Senren*Banka is brought to us by Yuzusoft and NekoNyan, a bit of a dream team in the world of visual novels. This is available on Steam, but the Steam version has the adult content cut out. You can get a free patch if you want the sexual content to be in the game, but it is not necessary.
How to Download Senren＊Banka
To download the game from Steam, click on the Download button at the end of this review.
The Game Review
I know that your eyes are drawn to the gorgeous artwork, but I want to talk about the story first. A visual novel game has to have a good story to keep me invested and this game certainly has that. The main character is called Masaomi and he has returned to the small middle of nowhere village of Hoori.
Hoori is a really cool place in that it has held on to many traditional Japanese values. While it is in the middle of nowhere, Hoori is a tourist spot thanks to a magic sword that is stuck in stone! Only one who is deemed worthy can pull the sword from the stone, which does give you major King Arthur vibes.
Masaomi and his buddies one day decide to try. Rather than pull the sword from the stone, Masaomi snaps it! This leads to him having to live with and be engaged to a shrine priestess and also try and rid the town of Hoori from strange creatures. Oh, and if he can find love along the way that would be great too.
Like many other visual novel games, Senren * Banka has different paths for you to go on. There is a main path that has the main portion of the story. However, eventually, you can try and get with one of a few different girls. Each girl has her own story, personality, and so on and requires you to make the right choices to see it all through.
I really liked how fair the game was with letting you replay chapters so that you can see different routes. The writing is fantastic and there is a lot of comedic moments in the story that did make me smile. It was so well done that I did want to see where all the different routes would take the story.
The presentation of the game is flawless. The artwork here looks like it was hand-drawn by a master artist. I love the way Hoori looks and the way each girl has her own style too is really neat. The whole game looks like a movie that you are playing through and I found myself searching on Amazon to see if this game had an artbook.
As well as having very high-quality looking artwork. Senren * Banka also has these fun chibi-style scenes that have a little bit of animation to them and these are very charming and stylish. It complements the game very well and when you do get one of these it is a major highlight of the game. The soundtrack is lovely and very fitting to the way the game looks.
I will admit that I played the Steam version of the game so I did miss out on all of the XXX content. However, if you want to add it, this is done via a free patch from the official website. I get why some people would want it, but the game was good enough that I never felt like I was missing out.
Senren * Banka is a tremendous visual novel. It features a fun story that is filled with interesting characters, characters that you actually care about. It has a style that is so easy on the eyes, that you will end up playing the game for hours on end. Also, for a visual novel game, it is pretty stacked with content too!
