Kandagawa Jet Girls Review – Ride, Shoot and Fan Service!!!

Japan is a weird place where all your crazy ideas come to fruition and Kandagawa Jet Girls just happened to be one of its many brilliant creations. While you might have probably heard of young pre-teen girls with jet for legs or maybe that one anime that got me thinking why is “horse girl racing” not a national sport?

Kandagawa is one that embraces the weird and makes it sensible, incorporating the realistic approach of Jet Ski racing to the gun blazing action that makes it more entertaining if not overly excessive.

But while the idea of water sport racing and fast-paced shooting is already on a league of its own, it’s hard to consider the idea as a Japanese-inspired anime without the necessary and highly influential fan service that fans can appreciate. So join me as we explore the world of jet skis, guns and a whole lot of fan service… maybe?!

Kandagawa Jet Girls as an anime follows the adventure of Rin Namiki and Misa Aoi as they try to strive to be the best team of jetter and shooter. However, unlike the anime that has a more focused point of storytelling, the game similar to the likes of the main Senran Kagura titles takes the storytelling in smaller bite-sized strides and expands the story from different perspectives of its playable characters.

Right then and their fans of the series can already explore a different side of the story as each individual competing school gets unlocked. However, the only real problem here is that while it does give a broader scale to the storytelling, scenes feel a bit rushed which is especially true to the Namiki and Aoi pair of chapters were quite a bit of its character development gets the axe. Then again, whoever played a Senran Kagura title for its plot?

As far as the gameplay goes it pretty much plays as you expect… except it has the added bit of the Japanese-level of craziness. The game has certain mechanics and unique layouts to the tracks that really makes it special. From the ability to do a turbo start to the obtainable weapons throughout the track, there’s a lot of elements that make the game unique and enjoyable that going through each of its finely detailed tracks doesn’t feel stale and boring. That is of course if you’re not playing the story mode where rival teams often lacks a challenge.

The game also incorporates a lot of elements that kart racing games are known for such as turbo drifting, speed traps and jump pads aside from the many water or balloon traps littered throughout its tracks. As a huge fan of kart racing games, it’s definitely a fun experience to breeze through its multitude of tracks but really, if you’re not into that as much as I do, well I just hope you enjoy the Senran Kagura way of character customization.

For the people that are familiar with Senran Kagura, character customization is as much as the game as its core gameplay. While you can enjoy stripping other female ninjas, dressing them up with risqué outfits and a boatload of accessories has always been the core of its gameplay for me. And Kandagawa offers pretty much that and more.

Have you ever thought what a Japanese-styled swimsuit would look like? Well, neither do I but Honey Parade Games has you covered as you try to unlock everything from accessories to swimsuits and even racing gears. It also offers some customization for its jet skis but really, it’s more about the ladies, amirite?

“It’s also worth noting that unlike the anime where hitting the girls would partially undress them, the game puts away that aspect to make it a game that is much safer to play in the living room unlike a Senran Kagura title.”

The game also sports mini-games, a free mode for offline racing and an online mode where you can race with other players around the world with your risqué outfits and over-the-top customization tastes. However, I will talk about the online mode much later once the game is officially released worldwide.

The game has been officially out for weeks and while I find it as enough time for other players to be familiarized with the game and its inner workings, its online mode still feels stale and empty more often than not. There’s a clear lack of a healthy online playerbase here which is partially not surprising for a niche game. Even modes such as ranked matches are often filled with one or two people of the same players grinding their way to the top of the leaderboards. If you’re hoping to hop on for a casual match however, active rooms are pretty much non-existent most of the time and creating rooms are often met with a long wait for people to come in and play.

Visually, there’s nothing wrong with the game other than being excessively seductive which is never a bad thing… I think. Character models are great and cutscenes are often portrayed with their 3D models bouncing around for “whatever” reason. It’s also a nice feature that similar to the Senran Kagura titles, cutscenes are played with its full-blown customized characters than their default settings which really justifies my claim that customization is the core of any Senran Kagura or similar titles.

THE VERDICT

Kandagawa Jet Girls is a fun and enjoyable experience whether you love its shoot n’ race aspects or the voluptuous girls in their undies. There are tons of unlockable features that really deepens the experience and the online feature can definitely lengthen its life span. Despite its rushed storytelling which is not really the main aspect of the game, Kandagawa is something that is definitely something that fans of Honey Parade-developed games can appreciate for its jiggly physics or casual fun experience.

Kandagawa Jet Girls was reviewed on PS4 and can be purchased here for around £39.99.

Enjoy the review? want to read more of our reviews? then click right here to be whisked away to the realm of our opinions.