Pretty Girls Breakers! Plus – Review

Not enough waifus in your puzzle games? Bored of placid soundtracks and simplistic graphics? Then Zoo Corporation and EastAsiaSoft’s Pretty Girls franchise has got you covered!

Pretty Girls Breakers! Plus is their second incarnation of the classic brickbreaker games, offering some fun new twists on the gameplay. You control a chibi character who has a lightsaber type baton with which to return your balls to the skies and break the blocks above. The levels start off basic, adding in more difficult to destroy objects and moving levers which redirect your ball, but builds up the mechanics with each level you unlock. By the time you reach the end, there will be moving enemies, unbreakable objects and projectiles to avoid, each match is also timed (counting down) creating a fun and intense game.

There are several level ups which will drop from the blocks randomly as you break them. These are things like multiplying the ball or giving you character power ups, assuming you manage to catch them in time. You have five extra balls or lives if you miss your ball and it can often be in your best interest to take the loss if you’re trying to hit the last few blocks.

You have two game modes “Pretty Battle” and “Eternal Challenge”. Pretty Battle gives you five missions from seven of the titular Pretty Girls. Once you hit a few of the levels, you will unlock the Eternal Challenge mode with three additional waifus for an endless battle of increasing difficulty. You can also challenge yourself by seeing where you place on the world rankings.

The Pretty Girls who join you on these excursions merely dictate the difficulty bracket and types of levels and they’ll appear on the side of the game screen to pass Japanese words of encouragement. Their faces will change depending on how well you’re doing but they’re wildly underutilised and would benefit from some animations to level up the overall design.

The background music is simple yet effective. It switches between a few tracks with upbeat, techno and anime-opening style jingles which lend themselves really well to the hyper focus required for some of the later missions. You’ve also got the really satisfying “Pews” and “Pops” as you whack balls and destroy blocks.

Clearing levels earns you points which you can then spend unlocking cute outfits for your Pretty Girls. Their main, if not only use is to change the cosmetics in the “Dressing Room”, a staple of the Pretty Girls Games. Here you can position the characters and add emotes and stamps to create an image which, while amusing, is largely pointless.

Pretty Girls Breakers! Plus is hardly innovative but it’s cute, colourful and fun. It is also available on Switch and Steam, but I racked up the Platinum Trophy on PS4/PS5 in under an hour and a seasoned hunter will be able to snipe these easy achievements with little trouble.