Recent reviews by MikoKisai

I've been playing for nearly 7 years at time of writing, and I'm still loving every moment I spend on the game.

The characters are cute, their lines are well-written and funny, and the devs just keep adding more and more stuff.

Although the developers describe this as optional, I would highly recommend everyone to buy this and play through the game again with the new route.

Peanut is adorable in every sense of the word, and the extra content fits in perfectly with everything else, to the point of even expanding the main story in incredibly interesting ways. It is worth every penny of the asking price.

TL;DR: If you're already familiar with Senran Kagura, you probably already know whether or not you want to play this game. If this is the first time you encounter this franchise, I'd recommend playing one of the other games first, in order to be more familiar with the characters.

For those not already familiar with the franchise, Senran Kagura is a series which revolve around a bunch of female ninja students. It's also filled to the brim with fanservice, and it's not afraid of admitting this.

What really makes the series work, however - at least in my opinion - is the character interactions. It's not just a serious ninja action thing, it's also a healthy amount of slightly silly "slice-of-life" moments, which really makes the characters grow on you. That's not to say that the fanservice isn't a selling point (it definitely is), but it's not the only one.

As is common for the spin-offs, Senran Kagura Reflexions is very much on the silly side of things, and it ramps the fanservice level up to eleven. The game is essentially an expanded version of the Intimacy mode found in other titles in the franchise - a mode where you get to interact with them a bit, give them a pat on the head, etc.

The conceit is that Asuka (or one of the four other characters available via DLC) has asked you to meet her in the classroom after school. She's sensed that something is wrong with her, but doesn't quite know what. You have to help her figure it out by making her feel calm and unlocking her heart through massages.

You start off by massaging her hands and fingers, which will cause her to doze off and have a daydream involving you. Each character has 7 different daydreams, each putting the two of you in different roles - one scenario might have you as classmates seeking shelter from the rain, another might involve her being your little sister. While there is some overlap between characters, no two characters share the exact same list of scenarios, so there's a decent amount of variety to the dialogue.

A single playthrough only takes about an hour (assuming you let all the voice lines play fully), but you'll need at least 5 to see the true ending for each character (and a couple more if you want to experience all the moods for all the scenarios). It's entirely up to you which order you play things in - you can go back and forth between different girls, or you can focus on one in particular and then move onto the next. The game does help you keep track of what you have and haven't done after the first playthrough for each girl.

Of course, the plot isn't really the point here - the real point is spending time with your waifu. The characters don't interact with each other in this game - it's always just you and whichever girl you're playing with. Personally, that is precisely what I expected the game to be, and I think it does a *great* job of doing that - but if you don't have any connection to the girls, you won't really get the full experience, and it becomes a bit difficult to recommend the game in that case.

If you're new to the franchise, I suggest you play a different game first. I recommend picking one of the main games - Shinovi Versus, Estival Versus or Burst: ReNewal - as they all work much better as a starting point for getting to know all the characters - but if you really want to focus on the fanservice, you *could* also choose go with a different spin-off, Peach Ball, as that game features the same 5 girls that are in this game. Once you've played any of those, you can always come back to this one.

Speaking of the girls - they're all different characters, and they do have different dialogue and daydreams - but you're not missing out on anything unique if you skip one of them. Having said that, I did still enjoy playing through all of their stories, even the characters I don't usually like as much - but it's probably also worth pointing out that my top 3 characters in the series are all in the game.

In addition to the main story, many standard features from this series are also available in this game - you can dress the girls up as you please, the normal Intimacy mode is still available right on the main menu (called Mini-Reflexology in this game), and there's a diorama function which can be used to pose the girls for a virtual photo session (and in this game, it's the only way you'll see multiple girls on screen at the same time).

This was originally released for the Nintendo Switch (where I've previously played it to 100% completion), and the porting quality seems fine. You don't have a ton of graphical options, but you also don't really need them for this game. The game does sort of assume you're either using a controller or just the keyboard - the mouse can be used for most (but not all) things, but the game doesn't really tell you which buttons correspond to what. This isn't a huge issue (it's pretty easy to figure out what the mouse functions are), but it seems worth pointing out anyway.

Overall, I had a lot of fun with the game, and if this seems like it could be your sort of thing, you'll probably enjoy it too.

This is an extremely solid puzzle game. If you like difficult puzzles, you should definitely get this game.

The puzzle design is very hard, but there is always some chain of deductions you can use. That doesn't mean it's easy to find... but it is there, and it is supremely satisfying when you spot it and solve the puzzle.

The ability to take notes is so useful that I cannot emphasize it enough. It allows you to quickly and easily indicate things like "these two cells have precisely 1 mine between them". It is also useful for testing if certain possibilities might lead to a contradiction later on; that technique came in handy for me on a few of the bonus puzzles.

There may not be a lot of levels, but they will definitely keep you occupied for many hours.

Once again, Zachtronics delivers a great programming puzzle.

This is possibly the easiest entry point as far as the "assembly-style" programming puzzles by Zachtronics goes; you have a decent amount of space for each program, and you can instatiate multiple independent programs to run in parallel, which can provide some extra flexibility in coming up with solutions for puzzles. The puzzles have a nice variety to them as well, which means you're always going to be challenged at least somewhat to come up with a good solution.