As far as I can tell, this the most recent game from Honey Parade, the team in charge of Senren Kagura and Valkyrie Drive. Jet Girls was another multi media project by them, but unlike Drive it only got a game and an anime. The show is fine and really the only good thing to come out of this project. The game is well… the result of Sony I’m pretty sure.

But before I get into the details of why I feel like this game is just bleh in all regards, what is this? It’s a jet ski racer like Wave Race 64(fittingly, the game has 64 story missions). It feels like it wants to be a kart racer though with items and supers and tricks. Calling it an ecchi racer though is well…

Lewd- 2

So before I can talk about how disappointing the game is, I have to start with the show. Mainly the big ecchi thing that everyone called out the game was missing, dress break. In the show, when a body part is shot hard enough the wetsuit in that spot comes off. For example in episode 1 Misa, the main girl’s tsundere partner, gets shot in the butt and loses the bottom of her wetsuit, so her bikini bottoms and ass are visible. I’d say around 30% of the shows fanservice comes from this idea, with the rest coming from episodes with the cast in bikini’s, girl’s bathing, and the ad catches which are glorious.

Anyway, the game has none of that. No bikini episode cgs or really any fanservice in the cgs at all. Basically all the cgs are of a pair of girls just kind of there in there wetsuit or school uniforms as kind of an everyday shot. One has them staring passionately at each other and that’s really the closest to sexy it gets. Which sucks, cause this was probably the best place to put anything.

Dress break isn’t here at all. For an ecchi game there is basically no sexual elements to the races themselves, which I’m okay with. I think dress break would have been a pain to play through, so instead the cg gallery should have been flooded with that kind of imagery to make up for it. Or hell, at least let me piecemeal the wetsuits in the dressing room to pretend the mechanic existed.

Dressing room is really basic, though it has more options then Valkyrie Drive had at least. A lot of swimsuit variants can be unlocked. No groping mechanic nor poser. There’s just not really anything here other then swimsuits and the good models.

The thing that sucks the most for me with this game is it shows how good the models for Senren Kagura 7Even would have been. The characters in this game look great. They all have there own proportions and builds and the jiggle isn’t comedic levels. Their asses even jiggle in the dressing room when you rotate the models. Sadly none of this is seen in the game proper. You can just stare at the shooter’s ass the entire race but are zoomed to far back to really see it wobble. There’s just nothing here. This gets a 2 for how disappointing it is.

Story-3

Racing games and stories don’t really work that well. At least I have yet to find an exception to that. So this uses the Senran Kagura style every team has it’s own story thing, so there isn’t a true narrative. Each group is 2 girls, a driver and shooter,and the stories follow them through their days up to and through the Kandagawa Cup. Mostly. The mikos have a possession style plotline instead.

Honestly, just skimming the show and I feel like this just copies the big bullet points from it and that’s it. Like title screen main girl has a thing with her mom, which gets referenced once. Her partner has a complex about her sister, it gets mentioned once. They need better teamwork, gets mentioned twice. It doesn’t really do anything. Even the yuri baiting is pretty weak despite that being the only remaining fanservice thing they could have leaned into.

Oh, and there’s a game only evil pair of girls you unlock when you finish everyone else. I skipped their story becasue I didn’t care at that point, but it kind of felt like they wanted to beat everyone to de-spirit them. I’m sure there is a good angsty reason for that, but I just didn’t care.

Gameplay-5

Let me be clear, I don’t think this is a bad racing game. The only mechanic I really don’t like is drifting, everything else is responsive and works pretty well. With friends this could be a decent time. With other people it at least would be competitive. Single player though is just sad.

Let’s start with the baffling decision to let you modify the jet ski’s stats. As you go through the stories for each pair their limit to customize goes up. You go to the shop and buy the overpriced parts to make the ski’s control better, go faster, or accelerate better. This would be fine, if it was needed at all. All it really does is make jumping into online(which is dead anyway) impossible as everyone else has maxed out vehicles. You won’t even be competitive. Thing is, in single player you don’t need any of those upgrades.

The game has no difficulties. The opponents get a a bit better at racing in the later stories but it really takes until the final one for them to be close to a challenge. You can basically just hold the gas pedal and vaguely turn and be fine for most of the game. You can do tricks to build boost or supers, grab weapons, or just use your standard gun to compete, but you don’t really need to. In fact, it kind of feels like those are only in the game for the challenges.

Each story mission has three sub goals. The first is get 1st place, the the other two are things like hit this speed, do x number of tricks, shoot all enemies and so on. These are the only things that spice up the gameplay at all. Doing all three goals gets you an unlock for that level, usually an outfit or accessory. These are the best part of the game and are basically taken right out of Senren pinball.

There are some minigames you can play. They basically exist to get you high amounts of credits to buy things, since you have to buy everything you unlock and everything costs way to damn much. I don’t think any of Honey Parade’s other games made the shop such an obvious multiplayer trap. The minigames give you an option instead of grinding multiplayer, but still don’t fix that the game’s shop is just way to grindy. Every clothing item needs to be bought 5 times, and they all individually cost like 2-3 races each. So around 15 races to afford one full item, which unlocks a glossy version of it. Since playing dress up is really the only fanservice you are going to get I guess they wanted you to work for it.

Verdict

I guess the biggest question here is, at what point did Sony’s mandates ruin this game? Did they know it was going to be this pointless the entire time, or did the cgs and mechanics get reworked after it was essentially done? Is there a beta version of this game with glorious cgs and dress break that could leak one day? If only…

It just feels pointless. If you want to interact with this at all the anime is just a better time all over since it knows who it wants to appeal to. This just lacks much of anything. It’s at best a mediocre racer that sorely needs an active player base to get anything out of. Sadly the upgrade mechanic locks new players out from really competing, forcing them to play the boring single player and likely dropping the game. If anything, this game just makes me feel bad for it which is not what I expected to walk away from it feeling.

PC save for Kandagawa Jet Girls

All things unlocked and purchased. If you for whatever reason want to check that, there is a silly thing in the shop. Song 12 in clubroom BGM is not a buyable thing, as it is already unlocked and is the generic music played in the clubroom. Kind of wish that was pre-bought in the shop instead of just missing, but it is what it is.

Gameplay: 5/10 Eroticness: 2/10 Story: 3/10

Completion:

Beat every story stage with the three goals, S rank the minigames and then buy everything. Do some of the final courses in free/multiplayer mode and lose at least 1 race to unlock songs.