Evenicle is a game made by Alicesoft, most well known for producing the Rance series of games, which now has ten main titles and a small set of spin-offs like Sengoku Rance. The Rance series stars a main character whose goal is sex with basically every attractive woman he encounters, and who is often willing to engage in questionable actions to get what he wants. Evenicle stars young Asterisk (aka Aster), who also goes on a quest for sex.
Well, sex and marriage, because in Evenicle the world has two rules granted to humans by their goddess. Killing another human is forbidden, and any one person may only have one sexual partner (in fact, sex between single people engages them in marriage). Aster has a problem though, he has promised his two sisters, who raised him, that he’d marry them both! This starts Aster out on a simple quest: to become a Knight. These heroes are granted divine dispensation to have multiple partners.
Warning: minor spoilers ahead.
Evenicle is a hentai-RPG, and the turn-based gameplay element is well polished. A series of skills are available to every character as they level up, allowing you to choose which skills, spells, and passive abilities are available to your party, based on what you equip with your limited points. Enemies have a variety of types and weaknesses, so having diverse abilities in your party is a necessity. Some enemies can be dealt with using regular attacks, but most special types, especially hannies (basically clay statues) require skills to defeat. Leveling up requires visiting a town to finish the process, but you can accumulate many levels before doing so, allowing you to grind. I didn’t find grinding necessary, but I would sometimes end up wandering around exploring, getting the same benefits. If you stick to the story, you might find fights getting tough to the point where you want to grind. There are also bonus bosses in some areas that require more levels or specific skills or strategies to beat, which you could grind to destroy.
Combat in Evenicle uses a resource called BP, with more powerful or wide-hitting abilities using more of it. Any action where you aren’t spending BP allows you to accumulate it, so using your most powerful moves often means attacking regularly for a couple of turns. Since BP stays the same between fights, you can make boss battles a bit punchier by accumulating it in a random encounter right before a boss.
Symbols on the map show events, like bosses, so you’ll never be surprised by major encounters. The actual map art is basic, and repetitive, but works fine to convey the different environments.
Then there’s the hentai element. Evenicle is also a visual novel, and it has got a hefty amount of adult content. For the most part the game is very vanilla. Aster tends towards vanilla interactions with women who aren’t his wives. There are a number of encounters with monsters, including tentacle monsters, sometimes played for laughs, and sometimes very serious. There are also rape scenes, which are clearly vile actions by awful people, and which have serious consequences in Evenicle‘s world.
With the focus on marriage, there is a tracking visual that lets you know how many wives Aster can have, and who they are. I’ll post a late-game image of it at the bottom of the article for the fabulous art, but it’s spoiler-heavy, so avoid it if you want to be surprised.
The art-style of Evenicle, with its bright colors, and focus on facial expressions, makes the H content top notch. I really love the art here, and it makes the simplest scene easy to enjoy. Chibis, joke scenes, and more are also elevated by the art.
Evenicle‘s story starts in a weird place; man goes on quest to get married to his sisters, but the story becomes more familiar RPG fare. It avoids feeling generic through clever use of plot twists, often based on the two rules given to humans by their goddess and the societal implications that those rules cause. This is obvious from the beginning, when Aster has to take his first wife, Ramius, because she’s been poisoned with a lust drug, and if he doesn’t marry her, she’ll end up on a sexual rampage that will turn her into a social exile. This cleverness alone is worth playing the game for someone with my story-focused inclinations, and should be a selling point for anyone looking for a good RPG or visual novel with a solid story.
I’d recommend Evenicle to any fan of visual novels, and to JRPGs fans. Even if you don’t love gameplay based VNs, Evenicle‘s content is worth it. You can find the hardcopy of the game from us at J-List, or a digital copy from our friends at Mangagamer. Seriously, put this near the top of your list. You won’t be sorry.
