Poker Pretty Girls Battle: Texas Hold’em Review | Not Exactly Strip Poker

A wise man once said, “If you’ve got eggs, you’ve got a meal.” Well, I have a quote of my own: “If you’ve got playing cards, you’ve got a game.” They may look like 52 cards with 4 suits of different types, but the amount of games created with them is staggering! They can include Blackjack, where everyone faces the dealer, the pre-installed Windows game Solitaire, Go Fish where I was disappointed to learn that fish aren’t involved, and so on. With a game so universally known, of course, video games have adapted to the digital medium and the results have been… rather mixed. For every Poker Night at the Inventory, there’s a Sexy Poker on the Wii. And now we have Poker Pretty Girls Battle: Texas Hold’em. The game promises a Texas Hold’em experience with a naughty twist, but does it actually deliver on this promise?

Gameplay

Sadly, there’s no story or even set-up to explain why you’re playing card games with women wearing outfits that leave nothing to the imagination. But hey, that’s not why I’m here; I’m here for the card game… that and the other selling point. Texas Hold’em is practically synonymous with playing cards, so it’s extremely hard to screw it up… and somehow, they screwed it up.

Every match has you play against three other opponents, one of which happens to be a woman who’s rather top-heavy. There are two modes to play: Pretty Mode and Free Play. Pretty Mode acts as the game’s main mode where you take on each girl in a game of Texas Hold’em. Whereas Free Play lets you play against any of the girls you unlocked in a game of Texas Hold’em. Your goal in the game is simple: knock out every other player by winning all their chips in games of Texas Hold’em. I don’t think I need to explain how Texas Hold’em works, but the card game performs how it’s supposed to, so that’s fine and dandy. The problem comes from the other aspects that surround it.

What makes card games so interesting are the mind games that can take place. Is your opponent bluffing you by betting more to try and force you to fold? Do they have any tells that give you a hint at what kind of hand they have? Texas Hold’em is a game for the bold and can make each flop an enthralling experience not just for the participants, but anyone watching it too! That being said, I’ve got to give props to Poker Pretty Girls Battle: Texas Hold’em, because it managed to remove all of that excitement! The game boasts 16 different girls to play against, but no matter who you face, every computer-controlled opponent plays exactly the same. Here’s a basic summary: They Check when they have a sub-par hand, but when the flop happens and they have a great hand, they start betting. They also never fold unless they have to call a bet that’s too high for them. This subpar AI leads to every single game playing out the same way and it quickly becomes extremely boring to play.

What also doesn’t help is that the blinds never increase; they always are 1 chip for Small Blind and 2 chips for Big Blind. This is fine for the start of a game, but when you have over 200 chips to bet, I ended up just mashing the Check button to progress since it was no loss for me. This led to games taking an eternity to finish, which again, made it unbelievably boring. You also can’t speed up the pace of matches by having your opponents make their moves faster, so you’re stuck at the default speed and it makes games last even longer. It only took a couple of games, but I quickly grew tired of playing this game as it ended up becoming repetitive to the point of it becoming tedious.

But what do you get for spending time on the poker table? Believe it or not, this is when it gets worse. Other than being able to play against them in the Free Play mode, your reward for beating each girl is a piece of a larger image. However, once you get all the pieces, you’ll be shocked to realize that the completed picture uses the exact same artwork that is used for each girl’s profile image. All that effort, all of that repetitive busy work for an image that is comprised of re-used art assets. Honestly, it’s unacceptable! Give us different poker tables, different card decks, or even new costumes for each girl as a reward for winning. But nope, none of that is here. And to top it all off, there’s an absurd amount of padding to try and artificially lengthen the game. The further you get into the game, you’ll find yourself having to fight the same girl multiple times to progress, with the final set of four girls making you beat each girl four times to complete the game. After doing the numbers, in order to 100% complete the game, you have to play and win 40 games! For a game this repetitive, that’s far too much. All in all, while the game of Texas Hold’em functions as it should, everything else in Poker Pretty Girls Battle: Texas Hold’em greatly holds it back.

Presentation

Thankfully, the set-dressing surrounding the card game is the best part about it, but that isn’t saying much. Each of the 16 girls has good-looking artwork, even if certain features are more accentuated than others. They also show a range of expressions, though there aren’t many to see. There are only three in the game: Neutral, Happy, and Disappointed, and none of their poses change to highlight this change in mood. It’s like they just changed the face of each girl and for a game that centers around them, it’s quite disappointing. And as I said earlier, each girl’s single pose is used as art for each reward image, which is extremely lazy.

Unfortunately, every other aspect of the presentation is incredibly underwhelming. Games take place on a green gradient background, and there is no way to change it for visual diversity. The character art for each player is crammed into small poker chips, diminishing their impact. It doesn’t help that your opponents other than the girls tend to repeat constantly and there is even one that is just a color swap. Needless to say, but it’s a visually dull experience.

The audio isn’t much better. Each girl has their own unique voice, but the quality of the audio is questionable. It’s not uncommon to hear peaking audio when they speak, not that you’d know what they’re saying. Poker Pretty Girls Battle: Texas Hold’em only has a Japanese dub with no English subtitles, so good luck knowing what they’re saying unless you happen to understand Japanese. The music is fine, but the more you play, the more grading it becomes. When you’re playing a game, the same song plays on a constant loop and when a river ends and you’re given a new hand, the song starts right at the beginning. This ultimately led to me muting the music in the options, which doesn’t exactly put the music in the best light.

But it doesn’t end there! There are also issues regarding the text in the game. It’s a minor issue compared to everything else, but you’ll sometimes come across more numbers being displayed when a player wins a hand. I expect this to be patched out in the future, but right now, it doesn’t do the game any favors.

Verdict

I enjoy playing card games casually with friends, but Poker Pretty Girls Battle: Texas Hold’em fails to capture that same charm. The game is obviously just doing the bare minimum, both in terms of its gameplay and presentation, and it’s very apparent throughout. You’ll have a much more enjoyable time buying an actual deck of cards; that way, you can play with more than one deck, play against people with different strategies, and have more varied locations to play on.

POKER PRETTY GIRLS BATTLE: TEXAS HOLD’EM IS NOT RECOMMENDED

If you enjoy Anime-themed games, perhaps you’d like to take a look at Harem Kingdom?

Many thanks goes to EastAsiaSoft for a Nintendo Switch review code for this title.