Criminal Girls 2: Party Favors sends you back into Hell with a new class of sinners. NIS America published the role-playing game for PlayStation Vita in 2016. Nippon Ichi Software developed it, and the same studio handled publishing in Japan, where the title dropped the subtitle and ran as plain Criminal Girls 2.
The setup is the draw. Seven Delinquents enter the Reformation Program, and one of them is not what she seems. That single lie sits under everything the Hell Spire throws at you.
Seven Delinquents and One Liar
You guide the group through the Hell Spire, and the job is not combat alone. Mistrust spreads through the team, and you have to hold it together long enough to overcome their sins and the bonds of damnation. Each girl carries her own story, and the game wants you to uncover all of them.
The promise is redemption. The method is management: shape seven people into the women they need to be, one sin at a time.
That structure gives Criminal Girls 2 its shape and its problem. A cast this size needs room, and the sequel spreads its attention across all seven. The twist — the one girl who isn’t what she seems — should be the spine of the thing. Instead it reads as a hook laid over a familiar loop.
The Hell Spire and the Reformation Program
The original Criminal Girls arrived in 2010 on PlayStation Portable. Criminal Girls 2 is the direct sequel, and it keeps the bones: a group of Delinquents, a program meant to reform them, a descent into Hell.
Here is how the two stack up on paper.
| Criminal Girls (2010) | Criminal Girls 2: Party Favors (2016) | |
|---|---|---|
| Platform | PlayStation Portable | PlayStation Vita |
| Publisher | — | NIS America |
| Developer | — | Nippon Ichi Software |
| Group size | — | Seven Delinquents |
| Hook | Reformation Program | One girl is not what she seems |
The jump to Vita is the obvious upgrade. The rest is continuity.
What the Seventh Girl Costs
The mistrust mechanic is the most interesting thing here. Uniting a team that doesn’t trust itself is a real idea, and the game knows it. It just doesn’t push hard enough.
The Delinquents’ individual stories are where the writing lands. Seven arcs, seven sins, seven chances to make you care. Some of them do.
The aggregate critical score sits at 6.1 out of 10 across seven outlets. That number is fair. Criminal Girls 2 is a competent sequel that never becomes more than one.
It is not a bad game. It is a game that had one strong idea — the imposter in the group — and treated it as seasoning rather than the meal. The Reformation Program returns, the Hell Spire returns, and the twist that should have changed everything mostly just sits there.
Worth playing if you finished the first one. Worth skipping if you didn’t.
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