I pre-ordered this for PS4 and Vita. Unfortunately, the game does not have cross-save. Decided to play the PS4 version, but checked out the Vita version briefly before shelving it- it's not too bad (and is PSTV compatible), but has framerate issues and less enemies on-screen. It seemed playable on the first level, but I wonder how the framerate holds up on later stages and harder difficulty settings. Could be unplayable. Definitely get this on PS4.
Where as the first two Bullet Girls (1 was garbage, 2 was actually pretty decent) games had you running around school environments shooting up school girls (
gee, wonder why this never got localized?), Phantasia takes the characters into a medieval fantasy world where you fight against monsters and some other fantasy-styled girls.
The schoolgirls from the previous game play pretty much the same as before. Each one has different starting weapons and you can dash, roll/dodge, crawl along the ground, and jump. Gone is the ability to snap to walls or duck behind objects to dodge fire. They changed the game to make it generally more straight-up action-oriented. I kind of miss being able to hide behind stuff, but I guess since you're fighting monsters (who so far have been melee-oriented), maybe they thought it wasn't necessary. Or maybe that will come later as more enemies get introduced, but I doubt it. A meter is present that builds up so you can unleash a super attack of sorts and in some cases this will also add a vehicle to drive, like a tank.
When you're playing the game, you'll find chests and enemies will drop 'loot' that is usually gold, materials, or underwear (of course!). Inbetween missions you can upgrade character abilities/stats, weapon powers/abilities, buy new items/clothes, and more. Clothes basically function like armor here and you lose the game when you're
nekkid and get hit enough times following that.
Did I mention nudity? It's all over the place here. Censored, just like Senran Kagura's nudity, but waaaaaay more prominent. Hope you like pantsu~ too, because just about everything you do is going to flash underwear or jiggle boobs n' butts. Need more perversion? They got you covered- there's also "information gathering" sequences where a girl gets chained up and you use various hand tools (slap/poke/squeeze) or items (shove something right in their mouths. Uh...) to make them feel good and get...results. It appears the goal is to make them feel good that they...
talk, but I couldn't trigger it when I tried.
There's three difficulty levels. The easiest is normal and it feels generally too easy so far. The hard difficulty wasn't that hard when I tried it, however it made what was just a couple of enemy waves and a boss fight that took maybe five minutes turn into endless wave after wave of enemies that took way more shots to kill and then the boss took me down pretty quick after about 20+ minutes of mindless shooting. You can replay missions to grind levels and playing harder difficulties adds rare item drops, so likely this was done with grinding and content padding in mind.
You can also unlock extra missions. The first one I got had me playing as the first fantasy character you unlock. She throws crystals that aren't as effective as the guns, but fortunately she can have guns as subweapons. I cleared the enemies out and got to the first boss -one of the girls with a chaingun- and she instantly mowed me down and killed me in about a second. Zero time to dodge.
Tried several more times and finally got a knock down by triggering a super when the battle started, but then she got up and I died instantly. And that was on normal.
Will come back to that later.
Should you buy this? If you're a pervert and like Senran Kagura, yeah, it's probably worth a shot. It's no Senran but decent enough. The PS4 version also looks like a Vita game with average visuals and the cut scenes are visual novel style, I.E. character models standing in front of static backdrops, I.E. boring shit. But if you want to run around and shoot orcs and see pantsu~ and stuff, check it out.
Much like DOA Xtreme 3, this one has no chance of making it out over here, so you'll need to get it from an importer or off an Asian PSN store.
