Starting a new job is always a bit nerve-wracking - new place, new people, new responsibilities. But what if, one day, you wake to find you've been spirited away to a hell-like world, and given a rather unusual job to do - one you'll have to complete before you're allowed to return to the land of the living? So far, so scary, but what if your job involved reforming potential criminals so that they too can return to life? And what if by "reforming", it turned out you had to gently whack them with whips and elctrostim implements? Well, in recent PS Vita role-playing game Criminal Girls: Invite Only, this is exactly what you're doing. Except the girls you're in charge of haven't actually committed any crimes - not yet anyway - they merely have the potential to, it seems, and that's enough reason for them to 'die' and be put on this reformation program, where it's up to you to help root out their delinquency and turn them into respectable human beings.
Your new boss.
At it's heart, Criminal Girls is a dungeon crawler. The idea here is to explore each of the labyrinth-like floors of the tower, beating bosses, lamping enemies in role-playing game style turn-based battles, solving a few puzzles and snaffling any useful treasure or items you come across along the way, as you get to know the girls a little better. While such 'puzzles' mostly involve walking from one end of the floor to the other, looking for items or pressing switches, the girls' antics usually keep it from seeming too contrived - such as Tomoe, who seems to have more boobs than brains, getting herself repeatedly locked behind doors, or the wild goose chase we went on in order to get the "ill" Yuko to press a switch, bringing her everything from herbs to mud to some water to try and make her feel better.
Of course, this being a role playing game, when you aren't busy battling baddies, you'll have the chance to level up your characters, and make them stronger, netting them a few new moves, stat bonuses, and the like in the process. As your party's made out of a bunch of delinquents, however, you'll need to help them overcome their temptations first, if they're going to get any stronger. How do you do this? By forcing them into cosplay and whipping away their urges of course!
In scenes that would make Mr Gray blush (let's face it, he's pretty vanilla really), in order to level up your girls, you'll need to break out some form or persuasion, whether it's a whip, an electrostim unit, some water torture, or even the old reliable tickling fingers to tickle their bad thoughts away. Administering these motivations is as simple as holding your finger over the designated spots on the touch screen, front and back, to whip/drip/shock away the cartoony 'temptations' that appear across your girl's body. The quicker and more efficiently you hit them, the higher your score will be, and the closer you'll edge to learning a new move, which in turn makes the pink fog slowly disperse to reveal more of your lovely lady. The novelty of 'educating' scantily clad women soon wears off though, as you find yourself doing it over and over to the point where it becomes a perfunctory chore rather than anything exciting/interesting.
Whip the coloured 'temptations' before they disappear for points!
These punishment sessions the girl's begrudgingly accept are the only means for learning new and more powerful moves for battle. Each move you teach them gets added to a list of skills they know, and each of the girls in the foursome you take into battle shouts out one of their commands they'd like to use each turn, seemingly chosen at random from their move pool. It's then up to you, as their prison officer, guide and mentor, to choose the most appropriate of the four for the situation. And as you only get one pick per turn, despite having a party of four girls willing to fight, you need to choose wisely - because some of the enemies' attacks can be pretty devastating come their turn. Each of the girlies has their own strengths and weaknesses too, whether it's Yuko's healing skills, Ren's ability to make the entire team guard to reduce damage or Alice's impressively deadly spells - and knowing where and when to use them for the best is key to winning many of Criminal Girls' battles.
As you get to know the girls better, you'll also unlock 'wishes' for them - essentially little side-quests and missions for you to complete, whether it's tracking down some sweet treats for Yuko, beating a boss with a certain configuration of delinquents in your party or locating some anti-perspirant for a particular sweaty Betty, they'll reward you with various bonuses for the girl in question. In fact, they also give you a good excuse to backtrack and do a bit of level-grinding, by repeatedly battling some weaker enemies - something which you'll likely have to do fairly frequently in Criminal Girls.
Giving the impression the girls have some degree of autonomy in combat may seem like an interesting concept on the surface, but it can cause a few hiccups along the way. For example, what happens if all four of your party's 'desires' don't mesh with your overall strategy? To put it politely, you're screwed. You're left with choosing the best of a bad bunch, as the game ends up offering you a choice of two lots of pickpocketing the bad guys for treasure/items, guarding and an attack-boosting support move, when what you really want is an offensive move to end that enemy before they take you out. Ditto for any healing moves - you'll want to take advantage of them when they come round, rather than waiting until you feel you need them, because the chances are they won't be there. Generally speaking, such unfortunate coincidences don't happen too often, but they always seem to crop up at the worst possible times, such as against that rather difficult boss, or when everyone is about one hit away from death. It's a shame really, because the battle system is generally one of the strongest parts of Criminal Girls, being both accessible and entertaining, even if it is pretty standard turn-based fare.
Most of the time, your choice of moves works fine.
There's also the issue of the censorship - the odds are, if you're buying Criminal Girls, you know what you're getting yourself into. You'll know that the game revolves around spanking a load of nubile young women under the guise of 'motivating' them, and, in it's native Japanese form, it saw the ladies in provocative costumes and positions, making little squeaks, moans and comments whenever a hit connected. European and American versions however are played through the Pink Clouds of Obfuscation, and your poor victim is mute. Like most forms of censorship, the mist actually makes the whole scene seem a lot worse than it really is - but what makes it even weirder is that you have the option in the menu to spend more money to force them to take it quietly - essentially a completely redundant purchase. Of course, this isn't NIS America's fault really, and we do appreciate them bringing over all manner of niche Japanese games, but... well. It just seems silly.
If your wishlist includes a relatively by-the-numbers dungeon crawler laced with scantily clad anime girls and a touch of sadism, then Criminal Girls: Invite Only will likely be your game of forever. For everyone else... it depends how much electrocuting nubile young girls you can take, particularly once the 'lol what' novelty starts to wear off. The interactions between characters and dialogue can be fun, and the dungeon crawling and battle system fare fairly well despite some difficulty spikes, but they still can't really elevate Criminal Girls much above average.
Format Reviewed: PS Vita
