VN - Others - Completed - Senren＊Banka [Final] [YuzuSoft]

I liked this game, but i wanted to like it a lot more and i tried very hard to make myself like it more to no avail.

It's a professionally made JVN, from a proficous studio. Voice acting is good, characters are good and cute, the story is so well written that it could have been the plot of a decent anime.

The problem is the pacing and it's a huge one. The story per se is your standard 3 acts western story with an introduction in the first act, stakes rising in the second act and the showdown in the third.

Except it isn't that. Because the third act and the showdown are barely mid story. Then there are at least 3 more acts that are painfully slow and uninspired.

In the first half of the story, where, by the way, all the meaningful choices happen, the pace is high, the plots move on steady and interesting but there is not romantic nor spicy content, which is ok, no biggy.

In the second half the story completely focus on the romance with your waifu of choice, as if the studio had made a complete adventure based game and after the ending they where like "Oh, crap! we forgot that this was a porn dating sim!". And then they started to make a whole new game from scratch, adding random extra plot, to wiggle more time for the romance.

And that extra time is so long, boring, slow, uneventuful, that it is a real pain to play through.

To make things worst, the LIs who were interesting, fun, well written and witty make a complete 180° turn becoming paranoid, pathologically shy, overthinking, unchallenging shoujo girls with 0 personality, obsessed with how to properly run a relationship.

Even the sex scenes are boring as hell.

And it's a real shame because i was looking forward to the relationship part, with the ninja girl in my first run, only to see that confident, teasing, brilliant girl turning into a useless slug.

I've played through the princess plot, mostly fastclicking and the ghost girl plot but, meh... nothing to see here.

A real shame, indeed. If the second part was less extenuating and the girls were consistent it would have been a great titile.

If you like casual long-drawn out romance with meager, low-stakes conflicts then this game is perfect. The UI and production value on Yuzusoft games are absolutely beautiful and Senren Banka doesn't disappoint on that front. The characters are all enjoyable enough in there own right, the art is top-notch, the music is pretty good and there are many h-scenes (almost all vanillia in nature though) as well. If you don't care much for the story and just want some relaxed romance then this game is sure to be enjoyable. As someone who has played almost all YuzuSoft games that have been translated I find this one to be my favorite.

However if you do care about the story and actual character development then this game's meager attempts at building conflict isn't going to be doing you anything. The conflicts feel forced and their exterior-forced nature means they never relate to a heroines actual problems meaning little devlopment is actually made. Along with this, the conflicts all stemming from completely different unrelated issues to the common route and to other character routes in general means they don't make any sense in the same universe. This can quickly take away from immersion if someone is genuinely analyzing these "conflicts," but for the casual moege enjoyer that shouldn't be an issue. I will also say that the characterization and dialogue during h-scenes is pretty bad (standard for Yuzusoft, whoever writes the h-scenes isn't the same person that writes the main script) and often feels very OOC and can definitely take away from immersion/enjoyment. Another "Issue," is the MC which is another standard self-insert Yuzusoft protag who's only personality trait is being "nice," "dense," and "brave." Since i've gotten so use to this style of MC it isn't so much of a negetive as almost all moege are like this.

So overall if you don't care much for story and just want a moege with cute heroines then this game is fine.

Story is boringly obvious and drags on forever, there is no conflict between any characters, no puzzle to solve, nothing really to see at all, the story(if you can call it that) part is like a small kenetic novel so nothing you do will make any difference.

The characters are dull, generic and frankly dont match well at all, most of the girls get there own route which is as long as the main story but as with the main story they are obvious and drag on forever.

On the plus side there are only a very minimal amount of cliché events and the art is very good but reallythat should be the bare minimun for any professional game.

Adult content is good and includes quite a bit for each girl.

Sadly this is a very forgettable game as there is nothing that stands out over basically and other game.

Story 1/5 boring and drags
Art 4/5 very good
Sex 3/5 could be better
Fetishes 0/5 none
Choices 1/5 pick the girl only
Characters 1/5 dull and generic

One of my favorite Japanese VNs

PROS
- Amazing art
- Story is great and interesting
- Good division of common route and individual route
- Extremely useful tool I wish every VN had (flowchart)

CONS
- To get to best girl you need to finish at least one of the main routes

Nor quite perfect but very well done. solid 4.5

While characters are common tropes (Ninja, Shrine Maiden with animal ears, air head exchange student, bound soul, childhood babysitter etc) they are done well with depth and humour without becoming slapstick. The MC is not the ahat common to genre but a clumsy and inexperienced guy with decent intentions that surprisingly relatable.

While stories simple it worked well and I doubt the layering of stories would have worked if any of them were complex.

The story telling is good balance of humour, drama and romance with really good use of pacing to set mood and flow of story though I did feel the slow pacing of social scenes dragged a little at times.

H scenes were well done and I felt really captured clumsiness and embarrassment of first time really well. While the evolution to giving multiple orgasms etc was a little over top it was needed to give a solid ending without getting dragged out.

I liked Artwork and while assets reused it was always appropriate to story.

Amazing CV, Nice artworks, good plot, not just multiple endings but whole different storylines, take a lot of time for character development
But if you just want to see an H scene in an hour, I highly recommend not play this game.
Each route has ~7 chapters and some routes you will be able to see an H scene in chapter 6

Artwork
The art is well done and everything looks so smooth. The large range of different face expression on the heroines provide more live into the game. I can't say there is big amount of backgrounds into the game, since most of the gameplay flow through 4-5 places, i mean i've seen much shorter games with more.

Voice/Translation
The voice acting is professional, can't say it gives a way to some other visual novel game. Especially in the h-scenes some of the heroines are really on fire, u get curious when they recorded it if they weren't really in real action.
The translation is very on point and it really brings some funny moments into some situations.

Story/Gameplay
Hmm, the story wasn't bad, but it was kinda predictable for me far ahead most of the time, i wanted to see some turning points. There were some action in the game, but clearly not enough for a game with divine sword, princess, ninja heroine and other stuff ... u expect more.
There is not really a gameplay, since you can't change the story path in any direction. The choices you make only choose the route you take with one of the heroines after the main story and events ending.

H-scenes
Damn, they may come late, but the waiting is really worth. They are long and they are atleast few with each of the heroines. They may be censored, but the good writing and voice acting make em very arousal. The protagonist act caring and gentle during the story, so that bring the aspect of the well deserved fun.

Overall
The gameplay took around 15 hours approximately to the point when u are finished with the story and your certain route with some of the girls begin, which is in within another 5-6 hours.
I enjoyed the game much so i can only recommend it.

Usually I don't fancy visual novels much. But this one got me engaged from the start. It's got a nice UI, with a lot of options, which is good because with a lot of customization you're able to adjust it to your likeness. The characters are also great. It has a lot of content, and I believe I'll sunk a lot of hours into it with those multiple endings being there.

Great game, there's great voice acting and the characters are not only interesting but unique and distinctive in their attributes! There's a lot of humor involved and while there are lewd scenes, it actually feels like a story that makes your heart content after playing it!