Kandagawa Jet Girls (English) · Test

From the creator of Senran Kagura Kenichiro Takaki…

Marvelous presents you Kandagawa Jet Girls. Instead of Ninja girls and destructible clothing, we’re looking at a more modest game about friendship, rivalry, empathy, bodysuits, and Jet Skis!

Kenichiro Takaki is moving from action games to arcade racing with weapons, stunts, and more. Some are even comparing it to a mix of Mario Kart and Wave Race though it’s more on the Mario Kart side. The biggest difference is the well-known focus on the story.

At the same time, Kandagawa Jet Girls is his Swan Song at Marvelous. He left amicably to Cygames and had an advisory role for Granblue Fantasy: Versus (Published by Marvelous and XSEED in the west) and Granblue Fantasy: Relink that’s still in the works. Though there are reports that he’s still interested in helping out with Senran Kagura when the time comes.

The biggest question is of course how good is their latest creation: Kandagawa Jet Girls?

Among Rivals and Friends

The story starts with a fateful encounter of Rin Namiki and Misa Aoi who’re being told to go away from their location because Jet Ski Duo Kaguya Shijuyin and Kuromaru Manpuku are about to practice. Since Rin Namiki has a bubbly happy-go attitude, she joins forces with the unsuspecting Misa Aoi and manages to beat one of the great favorites in the upcoming tournament. This encounter leads to both becoming friends and creating the Kandagawa Jet Girls.

Although Rin and Aoi are the initial main characters, the story mode goes the whole way and offers the complete gamut of character stories. Yes, every single team has one. You could say that each one is a small hero’s Journey because they are overcoming hardships and become stronger afterward. There’s a strange thing about them because thee storylines are loosely connected by alternative timelines. The most important take away is that all of them are not only rivals but also very good friends who’re ready to help.

It’s a nice story of cooperation and growing stronger together.

The whole Story Mode consists of separate story arcs with at least 8 chapters. Every single chapter consists of pre-and post-race scenes so it works as an arcade mode since you have to drive against all of them. The most notable particularity is the attempt to tie the story to the races as the reasoning comes down to just because they love Jet Ski Racing.

Story Interim Conclusion

The story of Kandagawa Jet Girls is like an introduction, a first episode so to say, Comparable to Lord of the Rings – The Fellowship of the Ring. All characters are having their introduction without a real main story that binds everything together but that’s because there are 2 goals it seemingly wants to achieve:

1) The relationship between characters becomes deeper

This is shown in various situations. Rin and Aoi are for example a new team and therefore they have to start from scratch. Aoi has a hard time opening up to Rin due to her being introverted but Rin’s bright personality balances that out. Others are having trouble with each other due to various circumstances. By overcoming these they become closer and more effective teams.

2) All characters are rivals and friends. Rivals on track but ready to help each other like a big family.

The whole story happens in its namesake aka the Kanda River (Kawa in Japanese and combination with another word Gawa, hence Kandagawa). Therefore, you only get to see the Tokyo part of the world of Kandagawa Jet Girls. One can only hope that there’s more to come as this story lays a very good foundation for future tales.

Contents

Story Mode

Experience the story of the 6 Kandagawa Jet Ski duos with at least 8 chapters each and more. All chapters have 3 missions you have to achieve mid-race to unlock an item for the shop to buy. One of them is to get first place and the other two are permutations of popping balloons, use different weapons, use weapons x times, etc.

Each chapter increases the maximum machine upgrade points by 10 until it reaches 90. You also get a specific amount of points depending on your ranking that goes up to SSS that cashes out at about 20k give and take. For reference, the most expensive upgrade parts cost up to 100k.

The whole campaign is very easy and shouldn’t pose any great difficulties regardless of skill level. A difficulty selection might have been interesting for replayability.

Free Mode

• Race

Go up against up to 3 CPU rivals and choose your Racetrack (8 + one alternative daytime), route (3 each that means overall 24 tracks), difficulty (Easy, Normal, Hard), and laps (up to 7). All characters are free to choose without any restriction as long as you have them unlocked.

• Time Attack and Leaderboard

Test your skills against other players with Time Attack and race for the best lap time on the Leaderboard. You can also download their Ghost data for the receipts.

Online

• Ranked Match and Ranking

Not a real Ranked Match and rather just the matchmaking but beware that it’s not worth it to play this without going through the story mode and upgrading your machine to the max as it’s part of the deal. The Rankings are more like a frequent driver list than skill due to how the point structure works.

• Casual Match

Search for rooms or create one. The settings are pretty much the same as Race in Free Mode, except without AI. There are 2 additional options. One is the theme of your room like free for all, beginners only or experts only, and then you can also create a private room for some quality time with friends.

Clubroom

Your one-stop place for customization shopping and minigames.

• Dressing Room

Customize your character with new clothing, hairstyles, colors, and accessories. You have up to 30 favorite slots to save your customizations.

• Garage

Customize your Jet Ski Machine. Acceleration, Steering, Speed, increased ammo for your standard weapon, improved shields, etc. 18 different stats can be modified.

In addition to that, you can also change the appearance of each Jet Ski with colors, skins, decals, and special graphical effects for specific moves.

• Club Journal

This is the collection of all the unlocked Artworks and movies.

• Shop

This is where you unlock everything, nothing is for free. Your Nr. 1 priority is going to be the upgrades since it helps you earn a lot of points along the way in the story mode. Then there’s all the before mentioned rest including the OST consisting of 43 songs. Stickers help you express yourself in the online mode.

• Extracurriculars

Jet Machine Cleaning: QTE Mini-game.

Mopping: Runner like game where you have to mop up water spots.

Treadmill Run: Mash the Square-Button to control the running speed and collect hearts.

Aerials: Drive through rings and do tricks to increase your combo count.

All mini-games have an additional Fever-Time feature that helps you increase the score tremendously. All of them come with 2 additional unlockable difficulties with the final one possibly garnering you over 100k points with a single game. This is probably the most time effective way to grind points.

Gameplay & Controls

Controls

Despite the simple-looking controls, there’s much more to talk about due to the different mechanics that add more depth to the racing.

Shield and Standard Weapon

All Jet Machines have special shields that protect you from attacks. Once it’s emptied you’ll get stunned for a little bit with slow speed. The shield regenerates after not getting any damage after a short time so make sure you dodge incoming attacks as good as possible.

The Circle Button activates the standard weapon that is available to everybody and shoots automatically 14 times before it needs to reload for a second. It’s not strong but it has 14 shots and can be used to wear down shields, shoot down balloons, and activating switches.

EPD

A very special Gauge with multiple uses. At 20% you can activate a speed boost that completely depletes it. At 100% the special technique becomes available.

The EPD gauge charges very slow but there are several ways to help it charge faster like drifting, rings, etc. When you are aiming for the top, the strategic use of it will be paramount.

Tricks

These tricks are available after driving up ramps and you can use 4 different variations each with different buffs that are executed with both sticks. 3 standard tricks do the following: Handling (Left + Left), Speed Up (Down + Up) or EPD Bonus (Right + Right).

The last and most special Trick (Left + Right) should be your shooters trick BUT when you have the right composition it becomes a combination trick with special animation and different buffs.

Weapons

Just like Mario Kart and other kart racers you can get weapons by driving over weapon boxes that give you one in random. There are Handguns, Grenade Launchers, Rocket Launchers, Gatling Guns, etc. 8 in total. The Square Button activates the aiming mechanic and you can even aim behind you by pushing the left stick downwards. While in this mode your driver Ai will do the job while you go for the aim.

At 100% EPD, you can utilize the strong special techniques that change depending on the weapon you’re holding. For example, a thunder that hits everybody or a rocket that attacks the first place.

Drifting

Another major mechanic that does multiple things. With each drift you can charge up to 3 stocks and the higher it is the longer your speed boost will be. Additionally, you also gain about 7% EPD with every stock you reach.

Another important fact is that the speed boost will propel you towards the direction your nose is so it can cut even the steepest corner.

One thing the developer has missed is the fact that you can drift even while you’re within the drift boost and you won’t be able to see the stock building up as the gauge is already in use.

Racetracks and Items

Aside from the Weapon boxes and ramps, there are one or two things worth mentioning that play a big role in your strategy as you’ll be having a choice between these two:

• EPD Rings: These increase your EPD slightly but they come in plenty amount and often with weapon boxes in-between.
• Booster: Get a short speed boost.

The choice between EPD and Speed boost is going to be crucial in aiming for the top.

One last thing worth mentioning is the balloons. They sometimes contain special items like points for the shop or shield regeneration. It’s not recommended to drive into them as they will slow you down and they split into smaller ones when bursting. You can shoot them to clear up your line while they split to the sides and maybe even disrupt your opponents.

The Racetracks

All tracks have 3 variations: A, B, and C. Most of the time A is the simple one, B increases the complexity and C has optional routes. Be it broad or narrow both types of track styles are there. The broad ones are offering some easy drifting while narrow spaces will make it difficult to drift and navigate at full speed, especially at 90° curves.

It’s important to find out where you can drift, how to use ramps, and your EPD gauge to optimize your strategy.

Gameplay Interim conclusion

The tracks and mechanics are working well together to give you a nice challenge… if only the Story Mode would offer difficulty options for people who just like to drive against CPU opponents. Otherwise, you’re left with the VS CPU races where you have to adjust settings every single time. Convenience is a very important part of the experience which is why Arcade Modes are still popular.

There are quite a few Weapons and unique Special Techniques that give you different usage depending on the situation some can even be used both in offense and defense, which is something worth thinking about when it comes to utility.

Overall it’s interesting but there’s a lack of easily accessible and challenging gauntlet mode that rapid fires races at you.

The mini-games are a neat extra and bring some refreshments to the main gameplay. Some might even spend a lot of time on them. While there are only 3 difficulty levels, the reward is rather bountiful when you’re doing well.

Graphics & Sound

Kandagawa Jet Girls runs at 30 FPS and puts the priority on the beautiful environment to strengthen the Kandagawa/Tokyo atmosphere. Whether it’s a good decision or not is a difficult question as many racing games opt for 60 FPS for more responsive controls even if it’s only marginal for some. While the menus are beautiful, it also comes with the trade off of longer load times.

Aside from that, it has very distinct visuals that pop out the Japanese flair with traditional things such as Castles or the typical shrine gates with their red color. Considering that it’s all about an urban river, it does a tremendous job of adding color with things like Sakura Trees, signs, castles in the background, boats on the track, and many other things.

All weapons have moderate effects to not affect the gameplay and there’s a lot of work put into the characters as one can see from the different customization possibilities.

You can expect a lot of variety with a collection of 43 songs with J-pop, rock, etc. and of course some are using traditional Japanese instruments. The VN parts are separate from the race music due to the difference in atmosphere. On the track, you can expect a lot of music that gets your blood pumping and at the team's theme will play automatically to signal the final round. It’s a nice touch just in case you missed the round counter.

The entire Story Mode is fully voiced in Japanese in the usual high quality bringing the characters to life.

Verdict

Kandagawa Jet Girls is an interesting attempt in bringing together Wave Race and Mario Kart by combining Jet Ski with Weapons. It offers a lot of customizations, including modifying the machines that change the whole driving by a lot.

There's not much to find wrong with the gameplay as it's only lacking in Singleplayer content post Story Mode. In this particular case, it’s not a matter of quality but quantity.

While talking about Story Mode, it punches above its weight and helps to establish the characters. Not as elaborate as Senran Kagura but good enough. A good beginning and prepares for hopefully what is yet to come.

Considering the slightly budget price of £39.99 it makes the entry a little bit easier. If you’re looking for a decent combination of Mario Kart and Wave Race but with an actual story, this could tickle your fancy. Senran Kagura fans will have to prepare for a shallower story but the characters are no less fun than their ninja counterparts are.

Wertung

7.0Gut

Kaufempfehlung

65% Kaufempfehlung

65%Angebot abwarten