The Neptunia and Senran crossover! 5+ years too late.

Hack and Slash, doesn’t really play like any Senran game or the other Nep hack and slash types.

I wasn’t intending to do this game for another 4 years or so, but due to probably not finishing Senran Burst and skipping finishing Nep 3 this year, I figured I’d do this so one game in both those franchises would at least be done. Plus it’s short and to the point, and decent as a game.

Story-4

So in Gamninjustri, you have two big clans. Basically Nep side and Senran side. They fight pretty often to destroy the others share crystal, which would make them the winner. One day, during a routine fight, NINJA mechs show up and a giant UFO appears. Yoh Gamer announces to the world she’s taking over with a giant NINJA war and that’s the main plot. Dealing with her attacks and gathering up the party which takes 5 missions. And yes, her name is Yoh Gamer and she insists that it’s NINJA, not ninja.

There is a decent reason behind why this is happening. Beyond that, which is explained at the ending, the rest of the game is basically running around to the new attack site with some silly shenanigans happening for Neptune and cast to react to. I could definitely feel the one note-ness of the comedy in this one, each girl basically gets one or two traits. Even the two new girls, Yuuki and Crow, don’t carry for long before they stopped being interesting. Yuuki is just Vert’s cute girl obsession but for her princess, while Crow is she has amnesia and is super gullible. It was funny the first two times, not the other 10. Yuuki vaguely grows as a character, Crow never changes. None of the other 8 leads have arcs at all.

It’s also weird how the Senran girls have their backstories in a setting where they don’t make sense. Specifically Homura doing part time jobs and living in a cave. She’s a main ninja of one of two world powers, why does she need side jobs? Also Miyabi pledging to evil just sounds weird when she’s a main character who is not at odds with anyone. Really just having them all do their pledges from their own series feels weird, since they don’t match up and are all from the same group.

Overall it’s a serviceable story for a crossover. Better then Action U and Blanc Zombie by a long shot.

Gameplay- 6

A decent action RPG that does a better job as an action RPG then Action U and Blanc Zombie, but lacking anything to draw people to it. It came out at the wrong time really.

It’s mostly a run through level, killing everything type. You get 10 characters, the four main Nep, the 4 main Ninjas from Senran, and two “original girls”. You can bring two of them into each mission with their own gear. Each girl has their own attack skill set, which all have charms tied to them. These charms are buffs and debuffs that trigger at the end of the skill use.

Instead of HDD or Ninja transformation, you get Fuurinkazan. 4 buff states that change the girls color scheme. You can use these a few times per stage. They are super guard + easier perfect guard, faster stamina regen(skills need stamina), higher attack for lower defense, or HP regen and status effect immunity. That last one was the one I spammed, as enemies in normal and Hard mode hurt. Especially bosses.

I was surprised actually, when I got to the third boss and actually had to think. I didn’t expect the game to have any real challenge. Things can hurt and later enemies can kill you if you approach the situations poorly. Which should be normal, but Action U and Blanc Zombie never really needed the player to think.

So the game has ten or so stages. After each stage you unlock some sidequests which reused the stage with a new room order. In order to keep up with the game’s curve on Normal and above, these are needed. In easy you can skip them entirely. The difference in playtime? 5 hours.

The biggest issues I had with the game are the lock on system, which has a soft lock on that made me attack behind me as it tried to hit what it thought I wanted which was in the opposite direction. That and the barrier loading. The game doesn’t need to do barrier cutins(a small number of missions just don’t do the cutin), but it is obsessed with showing you when a room gets blocked off, or when the barrier is removed. It kills the flow a lot.

Lewdness-3

There is 4 what you could call lewd cgs. 2 hot spring, though one is just the other with more characters. This is the whole playable cast in towels, it’s pretty standard. Then you have the Peaches and Cream minigame cg, which is the Nep girls in these half shirts with loose shorts kind of things. I’m sure someone has a fetish for these, but the presentation kind of kills any lewd energy it might have had. Finally, Miyabi and Yumi’s intro cg has a lot of cleavage. It’s probably not meant to be a lewd cg, but it shows the most boob out of every cg in the game.

So the Senran girls are back as their normal designs, which made me notice that Yumi and Miyabi just show more skin then Asuka and Homura, by a decent amount. The Nep girls all got ninja themed costumes, which made me sad that the Senran girls didn’t get redesigns of any sort. For their first comeback in years, nothing really changed.

Then you have Crow, who’s a standard actual ninja looking girl with a moderate bust, and Yuuki. The girl who was the deciding factor that I’d play this at all. She’s a very busty catgirl ninja who wears skin latex with some armor chunks on her arms and legs. Her boobs have another layer of latex esque stuff that makes it look like she’s wearing a bra of the stuff and finally some armor thrown on top. I find her the hottest girl in the game, followed up by Yumi or Vert. Sadly she’s never really lewded and the only outfit change her and Crow get is in the Peaches and Cream minigame where they wear the half shirt and shorts thing.

I’ve heard that Yuuki and Crow are gender flipped robots from some other Nep games, but when a redesign is this over the top what’s the point of pretending they are the same character?

I’d say the overall lewd stuff is on par with Blanc’s zombie game. Jiggle, some boobs, and a cg or two and that’s it.

Final Thoughts

Better then Action U and Blanc Zombie. That’s not saying much, but I’d honestly put the gameplay on par with Estival Versus and maybe even Shinovi. It’s at its base, a decent game released when expectations of it’s two franchises have dwindled a lot. This came out 5 or so years earlier, I’d imagine it’d at least have made an actual splash. It’d also have some real lewd rather then the excuse it does have.

Story is more then the other two titles, but still nothing to note as there is no character arc or real plot. Just an event or two to run around to the different battlefields.

Save for Neptunia x Senran Kagura NINJA Wars

Gameplay: 6/10 Eroticness: 3/10 Story: 4/10

Completion: Beat the game for all cgs, I did all quests and the post game stuff since I wanted to, but no unlocks are tied to that stuff.