The old ones are the best, and Pretty Girls Breakers! PLUS uses the old tried and tested formula: the bat and ball/brick-busting game, Arkanoid, Breakout and whatnot. Is this quickfire physics-based game worth playing? And what about the pretty girls in the title? What’s that all about?
We can save a paragraph or two on the story and character origins – there isn’t anything to discuss. The game aims to direct a ball into the blocks above your head and destroy them all. You move on to the next stage when the final block is gone. That’s it, mic drop, curtain call, fin.
Without any hand-holding at the beginning, it isn’t immediately clear how to play. Unlike the basic brick-busting games of old, you play a ‘pretty girl’, armed with a beat saber that smacks the ball sky high. With similar games, you only have to move under the ball to bounce it off. In Pretty Girls Breakers! PLUS, you have to physically press a button to hit the ball and, obviously, direct the ball, so it isn’t repeating the same trajectory.
Pretty Girls Breakers! PLUS Review
The early stages of the game are incredibly easy, but as you progress, enemies are introduced, making it a bit more challenging as you have to above their attacks and hit certain blocks multiple times until they break. Your girl isn’t just using their beat saber, however. Some blocks will unlock power-ups such as slowing down time, multi balls and a blaster that destroys everything above. You must position yourself under these power-ups and keep the ball in play.
Besides avoiding the enemies in Pretty Girls Breakers! PLUS, you must ensure the ball doesn’t touch the ground or the time runs out. The former happens quite frequently, but a decent amount of life points are on offer to make it fair. However, accuracy proves a problem when you have one lost block remaining, and two minutes on the clock can feel like two hours when you can’t direct the ball to your liking. Out of time? Out of lives.
The fundamental gameplay doesn’t change, but there are two different modes. The first is the standard Pretty Battle in which you unlock a few stages per girl, whereas the second mode is Eternal Battle – an endless mode focused on bonus points. A note on scores; you get rated on the number of blocks, the time it took, and how much life you had remaining.
Hello, Pretty
Now, touching upon the Pretty Girls element in this Eastasiasoft game, the totty will fill your screen during play and in the Dressing Room mode. During gameplay, the current girl will show on the left, along with your stats – the time, health, score, etc. On the right is the action, but the screen is split vertically 50/50. The left side of the screen feels like a bit of a waste.
Outside of play, the Dressing Room isn’t there to confuse you: you buy dresses for the girls using the points accumulated during each mode. As I’ve said before, these sorts of things don’t appeal to me, not do the beachball boobs, so I just had a quick look and saw that you could buy clothes and change the scenes. It genuinely isn’t for me, but if you like that sort of thing, there appears to be a lot to unlock. In short though, the main game is more than adequate for your pennies. Not a typo.
Verdict
Let’s round it up then. Pretty Girls Breakers! PLUS is a fun brick-busting game that’s no different than any other unless you’re into anime-style girls to dress up outside of the action. The levels offer a good degree of challenge and enjoyment, but I would have preferred to have the option to make the playing area at least two-thirds of the screen.
