Gal fighters.

There are a lot of fighting games on the market once again. This means there are lots of choices for every type of gamer. It has become more common for companies to attempt to make fighting games more accessible to casual players with things like auto combos and simplified special moves. SNK Heroines is one of those games. It is a two-button fighter featuring all female fighters. That in itself should tell you who this game is aimed at. Unfortunately, nothing about it feels good. The mechanics are confusing, the fighting feels stiff and unresponsive, and with a ton of menus the content feels lackluster.

I like simplified fighting games. There is no escaping age, and I am no longer able to dedicate myself to learning all the ins and outs of a fighting game. So having plenty of single player content and simplified mechanics is now a plus for me. SNK Heroines attempts to do this with a simple two-button system with a dedicated special move button that changes depending on a direction held. This sounds good in theory, but in practice it falls completely flat.

MSRP: $49.99
Platforms: PS4 (reviewed), Switch
Price I’d Pay: $29.99

Combos don’t feel great. Comboing into other moves doesn’t flow well. There is no duck option, so low attacks mean nothing. For some reason SNK also added a block button. This seems really awkward, as it adds another button to press in a series not known for having a dedicated block button. Everything has a button in this game come to think of it. This means fight sticks are awkward to use since they generally follow the standard six button layout, while SNK Heroines employs seven total buttons.

As mentioned there are plenty of modes here. Versus, survival, story mode, online, and more. What makes it feel lacking is that none of them are meaty. Story mode throws a lot of the same cut scenes at players throughout a five fight tier. There are endings for every character, but again they all fall under the same narrative. It doesn’t help that the entire premise comes across as creepy. In fact, a lot of the game just feels uncomfortable. The announcer sounds just plain scary at times. He is not someone I would leave my kid alone with.

There are hundreds of cosmetics and costumes to unlock and again almost all of them are kind of creepy. From cat tails to monkey ears I could dress up my heroine in an array of skimpy outfits covering all the fetishes anyone could ever ask for. Everything runs on coins, which are earned through various modes in the game. There is also an online mode where players can gamble coins on fights, but we’ll get to the online in a minute. There is so much stuff to purchase I am shocked there is not a way to purchase in-game currency. It would take months to unlock enough money to buy it all, and that is some grinding of a game I have very little interest in playing.

There are 14 characters in the game, but the select screen leaves it open for the swath of DLC headed down the pipe. Character models are not great, and the action onscreen is confusing. Life bars mean nothing. The game works on finishers. During the match players can switch back and forth using the tag mechanic beating down their opposition. Eventually a message pops up informing me I could finish my opponent. Then I had to land a finisher to win the match. Sadly I had a hard time telling when my meter was available for this. It is also near impossible to land without stunning the character first.

This method again sounds OK on paper, but in practice it is frustrating. I have matches where I tear up opponents only to lose because I had no meter. It doesn’t matter how well I played, which means I have less interest in getting better. There are also power-ups during every fight. Collecting these allowed my partner to toss them in using the right stick. Again it is a weird mechanic and simply not that fun.

Online is already a ghost town, but also limited. There are rooms to create, quick match and gamble match. That is it. The few games I managed to get in were laggy as all get out. I never had a great match, which might matter if I had the desire to keep playing this game. Final note – I tested the Switch and PS4 versions and playing on Switch is novel, but that lower resolution and framerate make it really showcase how much 60fps is needed for fighting games. After playing on PS4 I could not go back to the Switch version. It was just too slow.

SNK Heroines is a game that attempts to appeal to a very specific audience, but it is not even a good “one of those” games. It mishandles the aspects it is attempting to nail and is just not a lot of fun to play. With titles like Blade Strangers and Fighting Layer EX doing a better job at just about every aspect of the genre, there are better options available for players. I would avoid this one at all costs.

Review copy of game provided by publisher.