To those of you who usually read my articles it’s no surprise that I’m a fan of turn based JRPGs. In fact, I have two of those in my top 5 games of all times and you don’t want to know how many I have in my top 50. Needless to say I usually love them, but I didn’t expect to like Kanpani Girls as I’m usually not a fan of browser based games. Just like usual, I was pretty wrong and was actually surprised. As it stands the game has two servers, Zigrette and Rose. I chose Zigrette because it sounded like Cigarette so it made sense to me at the time, but I can’t say for sure if any of the gameplay changes depending on servers, I’d imagine not considering my experience of most games but I can’t say for sure.
The story begins with a short tutorial on how to fight, it’s pretty basic really, but we’ll go into the details of combat a little later. Once you’ve cracked the art of war, then you get some real story, you are a CEO who’s just disembarked a train and has been zapped to another world filled with monsters and sexy Japanese badass’. After one of them saves your bacon from a monster which looks like a giant blue power drink you decide to try and meet as many people as you can so one of them can help you get back to your world, naturally the only real way to do this, if you’re as awesome as this CEO, is by making kickass mercenary groups full of awesome female warriors. Your adventure starts out with Monique, an uptight slayer who is head of an honoured family and Ruka a cheerful and happy butterfly girl (awesome, right?). The two have decided to join you, after some persuasion, on your quest so that they can look for someone they know by the name of Rose. You’re also introduced to a clumsy thief named Loviisa who is on the run from the thieves guild, so with your busty party in hand you’re off to go make some new friends. The story is also pretty long and frankly, I’ve been playing for several hours and have really only scratched the surface of what the game has to offer.
The majority of the game you’ll spend recruiting new characters and building your awesome booby death squad. There’s so many classes and characters to choose from that you become a little spoiled for choice. In total you have 8 classes, the standard choices such as Archer, Warrior, Rogue, Magician but some fresh new classes such as Ronin, Soldier, Cleric and Fighter which make for some interesting playstyles. Each one of those classes gains different skills and abilities and has varying amounts of HP, physical and magical damage and have their own unique ways of fighting so it’s nice to play around with and find the best combination of characters to go with. As with any JRPG some rules will never change. You’ll always keep your magic and ranged base classes at the back and your physical and tank classes at the front, but there’s some nice tactics that you can implement with the leader select function which changes the way in which your characters approach the battle. In addition, you have a few ways to add new members to the roster, on a daily basis, you can pick one of four applicants, you can make your way through the story and you can spend magical stones to recruit a fresh new pair of breas… swords.
The combat system is pretty basic. Your characters will auto attack and use the skills and abilities that they have available to them to come to the best conclusion of the fight. On top of those you also have a CEO button which uses CEO power that builds up over the fights that you encounter. It’s a nice little get out of jail free if ever you need it, which if you set up your formation right, you probably won’t do, but it’s still fun to fire off whenever you want to mix things up and see how much destruction you can bring down on the world. It’s a great system which works very nicely, but I’d love to see a bit more choice making in this. My one and only constructive criticism about this game is that a “go rogue” button which enables you to freestyle battle would just make this game perfect in every way.
The game contains some standard JRPG features such as levelling up, discovering items, gaining new abilities and building up tactics with some nice fresh twists. With the takeover system you can select the character that you want and sacrifice one of your employees to make them even stronger. Doing this means you can make one of your favourite characters into a complete badass without constant grinding. Furthermore, you have the star system which allows you to see the potential and future potential of your employees without having to grind away for hours just to find out that they will be pretty weak at the end of the game, although you can use the employee screen to level up their class with resources and gold. They’ll get an awesome new title to go with their new star. You can also use the employee page to equip some new badass weapons, check stats and check out their skill set for front and back row formations to help figure out how to proceed with the perfect party.
The graphics in the game are great and, although they’re pretty basic, it compliments the game well, for gameplay at least. The graphics on the characters and the pages are absolutely stunning which is really what you need for a typical JRPG game. Each of the girls has their own design and furthermore you have a employee section which will give you details about each one of your recruits (provided you’ve unlocked them) and an awesome picture to go with it. It’s a nice change and a good way to know a little more about your character. It’s not something that I tend to do in games, but I did find myself reading up on the girls and enjoying what the descriptions had to say about them.
There’s some really nice sound in the game too. The background music, the battle music and the main menu music are all stereotypically based on JRPG culture so if you’re into that kind of thing (which I am) then it’s nice to spend a few minutes just admiring the nice music that accompanies the game. I’ve always admired JRPG music, especially with other games of this genre and it’s nice to see that Kanpani Girls has pulled it off so well, since a bad soundtrack can make or break a game like this.
What surprised me with this game is the shear amount of content within it. I wasn’t really expecting it to have as much as it did and to keep me busy for so long. As you go through the story mode, you’ll unlock certain facilities such as the equipment lab where you can forge new weapons and armour, the PR division where you can try to recruit new members, and the resource facility where you can increase the rate in which you get back your resources to undertake new quests. You can manage these with your employees and upgrade them to increase chances of nice things happening when making and developing new things. There’s loads of other quests, weekly and daily activities, new skills and lots to do in this game. I really have only scratched the surface of what the game has to offer, but there’s just so much to do that it takes time to discover and experience everything.
The game is hosted by Nutaku who act as a digital distributor and host an online gaming portal with a few other games, so I’d suggest if you’re a fan of the genre and ever have a moment to spare, go and check out the website. They’ve grown a pretty big reputation with regards to anime games and are looking to further their roster with Kanpani Girls. As it stands they have 3 games (including this), but have grown a fan base with regards to Japanese culture. You may know of them from their current games Angelic Saga Online, a popular PVP card battle game or from their other hit Hero Zero, a humorous cartoon game where you literally go from hero to zero (as the name says). Website registration is really fast and easy so I was playing the game within 5 minutes, which is always a plus in my books. They also host a few “naughty” games so if you’re in the mood then go get stuck in (not literally of course).
To summarize, the game is great. There are so many features that it’s difficult to get bored. There are a variety of different quests which involve either serious or quite a humorous conversation between the characters. Lots of different classes and abilities means you can look at some nice animations whilst kicking monsters in the face and the game is updated with seasonal events on a regular basis which offer new and exciting rewards. This is a game which actually tries to keep your attention with daily rewards and activities to keep you hooked. If you’re a fan of the JRPG genre or an anime fan then I’d recommend giving it a try. For the little amount of effort involved in actually playing the game, it’s definitely worth jumping onto the website and giving it at least 30 minutes of your time, chances are that you’ll find yourself with a great free game which will provide you with hours and hours of solid entertainment.
