Kandagawa Jet Girls is booba jet racing and it's rather well made. It may be made in the unity engine, but fear not my friends, for somewhat actually justifies its price tag. I'll start off by saying I recommend this game to someone who knows what they are getting into, but much like the precedent set by the Senran Kagura series (which is what brought me here), certain flaws hold it back from being more than a niche booba game.

At first sight upon install and boot up, I have to say this game looks amazing. Everything is very shiny and incandescent, which some might not like, but I dug it. The graphics, lighting, texture, and especially the you-know-whats ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°) look better than before. I truly wish the Senran games looked this great and had these proportions ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°). It ran at 120fps perfectly (although there is no true ultrawide 3440p option, it just stretches the screen, so I played bordered).

Next up is gameplay. It is comprised of two elements, much like booby and booty, you have the vroomy and shooty. You eventually can go pretty fast on the courses here, and it can get pretty difficult if you don't take full advantage of the mechanics of the jet racer - which was also another nice surprise. For someone who knows nothing of jet racing, it felt logical the way you control it. You can take advantage of drifting, lifting the vehicle's nose up or down to go faster or turn better (respectively), and an acceleration that coincides with the trigger of a controller. Being a PS4 game as I understand it, this definitely feels made to be played with one so I would recommend that as well. You also have a boost gauge, shields, and shootable obstacles that can reward you for destroying them. As far as the shooting goes, if you played Senran Kagura Peach Beach Splash, this game makes sense as a successor as most of the weapons are the same for the most part. Using the weapons is pretty simple, and there are "?" boxes around the maps that give you heftier/random weapons which you can directly control. For example, you can choose to fire in front of you or behind you. Shooting behind you will put an AI in control of driving your jet racer so you can aim. The AI most of the time keeps you avoiding obstacles but I noticed that my speed always decreased when I did it. Not just my teammate's AI but the AI all around - the AI is very weak.

This is what I don't get. Babies don't play games like this because of booba - big gamer boys like myself play booba games. And this particular booba racing game appealed to a cultured gamer in his 20's, and that gamer is me. So why does the difficulty feel like it was made for babies? I, no joke, finished EVERY race in 1st place. The only reason I replayed races was to go complete missions that I didn't the first time due to silly reasons (such as being too fast for the AI). This game has a starting boost, and if you time it correctly with the countdown, EVERYTIME you perform this without fail you will speed ahead of the CPUs and stay in front the entire race (unless you get hit by a rocket, or another weapon, and your shield is broken... but you just reverse the cards immediately after). For the free races, there is difficulty options - but I didn't even play those because I had my fill by the time I completed the story. You'll spend maybe 20 hours in the story mode... why can't the story races have a difficulty too. Even the Senran Kagura games had difficulty for the story. While driving the jet racer IS INDEED FUN, you never take advantage of the shooting because the CPUs are never anywhere close to you because you are so far ahead. There are even some mission challenges like "overtake 2 opponents without being passed" and "shoot every team at least once" - you cannot complete these challenges unless you just sit still at the start of the race, wait for the others to get in front you or handicap yourself some other way. This was disappointing, because it is a pretty dang good time, but I would have had substantial amounts of more fun if there was an element of challenge to the game's story mode. It seriously gets lonely when you never seen anyone else in a 5 minute race.

That aside, the story mode can be a bit monotonous, basically written to put you into races with a cycling roster of protagonists. But they are all likable, voice acted, and have cool outfits.

There is online play as well, but according to the leaderboards and steam charts no one really plays this, so don't expect that to be alive.

I spent a little while playing time attack mode, even after getting the achievements, because it's fun racing against "ghosts" of players or yourself. For instance, you can download ghosts of the top 10 players of the leaderboards and race against a carbon-copy of another cultured gamer. It's moments like those where you really see how biffing a drift, hitting a wall, not shooting an obstacle, not having fast enough acceleration, etc. can take a good race split and turn it sour. And then you want to play again to shave some seconds off. But then you don't want to play a dead game so you change your mind.

Character customization is decent, not a ton of outfits to choose from, but at least everything that is there has plenty of detail. Jet racer upgrades can eventually be abused to constantly giving yourself maxed out boosts. Not that it even matters though, because you can complete the main meat of the game without upgrading whatsoever. But there is a limit on how much stuff you can equip your jet racer with, so there is some fine tuning to be done if you are wanting to shave seconds off your splits or customize according to the courses.

Last thing I might add is that I got the deluxe edition for the soundtrack, which is killer - lots of bangers here, so if that suits your fancy, you probably won't be disappointed.

Overall, I am content with my purchase and had a good time. As far as I reckon, this game is somewhat unique with all the ideas it meshes together. It is just seriously too bad the AI/CPU/whatever is not better. I read a lot of the reviews here as well, and most of them touched on that as well. I didn't underestimate them though, I figured, "yeah, this might be easy but surely the end of the story will get pretty rough". No the lack of difficulty surpassed my expectations.

If the developers are still working on this to any extent, PLEASE patch in some sort of difficulty for the story. I don't even care if it is artificial buffs that just make the jet racer stats higher... actually that would be a great idea! Let me choose to have my CPU opponents use their jet racers with the upgrades I gave it and set the CPU AI to galaxy brain mode and give me a tough time. Ryona's in the base game too, but there is no punishment to be found here, y'all let her down... For now, not sure if I would revisit this game though unless that happens.

Kandagawa Jet Girls is booba jet racing and it's rather well made. It may be made in the unity engine, but fear not my friends, for somewhat actually justifies its price tag. I'll start off by saying I recommend this game to someone who knows what they are getting into, but much like the precedent set by the Senran Kagura series (which is what brought me here), certain flaws hold it back from being more than a niche booba game. At first sight upon install and boot up, I have to say this game looks amazing. Everything is very shiny and incandescent, which some might not like, but I dug it. The graphics, lighting, texture, and especially the you-know-whats ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°) look better than before. I truly wish the Senran games looked this great and had these proportions ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°). It ran at 120fps perfectly (although there is no true ultrawide 3440p option, it just stretches the screen, so I played bordered). Next up is gameplay. It is comprised of two elements, much like booby and booty, you have the vroomy and shooty. You eventually can go pretty fast on the courses here, and it can get pretty difficult if you don't take full advantage of the mechanics of the jet racer - which was also another nice surprise. For someone who knows nothing of jet racing, it felt logical the way you control it. You can take advantage of drifting, lifting the vehicle's nose up or down to go faster or turn better (respectively), and an acceleration that coincides with the trigger of a controller. Being a PS4 game as I understand it, this definitely feels made to be played with one so I would recommend that as well. You also have a boost gauge, shields, and shootable obstacles that can reward you for destroying them. As far as the shooting goes, if you played Senran Kagura Peach Beach Splash, this game makes sense as a successor as most of the weapons are the same for the most part. Using the weapons is pretty simple, and there are "?" boxes around the maps that give you heftier/random weapons which you can directly control. For example, you can choose to fire in front of you or behind you. Shooting behind you will put an AI in control of driving your jet racer so you can aim. The AI most of the time keeps you avoiding obstacles but I noticed that my speed always decreased when I did it. Not just my teammate's AI but the AI all around - the AI is very weak. This is what I don't get. Babies don't play games like this because of booba - big gamer boys like myself play booba games. And this particular booba racing game appealed to a cultured gamer in his 20's, and that gamer is me. So why does the difficulty feel like it was made for babies? I, no joke, finished EVERY race in 1st place. The only reason I replayed races was to go complete missions that I didn't the first time due to silly reasons (such as being too fast for the AI). This game has a starting boost, and if you time it correctly with the countdown, EVERYTIME you perform this without fail you will speed ahead of the CPUs and stay in front the entire race (unless you get hit by a rocket, or another weapon, and your shield is broken... but you just reverse the cards immediately after). For the free races, there is difficulty options - but I didn't even play those because I had my fill by the time I completed the story. You'll spend maybe 20 hours in the story mode... why can't the story races have a difficulty too. Even the Senran Kagura games had difficulty for the story. While driving the jet racer IS INDEED FUN, you never take advantage of the shooting because the CPUs are never anywhere close to you because you are so far ahead. There are even some mission challenges like "overtake 2 opponents without being passed" and "shoot every team at least once" - you cannot complete these challenges unless you just sit still at the start of the race, wait for the others to get in front you or handicap yourself some other way. This was disappointing, because it is a pretty dang good time, but I would have had substantial amounts of more fun if there was an element of challenge to the game's story mode. It seriously gets lonely when you never seen anyone else in a 5 minute race. That aside, the story mode can be a bit monotonous, basically written to put you into races with a cycling roster of protagonists. But they are all likable, voice acted, and have cool outfits. There is online play as well, but according to the leaderboards and steam charts no one really plays this, so don't expect that to be alive. I spent a little while playing time attack mode, even after getting the achievements, because it's fun racing against "ghosts" of players or yourself. For instance, you can download ghosts of the top 10 players of the leaderboards and race against a carbon-copy of another cultured gamer. It's moments like those where you really see how biffing a drift, hitting a wall, not shooting an obstacle, not having fast enough acceleration, etc. can take a good race split and turn it sour. And then you want to play again to shave some seconds off. But then you don't want to play a dead game so you change your mind. Character customization is decent, not a ton of outfits to choose from, but at least everything that is there has plenty of detail. Jet racer upgrades can eventually be abused to constantly giving yourself maxed out boosts. Not that it even matters though, because you can complete the main meat of the game without upgrading whatsoever. But there is a limit on how much stuff you can equip your jet racer with, so there is some fine tuning to be done if you are wanting to shave seconds off your splits or customize according to the courses. Last thing I might add is that I got the deluxe edition for the soundtrack, which is killer - lots of bangers here, so if that suits your fancy, you probably won't be disappointed. Overall, I am content with my purchase and had a good time. As far as I reckon, this game is somewhat unique with all the ideas it meshes together. It is just seriously too bad the AI/CPU/whatever is not better. I read a lot of the reviews here as well, and most of them touched on that as well. I didn't underestimate them though, I figured, "yeah, this might be easy but surely the end of the story will get pretty rough". No the lack of difficulty surpassed my expectations. If the developers are still working on this to any extent, PLEASE patch in some sort of difficulty for the story. I don't even care if it is artificial buffs that just make the jet racer stats higher... actually that would be a great idea! Let me choose to have my CPU opponents use their jet racers with the upgrades I gave it and set the CPU AI to galaxy brain mode and give me a tough time. Ryona's in the base game too, but there is no punishment to be found here, y'all let her down... For now, not sure if I would revisit this game though unless that happens.