I played this game on an emulator as a joke, and when I finished it I genuinely started to love the series. Even after playing 3 games Burst is still my favorite.
Firstly, the game's two stories, Hanzo and Hebijo, each telling the story from a different perspective, and both provide very different experiences. Hanzo is definitely the better of the two, but they compliment each other in a way that makes both necessary. Hanzo tells the main story of the game, while Hebijo elaborates on the antagonist group, and despite being weaker as an overall story, it makes the experience better as a whole by fleshing out the Hebijo cast. Both routes contain great character moments, and it's a bit sad that they contradict each other, because it means that all the great character growth moments in Hebijo route didn't technically happen canonically.
Burst's story is a tale of two opposing groups who, through fighting, come to respect each other, and realize the importance of their differences, and how the world can't function without opposing viewpoints. It's a cliche story, but a surprisingly well executed one, especially due to the likable and fleshed-out cast.
It's here that I have to elaborate that I did play on an emulator, Citra specifically, which definitely impacted my experience with the gameplay. Because I played using Citra, I experienced very few frame drops during the gameplay portions of the game, usually averaging around a consistent 40fps. However, during the dialogue portions of the game, it ran so badly that I had to mute the game, otherwise the audio would have pierced my ears. It was an interesting experience to play a game that ran at 40fps during combat and 10 fps during dialogue sections to be sure. However even when not experiencing frame drops during combat, it's not great. It's not bad by any means, but every character plays very similarly. Use a launcher, spam aerial rave, then use a super. It's satisfying, but it definitely gets repetitive during the later stages of the game. Additionally, despite every character almost playing the same, the balancing is not good. Hibari specifically feels much weaker than the other Hanzo girls, having only a single good super with the rest being comically bad.
Despite the mediocre gameplay I thoroughly enjoy Senran Kagura Burst. Even after playing the later games with much better gameplay, I still appreciate this one the most, as even if those games have better gameplay, this is the only game where two of the characters act out a Kamen Rider skit in the main story.
Firstly, the game's two stories, Hanzo and Hebijo, each telling the story from a different perspective, and both provide very different experiences. Hanzo is definitely the better of the two, but they compliment each other in a way that makes both necessary. Hanzo tells the main story of the game, while Hebijo elaborates on the antagonist group, and despite being weaker as an overall story, it makes the experience better as a whole by fleshing out the Hebijo cast. Both routes contain great character moments, and it's a bit sad that they contradict each other, because it means that all the great character growth moments in Hebijo route didn't technically happen canonically.
Burst's story is a tale of two opposing groups who, through fighting, come to respect each other, and realize the importance of their differences, and how the world can't function without opposing viewpoints. It's a cliche story, but a surprisingly well executed one, especially due to the likable and fleshed-out cast.
It's here that I have to elaborate that I did play on an emulator, Citra specifically, which definitely impacted my experience with the gameplay. Because I played using Citra, I experienced very few frame drops during the gameplay portions of the game, usually averaging around a consistent 40fps. However, during the dialogue portions of the game, it ran so badly that I had to mute the game, otherwise the audio would have pierced my ears. It was an interesting experience to play a game that ran at 40fps during combat and 10 fps during dialogue sections to be sure. However even when not experiencing frame drops during combat, it's not great. It's not bad by any means, but every character plays very similarly. Use a launcher, spam aerial rave, then use a super. It's satisfying, but it definitely gets repetitive during the later stages of the game. Additionally, despite every character almost playing the same, the balancing is not good. Hibari specifically feels much weaker than the other Hanzo girls, having only a single good super with the rest being comically bad.
Despite the mediocre gameplay I thoroughly enjoy Senran Kagura Burst. Even after playing the later games with much better gameplay, I still appreciate this one the most, as even if those games have better gameplay, this is the only game where two of the characters act out a Kamen Rider skit in the main story.