Senran Kagura: Peach Ball Reviews
*These are actual Bally pinball tables that Zen Studios is too chicken to release for Pinball FX3.
True to fashion, Senran Kagura Peach Ball takes a ridiculous concept, and revels in it. As a pinball game, it's not all that complex or rewarding
We spent a long time mulling over why Senran Kagura: Peach Ball didn't push any of our buttons. If you find anime ladies with animal features highly appealing, you can probably add a couple of points to the score below. Ultimately, though, Peach Ball serves up a tedious, repetitive story with monotonous characters and pinball tables that can be characterised likewise. Despite a polished art style and a genuinely interesting idea of livening up the arcade game in a way only possible in a video game, we found the end result sorely lacking in the pinball department.
Senran Kagura Peach Ball is a pinball gaming masterpiece, but it's also incredibly light on content. There's just five characters and two tables, which really isn't a lot. Still, the content that is here is incredibly polished, gorgeous and addictive. These two tables are some of the most fun and jam-packed video game pinball tables I've ever experience, and if the game had just a few more of them, it would be a must-have for any pinball fans looking for their next adventure.
This is definitely a big step up over Reflexions in terms of quality and if you like pinball and Senran Kagura, this is definitely worth getting.
SENRAN KAGURA Peach Ball is not to be overlooked when looking at it from a gameplay perspective. The core mechanics are fun and use interesting ideas that add more flare to a plain table experience and will have you coming back for another round to top your last score. Fans of the series now have their sexy shinobi as the centerpiece of the pinball table, which also serves as a gameplay element. The detail on each table with its objects and gimmicks, the visual effects and sound only better the experience. HD rumble feels great. Plenty to unlock and customize. There's a lot going for it in regards to both the pinball aspect and the ladies involved. Sometimes the story is cute, but it's really the only downside to Peach Ball as it's mostly slow and re-purposed for each girl's set of story missions which makes it an overall drag; if you care about a story for an addicting pinball game involving provocative, busty females.
Marvelous and Honey∞Parade Games' biggest mistake with Senran Kagura: Peach Ball was treating it as a budget title because it deserves so much more: more tables, more girls, more everything. Combining the cheeseball sexuality of Senran with pinball is perhaps the most brilliant idea this franchise has ever had and the execution of what is here is nearly flawless. But the lack of a diverse set of pinball tables and a curtailed cast keep Peach Ball from reaching the excellence it could have so easily achieved if the developers had more time and more ideas for what they wanted Peach Ball to be.
Senran Kagura Peach Ball could be the perfect videogame for a Nintendo Switch summer.
Review in Italian | Read full review
Having been previously introduced to the, shall I say "jiggly", nature of the Senran Kagura series a while back when a new title featuring pinball-style gameplay was announced it made me laugh and I knew I'd have to check it out...
Overall, I did rather enjoy SENRAN KAGURA Peach Ball, though I feel it will mostly appeal to longtime fans of the series. It’s fun and colorful with good replay value, but it also feels very repetitive and lacking in terms of content. I saw there’s a tab in the game shop for DLC, which makes me hopeful they will add additional character packs later on. But I still can’t help but feeling they should have loaded the base game with more content from the get go. Cause while I do feel you get your money’s worth for $39.99, I also feel there could be much more variety here. That said, I easily got some 10 hours playing through campaign, and it will take many, many more hours to unlock everything. If you’re a fan of SENRAN KAGURA, you’ll find a lot to love here. If not, you might want to wait for the next main game in the series.
Senran Kagura: Peach Ball is a fun and exciting take on the pinball genre, but within the big-breasted ninja girl series Marvelous is known for.