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Senran Kagura: Estival Versus |OT| Summer Life in Your Hometown

Saw many others were having issues with Amazon and a bubble mailer. Shot them an email, explaining hey- I'd like to return it, because it's damaged but I'd also like to play. Could I get a new copy and keep this one until I receive the new one with some kind of trust system? They said sure, and now I get to keep my Hanzo cards with a new copy.

Bless you Diana
 

Shun

Member
Top 5 bae and why.

Top 4 in no order.

Ryona cuz MAKO and cuz da bes.
Yumi cuz Yumi Hara and is Takane from iM@S
Miyabi cuz Hiromi Hirata and is Makoto from iM@S
Ikaruga cuz Isami Imai and is Chihaya from iM@S


Top 5 tie between
Hikage is bes
Asuka is bes

Runner up
Katsuragi cuz KobaYu

Bottom trash
Hanabi cuz terrible LL character voice from terrible LL.
 
I just did Murasaki's Side missions.

The part where she
starts singing
is seriously the cutest thing ever

And dat ending.
 

Demoskinos

Member
...Fuck this final boss in the ass with a barbed wire bat. Goddammit.

You wanna know the secret?
Keep resurrecting your partner and let her draw aggro. Pick your spots and hit her once your ninpo meter fills up. Rinse and Repeat. Thing is you can continually resurrect your A.I. partners.
 

pariah164

Member
You wanna know the secret?
Keep resurrecting your partner and let her draw aggro. Pick your spots and hit her once your ninpo meter fills up. Rinse and Repeat. Thing is you can continually resurrect your A.I. partners.
Please, tell me how. Because I have no fucking clue.

I finally beat it by the skin of my fucking teeth (further proof that complaining on GAF helps), but... there are plot holes galore. I have questions.
 

IbukiLordSA

Member
Released on my local PSN this morning, was super cheap, $36 only so jumped on it, looking forward to playing it when I get home from work.
 
Daidouji's L1+O is love. Between going through the chapters (1-4) for the Platforms that I miss and she makes clearing everything faster. Chapter 4 was really cute tbh especially when
Hibari snapped lol, I did not see that coming
 

xMrSunshine

Neo Member
Is there any reason to buy Shinovi versus now that this is out? I've not really paid much attention to this series before.

Can anyone give any word on the framerate and some approximation of the load times? I've heard those are the two main techincal problems.
 

Alfebit

Banned
Is there any reason to buy Shinovi versus now that this is out? I've not really paid much attention to this series before.

Can anyone give any word on the framerate and some approximation of the load times? I've heard those are the two main techincal problems.

Estival Versus is a sequel to Shinovi so if you want to follow the story and get to know the characters, which are actually both pretty well-written, you could start with Shinovi.

PS4 version runs at 60fps and load times are a few seconds at most.
 

xMrSunshine

Neo Member
Estival Versus is a sequel to Shinovi so if you want to follow the story and get to know the characters, which are actually both pretty well-written, you could start with Shinovi.

PS4 version runs at 60fps and load times are a few seconds at most.

Yeah sorry I should've been more specific that I was curious about the techincal problems on the Vita version.
 

Demoskinos

Member
Is there any reason to buy Shinovi versus now that this is out? I've not really paid much attention to this series before.

Can anyone give any word on the framerate and some approximation of the load times? I've heard those are the two main techincal problems.

The stories in Shinovi versus are still worth going through. Especially Crimson Squad and Hebijo storylines.
 

Alfebit

Banned
Yeah sorry I should've been more specific that I was curious about the techincal problems on the Vita version.

Ah, sorry. I don't have any personal experience but I keep hearing 2 different sides. One saying it runs worse than Shinovi did and one saying it runs just as well as Shinovi.
 

danowat

Banned
Never played a Senran game before, and apart from the tutorial explaining the controls and fighting, I've no idea what's going on (apart from boobs).

Is there a manual or guide anywhere that explains the options and other things in the game.
 
Never played a Senran game before, and apart from the tutorial explaining the controls and fighting, I've no idea what's going on (apart from boobs).

Is there a manual or guide anywhere that explains the options and other things in the game.

There is a (digital) manual, but the game is pretty straightforward. After completing the prologue you get acces to the Kagura Millennium Festival menu, where you can acces story missions (it's linear as far as I know) and bonus character stories after destroying festival platforms, the dressing room, settings etc. I don't think you need to know much more than what the game tells you.
 

danowat

Banned
There is a (digital) manual, but the game is pretty straightforward. After completing the prologue you get acces to the Kagura Millennium Festival menu, where you can acces story missions (it's linear as far as I know) and bonus character stories after destroying festival platforms, the dressing room, settings etc. I don't think you need to know much more than what the game tells you.

Cheers, I'll stick with it!
 

FHIZ

Member
Is the camera in the dressing room glitched? I was just fooling around with arranging the characters and poses, then tried to rotate them via the camera (not the way you can do it by setting numerical values) and nothing seemed to work. I know your supposed to press triangle to switch what the R stick does, but the functionality remained the same each time I pressed it, just panning left right up and down. Also, is there a way to turn off the inverted directions on that? It's super annoying.

Speaking of camera, did SV have an option where you could pull the camera out during gameplay? Does this game have it? On a few occasions I've felt the camera is a bit too tight leaving me unable to see some enemies who end up getting cheap shots.
 

muteki

Member
Pretty pleased with how this looks on Vita. Native res makes everything crisp. Framerate gets choppy at points (for me, during dialogue when many characters are on screen) but not too bad during gameplay so far. Load times are Vita load times, but glad I got a portable version.
 
I've playing Estival for a bit and the way I've found to describe it is "missed potential"

The game only improved Versus' graphics but didn't bothered to fix any of its issues and in fact, it added some new ones. Despite the game running pretty smoothly at 60 fps the game itsel feels incredibly sluggish. There's a lot of cooldown between attacks and there's not a lot of option to cancel them, making the combat feel very limited.

Even on hard you can simply mash the basic combo your character to pass through the levels. Just like in Versus any kind of difficulty stems from poorly designed mooks rather than an actual challenge. The cast is awfully balanced with those characters having long range attacks or status effects tied to their attacks having a natural advantage over everyone's else.

The Yang, Yin and Flash mechanic has become stale and rather than motivate you to try different setups is better to simply ignore it and focus on the form it works. Ninpos are still overpowered as hell and you get items to restock them as it they were candies so you can simply spam ninpos to beat the bosses or deal with cheap mooks.

Despite the graphic power of the PS4 there's little graphic variety in stages and mooks, that paired with the sheer amount of enemies the game throws at you. It makes easy for the game to become incredibly "mechanical"

Camera still sucks and the lock is utterly useless so most of the time you'll end flailing around in a generl direction hoping you'll hit something. Out of all the new mechanics the recovering is the only one worth a damn and even then, it gets gimped for how often you're send flying away from your enemies. Wall running is pointless in regular game as is the parry, you can simply hold your guard against bosses and retaliate when they break your guard since the penalty for it is minimal.

Honestly, I'd take a dedicated dodge mechanic over the guard one any day of the week. Bhikkhuni has one and the game is a lot more enjoyable by it.

The writing on the game is also a new low for the series. While I found the criticism of tone dissonance on previous games to be very debatable, in this game is so obvious that hurts. Is incredibly hard to get involved in the story when it goes from serious to retarded at the drop of a hat. The character favoritism on this game is also pretty irritating, just Gessen and Hebijo get an acceptable writing, everyone else gets hit with the flanderization stick so hard that pretty much become retarded.
 

Nyoro SF

Member
I definitely agree with criticisms of the battle mechanics. I'm only about 1/4 of the way through the game so far but I think their attempts at making the game a more focused, slower-paced fighter compared to the super-fast combat of Shinovi Versus was to its detriment.

I find it bizarre most of all, that despite improving the graphics of the parry and adding a badass riposte animation, that the hitstun on it was shortened and you can counter-attack out of it now.... makes no sense. Knocking down an opponent and then said opponent having the ability to do an immediate invincible counter-launcher as a wakeup action is extremely stupid, and the fact that Team Aerial Raves don't cost anything to do but do more damage than most level 1 supers is just bad design.

Removal of the ability to cancel recovery of whiffed moves with a guard is just a bad idea. For instance, use Ikaruga's weak attack once and then let the whole animation play out; you can't do anything for almost 3 whole seconds. No guard cancel, no jump cancel, no dash cancel... but you can super cancel. It's kind of ridiculous.
 

DarkOneX

Member
Haven't played many games of this type and never any Senran games and I am really enjoying it except one of the things you mentioned. After every combo there is a long time where you are just kinda sitting there asking to get hit by the enemies, very annoying and really breaks up the flow of the fighting. Wish it were much smoother like in Onechanbara games. Other than that I'm enjoying everything else.
 

antitrop

Member
Haven't played many games of this type and never any Senran games and I am really enjoying it except one of the things you mentioned. After every combo there is a long time where you are just kinda sitting there asking to get hit by the enemies, very annoying and really breaks up the flow of the fighting. Wish it were much smoother like in Onechanbara games. Other than that I'm enjoying everything else.

Ya, this game needs a Metal Gear Rising-esque "Blade Cancel".
 
Hold down Triangle to get a guard crush that can go through blocks. Most characters have the guard crush ability, a few don't.

Thanks :D

I realized I was only having trouble on the second Special Mission "I'm the Star!" since it was the first thing I jumped into but the fights in the story mode seem to go faster despite the difficulty setting being the same.

Also, gotta say, that intro gets me hyped every time I start it up.
IEOFMp7.gif
 
Ya, this game needs a Metal Gear Rising-esque "Blade Cancel".

There are dodge cancels in the game though.

You just shouldn't do the full combo unless you could end it with an aerial rave. Something I learned while playing Yomi.

I guess it's different depending on who you're playing.

Haven't played many games of this type and never any Senran games and I am really enjoying it except one of the things you mentioned. After every combo there is a long time where you are just kinda sitting there asking to get hit by the enemies, very annoying and really breaks up the flow of the fighting. Wish it were much smoother like in Onechanbara games. Other than that I'm enjoying everything else.

How far are you?

Because I feel that this becomes much less of a problem the higher leveled you are.

Also there are attacks that you can do dodge cancels out of, you just have to learn them.

Which is a weird thing to "learn" a character in a musou game.
 

DarkOneX

Member
There are dodge cancels in the game though.

You just shouldn't do the full combo unless you could end it with an aerial rave. Something I learned while playing Yomi.

I guess it's different depending on who you're playing.



How far are you?

Because I feel that this becomes much less of a problem the higher leveled you are.

Also there are attacks that you can do dodge cancels out of, you just have to learn them.

Which is a weird thing to "learn" a character in a musou game.

I'm not very far maybe have done 15 or so missions
 
I'm not very far maybe have done 15 or so missions

Also it just depends on what character you are. Girls like Yomi and Yozakura can be super clunky to play as in the early levels. But don't worry, they get better ovetime. Because the more you level up your characters, the faster they get.
 

pariah164

Member
On the positive side, the 'turtle' mooks are no longer annoying and can actually be hit with normal attacks. They were my biggest gripe with SV.
 
On the positive side, the 'turtle' mooks are no longer annoying and can actually be hit with normal attacks. They were my biggest gripe with SV.

But on the other hand, the big chicks with the kitanas are worse than ever though.

But yeah, the Turtles and the Giant Pandas are definitely not as awful as they were in SV.
 

Demoskinos

Member
On the positive side, the 'turtle' mooks are no longer annoying and can actually be hit with normal attacks. They were my biggest gripe with SV.

If you get them down to a lone few though they will do this annoying thing where they fall on their backs and spin on their turtle shells. Only happens when you thin their numbers out to just a few though.
 

Demoskinos

Member
Oh god. Playing the Japanese version for so long is really messing with my head I'm so used to using Circle for confirm instead of Cross.
 

Metzhara

Member
Got my copy from Amazon last night.
I usually buy games like this because, honestly, I find them utterly distasteful and hilarious in as much as creepy and bizarre.
Most of them however have pretty solid mechanics and this one is no exception.

Absolutely hilarious most of the time and if you're into low brow humor this has it in spades. I'm not normally into that sort of thing but sometimes I find the proper combination of things I don't like just work (much like multiplying negatives).

I absolutely will be streaming this more and sending the videos to friends as random funsies.

Disc version came with some cool collectible content and a 2 disc soundtrack which will get me EVERY DAMNED TIME.
I do also recommend Onechanbara 2... with PS4 DLC.

God this game is beautiful and terrifying.
 
I'm also really enjoying the localization. Alot of the jokes are bluntly self aware which can totally turn people away and I completely understand why, but for whatever reason I feel like it works really well here.
 

Demoskinos

Member
Played through story on Normal on the Japanese version. Cranking it up to hard this time and boy it is as advertised. Pretty damn hard. Which I invite because the game is way way to easy otherwise. Maybe on hard mode leveling up will actually feel like a needed mechanic.
 
Played through story on Normal on the Japanese version. Cranking it up to hard this time and boy it is as advertised. Pretty damn hard. Which I invite because the game is way way to easy otherwise. Maybe on hard mode leveling up will actually feel like a needed mechanic.

I wish there was a way to bring everyone back to level 1 without having to make a new save file.

I want the challenge, but I also want to keep all the clothes I bought, dammit.
 
Was having trouble combo building with Ikaruga, then found her dash-attack combo. God damn. Also, as noted above, girls really seem to speed up at higher levels. - is this just because of longer combos or are they actually moving faster?
 
Was having trouble combo building with Ikaruga, then found her dash-attack combo. God damn. Also, as noted above, girls really seem to speed up at higher levels. - is this just because of longer combos or are they actually moving faster?

I think it's the ability to cancel between certain attacks being more viable since you get more attacks as you level.
 

Lyte Edge

All I got for the Vernal Equinox was this stupid tag
Played through story on Normal on the Japanese version. Cranking it up to hard this time and boy it is as advertised. Pretty damn hard. Which I invite because the game is way way to easy otherwise. Maybe on hard mode leveling up will actually feel like a needed mechanic.

I played through a lot of the Japanese version on hard and it can get insane. You can get swarmed by enemies moving in circles and will be dead in seconds.
 
Playing and struggling to understand the appeal. All girls have the exact same body, combat feels limited, I am failing to understand why you won't always activate nekkid mode with infinite square combo, as there is no obvious downside, or why Fusion Arial thingie does not always work or anything in fact.
 

joe2187

Banned
Playing and struggling to understand the appeal. All girls have the exact same body, combat feels limited, I am failing to understand why you won't always activate nekkid mode with infinite square combo, as there is no obvious downside, or why Fusion Arial thingie does not always work or anything in fact.

You have to play the three combat modes to level up your moves. It's kind of a bit of a hassle to grind out battles just to unlock more moves for the character you like. But you'll gain more options.

Flash mode is your options Pre-transformation, so you're limited in your move set however you have more defense (more clothes) however you can only follow up an arial rave once. The more you level up your character the more options you have in the air depending on your character. (Dashing during combo strings also affects the next attack depending on your move list) so you can still follow up on the air after an arial combo with air dashes.

Yang mode is after the shinobi transformation, you have access to more of the movelist with a higher damage and your ninja arts. usually you should activate it to get through trash mobs in a speedy time or save it for bosses when you need the health regen. You can interrupt any of your regular attacks with a ninja art on the ground so dont be afraid to just throw it out if you feel you can go for the kill. You're also completely invincible. The higher level in yang mode, the more arial raves you can do.

Yin mode means you have very little defense, you have access to faster more damaging attacks in exchange for very little defense (no clothes) and you'll take twice as much damage. Same as above, the more you level, the more arial raves you can do.

Each mode has to be leveled up sepreatly by use, so the more you play one mode the more it will improve.

Playing missions on easy with Yin mode is a cakewalk, but you'll be hardpressed to stay alive on Hard against the bigger enemies and bosses solely by mashing buttons all day.

Also, you can block...its there, nobody uses it but it's there and it will save you, especially when you know how to parry correctly. Even on hard, learning to parry the boss can make the game much much easier.
 
Wow... this is like FIRST game where wall bouncing enemies is the worst thing you can do. It just gives them an amazing wake up option!
 
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