Criminal Girls

Note: This is NOT a review, it is instead…. an article determining my opinions on if this has an actual chance at being released in English by NISA or another english game publisher.

Was tossing up whether or not I should conduct this review, however in the end I let the temptation get the better of me, so here it is. First of all, before starting I would like to say whilst there is nothing in this article that is NSFW (Not Safe For Work), I would strongly advise that anyone who is not at the very least 15 (or of the M rating comparison in your country) to consider not reading on, as some content in this game may be a tad inappropriate for younger minds.

I shall wait for you all to decide….

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Well if you are still reading this then I assume you have chosen to keep on reading. Let me introduce this game to you, Criminal Girls is a game where you, the self-named protagonist, aim to escort 4 (Which rises as the game continues) female personifications of different sins and temptations out of prison cells and to the outside world, which to get to, requires the navigation of a gigantic tower, and no, this is not an entire Tartarus remake from Persona 3. It is by far not a walk in the park, so be warned, you might have made it down to pick the girls up, but you are not guaranteed to get back up.

So, if you are still willing to read on, please jump to the next paragraph!

Booting up the game, you get delivered straight to the title screen. “What! No opening cinematic” I thought disappointingly as for Nippon Ichi Software, I would have expected some form of opening sequence, since they very rarely have a disappointing one, even with disappointing games. What is even more disappointing is that the opening sequence which was blaring through my speakers was very good and having the single image didn’t do the song justice.

Jumping into the game you start off in a dank and dark prison holding room, where four girls are kept in cages (Four girls in the above image). You, as seemingly caretaker (??) of them release them and start your mission to escort them to freedom! Of course, you are almost instantly plunged into a battle but… oh look! Only one of your girls can attack the monster…. so whilst it might be cute to see the other girls cowering from the big scary monster, you, as the gamer has to put that aside and instead aim to survive the battle.

So I had to train my girls up to become fighters…. no no, put away those books my dear friend, this isnt called CRIMINAL GIRLS for no reason. You have to… punish the girls using points collected by defeating monsters. Originally you are only able to give spank them, however it progresses to feathers, messages, electric shocks etc, all of which improve your score.

So then finally after enough punishment, the characters can attack and then it gets interesting. You can either attack solo, attack x2 or use a skill attack, all of which appear as random options. These generally make the game a bit harder as you cannot plan character combos. To make matters worse, even the enemies are damn hard and can drain a lot of your health in one battle, making you waste more points to spend on potions then giving the prisoner another smack.

That is all I have for the first 15 or so minutes as the game starts. Thanks to a friend of mine who has a copy and kindly showed me the game for a while. This however, leads me to the bigger question on if this game could potentially be sellable by NISA, since honestly, the main purpose of this post was to show you some of the core gameplay elements. First of all, the gameplay is a dungeon crawler with RPG elements and random encounters. For a PSP game, it is a really fun and tough system that isnt just a click and insta-kill straight off. Sprite design is pretty good and the character designs really pull off the prisoner look, althrough maybe one too many nekomimi and moe characters, althrough bustier characters do appear relatively early from the looks of it (Never saw that far)

The question is, how NSFW is the art designs. I never got to see them clearly but there was no evident nudity at the start of the game, however I cannot state if it progresses later in the game, and I think the max that would occur would be the pantsu shots that are evident in almost every Japanese game you find nowadays. Even if this is the worst scenario, could it be changed in an english version? Since a bit of extra censorship wouldnt harm the core gameplay methods. Most of the punishments are relatively mild such as feathers and water (OH NO! DANGEROUS WATER!)

I mean, if this system is inappropriate, how will Disgaea 4 go with this seemingly much more brutal punishment system implemented in the game…. with the wooden horse and everything?!?!?

I am impartial, if it comes out it comes out, if it doesn’t, it doesn’t, however, judging from the NISA Forums, there is a significant number of posts in the thread asking for a potential localization. I would say, don’t get your hopes up, since generally games like this may be considered pushing the boundary one step to far. HOWEVER the punishment and overall questionable content in this game is relatively tame so unless there is a definite “no” given, do not give up!.

Taking away the punishment system, you have a standard dungeon-crawling RPG with some unique gameplay features and a rather high learning curve. Either way, for all you know those girls could follow Disgaea tradition and be thousands of years old.

To end, here is both a trailer and a boss battle preview for the game…

Criminal Girls – Boss 1 by yukiseekyo

Trailer 1 – Also plays the opening theme in the background.

Now I am off to hope for games more likely to come out in english… such as Princess Antiphona’s Hymn: Angel’s Score Op.A or Blue Roses…..