Panty Party is a surprisingly dull game. It’s an arena combat game where you play as Yurika, a girl who can transform into a flying pair of panties to fight other flying pairs of panties. She awakens to this power when she runs into Baka Pan, a sentient pair of panties who tells her that she is the Warrior of Love—the only one who can stop the villainous Panzi from brainwashing all humans into believing that panties are their one true love.

With a setting this outrageously dumb, Panty Party could’ve at least been pretty fun by leaning into its ridiculous premise and going all-in on its stupidity. Unfortunately, this is not the case as the story is shockingly grounded; Yurika must fight her way through Panzi’s minions while recruiting other panty allies who can aid her in her quest. Cutscenes are long and bland, and the script is poorly translated from Japanese with inconsistent localization. Why is one character named “Cool Kuma Panty,” but his minions are referred to as “Bear Panties?” The sound mixing on the voice acting can also be atrocious with many of the male characters being so quiet that they’re totally inaudible.

Combat itself is repetitive and completely void of depth. Each playable character (all of which are different pairs of panties) has three skills that don’t deviate far from the formula of basic melee and ranged attacks. A passion meter fills up as you fight, and once it fills up you can use your Passion to enter a superpowered mode for a short time. Some characters gain different moves while in Passion mode, but many use the same attacks as normal, just slightly powered up. Button mashing is the key to victory in Panty Party, and with every battle being two minutes long at most you never need to put in any actual thought to take down all the enemy panties before they can deplete your lives.

Panty Party’s eShop listing has a warning that the game does not feature any hentai content, but I honestly feel like it would be better if it did; at least a hentai game has an obvious audience with a clear purpose. As it is now, this game just isn’t dumb enough or openly degenerate enough to have any real appeal. It’s a dumb story that takes itself too seriously to laugh at but not seriously enough to be engaged in, and the gameplay is too boring to keep from getting old after just a handful of chapters. I cannot imagine who Panty Party’s audience is because it seems to be trying to coast entirely on curiosity born from its bizarre high concept.