Throbbyさんのレビュー一覧

Not great, but not awful. The music is nice, the art is alright, the voice-acting is not grating. It's a touch game without any detailed animations, which is a bit of a bummer; the girls in this series are fairly nicely drawn, but there's just really not much here to recommend the Magical Jewelry Primula Whatever series. They're short, and not much happens in them, aside from some meters going up and down and the (mostly) still animation changing a couple of times.

I played Citrine first, and was expecting this to be similarly meh. While Spinel is not exactly scintillating awesomeness, it *is* a little more engaging than Primula Citrine was. For one thing, it's nice that you have to work to find the sweet spots in this one; I actually almost lost before I was able to find a reliable series of actions that could keep me ahead of Spinel's meter.

Better than some touch games, but nothing super-special.

Wouldn't have paid full price for it; the thing is like three or four minutes long, tops. It's your standard "select gropey option, move mouse-hand over girl's body" kind of game, but I was a bit disappointed to see that there's not even an animation or indication of what you're doing. You get a tiny icon by the cursor, point it at the girl, and some bars go up. Meh.

Which isn't to say that I thought it would suck, mind you. It just didn't seem like a "gotta-play" for me... until they were offering it just before the big H-Game event thingy. "Why not give it a whirl?" I thought.

Well, I'm glad I did. The game really is a fun little gem. Let's go over it piece by piece.

First off, the areas are all unique, with their own types of weather and enemies. The weather thing is actually pretty interesting; some items or treasure only appear during bad weather, for instance. And there are gameplay effects, too; for instance, during a sandstorm, it's harder to see enemies on the map, and if you're not paying attention, it's pretty easy to wander into them by mistake.

Next, the game has a decent crafting system. On the one hand, it means lots of wandering around gathering materials. Everything refreshes daily, so you wind up doing a lot of circuits of the different areas, picking up wood and herbs and ore. It makes shopping mostly unimportant, since you can often just craft better weapons or the consumables you need--but you will spend a fair bit of time selling things, so you can make enough money to upgrade your boat.

The boat itself is kinda cool. As you upgrade it, you can hire more crew, and access more areas. There are a lot of neat things it can do, once you build it up enough, but there are nice cosmetic changes, too (like when you get an actual bedroom, instead of a cot in the middle of the hold!), and it winds up looking Appropriately Piratey.

Combat is good; at the beginning, it will be pretty easy to get yourself wiped out, if you're not well-equipped and levelled-up. Don't shy away from easy fights; the first boss battle is one you're intended to lose, but after that, it's time to start building your strength. Trust me; just because you can get to some of the side quests does NOT mean you're ready for them!

Finally, the characters are fun. Everybody's a bit of a pervert, of course, and--it's weird to say, but true--sexual assaults are more comedic than traumatic. I mean, your first party member is a half-monkey wild man who wants to hump everything with boobs.

I'm running out of characters, so I'll leave it at that. All in all, it's a surprisingly solid title, with decent H-scenes, very solid mechanics, and an interesting-enough story with colorful and appealing characters. It's longer than most, and well worth the price.

This is a pretty short review, 'cause honestly, there's not much to say. It seems a little chintzy to make you shell out some dollars to get a partial voice-pack, but the price really isn't all that high. The quality of voice-acting is pretty decent, and like the title says, it *is* nice to have this add-on installed. The one caveat I have is that the actress who plays Styria has Shatneresque pauses salted throughout her lines, so if you don't speak any Japanese, it's easy to accidentally cut her off, thinking that she's done talking. Ultimately, I gave it four stars, 'cause it does what it's supposed to, and does it well; in terms of value, it's probably a three-star take-it-or-leave-it.

Studio S makes some pretty good torture games. The art is pretty good, the graphics are older but serviceable, the voice acting is nice, and there are plenty of ways to punish your victim.

Unfortunately, it's almost TOO many ways. And you don't get to pick which ones are available all the time, either. A recurring problem I have with Studio S games is that at some point, the Brutality Meter cranks up to 11, and you're doing things like taking a giant branding iron to somebody's face.

If there were a way to avoid the scat and guro elements these guys put in all of their games, this would be stellar. Unfortunately, you're sort of left with the options they give you; you start off with one set of attacks, and partway through they switch to different options. That's not entirely bad, although it would be nice if it added choices, rather than replacing them. After a while, you apparently decide it's time to use a tentacle attack to dismember the girl.

And that's the bummer. I want a good torture ryona game, with a little brutality, a little sex, a little humiliation, and a skewed power dynamic. Most of the time, though, these games wind up trying to cater to everyone, and then you have to wade through a bunch of stuff you do not want. Studio S is a little better than some other developers in that regard, but go into this game understanding that it assumes you want to utterly destroy your victim. So far, the two endings I've achieved are "Branding Iron to the Face" and "Girl's Mind Breaks and She Flops Around on a Giant Pile of Feces and Eats Them." Not sexy fun, to me. :/

Still, the part BEFORE the end is fun enough that I'm keeping it around. If I could, I'd give it three-and-a-half stars.

This is a winner, in so many ways. It's not crazy-hard, but it's challenging enough to keep your interest; the music and sound design are fantastic, without being distracting; the enemies are varied and visually interesting... Just an all-round good effort, and well worth the money, even at full price.

Things I particularly liked: For a side-scroller, this had a surprising amount of exploration you could do. There were all kinds of secret areas tucked away, with scads of hidden items in all kinds of nooks and crannies. You need to find at least a few of 'em, too, because the enemies are not relentlessly overwhelming, but they can get pretty tough toward the end of the game.

And the art! Again, I gotta point that out. Even aside from the curvaceous heroine (a nice change from stick-and-boob ladies in most H-games indeed, although I admit that Maid's chest is still pretty giganto), the enemies are weird and interesting, and everything just looks like it belongs together; there are no elements that seem out-of-place or are conspicuously uglier than others.

The not-so-great: Well, not much, really. Honestly, the only things I can really quibble about are the gallery (just your run-of-the-mill typical H-game thing, where you select an enemy and run its animation) and how long it takes Maid to stand up after getting knocked down. If those are the only two things you can complain about after playing a game, though, you ain't got much to gripe about!

It's a pretty solid side-scroller, all told. There aren't terribly many enemy models, but the palatte-swapped versions have unique H-animations and attacks, which helps pad out the variety of foes nicely. Controls are a little bit sluggish, some bosses' attacks are ineffective before the projectiles actually fade out (if that makes sense), and it's way too easy to accidentally do the three-part combo and leave yourself open to enemy attacks.

But level design is good, the enemies are challenging and have varied and sneaky attacks, and the animation is pretty smooth. I played through on hard mode, because I'm a sucker for punishment, and the third and fourth bosses (especially that third one) were frustrating--but not impossible.

In the end, I feel like I got my money's worth, and that's a pretty good thing. I don't know that this title has a tremendous amount of replay value, but I'll probably dust it off a time or two down the road.

I'm not going to spend a bunch of time on this review, because you shouldn't spend a bunch of time on this game.
It has four scenes, with a couple of options in each. Art is decent, but the girl's face doesn't really match the sound effects, and there's nothing in here that isn't done better somewhere else.
This game basically checks all the boxes for this sort of torture ryona game--yep, we've got needles, branding, belly punches... that's everything!

Except it's really not, though. There's no real variety, no sense of sadism or fear or anything; what this game does have is not nearly enough.
Trust me, keep searching, and you'll find something better. I do not recommend this work.

And her nipples are grotesquely long in the final scene, too. Like, little-finger long.

This pretty much is exactly what you expect it to be. It's a dog-humping story, with basically zero gameplay but just enough interactivity to let you choose which order to see the story in.

Pros: There's actually some decent variety in the scenes, the heroine is cute, and it's got enough humor and enough sex to make it fun.

Cons: There are only three scenes plus an ending sequence, and it's occasionally ridiculous. Also, every single day is exactly the same, except whatever you do with the doggos.

The translation is serviceable but nothing to write home about.

Bottom line is, if you're really into the concept, you'll probably enjoy Dog Match. It's not a bad deal even at full price.