(Vita) KanColle Kai import review (2024)

(The Japanese version of the title is “艦これ改”)

Tweaked version of the popular Japanese browser game about warships depicted as anime girls that is difficult to get into and not massively rewarding when you do.

World-building & Story

In Kantai Collection, you play as a war admiral who commands a fleet of ships represented as anime girls – KanColle Kai replicates this setting and adds nothing new to it in terms of plotting.

It’s a cool idea and has been copied numerous times since its release, but the lack of any real narrative here makes this Vita port largely interchangeable from the browser original. You’ll either be invested in the idea of collecting as many ship girls as you can, or there will be nothing here to hook you in.

Presentation & Sound

As a menu-heavy title, a lot of KanColle Kai is nondescript, but its ship battles are pretty entertaining in the way they’re presented.

So you’ll spend the vast majority of time navigating around the various grey menus. These are pretty stylish, with chunky text and a unique circular design and I liked touches like little chibi versions of the girls being shown as repairing your ships or building new ones when you choose the corresponding actions. The actual map menu is pretty boring with only a hexagonal grid, reminiscent of Daisenryaku with just your fleet represented as icons and little else of note.

The graphical highlight is definitely the ship battles. In this, your fleet lines up in the water (which has some pretty nice effects) against your opponents and you’ll see the artwork of the girls and your foes. Things like torpedoes burrow under the water and airstrikes are called in from the skies and there’s fast cuts between everything, after which you’ll get explosions and damage (and clothes ripping, because of course). Still, it’s all flashy and better than the rest of the rather rudimentary aspects of the presentation.

There’s plentiful Japanese voice acting here but the soundtrack isn’t quite varied enough, with the same theme playing on a loop when you’re in the briefing room.

Gameplay & Content

Somewhat of a grand strategy designed on building fleets, exploring a map and annihilating your foes, KanColle Kai is a solid but unremarkable title that’s truly difficult to understand and not necessarily that rewarding when you do.

So despite the game containing a tutorial, I didn’t find this did a great job of explaining things to me – it would say things like “build an airship carrier” without actually telling me how to do this in the menus. And there are a lot of menus in this title. Like Daisenryaku, there is a tonne to get your head around and you’re going to need to invest some serious time to understand what does what, remember where things are hidden and figure out where you need to go to next.

The basics are this: everything here is turn-based and you need to select actions for each of your fleets during a turn before ending it and giving your opponent a go. You have resources, that are replenished by building cargo ships and escorting these to different locations. Resources are used to craft new ships and new weapons, both of which take a set number of turns to complete (think Freedom Wars but not in real time) and you also use resources to resupply your ships that have expended ammunition or taken damage in battle.

You’ll be able to craft various different types of ship, from destroyers to aircraft carriers, which is done by committing certain amounts of resources when building. This is never explained in game and was something I had to look up online – as with many things in KanColle. The same goes for weaponry, that you can swap out depending on the type of ship. You’ll then sort your ships into different fleets (up to 8) who can each take one action each turn, the idea being that you build up a number of different fleets to help explore the map.

Every ship will gain exp as they engage in combat, which is done either through training skirmishes or by going out to explore the waters (you can either move to another grid you’ve explored, or battle different areas you’ve already been). By exploring, you will come across enemy fleets and this is where the combat system begins – you choose different commands from airstrikes to artillery fire to torpedoes with each being more or less effective depending on the type of ship you’re battling.

This plays out largely as RNG simulator – your shots can miss, crit etc but you don’t have any control over it, you simply watch it happen and then have a choice at the end to double down (both sides will take extra damage) to try and finish them off, or retreat to recover (you need to move back to your base in able to repair and damaged ships). It’s surprisingly hands-off and unexciting given the otherwise flashy graphics and I can’t say I was a massive fan of how combat played out.

And that’s effectively KanColle in a nutshell. I understand the attraction comes from trying to get all the ship girls, levelling them up, equipping them with new weaponry and building well-balanced fleets but honestly, after a good chunk of hours with the game I just wasn’t getting hooked into its gameplay loop. Fans of the browser game should definitely be happy and there certainly is a solid gameplay core here, but don’t expect to be blown away.

You’ll also be playing the same scenario over and over, although it will take a good chunk of hours to see it all the way through.

Ease of Understanding

Like Daisenryaku, this is one of only a few Japanese imports that I really wouldn’t recommend unless you’re desperate to play the game as the language barrier can be very difficult to get over.

This PSNProfiles trophy guide helped me out a lot with some of the basics and this Wikia also contains a lot of information, but I also found myself watching this series of YouTube videos just to wrap my head around it. Compared to something like Macross, Tales or World Trigger where I could understand the basics and was just occasionally looking for help, I found myself pretty much constantly having a website tab open to assist with KanColle.

It’s certainly not impossible to play, but it isn’t easy!

Conclusion

KanColle Kai is, I’m sure, a fairly solid recreation of the popular browser game, but it’s rather impenetrable for non-fans and is certainly a difficult import for non-Japanese players. Even when I managed to get through, there’s a serviceable but unspectacular strategy game here and whether you get hooked or not will depend purely on whether you feel the desire to collect all the ship girls. I didn’t, making this a challenging one to recommend.

5.0/10