This is the 2nd Tamsoft game I've played in a row, and I'm already really heavily considering tripling down on that...

I wish I had more of a positive opinion on this particular entry, this game isn't very good, however Senran Kagura as a series is pretty awesome!
Getting the worst parts out of the way first, this game has possibly the worst stages, and most tedious, uninteresting content of any game I have ever played. It's fucking dire, there are exactly two types of stages and almost all 131 missions (DLC included) feel like copies of each other with some minor numbers and visuals tweaked. Solo bosses are interesting on paper, it takes the idea of the musou genre having some 3D fighter elements and brings that to the forefront, unfortunately it's executed so poorly that every boss can be defeated in the exact same way within seconds. There's not even just 1 way of breaking every boss, this game is balanced like those 2 towers that fell down in 2001 and made an oopsies, but by far the easiest method is through guard-cancelling. Almost every player action can be instantly cancelled out of by guarding: light-attacks, heavy-attacks, dashes, it even works while in the air. Most attacks also have incredibly short wind-up animations, they deal damage within just a couple frames of hitting the button. These combined make the fastest way of dealing damage to just alternate tapping light-attack and guard, it's just button-mashing with slightly more effort, and this works with almost every playable character!

It's not just single targets either, the more traditional musou stages are just as simple to break. Hit 1 enemy with a strong-attack to start an aerial combo, continue until you've built up enough skill points, then spam AoE ninja arts; 90% of characters can do guard-cancels, 100% can do this. Having ways to super quickly clear out groups of enemies isn't inherently an issue, that's a big part of the appeal of all musous, the problem is when that's all there is. Despite what some may tell you, the hoards of enemies in musous are filler, they're fun to rush through, but it's very rare those hordes are the actual focus of any given mission; there's usually a larger objective, and in the cases where there isn't it's usually made up for by cranking enemy numbers as high as possible. There are no varied win-states, it's always to clear every enemy on screen, and enemy numbers usually range within the lower double-digits. Most stages can be cleared within 30 seconds, some within 10.

The most unfortunate part of the terrible mission design is that the characters available to play within those missions are actually great, but they get no opportunity to shine. As most stages can be completed with such simple, universal tricks, already any unique abilities take a backseat when going for maximum efficiency; but playing efficiently isn't always the most fun and "bad" characters can still be fun. The more niche characters, while very fun in a vacuum, are often too difficult to actually get any fun out of without defaulting to the most basic parts of their kit due to every other system working against them. I think a perfect example is Haruka, she has a very versatile moveset, her light-attacks are some of the slowest in the roster, but her strong-attacks and ninja arts all have very different use cases; one hits in a forward line, another in a circular AoE around the player, her arts even apply status effects like stun or freeze on hit. Enemy behavior, especially on higher difficulties, is very aggressive, they will always run directly toward the player and at least 1 opponent will usually be preparing an attack, being hit by said attack will always interrupt the player's combo and most enemies have very short telegraph windows. This combination of high likelihood for slower characters to be interrupted, alongside very consistent enemy positioning makes it much harder for slow characters to setup attack strings, and makes the payoff for those setups much less valuable. In a more traditional musou Haruka, along with a lot of the other similarly bad units would be pretty great, but the extremely basic level designs bury all of their biggest strengths.

Frantic Mode also exists, I hate it and it only exemplifies all of these problems! On paper Frantic is just a glass cannon mode, attack stats are greatly increased while defense is bottomed out; but there's 1 extra change: movesets are greatly simplified. This almost exclusively benefits characters whose main rotations revolve around light-attack chains, and not even all of those because it sometimes shortens those strings as well. On the left is Hikage's normal move list, and the right is her Frantic list; I would consider Hikage to be one of the most neutrally affected characters by Frantic, her playstyle is fairly simple so she's not completely debilitated by the smaller kit, but she also doesn't benefit from it much either. Even being one of the least negatively affected characters, she still loses a massive piece of her kit, and while those few lost strong-attacks aren't the most practically useful, those last 2 light-attack extensions absolutely are. That final light-attack chain finisher is the strongest part of Hikage's kit, it's what differentiates her from other light-attack focused characters, and in Frantic Mode it gets removed and replaced by nothing. Homogeneity among the cast is a minor issue already due to centralizing mechanics such as aerial raves and parries, but in Frantic Mode that becomes a genuine significant problem. Almost all Frantic move lists look exactly the same, or at least very similar to Hikage's; a shortened light-attack string, alongside 2, possibly 3 strong-attacks, turning even the most unorthodox characters into light-attack spam units with varying success. This shouldn't be too big of a deal, yes Frantic Mode is generally a downgrade, but it's also not a forced mechanic, it's entirely optional right? Well yes, it is, you can finish the entire game without ever touching Frantic Mode, but it is heavily encouraged! I don't think I need to describe what a rank is, they're extremely common in video games, but Burst Re:Newal has a bonus rank on top of the traditional highest rank: a purple star. This purple star is associated with Frantic Mode, in order to get the highest possible rank on every stage you need to clear all of them in Frantic. For a casual player, this is irrelevant, but for anyone who wants to squeeze out extra playtime from this otherwise ridiculously short game by going for high ranks, Frantic Mode is a necessity. Even disregarding the purple star, achieving A ranks is much easier in Frantic thanks to the increased damage output; remember earlier how I mentioned some stages could be completed within 10 seconds? That's Frantic Mode. I love min-maxing in games, learning the most effective ways to clear something is one of my favorite ways to play video games, and sometimes that can break a game in a way that takes away some enjoyment, but Frantic Mode is the least fun type of efficient play, it forcibly removes options in exchange for the ability to clear content in seconds with little effort. For a casual player Frantic Mode only adds limitations, and for a dedicated player it's an unsatisfactory win button that becomes mandatory for completion. There's only 1 group of players that truly benefit from Frantic Mode, the boob-enjoyers... I may have neglected to mention 1 tiny aspect of Frantic Mode that may or may not be the entire true point of the mode, it removes most of the player characters clothing!

Ok enough paragraphs about stupid numbers, and mechanics, and "game design", time to talk about the real priorities of this game, s*x! This game is hornier than some nukige I've experienced, way more focus was put into sex-appeal and cute characters than making a 10/10 hack & slash game.
And it kinda rocks!
Don't get me wrong I would absolutely love if it were the greatest musou I'd ever played and had nice characters, but on the priorities scale it's definitely leaning a lot harder toward the latter. It's not just within the character designs or overall presentation either, there are entire mechanics focused around interacting with the girls, and a very in-depth outfit customization system! I mentioned Frantic Mode's outfit stripping earlier, but that's just the tip of the iceberg; there's of course a CG gallery consisting of a lot of lewd images, a diorama mode for posing character models, and an intimacy mode that lets the player touch and even kiss each playable character. Admittedly, I barely touched any of these extra modes beyond what was necessary for a few achievements (as well as getting these example images), I'm just barely outside of the target audience; what I am well within the target audience for however is the outfit customization! I love dolls, especially cute digital dolls that I don't have to spend real money on extra outfits for! I'm a big fan of dress-up games, any game with a lot of character customization is an immediate green flag for me and Senran Kagura is certainly not lacking in that area! 87 outfits (+5 colors of each), 35 hairstles (also with 5 color choices), a load of accessories that can freely be resized, rotated, and placed anywhere on the character's model; there are a significantly higher number of customization options than there are playable stages, and it would likely take an equally greater amount of time to put together an outfit for everyone than to clear all of those stages! Character models do suffer from a slight case of same-face syndrome; I love Yaegashi Nan's character designs, but the 3D models just can't quite carry the same style as 2D illustrations. Luckily there are more than enough options to paint over this little issue and make everyone stand out, so I'd say it covers its weak spots pretty well! It's no wonder Tamsoft later made spinoffs that pretty much entirely focus on this aspect of the series, it's by far the most in-depth part of the game despite being a completely optional piece of side content!

Something I had somehow completely forgotten to mention up until this point, Burst Re:Newal is a remake, and a surprisingly very faithful remake of a 2.5D 3DS beat-em-up. This explains a lot of the more simplistic mission design, what works in that genre won't necessarily work as well in a 3D musou, and missions are directly copied over almost entirely unchanged. It also explains the overly in-depth customization, it's likely a system carried over from a earlier games, and what's seen in Burst Re:Newal is the culmination of several games worth of iteration and outfit additions.
This all puts Burst Re:Newal in a very strange position; it's a remake, and clearly one that tries to be as faithful as possible, but the foundation that remake is placed on top of is a very different game from the original. Most of my complaints come from this conflict in design, a newer battle system modeled closely after traditional musous and 3D arena fighters, but with stage design ripped straight from a 2D beat-em-up. I don't actually think it's that terrible of a game, there's a lot to like here but it has some very strange, glaring flaws that turn the full composition into a bit of a mess. It'll be quite a while before I get around to playing Shinovi/Estival Versus (I think 2 Tamsoft games in a row is enough for now), but the biggest takeaway I've had from this entry is that I'm very excited to play a fully original game designed from the ground up as a 3D musou!