Senran Kagura Bon Appétit takes the characters from previous Senran Kagura games and introduces them to the world of rhythm battles. The setting for this rhythm battle? During the Cooking tournaments, the winner can obtain a ninja scroll that grants any wish possible (that old chestnut). The wishes of characters vary, and the stories seem to change some characters motivation for entering the tournament, but then it’s foolish to expect much from a story in a rhythm game. The dialogue has its moments that will make you genuinely laugh and, if you get a perfect on the final dish of a level, you will get a great cutscene. From the judge flying on a giant squid to toy rabbit jumping onto a cake castle.
The gameplay itself is what you would expect from most rhythm games, although oddly it chooses not to use the touch screen in game, instead opting to use the main buttons. Prompts come across the screen and the variations are press the button, hold the button or bash. Sometimes you will have to hit buttons at the same time, but they think this out well, with your hand never feeling cramped when pressing them together. The soundtrack is small but enjoyable and the button prompts fall on beats meaning that it all feels right, which is where a surprising amount of rhythm games fall down. Unfortunately the smallness of the soundtrack is an issue as it means you will soon have heard it all very quickly. With ten characters to playthrough, the stories with the initial purchase (more are available via DLC) have more incentive to revisit these battles, but you will quickly find the ones you like and the ones you don’t.
There are three difficulty settings in the game, as is normally the case, letting the player choose from easy, normal or hard. Easy won’t provide much of a challenge but is a good way to cut your teeth in understanding how the game works. Medium will be fairly simple for those that have played rhythm games before but will pose more of a challenge in later levels of the story arcs and hard will provide a nice challenge for those with fingers like John Travolta in Saturday Night Fever. It’s not revolutionary gameplay wise, but what it does, it does well.
Unfortunately outside of the core gameplay there are a limited amount of other modes and the way the game displays itself is slightly baffling. It’s a game that wants the women it is portraying to be sexually appealing to the player, however during the game there are various characters that will shout “pervert”, which seems apt, and also look like they are crying due to their clothes being destroyed. Now maybe the initial thought from the developer was “they will be upset about losing the cooking tournament” but this isn’t how it comes across on the screen.
The game shows off its intrusive perversion at its worst when you are doing well. If you get to part 3 (each battle is in 3 parts) with nearly a perfect score a heart will pop up in the button prompts. If you miss this you will see your combo broken so, if you want a perfect score, you have no choice but to press for it. Doing so starts a close up of the derrière of your competitor. It will pan up the body, lingering on the risqué parts before showing their face… tears in their eyes. When this was first encountered I thought I must just be imagining things, but upon repeated playthrough’s I realised that was not the case. It is not OK to have a crying half naked woman on your screen as a reward… That is not cool!
Much like other games in the series, Senran Kagura Bon Appétit is a game let down by its odd way of being risqué. It has strong core mechanics but the way it is dressed will make most players feel uncomfortable. It takes more than strong core mechanics to make a game great and until the franchise can find the balance of perversion and gameplay, it will fail to reach its true potential.