Naughty Ninja Ice-Cream Sundaes – Senran Kagura Bon Appetit: Full Course Review

Marvelous Entertainment are fairly prolific when it comes to their cheeky girl-shinobi series of games, Senran Kagura. Based around the heated rivalry between a group of all female ninja schools, the franchise has always stuck to the one-on-one brawler genre with the odd excursion into territory where gameplay doesn’t involve beatdowns and fisticuffs. Senran Kagura Bon Appetit – Full Course is one such excursion and sees the girls laying down the pain in the kitchen instead of the dojo. Yep, this is a game about a bunch of buxom ninjas baking up a storm in a competition to cook the tastiest dish for perverted old geezer, Hanzo, who seems more interested in the girl’s “assets” than any food they are making.

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To be honest, this is my first time playing a Senran Kagura game but I had heard of the series and it’s lightly risque content. It’s probably no secret that said content is probably why most gamers are giving these titles a try. What may be less well known and what becomes clearly apparent once you get past all the surface titillation, is that they are founded on very solid gameplay mechanics and are actually a lot of fun to play.

While it’s story is all about culinary dueling, Bon Appetit is actually, surprisingly, a rhythm game and a well designed one at that. Anyone familiar with the genre will be instantly comfortable with the controls. While it can be played using the keyboard, the nature and speed of gameplay made this control method difficult, for me anyway. So grab a gamepad if you can, I used an Xbox controller. Like similar rhythm games in the past like Bust a Groove, you’ll spend the majority of your time in Bon Appetit attempting to match your button pressing to the prompts that appear on screen. The concept is a simple one and it plays that way but don’t think that makes the game a pushover. On highest difficulty, the pace is seriously hectic especially when faced with a song that has a quicker tempo.

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Bon Appetit has three main modes to try out: Story, Free and Arcade. Story Mode is where you are going to spend most of your time and features the full cast of Senran Kagura girls to choose from. Each one has her own food related narrative to explore and they are hilariously entertaining, packed to the brim with awfully lewd puns, mostly about vegetables that look like male genitalia. This mode provides the main content of the game and with the large roster of girls, you are looking at many hours of appetizing  warfare before you have seen everything on offer.

Once you have picked a favorite shinobi, entry to the cooking arena will be granted where you will be faced with increasingly difficult opponents in a three round battle to produce the tastiest meal for creepy old Hanzo. Keeping your rhythm fills up a meter at the top of the screen and whoever fills their meter the most wins the round. The loser not only has to face humiliating defeat but some of her clothes get ripped off in the process until she’s barely got anything covering the rude bits. Do really well in the final round and you will be treated to a special scene of your opponent drizzled in chocolate sauce, sort of like a naked ninja ice cream sundae! Prudes need not worry, there’s no actual nudity here; cute little anime faces cover the parts deemed inappropriate for viewing.

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Graphically, Bon Appetit is clean and colorful. Having been released originally on the PlayStation Vita back in 2014, the visuals have obviously been updated for PC and maintain a silky smooth frame rate all the way through. Just don’t expect state of the art graphics, everything here is fairly basic and gets the job done simply but admirably. Sound design is another story. While effects are of a consistently high standard, I found the music to be the game’s weakest aspect. With over 20 songs in the playlist, there’s not one I can recall and very few I became familiar with from a gameplay perspective. I realize Bon Appetit was made in Japan and, as such, is filled with tunes from there. But, they all seemed to blur in to a jangly mess after awhile. As a rhythm title, song roster is perhaps the most important thing to really nail and in my opinion, they failed in this department.

In all honesty, despite the questionable reliance on cartoon cleavage and exceptional jiggle physics, Bon Appetit is a surprisingly comprehensive title with loads of content and some real re-playability that will have you coming back for more. The inclusion of all previously released DLC (hence the Full Course moniker) adds even more characters to play and quirky narratives to explore. There is also a dressing room mode with hundreds of clothing variations. This is a great feature, for those so inclined, to unlock hard to find accessories like cat ears or sexy nurse outfits to give their shinobi a unique look.

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Senran Kagura Bon Appetit: Full Course is probably not for everyone, especially those who are easily offended. For the rest of us who can see it as harmless, light-hearted fun, there is a very solid and enjoyable rhythm game here with a smorgasbord of meaty content to trawl through. It’s lewdness is so over the top and audacious, it’s tough not to be swept up in the craziness that ensues. While it may attract it’s fair share of criticism for the pure fan-service on display, Bon Appetit also deserves accolades for providing a credible gaming experience. With naked ninja ice cream sundaes of course!

Reviewed on PC

REVIEW OVERVIEW
Gameplay
8
Story
7
Graphics
6
Sound
6
Replay Value
8
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Hi. I'm Josh and if you are checking this out then you are probably as mad about gaming as I am. The first game I fondly remember playing was Metroid on the NES and I've owned or played on just about every platform since. I also like to write so why not combine two of my favorite things and write about games. I'm excited about the future of this industry and I look forward to sharing that excitement with everyone. Contact email: [email protected]
naughty-ninja-ice-cream-sundaes-senran-kagura-bon-appetit-full-course-reviewSenran Kagura Bon Appetit: Full Course is straight up fan-service for those who are into light-hearted anime-style titillation. Those of us willing to look beyond the jiggling breasts will find a fun and well designed rhythm game that hits all the right notes!