[Hgames ahoy] Never a better time to join the dark side!

Shinova · Post by **Shinova** » 2008-01-20 06:15am

From the niche of the niche, there is never a better time to get into Japanese ero-games than around this time of the decade, before all that peak oil and global warming feces hits the fan.

Seinarukana - The Spirit of Eternity Sword 2 in a simple statement, rocks. And could steal many of your hours from you.

This is a hentai game with different heroines you can end up with, plus it's an RPG game with an interesting battle system, more of which plus lots of screenshots and scans from bonus material here:

http://blog.seiha.org/?p=248

Basically you work in parties of three, with an attacker, defender, and support role. The attacker character attacks, the defender takes the other party's main attack, and the support utilizes a variety of support abilities from healing, magic attack, magic cancelling, buffs, debuffs, etc. You can switch your characters around each of the three roles per turn, so depending on the situation you may want to put certain character in a certain role and so on, plus you can have up to six parties. Each mission takes place on a world map you maneuver around and fight enemies along the way, with a 3D engine to boot. The actual combat is done in pretty good 2D animation. The battle system has enough quirks and complexities to occupy one throughout the whole game, plus your characters' skills and levels carry over if you finish the game once and into Hard and then Super Hard mode.

The setting and premise of the story is best described in these summaries here:

chapter 0 and 1
Chapter 2

This game is quite epic. It has elements of fantasy and sci-fi, and you and your cast of characters travel from world to world, fighting evil, and trying to find your way back home. Your ordinary high schoolers taken out of the normal world and into the bigger universe.

The art and the music are both very nice as well.

A great game to play, assuming you can stomach some amount of drawn porn. And the Japanese language. And the time to enjoy the game (there are programs to help with the Japanese bit though, and someone's translating the battle system).

Bounty · Post by **Bounty** » 2008-01-20 06:23am

This is quite possibly the saddest thing I've seen this year.

Mobius · Post by **Mobius** » 2008-01-20 08:47am

A great game to play, assuming you can stomach some amount of drawn porn.

Pron as in XXX Rated or just your usual yuri stuff you can find in Clannad, TokiMeki ?

is there a CERO Rating on it?

Redleader34 · Post by **Redleader34** » 2008-01-20 11:17am

Damn, Bounty, I feel happ for you that this is the saddest thing you have ever seen. (At this point, mabye 10% bad but enough about me). I remember reading a revew for these on Something Awful, and still, I wonder.. "Can't these talented guys make a real RPG, without the porn?" Then again, Nanoha started as a spin off from porn, so hopefully this could be spun off into something legit.

Vendetta · Post by **Vendetta** » 2008-01-20 11:55am

See, I think the reason for it is that JRPG players are so conservative and unwilling to embrace new gameplay mechanics that you have to wave porn at them to make them play.

Darth Ruinus · Post by **Darth Ruinus** » 2008-01-20 02:23pm

Oh shit this is a pron game?

Man, these guys really go all out.

Shinova · Post by **Shinova** » 2008-01-20 02:49pm

Mobius wrote:Pron as in XXX Rated or just your usual yuri stuff you can find in Clannad, TokiMeki ?

is there a CERO Rating on it?

There's yuri in Clannad?? Interesting.

There's real sex. Nothing weird like tentacles or anything like that. The vast majority of the game is pron free.

Mobius · Post by **Mobius** » 2008-01-20 03:25pm

Shinova wrote:
Mobius wrote:Pron as in XXX Rated or just your usual yuri stuff you can find in Clannad, TokiMeki ?

is there a CERO Rating on it?
There's yuri in Clannad?? Interesting.

There's real sex. Nothing weird like tentacles or anything like that. The vast majority of the game is pron free.

oops, i mean Kannon and Air...

a new Clannad game is going on 360. Too bad they had to stop Lucky Star for the upcoming Clannad TV show.

Hotfoot · Post by **Hotfoot** » 2008-01-20 04:44pm

You know, looking at that advertising art, you wouldn't expect there to be sex in that game.

Which is funny, because if you look at a lot of art for Western Games, you'd EXPECT sex, but not get anything even close. Case in point, Pox Nora. If you've seen the ads while surfing webcomics like I have, you know what I'm talking about. Scantily clad chicks prancing about like they're about to fuck half of Middle Earth or Coruscant or whatever. Then when you get to the game, there is no sex at all, not even implied sex or even, in many cases, any romance. It's hilarious, because obviously people would like to see sex in a game in some way, shape, or form, but the most "daring" thing we've seen so far is Mass Effect's 30 seconds of barely R-rated skin.

Yeah, I know it's because of the puritanical nature of the US, but seriously, what the hell? Japan's off in the ass-end of crazy (though this looks like a halfway decent compromise), and Europe is only just now starting to make decent titles.

And yeah, seriously, to everyone bashing this, consider this: This game is an RPG that contains sex, but without the sex, it could still be a decent game. Can we say the same for games, like, say, Extreme Beach Volleyball or Stark's favorite game ever, Rumble Roses?

I mean seriously, there is an obvious demand for porn in games, so should it really be so shocking and horrible when game developers do it? If it's tasteful, it can actually ADD to the game (shocking, I know), and porn games can be just like porn movies. It's only really bad when it gets creepy and weird, or when people exclude themselves from meaningful relationships in favor of the fantasy of porn.

So yes, let's let he without a porn collection throw the first stone. It's cool, I'll wait.

Covenant · Post by **Covenant** » 2008-01-20 05:54pm

It should be stated that similarly to porn in game, there's a desire for porn in movies and television shows as well. I'd say there's also a desire for porn in music, but I have no idea what that would mean. While a lot of American stuff likes to avoid naked bouncing breasts in 'serious' shows, it's really common overseas even in commercials, and it's not like sex plays only a small part of most sitcoms, even if it's offscreen (usually). Any movie or television show that involves relationships between characters invariably invovles at least implied sexual moments, so why is it any different for games? Because they're for kids? That's the real thing--they're not. The games industry is going to have to mature along with it's playerbase, or lose them. By adding games with more intellectual themes, you partly reach them, but adults aren't only brainy--they're also still horny. People better get used to porn in games.

Stark · Post by **Stark** » 2008-01-20 06:00pm

I have to agree with Hotfoot: they're not even selling the game on sex (to go by the art posted). It's quite normal JRPG advertising, and not Western-style 'play this car racing game BECAUSE THERE ARE TITTIES ON THE COVER RAR!'.

I mean it's Japanese, so I wouldn't be surprised if the linear plot included the unavoidable rape of the entire female cast, but it's not intrinsically bad for an RPG to have sex in it.

Adrian Laguna · Post by **Adrian Laguna** » 2008-01-20 07:31pm

There's sex in Baldur's Gate II, though you don't see anything, nor would you be able to see anything anyway due to the nature of the game. There's more for male characters than female characters though. Male characters can get it on with a prostitute, a Dark Elf princess, and a female party member. While female characters are limited to fucking a male party member, I think, maybe they don't even get that. They really should have made the Dark Elf princess act the same regardless of whether the character is male or female, seeing as her city was fairly misandrist, you'd expect high incidence of female homosexual sex among the upper classes.

Ar-Adunakhor · Post by **Ar-Adunakhor** » 2008-01-20 07:49pm

While the screenshots look suitably pretty, this game seems like it would sell exclusively on sex to anyone who doesn't speak Japanese. Because, yaknow, it's not translated. What is the appeal to an English speaking audience besides zomg b00bz?

Shinova · Post by **Shinova** » 2008-01-20 08:42pm

Ar-Adunakhor wrote:While the screenshots look suitably pretty, this game seems like it would sell exclusively on sex to anyone who doesn't speak Japanese. Because, yaknow, it's not translated. What is the appeal to an English speaking audience besides zomg b00bz?

I did say you have to be able to stomach some degree of Japanese to really enjoy the game.

The rest is machine-translatable.

EDIT: I was searching around for this and found it; it's the game's opening:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OrXbe57voj8

Too bad I can't find a higher quality version.

Hawkwings · Post by **Hawkwings** » 2008-01-20 10:33pm

I found a trailer, I think, for this game.

http://www.stage6.com/user/yayoi_5/vide ... ty-Sword-2

It's a shame that there aren't any real single player RPGs in english anymore. Looks like I need to wait for a translation of this one.

Shinova · Post by **Shinova** » 2008-01-20 11:00pm

Ah, that's the longer one that shows off some of the in-game action and some of the worlds you visit over the course of the game.

Someone is translating the battle system. Translating the story itself is going to be a monstrous task.

SilverWingedSeraph · Post by **SilverWingedSeraph** » 2008-01-20 11:04pm

Many japanese games unfortunately just include sex so they'll get more sales. Take Tsukihimi and Fate/Stay Night. Two very good Visual Novels, one of which is the best selling of all time. The story is great, the world and the characters are interesting. But they put sex scenes in it, just to get more sales. And what's worse is that they aren't even good.

I just skipped over them completely, because the writing was goddamn atrocious. Most fans of those games seem to feel the same way, from what I've read.

I don't know if it was intentional on the part of the author or not, but the erotic scenes in it are goddamn horrible, in contrast with the story, which is excellent. As to this game... if it were ever translated fully into english, I'd probably check it out. If not, then I have no real interest in it.

Ford Prefect · Post by **Ford Prefect** » 2008-01-20 11:45pm

SilverWingedSeraph wrote:And what's worse is that they aren't even good.

In Tsukihime's case it's the funniest porn to ever be written.