Criminal Girls X Has You Wielding Guns On Motorbikes; No Punishment Sessions

Mikage LLC. president Ryoei Mikage, writer Sou Yoda, and character designer Kei Mochizuki recently held an interview with Inside Games, where they talked about how the game came to be, the fact that the series’ Punishment sessions aren’t returning, and more.

Here are the highlights:

• • Sou Yoda was so enthusiastic about a new Criminal Girls game, especially because of their history with the series and the premise of a mobile game with “a story with an ending”, that they asked to let them do it for free. Ryoei Mikage ended up bringing them onboard as a project partner as Yoda was quite stubborn.

• • When they considered what should be done for a third Criminal Girls game, Mikage states that they thought it should go back to its roots and be about ‘criminals’ in every sense of the word, like the first game which was surprisingly serious. Yoda was asked to write a story as he would for a console game.

• • Regarding VR and its implementation, Mikage states that VR doesn’t change how battles play out, but rather just changes the perspective you see things. Originally there were no plans for VR; but after the VR boom last year, Mikage deemed that the timing was right, and after checking with the team to see if it was doable within the development schedule, gave the green light.

• • Mikage was the one who requested Yoda to write a story about ‘pure love’ using Criminal Girls, as after his experiences in the past few years, he understood deeply that humans need love. So he told Yoda that he wanted to make a game that would make people understand this feeling, and bring it back into their lives.

• • The structure of Criminal Girls X is similar to the first game, where the history of the criminal girls will be revealed bit by bit. Because the theme of the game is ‘love’ and not ‘infatuation’, the heroines were made a bit older, to around 20-26 years old.

• • Criminal Girls X will not have Punishment Sessions. Here’s Mikage’s statement on why:

Mikage: “As people may know already, the state of affairs regarding ratings is different from how it was before, so the series’ Punishment system is sadly not possible in this day and age. Aren’t they being too harsh on video games only? For anime and movies, it’s pretty loose… Somebody help mend this situation.

That said, we can’t really do anything arguing against a black box, so like I mentioned earlier, we took another look at what’s most important in the series, and this time with the theme of ‘pure love’ we came up with a new system to replace the Punishment system.

I want to show everyone what it is right now and get everyone to understand, but if I did so we’d be the ones that’ll get punished, so I can’t say what it is right now. Sorry, I’m being told to wait until it’s more perfected and ready. I can only say this – “What would you want your beloved to do for you?””

Soeda, Mochizuki (drawing), Mikage, and Nabata (in charge of promotion)

While that’s most of the important bits from the interview, Mikage has revealed more about how battles will play out via Twitter: All the girls wield guns like shotguns and grenade launchers as weapons, and the player chooses their equipment and they use the firearms while riding motorbikes. Up to 3-4 girls at once can do combos in battle, but at first it’ll be hard for them to do so.

Criminal Girls X is in development for iOS, Android, and PC in Japan, and may possibly release on PlayStation 4 in the West. More info is set to be released on April 26, 2019. Read the prologue of the story in our previous report here.