Kantai Collection (KanColle for short), is a browser based game in which players take on the role of Admiral of the Japanese Navy in the fight against the Abyssals. Instead of ships however, which have proven to be entirely innefective, the player uses Kanmusu (shipgirls). These young women are the reincarnated spirits of military vessels in World War II, and they are ready, willing, and able to fight for Japan again.
Overall, it seems like a ridiculous concept, and yet the execution and art allow it to work nearly flawlessly. The girls are designed with personalities and art based loosely on the actual ships they represent, and since ships are always referred to in the feminine, it makes a strange sense that all the ships are girls. The girls are generally uniform by ship class, with smaller ships like destroyers being represented by younger age girls, and larger ships being teens and adults.
Kancolle Kai is the Playstation Vita version of the game. Gameplay mostly consists of sifting through menus. There are menus for organizing your fleet, managing your construction yards, repair docks, quests, and more. When not organizing your kanmusu and their equipment, you navigate your ships on the world map to attempt missions and defend your territory from the Abyssal threat. This is where the game becomes more strategic. While I was (and still am) often tempted to roll out with nothing but battleships and aircraft carriers, doing so puts a large drain on my resources and would be weaker against submarines. On the other hand, a fleet that has nothing but destroyers would be unable to face larger enemy forces. This balance of fleet management also applies to missions, where some require certain ships, and others are just designed in a way to make it difficult for specific ship classes.
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| The world map screen where you manage fleet locations, create convoys, and go on missions. |
Missions are, without a doubt, the most frustrating and enjoyable part of the game. Each mission has a map that consists of a number of encounters with branching paths. At each branch, the game randomly selects where you will go, so a fleet that has destroyed every enemy might not complete the mission because the random compass sent them the wrong way. Though the effect can be frustrating, I do understand why it was included, and it does add some suspense and randomness to missions. The ability to leave a mission in between encounters and try again later is also welcome, as it allows for resources and kanmusu on the verge of sinking (permanent death) to be saved. Overall, there is a feeling of success when accomplishing a mission or destroying a tough enemy, and that's key. I actually feel like I'm accomplishing something as I play. It isn't as satisfying as a game like Dark Souls, but it's still there.
Creating ships also has an aspect of randomness, but I think that makes sense given the over two hundred possible ships available. The player enters a recipe consisting of the four resources in the game (Fuel, Ammo, Steel, and Bauxite), and get's a turn timer to get a new ship. The timer number gives a good indication of the ship type, but not the specific ship. For example, a number might produce heavy cruisers and light aircraft carriers, but it isn't until the ship is finished that you find out which type, and which specific girl, you get.
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| The USS Iowa, the first and only American kanmusu, is a reward for defeating the game on Hard mode. |
The game is only in Japanese, so playing can be difficult without a secondary device to connect to the KanColle wiki to look up quest and mission info. Obviously, this could be circumvented if I could read Japanese, and while I'd love to say I can... I can't. That said, I've had a blast with KanColle Kai, and I plan on playing the new game+ campaign on multiple difficulty levels to unlock various ships. It's not a perfect game by any stretch, but it provides enough that any fan of browser style card games should very much enjoy.
Kancolle Kai is a game perfect for those who don't mind micromanaging, enjoy mobile or browser based card games, and like well done anime art. However, the Japanese only text is sure to be a barrier for those not willing to put in the time to learn how the game works.
Kancolle Kai - 8/10
Note: The KanColle web browser game is only available in Japan, though there is information online about how to access it from outside the country. A trading card based arcade game was released by Sega, and there is a tabletop RPG. An anime (reviewed here) was released There are multiple 4-koma web manga that show the orlder girls teaching the younger girls tactics and how to play the game. There have been numerous manga published as well (none outside Japan), though none have had very lengthy serialized runs. There are also a few light novels based on the game as well. A second season of the anime was confirmed, but no date has been given. A movie is also in the works and set to release in the Fall of 2016.
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