGames

Game Title: Senran Kagura: Peach Ball - Developer: Marvelous! - Platform Reviewed: Nintendo Switch

Senran Kagura has released games in various genres and now turn their attention to erotic pinball, the premise here being that a group of young women are turning into various animals and one of their friends has luckily devised a way to save them… a ball that fits perfectly into a pinball machine and needs to be flippered at them mercilessly, until they change back to the young, busty humans that they once were.

I’m pretty sure that I’m not the target demographic for Peach Ball but I can’t say that I’m sure who the demographic really is, the mini-games and modes that exist outside the main story and stages are all very water-squirty and gropey but aren’t particularly erotic, instead  for me falling deeply somewhere between unpleasant and baffling (coincidentally, the names of my elbows). 

Pushing aside those aspects and focusing on the main gameplay, each stage boils down to needing to hit the girl with the Peach ball until the final section is reached whereby you flick multiple balls at either their chests or posterior until the timer runs out and you save the day, you’ll know when you have done this because all of their clothes will fly off. Natch.

The main pinball aspect of the game works well but feels limited in the scope of what the tables offer. Whilst each differs visually, the main functions remain the same and although there are only a handful of main stages, by the completion of the game I felt like I’d exhausted all of them. 

The unlockable extras (there’s also paid content in the Nintendo eShop which is currently locked at the time of writing this review) all boil down to visual flair, different costumes and a poseable galleria of the girls, there’s not much in the way of actual additional gameplay.

The pinball physics themselves mostly feel fine and run at a solid 30fps but, due to the simplicity of the table designs, there a definite sense of patterning that comes into play where I could pretty much get a ball-loop going on without much effort, making completing the tables a cinch (thinking about it, I didn’t fail once in the game and I’m by no means a pinball wizard) the only major difficulties came from the cartoonish pop-ups and slogans that fill the screen in frantic moments making it hard to see where the ball is.

Summary:

I didn’t find Senran Kagura: Peach Ball to be a bad game but a lot of the design aspects, especially in regards to the more erotic segments completely missed the mark for me. 

If you like pinball, there are plenty of other options out there with more depth and subtlety (in a game mechanic sense) but if you are more au fait with the subject matter and are a fan of anime erotica, you’ll probably get a lot more from the game than I did. 

As it stands, it’s probably not a game I would come back to now that I’ve completed the main narrative and the amount of money you unlock in each stage, when compared to the costs of unlockable items in the menu suggests a level of grind that the gameplay loop doesn’t really hold up to, in my eyes.

💧❄️ RATING: MELTING ❄️💧

Ratings Explained

ICE COOL (Great Game Recommended)

MELTING (Recommended with reservations, one to consider if you are a fan of the genre)

MELTED (Not A Recommended Purchase)