Right… Where do I begin? Anyone who knows me and my reviews will probably remember the last time I reviewed an anime game, me and Blue Reflection definitely didn’t get on; turns out Will doesn’t dig the “anime tiddies”. You can imagine my surprise however when I booted up Kill La Kill and wasn’t immediately met with anime tiddies; oh no this time it was the forbidden fruit that is anime ass… Well fuck.
This year’s anime game of choice, Kill La Kill -IF- is a 3-dimensional fighting game in the vein of the Ultimate Ninja Storm series, or My Hero One’s Justice, but with fewer ninjas and superpowered teenagers and much MUCH less clothing. For real, every single character is wearing the bare ass (Literally in some cases) minimum of clothing, which for some fighters seems to be an odd point? I mean at least Goku getting shirtless a lot was explained by his clothes getting torn up by baddies! These guys just get going with nothing on? Whatever; let’s talk about a video game.
My experience of this fresh hell started with, as most games do, a tutorial. Unlike most tutorials however this one came at me hard with NON STOP JAPANESE. There is no option to change the in-game voices to a nice easy to hear dub during this stage, and thoughout the entire tutorial you have a side character chatting away in your ear. This would be annoying enough in English, but since it’s Japanese, you know I needed subtitles, so not only am I trying to learn the game, but I’m also being constantly talked to AND I having to try to read it… Anyway, that’s all by the by; let’s have a little talk about the gameplay I was being educated on.
I got stuck into learning the usual fighting game fare of taking the role of Satsuki; a girl with… a white thong outfit and wielding a… sword? Honestly I wasn’t 100% sure what the hell was going on, but I could approve of the simple controls that lead to some pretty impressive looking attacks! The camera likes to go a little nuts at times if it’s not focusing your characters ass… Plus every now and then you’ll lose track of all the action when someone pulls off a massive energy based attack that obscures the entire screen!
The further I got into the game the more confused I got by what was going on storyline wise; the game makes a leap that you know the anime pretty well, so you’d better bone up if this is something you’d think you might enjoy. Anywho, so before each fight you’re issued a good lump of exposition about whatever circus clown or swimwear model is about to kick your ass or have their ass kicked. I won’t pretend I paid much attention to any of these cutscenes, not being a fan of the series (And sorry to say this game didn’t change my mind on that) I was more interested in getting back to kicking asses.
Like I mentioned before the combat is pretty easy to master with most combos being simple button presses without much thinking or repetitive practice required. In fact most battles boil down to a pretty simple trick of “dodge, dodge, light, light, heavy, super, win fight”; it actually gets pretty damn tedious after a while, and considering that in my first hour of gameplay I was stuck playing as miss long-sword-white-thong Satsuki without any say in the matter, it’s a long time to be subjected to a single character’s move list when I KNEW there were others! That’s not saying it wasn’t still fun seeing as some of the finishers look stunning, though the framerate is made intentionally choppy during gameplay so characters run in a pretty janky way, and some attacks look a little off; it’s clearly done with a style in mind, and maybe matches the framerate of the anime?
Either way it started to hurt my eyes after about an hour of gameplay, so I finally took my mum’s advice and had a 15 minute break for every hour.
Realistically this game is a solid fighter with some tight controls and great music, making you feel like a badass from the get go, however it’s absolutely built to be a game for fans, unlike in other anime games I’ve played where there’s no real explanation of the storyline and characters are thrown at you from all angles before you’ve even gotten over the last half naked fighter.
Basically it comes down to this. If you love Kill La Kill, then definitely pick this up since it’ll scratch your itches in several fun and interesting ways… However if like me you’re a KLK virgin, then probably give it a miss and go get something a little more accessible… Like Dragonball FighterZ for example…
Kill La Kill -IF- gets a 6/10 from me.