Criminal Girls 2: Deja vu

Let's not beat around the bush, dear fellow gamers: Criminal Girls 2, or CG2 for short, is a carbon copy of its predecessor Criminal Girls: Invite Only. Not only does it sports the exact same gameplay, but it also proudly features the exact same dungeons so far (albeit redrawn), the exact same "motivation" minigames (albeit slightly more sophisticated) and last but not least, the exact same cast of foes (without albeit: they were virtually lifted straight from CGIO). The only brand-new feature is the cast of characters, their backstories and the saucy scenes that go along with them—although then again, we're not exactly dealing with genuine novelties there. All the girls are blatantly inspired by their CGIO counterparts, be it in terms of looks, personality and demeanor: Chloe is a virtual copy-paste of Alice, Tsukasa of Ran, Yurine of Tomoe and so on. (It was actually quite entertaining to tie each CG2 girl with her respective CGIO inspiration.) Anyway, you get the picture: CG2 is basically CGIO with revamped art, a new yet familiar cast and ramped-up fan-service. Which in theory is totally fine by me, since I really don't mind treading on familiar ground when it comes to beloved gaming formulas.

In practice, things are a bit more complicated. I'd like to claim that I fell head over heels for CG2 just like I did with CGIO and that I'm having tons and tons of fun playing it; but unfortunately, the reality is quite different. While I'm having a decent amount of fun with CG2, I'm far from being glued to it and I deem it quite inferior to its predecessor. This is due to a sole reason that jumped out at me as soon as I started my playthrough: CG2 is unreasonably hard. We're not talking about the "challenging" kind of hard there, but rather about the "tedious" type of hard—the one that generates eyerolls, exasperated sighs and ragequits. I was visibly not the only one being put off by CG2's excessive difficulty, since a so-called "casual" patch was made available for the Japanese version. This patch was added to the Western version, and I switched to Casual mode after a mere couple of minutes because playing on Normal mode was an absolute chore. Not that it changed my fortunes wildly, mind you: the only difference between Normal and Casual mode is that foes hit slightly less hard on the latter, but everything else is left untouched. Brace yourselves, this is how CG2 rolls when it comes to difficulty:

—All foes have ridiculously high defense, coupled with a ridiculous amount of HP. They are also several steps ahead of the girls by default, with better skills that the girls often cannot prevent or counteract. As a result, all battles tend to be painfully slow and tedious. Even the meanest field enemy takes several turns to die and can inflict ugly status effects on the whole party long before the items or skills that can cure said status effects have been uncovered. As for the bosses, they are so cheated that it's not even funny. They are always lightyears ahead of the poor girls, with better stats, better skills and literally twenty times more HP. Beating bosses in CG2 requires all at once pre-battle grinding, strategizing, luck and a treasure trove of patience, and having all that doesn't even guarantee that you won't die after twenty-five minutes of arduous fighting. Battles in CGIO were stimulating and challenging affairs that flowed smoothly; battles in CG2, on the other end, feel like painful interruptions that take way too long to be resolved. In a nutshell, what we have here is a serious case of The computer is a cheating bastard.

—The girls' suggestions in battle are often off the mark, especially when compared to CGIO. I've lost count of the number of times when all girls pull out their most powerful skills to dispose of a mere field enemy or coyly offer regular attacks when fighting a boss. They are also quite reluctant to suggest buffs and debuffs, which doesn't make boss battles any easier. This definitely qualifies as fake difficulty because of Artificial Stupidity.

—The "Motivation" minigames have been made unnecessarily fussy and are now bristling with confusing instructions and complicated control schemes, which leads to fake difficulty because of Some Dexterity Required. Not only are they often tedious to play, but they don't allow for much clumsiness, unlike their CGIO counterparts. This means a higher failure rate, which means less XP gained, which means more grinding to gain CM points, which means more slow battles. Now that's the fake longevity cherry on top of the fake difficulty cake.

You get the picture, dear fellow gamers: we have a big fat case of fake difficulty here, and it takes away a good chunk of the player's rightful enjoyment. Granted, I've already given praise to games that were choke-full with fake difficulty, such as Astonishia Story; so why am I so finicky all of a sudden, you may ask? Well, it's all a matter of expectations. While I fully expect a retro-ish game like AS to be unreasonably and unfairly difficult, I expect a fan-servicy game like CG2 to boast a light-hearted, easy-going and fun gameplay that complements its sassy overtone. I do NOT want to grind in a fan-servicy game, nor do I want to spend half an hour fighting a non-final boss. I don't know which point Nippon Ichi Software were trying to make by delivering such an unforgiving gameplay, but the outcome doesn't sit well with me. Now that I think of it, maybe they are actually taking the piss out of the player: you come here to indulge in SM fare with helpless girls and you end up being roughed up by the game—what goes around comes around, karma's a b*tch and all that, you know. That would sure be a brilliant display of irony, but that wouldn't make the fake difficulty easier to swallow. I've come very close to rage-quitting a couple of times, and I'm not sure I will be able to clear my current playthrough of CG2: I started playing it to get a break from Rainbow "grindy" Moon, and fake difficulty and drawn-out boss battles that requires metric tons of level-grinding to be overcome are not exactly what I signed for. Oh, well. The gaming instinct will decide, as always! Thanks for reading, and be my guest anytime!