[h1]TL;DR:[/h1]
A fun little top-down RPG with beautiful pixelated graphics and a nice twist on typical class mechanics that lets you sample (and master) all of them in one play through.
While this is an "adult" title, that's not really the focus of the game. There's a real JRPG here with a decent story and battle mechanics. Nothing too deep on either the story or battle side, but it's a satisfying experience nonetheless.
The game was built using [b]RPG Maker[/b].
[h2]Pros: [/h2]
[list]
[*] Engaging, fun story.
[*] Better copy editing than most games in the "Adult" genre. I only recall two typos during the whole thing.
[*] Satisfying ending with a nice set-up for the sequel.
[*] Turn-based fighter with an interesting costume-based mechanic for swapping classes
[*] About seven hours of game play to do everything, which is perfect for its price-point
[*] 16-bit retro graphics look is very well done and polished. Not over-pixelated in higher-resolutions.
[*] The game auto-saves every time you transition from one area to another.
[*] Adult scenes all have a sense of humor and Diana's varying levels of embarrassment and/or excitement are endearing.
[*] Under US$7.00
[/list]
[h2]Cons:[/h2]
[list]
[*] The battles are on the easy side and the game doesn't have an option to change difficulty. I only got Diana killed three times, and each time it was because I was careless about managing her health.
[*] There is a bug -- and it could be an RPG Maker bug -- where the current screen state freezes, but the game still responds as if it were not! I encountered four of these odd freezes during my first play-through.
[*] If you are looking for a lot of Adult scenes, you will be disappointed. The 16 that are here feel kind of tacked-on and all of them are very short.
[*] The gallery of adult scenes is tied to your game save, so starting a new game will erase the gallery.
[/list]
[h1]What This Game Is and Why Should You Buy It[/h1]
This is a nice little story about Diana, the warrior princess who narrowly escapes an attack on her kingdom and goes in search of The Legendary Weapon. She sails to a far-away land in search of the weapon, but must disguise herself as a peasant so that the evil prince and his demons won't be able to track her.
The peasant costume brings in this game's unique class mechanic. When in town, Diana needs to be disguised, so she has to always change costumes (using conveniently-located wardrobe cabinets) when entering or leaving town. Each costume has different weapons and abilities associated with it. There are a total of four costumes: warrior, peasant, nun and the "hidden" demon. There's also the option to go nude, which reduces your armor, but gives you access to [i]all[/i] of the weapons and abilities of the other costumes.
Battles are initiated by monsters seeing you and running toward you. You can run toward the monsters, but the battle will only trigger when they also see you. So there's no "surprise" mechanic in the battles. Battles are turn-based and you have the option of making a melee attack with your weapon, a special attack that consumes MP (magic points) or taking a defensive stance. You can also attempt to escape a battle using the, ahem, Escape key. The game's tutorial does explain this, but it's worth noting that there is no "Escape" menu item during battles.
Each costume starts you off with one magical attack that will affect a single target. As you build up experience with the costume, you can use it to buy additional special abilities, including AOE (area of effect) attacks and status effects.
Being roughly a seven-hour game, the skill trees aren't deep, but you will find yourself grinding a bit if you want to max out all of the trees for each costume. The demon costume was the most interesting to me because it's all about placing negative status effects on your enemies and taking advantage of all those negative affects by sacrificing your own health to a [i]coup de grace[/i] attack whose strength is based on the number of negative status effects on the target. This was a great finisher move for the final boss.
In terms of map areas, there are two towns -- one small and one fairly large -- a large forest, a large desert, a mine, a snowy forest and the abandoned town where the Legendary Weapon can be found. Most of the areas are broken up into three smaller maps, so there's plenty to explore. A decent amount of treasure chests are placed on the maps and none of them re-spawn. It's possible to collect almost all of the weapons and armor in the game just by opening chests -- disappointing the various town merchants, but, yeah, they are all crooks with over-priced merchandise. So it serves them right.
The game has a nice mix of main quests and side quests with an on-screen quest tracker. The quest tracker let's you know what your current goal is, but it doesn't lead you by the nose. There are no map markers or GPS lines. In fact, there is no map or mini-map at all, but you really don't miss either.
Adult scenes are awarded through various game events, most of which occur in the main town. A normal play-through will find most of them without any extra guidance -- and the game provides hints for scenes you haven't discovered yet. But I did have a problem with triggering one of them. I had bought the bundle for the game, which included the walk-through PDF. So as I got near to the end of the game I did dive into the guide that one time, because it turns out there is a special set of conditions for triggering the gallery scene that I was missing.
The final boss battle was good, but since I had maxed-out all of my costumes, fighting the boss nude (where you get access to all of your costumes' abilities) made pretty quick work of him. I think he was down after only six turns.
[h2]To Sum It Up:[/h2]
it's a good story and it's fun. Nothing too deep, but a good diversion for a few hours and priced appropriately to its length and content. While it's an "adult" title, the emphasis here is on game play and story, not T&A. I had a great time with it and I think [i]you[/i] will, too!
Clothing System with 5 outfits and unique skills to learn for each one;