Another problem with these characters is that, despite being delinquents, they don’t really act like them. The only one who comes close to being one is Ran, and, even then, she never did anything other than mouth off to you. Hell, most Final Fantasy protagonists were bigger delinquents than these characters, yet were never considered to be evil. However, the character I have the biggest problem with is the player character himself. When you think of a prison warden, you tend to think of someone who is harsh and stern, which is someone who would be needed to deal with delinquents. Instead, you have the typical anime harem protagonist who does nothing but win the girls’ trust by kissing their asses. One could argue that it is saying that you can win someone over through kindness, but that is unfortunately untrue.
There are people in the world who will take advantage of kind people for their own gain, and will do so with no remorse; and chances are these are the type of people that will end up in Hell in the first place. It may have actually been an interesting take on the genre if it showed that you can’t always just be nice to people, and that, sometimes, you need to be stern and assertive. I would have also been better if the trials also represented their crimes in the real world and they learned from them. Unfortunately, though, all we get is “the power of love and friendship conquers all.”
The only point in the game where your character comes close to being an assertive figure is during the “motivation” segments. These segments are basically mini games that involve stripping the girls and… well, having your way with various objects such as paddles, electricity or chemicals. Now, I am not going to sit here and go into anything about how this makes the game “misogynistic” or “morally wrong,” and I will just leave that up to you to decide. However, I will say that, in execution, these minigames are not nearly as graphic as they are made out to be. The reason I say this is because you are not shown the effect of these things and there is no dialogue during these sequences (the Japanese version did have dialogue, as I already mentioned, but it was removed in the localized versions). As a result, there is nothing particularly graphic displayed in-game, and it can be easily missed if you don’t look too deeply into it. Also part of the reason for this is because you will often be too distracted by the minigame itself to even examine what is going on.
In terms of presentation, Criminal Girls is rather bland, as well. The dungeons all look like they could have been randomly generated and have nothing to do in them other than find treasure and go to the next floor. The character sprites also look like something out of an early SNES RPG like Final Fantasy IV or Dragon Quest V. The battles also are displayed Dragon Quest-style with the same background in each battle, and the same few enemy sprites are recycled about four times each.
The music, on the other hand, is actually a redeeming factor. Really the only songs I disliked were a few of the dungeon themes, and, even then, it was more so just hearing them too much. The title theme of the game was very catchy, but was sadly underutilized. A majority of the battle themes were good, and most of the cutscene themes probably contributed more to the mood than the actual writing of the game. The voice acting is only in Japanese, if that is a problem for anyone. However, the voice acting was very solid, and I liked their performance, especially whoever voiced Sako.
Criminal Girl’s battle mechanics are actually fairly well balanced and require a decent amount of strategy to them. You need to make good use of every character in the game and all of their abilities, in addition to being stocked up on items. The game also is very convenient in that it allows you to both switch a character out and use an item without it taking up your turn. To counteract this, however, you can only have one character attack per turn. More specifically, you chose between four preset options for what you choose to do that turn, with only one option per character. This creates a problem in that you cannot properly strategize because you have no clue which options the game gives you. Oftentimes you will want to attack multiple enemies with your strongest attacks, but your options will only include single targeting attacks. Hell, a lot of times you won’t be able to attack at all because you are only given healing spells or buffs, while other times it will be the exact opposite. Chances are, the game’s difficulty would have decreased exponentially if it worked like most other turn based rpgs, and it just felt more like I was battling the system itself.
The motivation minigames are also rather annoying. All of them are based around performing a basic motion on the screen in a specific amount of time. These minigames are either overly simplistic to the point that you will never lose, or you have difficulty with them due to the game not registering your touch. Another problem with the minigames is that they are used to gain experience for new skills, yet completing one game at the most efficient level will only give you 80% of the required experience. As a result, the process is unnecessarily extended to just waste more money.
This brings us to yet another aspect of the game that ultimately holds it back; the padding. Criminal Girls is only about 20 hours long from start to finish, yet, if all of the padding was cut, it would likely be half as long. The first example of this is the sidequests. These are nothing more than fetch quests that require you to backtrack to previous levels to either fight a mini-boss (that are often recycled) or to collect an object. During the fourth trial, you are constantly interrupted to backtrack through previous areas to find objects needed to advance the plot. You also end up having to retread the entire third dungeon again after you finished it the first time.
Criminal Girls: Invite Only was a bit of a letdown, to be honest. It felt to me like there were three flaws for every good quality the game had. It is not a bad game, by any means, and I still had some enjoyment with it. Specifically, I enjoyed the battle mechanics despite them being far from the best I have encountered. Overall, Criminal Girls is a game I would not necessarily highly recommend, but, if you do decide to pick it up, there should be enough to get $40 worth of entertainment out of it.
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Review copy supplied by the Publisher
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