Games Due for a Replay

I don't think we have a thread like this. I'm not thinking of games you just replay often cause you like them, though that's fine to discuss here as well, but games you want to replay because you wonder what you'd think now; maybe you weren't ready for it then, or maybe you're wondering whether you'd still like it.

I'll start with Kenka Bancho: Badass Rumble (PSP), which I've mentioned before.

Kenka Banchou was a series of open-ended, delinquent-themed 3D brawlers that got an entry nearly every year between 2005 and 2015 in Japan minus a 3-year gap between the final two, amounting to 7 games in 11 years. It started with a PS2 title developed by YsK, later replaced by Bullets; like a lot of Japanese series in the PS3/Xbox 360 era, it was then demoted to handheld systems by the third game, with 4 games on the PSP and a final numbered entry (so far) on the 3DS. During those years, publisher Spike became Spike Chunsoft and inherited Chunsoft's Visual Novel specialty, resulting in the shameful Kenka Banchou Otome trilogy on the PS Vita (2016-2019). If you include both, and throw in the random mobile game from 2014, that's 11 games. Out of all those, only one was ever released in America; Kenka Banchou 3, renamed Kenka Banchou: Badass Rumble, in 2009.

The Japanese delinquent fiction genre has never been popular in the West. Rebellious, no-good teenagers with high testosterone punching and kicking each other to prove themselves just isn't appealing to Western otakus who wear cat ears at nerd conventions. Back in the '90s, the first Shonan Bakusozoku OVA (which is really good) reportedly had the lowest sales of any early Animeigo release; the rest of the series wasn't subbed until fans took care of it a couple of years ago. In video games, River City Ransom was a beloved cult hit, but it had to be Americanized to gain popularity. I've been a fan since I first saw Takashi Miike's Crows Zero in 2007 or 8, so when I first read about XSEED releasing this game called Kenka Banchou on Siliconera a couple years later, it was an instant buy for me. The concept sounded right up my alley: every year in Japan, high schools across the country travel to the historic city of Kyoto for a week-long excursion. This is the perfect occasion for a Banchou (a school's "boss", like Kunio and Riki from the Nekketsu series) to "conquer Japan" by beating down all the other Banchous.

It was a much more open-ended game than I expected. In retrospect, it's kind of a modern counterpart to Spike's other flagship series during those years, Way of the Samurai, with less story and much more fighting. Time is always moving forward, the city has multiple areas, and each school has their own schedule. Apart from running into rivals at random, you can also fight regular flunkies, who might drop yen, items or their school's schedule, letting you track down their leader.

You're free to attend your own scheduled school events (which is where most of the main storyline takes place) and stick to hunting your rivals during your free hours, or ignore them entirely and just fight all day long. You can even stay at the hotel through the entire trip, which earns you a special title. There are 47 banchous in the game, and actually meeting and beating all of them on your first playthrough is essentially impossible; your main goal is more so to conquer all the prefectures (beating a Banchou makes you boss of the areas they've conquered, too), but a normal playthrough is really about creating your own experience during that week. You can then use the New Game + option if you want to see more of it. There's a lot of optional story content, like relationships you can build with various girls in your school or a whole Shinsengumi-inspired sidestory.

There's also an honor system revolving around manliness - a manly bancho doesn't use weapons, attack unprovoked (you can stare other delinquents down to provoke them, then successfully insult them to get the first hit), break random property, or attack civilians. If you don't mind being a punk-ass shabazo, it has its advantages; you can find a lot of money and items by smashing stuff, and weapons have obvious uses. Attacking randos will have the police running after you, though.

You learn new moves as you level up, and acquire other banchou's special moves when you beat them; you can also make them your followers, depending on your reputation and their personality.

In the end, though, unlike Way of the Samurai which is all about how events change depending on your choices and actions, this game is mostly about fighting. Bullets is not the developer Acquire is, though, and the fighting is both simpler and less well-executed. The main issue is the slow response; for whatever reason, there's a whole second of delay between pressing the attack button and the initial punch or kick launching. Successive hits in the combo chain up at a normal pace, but that initial lack of responsiveness is just weird. When I played it at the time, that and the lack of direction ruined the game for me. I'm more open to open-ended games now; I also noticed when messing with it recently that you can put points into your Speed stats on leveling up, and I wonder whether having high enough Speed might resolve the issue. I actually find the fighting kind of fun now, regardless. There's a separate mode called Night Out that lets you level grind outside of day time hours, which I never used in my old playthrough; you won't run into story events or other banchous around the city at night, but there are plenty of flunkies, including some really strong ones, apparently. I intend to use it to boost my Speed stat really high early on to test that theory.