Fanservice in a small room.
Action Taimanin (2019): 4 out of 10: In a near-future Tokyo where demons, robots, and human terrorists keep everyone considerably busier than they would like, a task force of possibly superhuman ninja women takes on supernatural threats and international conspiracies. Players assemble allies, improve weapons, and send their chosen heroine into battle wearing outfits that suggest the equipment budget was allocated somewhat unevenly.
The Good
The Good: I am not one hundred percent against gacha games. I have had plenty of fun in the past taking one out for a spin. And anyone who has read enough Cinematic Diversions reviews will hardly require smelling salts upon discovering that I am also not against fan service. Attractive women fighting monsters is a perfectly respectable foundation for a video game. We have built entire franchises on less.
And initially, Action Taimanin is reasonably entertaining. You enter a small arena, dispatch some enemies, collect your rewards, and start improving your character. The combat is easy to understand, and there is satisfaction in watching your weapons and stats improve. Without spending money, I could make small progress and engage with the various upgrade systems. I never felt that my immediate problem was an inability to buy my way past an obstacle.
The women are attractive; the backgrounds are serviceable, and there seems to be a substantial amount of story for anyone inclined to investigate it. For a while, the basic routine worked. Hit things, get things, improve things. It is a dependable formula.
The Bad
The Bad: The gameplay never evolves enough to justify continuing. Your numbers get bigger. Your equipment gets better. The actual experience of fighting enemies remains much the same. With the character I was using, this largely consisted of strafing and button mashing while familiar enemies lined up for another appointment.
You can feel the mobile origins in the limited combat and tiny environments. These are small arenas. Very small arenas. Some of them are a freaking walk-in closet. I have fought demons in spaces where I would hesitate to assemble an office chair.
The larger problem is that we have Onechanbara at home.
Long before I picked up Action Taimanin, there was no shortage of games featuring scantily clad women with high-pitched voices fighting zombies, robots, and demons. You could pick these things up for a fiver or a tenner, enjoy some ridiculous action, and perhaps purchase a costume if your heroine’s existing wardrobe somehow failed to communicate her personality.
Those games also tended to offer combat designed around a console or PC. Nobody is holding Onechanbara up as the next Devil May Cry, and I am certainly not demanding Dark Souls with a bikini allowance. But there is room between demanding technical mastery and wondering whether my participation is strictly necessary.
The fan service does not rescue matters. This is not a hentai game. That is hardly a deal-breaker. I occasionally review and even enjoy those, but explicit content is not a requirement for my entertainment. The problem is that the teasing becomes another attraction competing for attention in a game whose central activity has already worn thin.
There is even a room where you can model your girls. Yes, we have Dead or Alive at home as well. Both the fighting game and the volleyball game.
The Ugly
The Ugly: I played this in 2026, so perhaps years of additions explain the interface. Whatever the history, my God, there is a lot of it.
Rooms. Upgrades. Currencies. More systems leading to other systems. Somewhere in the lower-right corner is a button that lets you play the actual game. You may need to squint.
I am not exaggerating when I say that finding the action became a challenge of its own. The combat is simple enough to operate while distracted, but the surrounding administration appears to require an orientation session and a benefits coordinator.
Then there are the voices.
I cannot tell you whether the story is bad. There appears to be a story, and it appears relatively complicated. Unfortunately, absorbing its finer points required listening to squeaky Japanese dialogue delivered with an enthusiasm that made international diplomacy sound like someone had discovered a spider in the shower.
Yes, I understand this is an anime mainstay. I have encountered an excited cartoon woman before. But everything here seemed to turn up to eleven. Airport attacks and diplomatic incidents arrived accompanied by voices sounding like Quint was interrupting the meeting to talk about the shark.
The camera completes the experience. Put my character and several enemies in someone’s garage, ask everyone to move around, and the camera swings around like a monkey on speed.
A two-car garage, admittedly. But a garage nonetheless.
This did not make the game difficult. I do not recall dying. We are in Fable territory regarding how threatened I felt. Instead, I could barely see my character, continued pressing buttons, and won anyway. I would have appreciated a better view of whatever it was I had apparently accomplished.
In Conclusion
In Conclusion: Action Taimanin managed to wear out my patience despite starting with two things I am perfectly willing to enjoy: gacha progression and shameless fan service. The early combat has some appeal, and you can improve your character without immediately opening your wallet. But improving that character never made playing her sufficiently more interesting.
The upgrade systems are complicated, the fighting is shallow; the voices are exhausting, and the camera needs considerably more square footage. There are other games offering attractive women and monster killing that make the monster killing more fun. I came for sexy demon hunters. I just wish they were mute and had more than one move.