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Senran Kagura: Shinovi Versus |OT| Life Returns to Vita

SerTapTap

Member
Wow, should have done the side missions first. They are insanely easy with no hard mode.

I'm getting the game soon and am wondering if theirs any tips I should know before I play it. Appearantly one story is bad, so I should get that out the way first?

One story is dark and the other 3 aren't, that's the big thing IMO. And Hanzo/Gessen are 75% the same thing with the roles reversed. I can't at all agree that any one is significantly worse than the others and would recommend just starting with whatever. If you really can't stand a story you can just press start to skip the cutscene, gameplay-wise no story is significantly different beyond which characters you play as.
 
Uuuugh, grinding out the final for each form is so sloooooow. Gonna try to do it in chunks interspersed with finishing everything else, hopefully it'll be close to done by time it's all that's left.
 

Jawmuncher

Member
If you save/load there should be an I-icon on your file where your time is shown.

Thanks!

------

Also WOW already at 12 hours and that was just doing all the side missions.
Im not even sure how that works out to that but it feels like that much.
How much is the story mode itself another 10h?
 

Hikami

Member
Oh, cool. Didn't know that was a thing.
34 hours apparently

29fcf3546f.jpg
 

Vylash

Member
Thanks!

------

Also WOW already at 12 hours and that was just doing all the side missions.
Im not even sure how that works out to that but it feels like that much.
How much is the story mode itself another 10h?

dunno, took me a little over 31 to do everything
 

SerTapTap

Member
Beat all main stories for crimson squad

Ten Percent of all players have platinum?! That's gotta be a record for a game this long.
 

Nyoro SF

Member
The translation for this game is pretty freeform; not inaccurate per se, but they did take a lot of liberties with what the girls were saying.

I'm glad they did because most of the phrases the fighters used were bland. Even if the expressions they added didn't exist originally it gave them more character. Nice work.

This isn't the first Japanese game I've played where the localizers taking liberties has improved my gameplay experience by quite a lot.
 
I didn't expect this game to have so many feels.

Plenty of lewd stuff certainly, but there's some great heartfelt moments as well.

It also has a shocking amount of character development. It's pretty insane. From an outsider perspective it's like "lol boobs" but then you play it and... you certainly don't expect what you get. I started off with Hebijo knowing nothing about the schools or characters, and that story gets dark pretty fast. Huge spoilers for the end of that story...
it goes super dark at the end with the assassination attempt on Miyabi that results in Murasaki "dying", then Imu flipping the fuck out trying to kill Ryobi and Ryona, but they pull back instead of committing to any of those deaths. Which takes away almost all of the impact of those moments, but I felt relieved nobody was dead and it was happy ending after all. There are so many tragic characters in that school it was nice to see things turn out good for them
. Ryona is my fave gal so far. She so crazy.
 

SerTapTap

Member
Hm, okay, I guess I just found some bad side stories, so far the rest have been pretty enjoyable, at least for an okay laugh at the end.

I didn't expect this game to have so many feels.

Plenty of lewd stuff certainly, but there's some great heartfelt moments as well.

Love the variety of characters personality-wise, and they generally aren't straight-tropes either. I don't like everyone (minori) but most characters are pretty cool and I enjoy the backstories, dialog and personality in the animations.

Ryona is great even if her victory pose(s) are a bit much. Yozakura is my fav though, shame her side story is a bore.

Edit: My SK2 nyuu nyuu pack shipped! I can't wait to not be able to play it
 

bobohoro

Member
My freaking god, thank you for this info.

I just started playing and was dreading this trophy.

It shouldn't be much of a problem. I have 7 chapters left in total and am already at around 6500 kills. And since you have to max out properties - and get one character to lv 50 iI think - the trophy really should come along naturally.

I echo the sentiment that Ryona is one of the best new characters. Her pervy side can be a bit overdone (or like, be extremely overdone), but she is entertainingly insane and pretty dark. And she has one of the best movesets. Looking forward to the conclusion of the Hebijo Arc.
 

Jathaine

Member
Been rippin' it up online with Murakumo and Miyabi. Miyabi just feels so overpowered to me that I use her a lot less than kumo. I feel like I'm cheating when I use her, haha.


Bonus: A couple of Miyabi pics
 

Zonic

Gives all the fucks
Oh right, just knew it was one of the earlier Chapter 4 stages for Hanzo, as it's the same level that I got the 7,777 combo with Ikaruga.

But basically, that's the level you want to use for leveling up, getting the high combo, etc.
 
Don't grind for the trophy before completing basically everything else

It shouldn't be much of a problem. I have 7 chapters left in total and am already at around 6500 kills. And since you have to max out properties - and get one character to lv 50 iI think - the trophy really should come along naturally.

I echo the sentiment that Ryona is one of the best new characters. Her pervy side can be a bit overdone (or like, be extremely overdone), but she is entertainingly insane and pretty dark. And she has one of the best movesets. Looking forward to the conclusion of the Hebijo Arc.

Thanks for the suggestions I will keep this in mind. My god this game is amazing. Pervy yes, but amazing none the less. I am actually quite shocked at how decent the stories are for the characters even though some come across as crass for the sake of it.
 

SerTapTap

Member
Thanks for the suggestions I will keep this in mind. My god this game is amazing. Pervy yes, but amazing none the less. I am actually quite shocked at how decent the stories are for the characters even though some come across as crass for the sake of it.

I really appreciate that there's really only 3 characters where being "lewd" is a significant part of their personality. Though the flat characters are painfully predictable, especially the eyepatch one
 

jwk94

Member
Man, this game is so good. I just finished the Hanzo storyline. I'm kinda confused though. What exactly happened with the Hebijo girls in the Hanzo story? it feels like that chapter wasn't as fleshed out as the other two chapters.

Did it bother anyone else how despite going into frantic mode before the battle started, Yumi was in her base mode during the final Hanzo battle? Also, I really need cutscenes for this game. That last chapter would have been sooooo good if it were animated.
 

Fusebox

Banned
Couldn't help myself, even though I've had the Japanese release of this for ages I never got into it because it was way more text heavy than I expected so I just double-dipped on the English release. So good.
 

GuardianE

Santa May Claus
Man, this game is so good. I just finished the Hanzo storyline. I'm kinda confused though. What exactly happened with the Hebijo girls in the Hanzo story? it feels like that chapter wasn't as fleshed out as the other two chapters.

It's left unanswered, more or less. They decide to focus on Hanzo's fight, since it's the Hanzo chapter. There's a lot of retconning when you go back and forth between the various schools. The canon one is probably Crimson Squad.
 

antibolo

Banned
Beat all main stories for crimson squad

Ten Percent of all players have platinum?! That's gotta be a record for a game this long.

Keep in mind that the localization shares the same trophy set with the Japanese version, so that also includes the Japanese playerbase which had this game for a while now.
 

Hikami

Member
Finished the game! Woo.. that was way longer than I was expecting.
It's so sad to see it end, I've become attached to the characters.

Wasn't too sure about getting Bon Appétit but, I'm sure I'll be getting it when it releases now.
 

SerTapTap

Member
Keep in mind that the localization shares the same trophy set with the Japanese version, so that also includes the Japanese playerbase which had this game for a while now.

Ah, that's a good point. Still, I'd expect most games don't even see more than 20% of players finish the story, let alone see 10% with 100% completion (not of this length anyway)
 

jwk94

Member
Just finished the first battle on the Hebijo story. Although I've only just started this storyline, I definitely prefer it to the Hanzo one. This feels like a proper beginning. Even though there were clearly events hat proceeded the opening cutscene, I don't get the feeling that I'm being thrusted into some story without any knowledge of who the characters are or what I'm doing. Right now my objective is incredibly clear: complete the five-man team, find and "defeat" the Crimson Girls, and find out what happened to the original Hebijo school.
 

JoJoSono

Banned
Why is the final battle in this game bullshit? Who thought it was a good idea to have it solely be decided on the stupid "mash button thing"? Is thier a trophy tied to winning the final battle because if there is'nt I'm just going to say screw it.

I was enjoying the overall combat in this game, but after 30 hours it kind of turned to crap. The story and characters were already garbage so I didn't care for them. The fanserivce became tired and repetitive after you saw the outfits explode for the 1st time. The dynasty warrior parts became even more pointless and tedious as well. Since the levels are so small and the groups so little and easy to kill they feel irreverent and just busy work to the actual boss battles. Which becomes tiring very quickly. The boss battles are fun make no mistake if a little too easy, but they are kind of surrounded by a lot of garbage.

And now I can't beat this final boss, not because the boss battle is hard or anything, but because I can't seem to do the stupid mashing minigame.

Yeah I don't think I very much care for this game.
 

JoJoSono

Banned
Yet you sunk 30 hours into it.

I'ts pretty easy to do when it comes to portable games. I only bring one game with me and well for most of my day that's the game I have to play. The time flies. Plus I wanted to finish it after putting in 15 hours in which is when the game started to fall apart.

Which is my point actually. I had fun with it to a point. The "boss" battles where still very fun and somewhat challenging. Yet, they didn't hide how tedious the game would become.

I'm already not into otaku or waifu stuff so I knew going in I wouldn't care about the characters or story. I'm not the audience so whatever. I didn't realize how annoying and stupid they would be though or even creepy. Characters like Katsuragi, Hibari, Murakumo, Murasaki, Ryobi, and Ryona just annoy me with thier feitshy "weak" personalities or other annoying quirks. The sexual interplay with characters like Ryona just became a little too much to the point of almost being very disgusting. Characters like Minori and Mirai aren't for me so I was never going to enjoy "child cute" characters.

But I guess I didn't realize how completely uninteresting the story would be. Maybe that's the appeal? To play up the anime battle school cliches to the max? I don't know, but it bored the heck out of me so I just ended up skipping every cutscene by the time I finished Hebijo and headed into Gessen followed by Crimision.

So the story is garbage to me or at least not for me whatever. That's just one layer.

The other was how tedious the "Dynasty Warriors" parts became. At first I could deal with them because the game was new and I liked the speed and ariel mechanics. Then they became so irrelevant feeling. The levels or so small and the encounters so easy that they emphasized the feeling of me wanting them to quickly get them over so I can get to the bosses. So now that's two layers covering a good part of the game.

All games are repetitive, but in the end this game dosen't hide it. The story and mission structures are all the same to the point going into each mission you know exactly what is going to happen since you've played one school already. That's not good. There's no mixs up here. The game relishes in being the same thing over and over.

Even the fanserivce becomes tiring since it's the same thing over and over. So much that in the end you become numb to it.

So yes I put 30(36 actually) hours into it because by the time this did it's damage I had already bought in and had to finish it. It just hit the camels back when the boss battle had the most annoying "mini game to finish" thing. Nothing based on actually beating the boss. Just the minigame that for whatever reason I could not finish.

I may have spent a lot of time with it. A lot of time spent trying to get to the fun parts basically. My point is that I won't be looking back fondly.
 

ShinMaruku

Member
Not every game is for everybody and that is fine. Atleast you gave the game a shot.

I like when a game does not hide the repetition because after a certain point you'd see past the smoke and mirrors obviously this game was built on hoping it's mechanics would hold it. To me they succeeded but that's to me.
 

GuardianE

Santa May Claus
Yet you sunk 30 hours into it.

That's way better than the alternative of spending 30 minutes skipping a tutorial and bungling the controls before rendering a decision. You need to spend a lot of time with a game in order to come to a meaningful conclusion about it. This is why most reviews are such shit. They don't, or can't, spend adequate time with a game to reach a satisfactory conclusion.

The game's not for everyone. If you came into this with a distaste or disinterest for fanservice, the game is already swimming upstream to meet your expectations.
 
I'ts pretty easy to do when it comes to portable games. I only bring one game with me and well for most of my day that's the game I have to play. The time flies. Plus I wanted to finish it after putting in 15 hours in which is when the game started to fall apart.

Which is my point actually. I had fun with it to a point. The "boss" battles where still very fun and somewhat challenging. Yet, they didn't hide how tedious the game would become.

I'm already not into otaku or waifu stuff so I knew going in I wouldn't care about the characters or story. I'm not the audience so whatever. I didn't realize how annoying and stupid they would be though or even creepy. Characters like Katsuragi, Hibari, Murakumo, Murasaki, Ryobi, and Ryona just annoy me with thier feitshy "weak" personalities or other annoying quirks. The sexual interplay with characters like Ryona just became a little too much to the point of almost being very disgusting. Characters like Minori and Mirai aren't for me so I was never going to enjoy "child cute" characters.

But I guess I didn't realize how completely uninteresting the story would be. Maybe that's the appeal? To play up the anime battle school cliches to the max? I don't know, but it bored the heck out of me so I just ended up skipping every cutscene by the time I finished Hebijo and headed into Gessen followed by Crimision.

So the story is garbage to me or at least not for me whatever. That's just one layer.

The other was how tedious the "Dynasty Warriors" parts became. At first I could deal with them because the game was new and I liked the speed and ariel mechanics. Then they became so irrelevant feeling. The levels or so small and the encounters so easy that they emphasized the feeling of me wanting them to quickly get them over so I can get to the bosses. So now that's two layers covering a good part of the game.

All games are repetitive, but in the end this game dosen't hide it. The story and mission structures are all the same to the point going into each mission you know exactly what is going to happen since you've played one school already. That's not good. There's no mixs up here. The game relishes in being the same thing over and over.

Even the fanserivce becomes tiring since it's the same thing over and over. So much that in the end you become numb to it.

So yes I put 30(36 actually) hours into it because by the time this did it's damage I had already bought in and had to finish it. It just hit the camels back when the boss battle had the most annoying "mini game to finish" thing. Nothing based on actually beating the boss. Just the minigame that for whatever reason I could not finish.

I may have spent a lot of time with it. A lot of time spent trying to get to the fun parts basically. My point is that I won't be looking back fondly.

Put off by every aspect of the game. Plays it for 30 fucking hours.

Neogaf.
 

Nyoro SF

Member
I understand not liking a game but If you don't care for that art style or presentation or story then why on earth did you buy the game which was very clearly advertised as such before its release? Almost all of your items could've been discovered by at least two youtube videos.

Are you going to come back after 50 hours to talk about how much more you don't like the game? 60? 70? To dislike every aspect of a game yet continue to play it for 30 hours sounds like pure insanity to me.

Also the story missions are supposed to give you a feel for controlling your character while leveling though I agree they definitely could've diversified the missions more.
 

Zonic

Gives all the fucks
I must say, $6 for both characters is a good deal, especially since I was expecting it to be $10. & they have their own character stories as well, so that makes it better. Though can you unlock additional clothing & such if you beat their stories (shame there's no trophy like with each of the other girls' stories)?

Edit: Oh yes, a reminder that the DLC characters will work on Bon Appetit as well, though with Rin, you have to get the DLC for that game as well.
 

JoJoSono

Banned
Put off by every aspect of the game. Plays it for 30 fucking hours.

Neogaf.
I don't know why reading is hard for you, but I clearly said I found the game enjoyable up until the problems set in. I said I found the boss/1 on 1/shinobi battles perfectly fun. I still do. I said I found the gameplay and mechanics to be good. So where you got that I said I was put off by every aspect I don't know.

My problem is that there is more then just those boss battles and while I was able to deal with or ignore them they in the end brought the game down.

The Crimsion school was the last to unlock and since I did find the mechanics and character play good. I would have to play through a good portion of it to unlock those characters would I not?

And by then yes I might as well finish the game.
 

bobohoro

Member
Put off by every aspect of the game. Plays it for 30 fucking hours.

Neogaf.

Huh? He wasn't put off by every aspect, since he liked the battle system despite some flaws and enjoyed the boss battles. I think we already had a thread on why people may spend quite some time with their purchased games and still end up disliking them. Or why they feel let down precisely because they invested several tens of hours into a game.

His critisism is pretty valid too, especially on the gameplay part. The game relies heavily on the appeal of its characters and if those don't click with you in the end, you really have to look hard for aspects of the game that stand out.

For the record, I will probably score the game a 5/10 in my personal final verdict and despite seeing big flaws with it, I still will have put in some 30 hours and will even get the plat. I stuck with it because I enjoy the character interactions and playing with the Crimson Squad is a nice finale, but Shinovi Versus as a game falls flat in several areas.
 

LoudCore

Neo Member
So I actually just bought the physical version of this game yesterday.

Only played the tutorials so far but I'm enjoying it and the graphics/art is well done!
The syllabus that came with it is really cool too.

I'm stupid and I can't seem to get the aerial rave down in the tutorial, it says press O and use Square and something to do with the techlist thing I think (I dont remember, Im at work so.)
I want to get the tutorials down before I move onto the story.
Maybe I'll figure it out
 

JoJoSono

Banned
I understand not liking a game but If you don't care for that art style or presentation or story then why on earth did you buy the game which was very clearly advertised as such before its release? Almost all of your items could've been discovered by at least two youtube videos.

Are you going to come back after 50 hours to talk about how much more you don't like the game? 60? 70? To dislike every aspect of a game yet continue to play it for 30 hours sounds like pure insanity to me.

Also the story missions are supposed to give you a feel for controlling your character while leveling though I agree they definitely could've diversified the missions more.
I didn't say I didn't care for the art style. A few of the charcter designs are fine. The overall cel shaded look and graphics for the game or some of the best on the vita. The actual presentation-more then just tna- is also good.

What I said is I don't care for a few of the moe characters and I'm not into the waifu culture so this game's brand of storytelling does nothing for me. Which is fine, because I didn't buy it for the story which I can just ignore. Regardless, me finding the story crappy is not in itself a problem. It only becomes a problem when it adds up and when things start falling apart it's harder to not add up the problems. If the game had been super fantastic outside of the story then I wouldn't care. It's not though.

I bought the game because there's nothing else on the Vita and I was told it was a solid brawler. A video would prove this. I would prove this. I'm not sure why this point keeps getting missed but I have said the gameplay is good and I like the parts where you fight the other shinobi. It's just in the end the other parts problems started to grate on me too much.

I'm not sure what's insane about playing a game and then looking back on it and realizing you didn't like it in the end.

Also this game goes by fast and the mission by mission structure complete with an enjoyable boss battle for each one makes it easy to swallow.

And the story missions are supposed to do what? I did the character missions first and those give you a feel for the character already. Also what else are they supposed to do? This dosent really work as an excuse.

My problem is either I would like a game with just those boss battles or where the dynasty warrior parts don't feel like filler. More enemies, bigger levels? I don't know. My problem is that largely I feel a strong desire to skip all gameplay that isn't those battles. I would like that fixed.

I would be intersted in the sequel because it's on PS4, but yet also Vita. I think it being portable impacts those design choices. Bigger levels and more worthwhile grunts may not work best for a quick pick up and play structure. So I doubt it also being on ps4 will change anything. I'd have to find out.

Either way I guess the lesson here is to just judge all moe otaku games as bad and move on. Don't give them a chance.
 
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