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:
—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.
The new girls are clones of the previous ones? Well, colour me unimpressed. I could forgive the same dungeons, enemies, punishments and even some of the grinding. I wouldn't be a fan of Hyperdimension Neptunia if that stuff truly got to me. But they couldn't come up with seven totally new girls?
ReplyDeleteCome on, it's a fanservice game. Half the fun in those games is seeing how wacky and ridiculous the characters get. And if Senran Kagura can handle such a huge cast of characters, surely they could at least make their clones not so obvious. Have fun with your own game NIS.
Oh well, even though I enjoyed the first game, Criminal Girls is my least favourite fan service game. I like my fan service to be silly and light hearted, and Criminal Girls isn't silly enough for me. Which is good for variety's sake, but coupled with the clones, it means this game is going to drop down on my backlog. I'd rather get to Gal Gun first.
Hey, maybe that game would be a good break for you. It has fan service and is wacky as all hell.
It's clear that NIS did the bare minimum with Criminal Girls 2. This game feels more like a quick cash-in than like a work of love—and an unpolished quick cash-in at that because of all the fake difficulty.
DeleteI think I will manage to finish it still, if only because I want to know how the girls' stories unfold; but I will definitely skip the postgame part, complimentary bosses and the like. And after that, I'll play something more relaxing—like, say, Sonic Boom Fire&Ice or Gal*Gun.^^