Senran Kagura: Peach Beach Splash review: Summertime of youth

Peach Beach Splash wholeheartedly embraces its naughty roots without sacrificing gameplay.

Developer: Tamsoft
Publisher: Marvelous USA
Platform: PlayStation 4
Release Date: September 26, 2017

Since beginning as a humble lewd anime beat-em-up game, the Senran Kagura series has tried its hand at becoming just about every genre from fighting to cooking. This time around, Senran Kagura transforms itself into a third person shooter with a lewd anime twist. The game, titled Senran Kagura: Peach Beach Splash, brings you to the mountains of Japan where ninja schoolgirls are enjoying their peachy adolescent summer with a classic water gun tournament. The only difference being, in Peach Beach Splash, water guns resemble a stylized arsenal far more than a Super Soaker and your goal isn’t to simply dampen your ‘ol pal’s Old Navy undershirt, but to rip that bad boy clean off so their bare privates unleash a dazzling shine.

While that may sound a smidgen over the top, Peach Beach Splash wholeheartedly embraces its naughty roots without sacrificing gameplay. Beneath the countless layers of anime trash, Peach Beach Splash is a surprisingly well-rounded game with a wealth of customizable options to choose from.

Nothing in Peach Beach Splash is more important than customization. Upon first loading up the game, you’re granted a daunting number of 25 young lasses to customize. That already high number only continues to exponentially grow as the game goes on. Each character is a blank canvas, devoid of innate stats, but wholly visually customizable.

The game immediately impressed me with the incredibly high number of alterations I was allowed to perform on any given character. Unlike in other games, there’s nothing stopping you from dressing your character in physically illogical outfits. For example, despite already placing a baseball cap on Yumi’s head, I was still allowed to put a variety of additional things on her head, such as a ramen bowl, or a life-sized anime child.

Your options are vast enough that every character has the chance to feel unique. Happily, the clothing choices you make are also present when you randomly meet that character as a CPU. Customization often makes Peach Beach Splash feel delightfully personal, like a rendition of your ideal trashy anime world. Additionally, the limitless and wacky customization options let you know that Peach Beach Splash doesn’t take itself too seriously, so neither should you.

Peach Beach Splash‘s delightful customization options don’t stop at the fabrics. You’re required to flesh out a deck of cards to use in battle. These cards take the place of Ninja Arts from other Senran Kagura games. Cards let you use flashy abilities to assist in taking down some of those foul, water shooting, summer-glazed youths you’re going up against. Card types can be found in three different variations: pets, attack, and support. Which, with the 810 cards available in Peach Beach Splash, is more than enough variation to hold my interest.

After a while, the nudity loses its charm, becoming more of an inconvenience than a novel look at some breasts.

Admittedly, the card system used in the game is a bit unbalanced. Peach Beach Splash utilizes a star-based ranking system where a higher star count means your card produces a more powerful attack. A 5-star card would easily eclipse a 1-star card in terms of raw power and usability. Unfortunately, the game allows you to use the same deck and stats throughout the game. Meaning, you’re allowed to bring the firepower of your stacked 5-star deck to a multiplayer match full of beginners. As one of the beginners in said matches, cards can get immensely frustrating, as they make the game feel more equipment based than skill based. I’d rather not get outclassed simply for not having the right luck when purchasing packs.

Despite that frustrating mechanical imbalance, Peach Beach Splash still manages to be quite a fun game. Gameplay-wise, I’d say it’s almost like a lewd and partially nude recreation of Splatoon 2. Games are easy to pick up and play, with most matches lasting from 2-3 minutes. Guns are easy to manage and have a range of abilities. Each gun feels unique, but also very familiar, making it easy to switch up your loadout after a match. Although, Peach Beach Splash provides little incentive for you to do so. Each gun comes with two modes of fire, making each one versatile enough to work effectively in most situations.

Don’t worry, all of the guns at least provide enough firepower to strip those anime girls bare in record time. But why would you want to do such a thing? Peach Beach Splash‘s infamous feature was somehow my least favorite thing about the game.

For those of you who don’t know, in Peach Beach Splash, your opponents’ privates are stripped partially naked after being defeated by your swift gunplay. Stripping your opponents bare is quite a delightful novelty at first, but its enjoyment quickly fades. The minigame required to activate the feature interrupts the flow of battle in such a jarring way that I found myself avoiding it altogether after a couple of naughty encounters. It’s especially frustrating that this feature offers no benefit other than seeing a nude anime gal, yet subtracts time from the overall clock.

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Peach Beach Splash is a lovely addition to the Senran Kagura franchise. The game acts as a wonderfully fun third-person shooter, with immense levels of customization available right out of the box. Unfortunately, it does at times feel held back by its over-the-top, lewd, anime roots. After a while, the nudity loses its charm, becoming more of an inconvenience than a novel look at some breasts. The game’s multiplayer also feels particularly unbalanced at times due to the card-based system Peach Beach Splash utilizes. Neither of these things, however, are enough to stop my continued enjoyment of the wonderful gameplay Peach Beach Splash offers.

A copy of this game was provided to App Trigger for the purpose of this review. All scores are ranked out of 10, with .5 increments. Click here to learn more about our Review Policy.