Throbbyさんのレビュー一覧

I want to start off by saying that I'm not a huge fan of guro content, but I do like some games that feature it. This one fits the bill--with some caveats.

First, it's devilishly hard (ha, ha). It's not impossible, and you can beat the game without using Invulnerability Mode, but it *will* take you a number of tries to beat it. Fortunately, the gameplay is solid enough that it'll draw you back in, trying to earn a perfect score for every area.

Second, the gallery mode kinda sucks. It's not horrible, but they pad out the animations by including, for instance, every possible costume you could be wearing while you drown. That's not awful in itself, but the interface is clunky; you have to move up and select the animation you want to view, and then move down to the start option, then back up again to view the next one, and so on. Again, not horribly outrageous on its own, but when you couple the short duration of some animations with the numerous button-presses needed to get through each section, it's annoying.

The art isn't too bad, although I wish there were a little more variety; most animations are either some kind of saw chopping you into giblets, or a brief sex loop, or some kind of melting or burning. Definitely more on the guro side than porn or even ryona, so make sure you're all-in on dismemberment before you buy!

If the gallery were better and there were more sex, this would be a four-star game. As it is, I gotta give it a three: worth it if you're particularly into what the game has to offer, but give it a pass if you're even a bit squeamish.

I first played Xenotake years ago, when it was originally released. It's held up pretty well through time, with good animations and decent gameplay, although I will admit it's more of an old favorite than a holds-its-own-today game.

The scenes are great, the gallery is well-implemented, and the story is tongue-in-cheek good fun; I almost wish there were more games set in this universe, so you could explore it more.

My only complaint is that the game is too easy; there aren't enough battles where you're attacked from both sides, and you wind up with a ridiculous amount of extra armor, making you effectively invulnerable. If there were a genuine hard mode, this would be a five-star game, for me.

Survive! is fun enough, big enough, and cheap enough to be engaging--as long as you enjoy what it has to offer. The premise is straightforward: There was a zombie-apocalypse-type calamity, and you're one of the survivors. The "Hunters," a group of bandit baddies, is moving into your area, and your team needs to gather resources and drive them out. You have 45 days to defeat them by completing a dozen missions, with four turns per day. You control up to four women, to whom you assign the tasks and jobs you need to do, managing their needs to keep them ready for action.

Good stuff: There are a fair variety events that can happen while exploring, and they can play out differently depending on who is involved. There are some good inter-character interactions--assigning several person to watching TV is a good example--and each one of them has a distinct personality and preferences. The game rewards critical thinking when figuring out what to bring on a mission, and it's well paced.

Bad stuff: The interface is not intuitive, sometimes. The game originally only had three characters, so when you try to look at everyone's inventory, the fourth woman doesn't show up. You have no idea what some items are when you first find them, because the icons aren't very descriptive. Some missions are trial-and-error, since using the wrong gear means failure, but your characters usually get an idea what to bring next time around. Everything's random, so it can take a long time to find certain items or unlock specific activities. Also, take notes or a screenshot when you find new areas or fail a mission; otherwise, you can have a hard time figuring out which gear to bring.

The H-stuff: On the plus-side, the English is passable, so you're never wondering what's going on. Which is good, 'cause all the H-events are text-only, with an unlocked still animation. The art quality is high, but there's no way to see the text and the picture at the same time, and it's clunky when you try to change from one picture to another. You can unlock pictures through events or by purchasing them with points earned by playing a minigame--which sucks SO bad. Just move up and down, firing continuously, and you'll be fine. But it's a horrible grinding slog to do it.

All in all, it's so cheap that if it seems vaguely appealing, you should go for it. If you're looking for polish and animation, though, give this a pass.

In a perfect world, these kinds of games would have tons and tons of dialogue options and meaningful choices, that would allow you to really feel like you're interacting with the girls, role-playing your character, and steering the story in a significant way.

This is not a perfect world, unfortunately... So Fantasy Tavern Sextet is close to as good as it gets, for now. There's not enough interaction or story to really effectively flesh out the heroines, but the writers do a pretty good job of making you feel like you know the girls in a short time. They're both attractive, have appealing (if somewhat underdeveloped) personalities, and the scenario works well enough to hold everything together.

Better still, the translation is impeccable, the scenes and dialogue are well-written, and the drawings are pretty. There are a couple of places where it feels like events aren't fully illustrated (an early encounter with a slime is a prime example!), but overall, the game works as a package. The game also does an admirable job of managing the biggest weakness of most VNs: namely, the fact that most of the story is written ambiguously enough that no matter what you've chosen during branch moments, they didn't have to write parallel exposition and dialogue, but could rather use the same stuff regardless of your choices. Throughout almost the entire game, they did an excellent job making it seem like the story was taking my input into account.

I only have two complaints, really. First, Lupine doesn't get as much romantic-development time as Daisy does, which makes her stuff seem a little forced. Second, that whole "ambiguous writing" thing falls apart completely, at the end. The character is like, "I guess I went with the flow and had relations with both girls," and I'm like, "Um, that's totally not how *I* remember it! You got naked with one, and the other just ambushed you with a quick peck. These are not equivalent!"

Alas. I really hoped that I could pick an ending, but in the end, it funneled me into the One True End. That was genuinely a bummer, but I still really enjoyed this one.

I think the best way to sum up this game is, "I wrote a review for it just after I finished playing, but there was a website hiccup and it didn't post. A day later, I'm trying to write a new one, but I'm having a hard time remembering enough details to really flesh things out, and I definitely don't want to play through again to refresh my memory!"

It's not that it was *bad.* The English is actually pretty serviceable, although there are a few moments where the translation is head-scratchingly opaque. The gameplay itself is fine, with level-ups and new equipment available at a good pace; you should have just enough money to buy all the best gear by the end, although you likely won't use most of your special abilities. And the H-scenes are alright, with good dialogue and nice set-ups--although every one after the first comes with a game-over screen that is a little over-the-top. I laughed out loud at a couple of them. :P In the end, although the scenes are well-written and nicely illustrated, there just isn't quite enough opportunity to really enjoy tormenting the heroine with them.

If you really, really like time-stop games, you could do worse than buying this one. But if you want a good RPG with an interesting story and more than 90 to 120 minutes of gameplay, you're better off spending your money elsewhere.

Unfortunately, I don't have much good to say about this title. The mind-control scenes are not bad, honestly, but they lack variety and flavor. Part of the problem is that the writer didn't give himself enough room to ramp up the corruption; the other killer is that the story almost seems like you can influence events by your actions, but ultimately, you're just stuck on rails, with no way to avoid the H-scenes and brainwashing, or achieve a good end.

The gameplay is essentially nonexistant. There is literally no good reason to have any fights in the game; there's no experience, no equipment, no levelling up, and no defeat scenes. The only function wandering around and fighting has is to pad out the time it takes you to finish the game; if you really feel compelled to try this title, just run from everything. It's less annoying, that way.

The art isn't bad, but it's definitely not good enough to elevate this to worthwhile. The translation is passable--and there's only one use of "meat stick," thank the gods!--but there's just not enough story or development to be interesting. There are glimmers of good writing, and the maker sets up some good scenes, but this feels like a quick hack-job done so he can get paid. I spent 605 yen on it, and I think I slightly overpaid.

Gameplay is pretty simple. There is a room filled with sex machines, and Hitomi is there to test them! You take the role of the Experiment Director, and choose which device Hitomi is going to try out. She climbs aboard, and a yellow bar fills over time. When it's full, you earn a number of coins, which varies by machine. You can increase or decrease the speed, or hit the "finish" button, which plays a little climax animation.
At first, most of the machines are unavailable; you purchase them with the coins, eventually opening up ten devices to play with. It's all pixel art, but the animations are pretty good, and there's some nice variety. It's not a long experience, and there's basically zero game-play, but it does the job.
Also, there is a button which takes you to the "Overgrown Laboratory," which has a signpost stuck in the ground saying "Coming Soon!" I would love to have another lab to play with--and that would likely raise my rating to four stars--but at this point, I doubt the author is gonna release the expansion.

The title says it all. There are some pretty good ideas in this title, but the execution falls a little short.

The story is a pretty standard one--bad guy invades the world, and you gotta stop him--inverted so that you're the prince of a demon kingdom, invaded by humans. The Boss Baddie has 15 lieutenants, who are magical girls brought over to help him conquer Monsterworld, and the game follows our hero, Prince Evil, around as he defeats these witches, rapes them, and then mind-controls them with his semen.

The good stuff: The makers use a lot of different music, so things don't get repetitive. The witches actually have a nice variety of abilities, although there is some duplication, since it's pretty damn hard to give 15 people totally independent CRPG skill-sets. Some of the special talents are pretty cool; one girl actually has a chance to learn skills when enemies use them. It's got good pacing, in terms of making you ramp up in power. And... uhhh... Well, the translation is pretty serviceable, despite some instances where equipment is terribly named (e.g. "Miss Lil Bow" instead of "Mithril Bow") or places where it's just laughable ("You will have to accept my big penis for compensation! With your vagina!").

The bad stuff: One game-breaking problem where a missing picture crashes the game during a boss fight. Not enough chances to use the girls; you'll probably wind up using the same team for most of the game, and there are too few places where specific characters play a special role. Drops the ball partway through, where dialogue no longer updates to reflect world changes. Too much equipment to buy; the equipment system is good, but 16 characters is a lot of gear to manage! And it's not clear whether you're mind-controlling them, or freeing them from MC, or a little of both. The story is thin, and the ending is mediocre.

The H-Stuff: Art is good, scenes are short, and every one is, "Oh noooooo! I'm cummmming!" Nothing special here.

Final word: Everything about this game smacks of it being an overambitious project that was ultimately a little too much for the makers to tackle. While there are some really sound ideas in there, in the end, it was just too big of an undertaking. If they'd had there be six witches, or eight, it might have been do-able, but fifteen boss fights leaves precious little room for developing the story or using each character to her full potential.