A new challenger approaches in the fighting genre. SNK Heroines: Tag Team Frenzy is an (overly) sexy fighting game where the heroines fight to the death or that’s supposed to be the idea.

Review: SNK Heroines Tag Team Frenzy

Title: SNK Heroines: Tag Team Fenzy
Platform: PlayStation 4, Nintendo Switch [Reviewed]
Genre: Fighting
Developer: SNK, Abstraction Games
Publisher: SNK, NIS America
Players: 1-4
Release Date: September 7, 2018
Price: $49.99 (USD)

A Heroine Wakes In a Mysterious Place

SNK Heroines begins with players choosing two characters from any of the 20 ladies available on the roster. The first being the player controlled character, and the second their A.I. tag partner. Once that’s done, those characters appear inside of mysterious mansion wearing sexy costumes. It does not take long at all for the heroines to rush into battle either. Depending on the player’s character, different cutscenes and opponents appear in the initial chapter. After facing multiple adversaries, it is revealed that the heroines are stuck in a television show meant to show off the girls fighting so that the evil villains can harvest their fighting energy.

The game’s biggest focus is obviously the girls. All the heroines on the roster are dressed to show off their feminine features. Weirdly though, most of their portraits are drawn to make them look like they’re out of breath from doing something other than fighting. While the art portraits do have a decent look, the 3D design falters greatly. They just don’t match at all to how the girls look. Making you feel like the fanservice focus on their feminine features is overdone.

Probably the worst part of this, are the sounds of the girls fighting. Every move the girls make is accompanied by grunts or yells. But these grunts and shouts sound more like moans of pleasure, and not of fighting. Making the game awkward and off-putting.

Tag Team Partners or just Back-up?

At first glance, you’d think that between the two girls, players could work to achieve powerful combos. However, all players are actually doing is switching between two characters. Instead of creating powerful combos, it’s more like just a reason to have four girls fighting at once. The characters use the same kick and punch animations. Making fights feel repetitive very quickly.

So, really the second character is merely a backup. When the primary one gets knocked out, the second girl takes her place in the fight. The combos for the girls feel the same and while their “ultimate” moves do differ in looks, it still feels the same for every girl. Players do need to build up stamina first before unleashing their finishing move. Switching between the two characters does allow for a bit of stamina restoration, but you don’t really have to unless absolutely necessary because the A.I. hardly ever switches out at all.

Some Issues and Online Play

The stamina bar in the game is about confusing. It regenerates after a couple of hits, but for some reason, it feels like the opponent’s bar fills much faster than your own. The special ability bar only really works when totally full, unlike other fighting games where you have more flexibility in when you want to deliver special attacks. Plus, once players use their special ability or miss, the ultimate move becomes unavailable until the next round.

The controls for the girls also felt stiff and almost impossible to use. The arcade and online modes do offer a small amount of potential for some fun multiplayer time wasting with a competitive feel. There are also plenty of unlockable costumes giving players at least some kind of goal for winning fights.

Pros:

Plenty of costumes to try and unlock.

Cons:

Even being a fan service type game, it still overexaggerates too much.

Combos and movesets are repetitive, really nothing unique about them.

The story is bad.

Final Thoughts

Overall Score: 4.0 Out of 10 SNK Heroines fails to impress. The game’s heavy focus on character appearance and fanservice simply mask the game’s problems. The movesets and combos are repetitive and offering no real unique abilities for the girls, with tag team partners serving more as backup than an actual tag partner. Unless you are a huge SNK fan that loves these characters I’d say go try out other fighting games available instead.

This game was reviewed using a digital code provided by NIS America