Worth the money: Recommendation list (1 Viewer)

[stashar]

There are some high quality H-games out there now. For people who are actually into paying for these things, I feel like listing off what I can recommend to the fellow players. These are for the English-version of the games.

All games are worth the money, and are values on a scale from 3 to 5:

5 Stars: Excellent games at low prices.
4 Stars: Excellent games at average prices, or Above-average games at low prices.
3 Stars: Worth the money: Average game at low price, or excellent games at passable prices.

Within a list, I've ordered the games roughly in terms of my preference (taking into account the price).

5 Stars: *****
* $15 Aselia the Eternal (Non-H): Aselia the Eternal
* $20 Re;Lord 1 ~The witch of Herfort and stuffed animals~ :Re;Lord 1 ~The witch of Herfort and stuffed animals~
* $10 Millia Chronicles (part of a 3-game package: ryonage Canned Goods) Ryonage Canned Goods [D-Gate] | DLsite

4 Stars: ****
* $15 Princess Waltz: Princess Waltz
* $15 Echidna Wars Dx ECHIDNA WARS DX [D-Gate] | DLsite
* $45 Evenicle MangaGamer.com - Evenicle (download)
* $40 Senran Kagura Estival Versus (Non-H): SENRAN KAGURA ESTIVAL VERSUS on Steam
* $35 Beat Blades Haruka MangaGamer.com - Beat Blades Haruka (download)
* $20 Lightning Warrior Raidy II Lightning Warrior Raidy II: Temple of Desire

3 Stars: ***
* $40 Eiyu*Senki – The World Conquest: Eiyu*Senki – The World Conquest
* $20 The Spirit Master of Retarnia -Conqueror of the Labyrinth: MangaGamer.com - The Spirit Master of Retarnia -Conqueror of the Labyrinth- (download)
* $40 Senran Kagura Peach Beach Splash (Non-H): SENRAN KAGURA Peach Beach Splash on Steam

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Watchlist:
* Slave's sword: Slave’s Sword Game Page – Kagura Games
* Re;Lord 2 ~The witch of Cologne and black cat~: Sekai Project July Updates! – | Sekai Project
* Beat Angel Escalayer R: mangagamer.org/escalayer/

Notes:

* Only Raidy 2 makes the list. I've played Raidy1 and Raidy3, but I don't believe they deserve a spot on the list. Good art and all, but the gameplay gets very repetitive, very quickly.

* Senran Kagura PBS and Estival Versus are the only games I've played, and thus are the only Senran Kagura games I list here.

 

[stashar]

Aselia the Eternal -- Solid Strategy RPG. The English version comes censored, but there are censor-patches readily available. Unfortunately, the H-scenes are lost to time (the English version is based on the All-ages PS2 Japanese version, which had its H-content removed). The "uncensored patch" removes some towels, blood, and "light / fog" from the images, but there are no English translations to any of the H-scenes.

Despite the loss of H-scenes, Aselia the Eternal is a solid game that appears on the top of my list as #1 buy since it has excellent gameplay, a good storyline, and low price.

* Gameplay 5/5 -- Aselia the Eternal is a graph-based strategy RPG (think more like Risk instead of Chess), where you command 3-man squads to move about the map. But instead of controlling characters one-at-a-time (like Fire Emblem), you build a 3-man team (front, middle, and back) and move these 3-man teams across the battlefield. Each character in your army has their unique stats and skills, but are roughly grouped into Blue Spirits (strong physical offense), Green Spirits (Defenders + Healers), and Red Spirits (powerful spells). The last two classes, Black Spirits and Etrangers, are also available but have unique skills. The overall battle flow is simple, but the team combinations are complex: the simple formula for easy to learn but hard to master.

While all of this sounds quite complicated, the game comes with a well written .pdf detailing all of the advanced strategies you need, as well as a guide through all the "routes" of the game.

With regards to game length... the game itself will take dozens of hours to play through any route of the story. Once you get to the end (roughly level 30), you can New Game + to see other routes. But the most powerful dragons in the world will require a run to New Game++ (above level 60+) before you stand a chance! Still, a single playthrough was quite fulfilling (and was sufficient to satisfy me). I'm not really one to sink hundreds of hours into these things... but the possibility exists for anyone who wants to run through all the routes and beat all the optional bosses.

* Story 4/5 -- Aselia the Eternal is a Isekai, but before the age of modern Isekai. Your standard main character Yuuto gets trapped in the world of Phantasmagoria, forced to lead the (all female) spirits to war. While its an obvious harem setup, the various spirits have a good set of diverse personalities. Some get a bit tropey (ie: the young one who calls you Papa, the stoic one, the maid... etc. etc.) but each harem character does get a good, deep backstory and romance arc. Beyond the harem is an epic fantasy tale: starting at humble roots of a country vs country war, but growing into a far bigger problem by the end of the game.

-1 point for following the tropes, but otherwise, a solid storyline worth playing (and replaying).

* Art 3.5/5 -- Honestly, the girls are mostly too young looking for my tastes... lol. Possibly why I preferred to keep things censored personally. The overall drawing style is not quite "typical anime" (even back in the 00s when the game was originally released), but still, there's a bit of charm to the drawing style. The soft-painted feel does show off curves and armor pretty well. I mean, I think I'm going to give more points to the rendering of cloth / metals as opposed to how the girls look on this one.

Consider the art score to be: 3/5 for the girls themselves, but 4/5 for the rest of the game. I've seen the rips and the H-Content really didn't seem as good as the rest of the art.

It should be noted that everyone has at least one high quality storyline scene. And I mean everybody. There's obviously the three main spirits: Aselia Bluespirit, Esperia Greenspirit, and Oruphaliru Redspirit which make up the three main paths of the game (+a few other paths). But even Nelie Bluespirit gets a scene and some storyline development.

Price / Value -- Aselia the Eternal is not the best game on the list. But its only $15 from JastUSA and on Steam. For a game that offers dozens, maybe a few hundred, hours of solid SRPG + Visual Novel gaming, its certainly worth the low price.