Senran Kagura Peach Ball Review

Senran Kagura Peach Ball jiggles onto the Nintendo Switch offering an experience heavy on fan service while thinly disguised as a pinball game. This time around the Senran girls have been magically transformed into sexy animals (basically furry-lites) after an accident in the local arcade. It’s up to you to turn the ladies back to normal by setting them atop pinball machines and hitting them with a special ball until their furry parts (clothes) fall off. It’s the only way.

That’s the plot of the game but I can’t imagine anyone is actually buying the game for that reason. You know why you want it and that’s okay.

The game recommends that you play through the story mode first which will only run you about 2 hours max. You can play through it again choosing a different character of the five offered but there’s little variation to validate playing it more than one or two times. I wasn’t expecting a long campaign in a pinball game but only two hours is a bit short considering this is a $40 game.

The interactions between the characters are about as good (or bad) as any ecchi anime revolving around well-endowed women. Most of the story is fully voice acted with the Japanese voice actors so it’s nice to hear the girls’ voices.

The few cutscenes are fully animated but they’re far and few between. Most of the story is just reading dialogue on the screen with a static background image of the arcade.

The music and sounds of pinball sound quite nice, especially while playing in handheld or tabletop mode with the Switch. It’s nice having a pinball game with this much detail in the palm of my hands.

I was a little disappointed that there were only two different pinball tables as I’m more of a fan of pinball than I am of fan service anime babes. However, both tables are beautifully animated and are pretty to look at (not to mention the scantily clad women on top of them). The tables also have different themes that unlock such as night and day or seasons that change up the look of the pinball table but don’t offer too much variation to the gameplay itself.

There are plenty of fun mini games in the pinball game itself, which usually involve paddling one of the girls in her breasts or butt until she is sprayed with water or ice cream. At least the game isn’t shy about what it is. For those of you who don’t care too much about the storyline there’s Free Mode where you can play endless pinball with your favorite girl (you’d be a fool not to choose Murasaki though).

Outside of pinball, Senran Kagura Peach Ball has plenty of collectibles to buy at the in-game shop. Most of them are costumes and accessories to dress or undress the girls in. After purchasing all the costumes you deem worthy to be worn by your anime girl of choice, there’s a gallery mode and intimacy mode. In intimacy mode you can rub your lady until both of you are satisfied.

The game makes good use of the HD Rumble feature in the Switch’s Joy-Cons to really get across the feel of a pinball machine. It’s encouraged to play the game with them detached from the Switch for the best experience. You can also play it in handheld or on the big screen but there’s a few situations that involve motion controls that you could miss out on.

It’s nice to see that Nintendo of America allowed localization of this software for a western audience without censoring any of the content. It’s nice to see Nintendo being so liberal with the content releasing for its newest system. Let’s hope they keep this line of thinking up!

Senran Kagura Peach Ball was a nice time for the few hours that I spent with it. There’s not a whole lot of pinball here, but I don’t think the people buying it are too worried about that. There are plenty of costumes and accessories to collect for your virtual anime girls that will be enough for some people. Although, I’m not sure the content it provides is necessarily worth the $40 price tag.

Tony Matthews

Tony has been gaming ever since he could walk. Pokémon Blue Version helped him learn how to read. His greatest accomplishment is not just having played the entire Kingdom Hearts series but also understanding it.