Welcome back, fellow perverts!
Firstly, I want to thank you guys for all the nice comments on my recent article about Sister Travel. I read them all and extracted the main points of your feedback:
- What’s the content of the hentai scenes?
- Is the gameplay worth it?
- What is missing in the all-ages version?
- Is a “virgin run” possible?
- More hints and good to know info before you start, please!
- Goblins are not husbando material.
I’m delighted that you, my dear readers, and I are on the same page – except for the goblin-part of course. The other points are exactly what I care about too, so I’m going to continue focussing on them when I write my next reviews. Like, right now.
Luna, once a member of the Empire’s aristocracy and knighthood, now lives in the Free City Cellway as a mercenary. She quite enjoys her life which consists of doing quests with her friends Euro and Carme for the local lord Demos and drinking beer afterwards. At least it’s better than serving the Empire because Luna doesn’t like the direction her homeland takes – especially regarding slavery. Even though Cellway is allied with the empire, at least she doesn’t have to deal with the unfair treatment of civilians or other injustices here.
At least until one day, when Luna decided to take on a quest alone which ends with her being branded as a slave and sent to a slave training facility.
Luckily, she can escape but branded a slave means that she can’t go back to Cellway, the Free City, nor to her homeland, the Empire. She has no choice but to join the resistance, a group led by the former slave Leon, who seems to be more than he lets on and help them to fight the Empire.
What will become of her? Can she help the resistance bringing the Empire down or will she succumb to her fate as a sex slave instead?
Slave’s Sword is an epic story told in two parts, today I will talk about the first game.
Slave’s Sword 1 starts like any standard JRPG. You control Luna and her two friends who were just finishing a quest for killing orcs.
The game takes its time (there is no rush since there is an entire second game to tell the rest of the story) and that makes for a pretty immersive experience, especially compared to other hentai games.
We can witness Luna bantering with her friends, drinking beer, getting to know the town and its residents (which we won’t see for the rest of the game), and drinking more beer until we accept the fatal quest that will change Luna’s life for good.
This mission will not only prove to be pretty difficult (and losing is actually an option if you don’t mind the inevitable rape scene afterwards), but it also includes stealth segments.
I really have to applaud the developers for starting the game in this way. Personally, I dislike games that begin by telling you “this is your base” and “here you can get your quests.” Even though Slave’s Sword will eventually become such a “quest-based” RPG where you spend most of the time doing generic quests, earning money and buying new equipment so you can do even harder quests, Luna’s fated journey seems to be more than just one quest after the other. The player was there from the beginning, he witnessed her downfall and saw how she struggled to get up again. So when she rises, it feels meaningful and is satisfying, even if it’s technically just grinding levels and farming materials to craft better equipment.
…but hey, that’s what JRPGs are all about, aren’t they?
I don’t want to spoil anymore, so for the sake of discussing the meat of the game, let’s just say Luna ends up in the town of Serra, from where she will operate for now.
Luna can choose from four different quest types, each having three difficulty levels. Even though she could choose whichever quest she wants to do, the difficulty levels effectively set the order in which you will do each mission. You’re probably going to complete all three difficulty levels of one mission type before you go to the next.
However, all quests are optional and essentially just filler material between the story missions that will move the story forward. If you’re only interested in the story, you can probably just choose the easiest difficulty for the game, skip most of the filler quests and instead focus solely on the story missions.
Speaking of the game difficulty (different from quest difficulty), there are five levels you can choose from: Easy, Normal, Hard, Very Hard and Maniac.
Usually, I like the possibility of a higher difficulty, but this time, it doesn’t really work. Normal has a pretty good balance, and all the quests and their specific difficulty settings are based on this mode. I played the entire game on Hard, and it was … pretty hard. Very Hard and Maniac is nearly impossible, if not actually impossible during the endgame because Luna’s level limit is pretty low and even with the best possible equipment, on higher difficulty settings the final boss will be more a matter of luck than of skill.
Contrary to the beginning of the game, during the main game, Luna will have to fight all her battles alone – even though story-wise she often has a companion on her side which I think is a missed gameplay opportunity. Having only one action per turn against a group of enemies drastically reduces the strategic possibilities the player has, so I can’t really recommend choosing a higher difficulty than Hard – it will probably just end in frustration.
That’s a shame because the rest of the gameplay is well-designed. For example, the player can choose whether he wants to buy new equipment (which is very expensive) or upgrade his old stuff (which is cheap but needs iron, a rare material which must be farmed and might be better used on more costly late-game equipment).
But like I already mentioned, even the best equipment won’t help you on a higher difficulty setting. The only thing you can do here is to … gamble.
Yes, you can spend all your hard earned money on gacha machines which will give you gacha cards. You can equip these cards, and every card has a different ability. Some give you exclusive magic spells, others give Luna the ability to counterattack or even act twice in one turn. Which card you get is entirely random – obviously, rarer cards provide much better skills. But getting those cards will take a while – and use up a lot of money.
But how can Luna get all that money? How can a slave like her possibly earn so much … oh, right.
Despite what you might think, Luna’s potential fall into depravity is entirely up to the player. If you never visit the town at night, you’ll never see any prostitution events at all. (Game Over Rape, of course, is a different matter.) So even though she is branded as a slave, you can avoid a future as a prostitute.
However, if you chose to use Luna’s female privilege instead of earning your money like a pure adventurer, the progression you’ll witness is actually pretty nice. Luna starts by looking around the town, finding men in dark alleys or taking job offers in the local brothel. They’ll pay pretty good, so you might be tempted to just do it once at the beginning to buy that new shiny piece of equipment you so desperately need… or to satisfy your gacha addiction.
Luna has several sex stats that will change depending on the number of hentai scenes she’s part of. If her shame goes down, she’ll even be willing to walk around in town naked. If her skill as a prostitute goes up, Luna becomes lewder, tempting strangers just to satisfy her carnal desires instead of her empty wallet. However, this results in her earning actually less money the better she becomes at it.
You might have started to prostitute yourself at the beginning of the game just for the money, but in the later parts, when the amount you earn is neglectable compared to the enormous prices of endgame equipment, you’ll only do it for it the sex…
This goes against what you’d expect, but it makes for a great roleplaying experience.
You can play Luna as an innocent angel who feels forced to sell her body to complete her mission, but throughout the story, she starts to enjoy it and eventually does it willingly.
Luckily, not every hentai scene is consensual. There is a Game Over Rape scene for every enemy – normal monsters or boss monsters. However, the art in Slave’s Sword is pretty light – you won’t see disturbing Game Over scenes like in Kunoichi Botan.
If you lose against a normal monster, you’ll even get the choice whether you want to see the Game Over scene (which ends in a Game Over) or want to continue fighting with 1HP left.
This… actually makes you invincible against normal monsters, huh.
When fighting against boss monsters, you’re getting this choice after the hentai scene – if you choose to continue, you’ll spawn in front of the boss fully healed, ready to try it once again. If not, you’ll be treated to an additional scene that results in the Game Over screen.
This system is pretty fair – you don’t lose your progress, even if you lose the battle – as long as you can deal with the fact that Luna’s sex stats increase again. (But you can save everywhere, so you should never experience the loss of your progress because of a hard battle anyway.)
Speaking of sex stats, when you import Slave’s Sword‘s save data into the second game, Slave’s Sword 2, these stats are the only thing that will be brought over to the second game. So don’t worry about farming items or crafting the best stuff since you don’t need it for the second game.
Actually, I would advise against importing your save. Even though the sex stats don’t change any story even in the first game, they do matter in the second. So if you let Luna become a turbo-slut in Serra and import the save into the next game, you might miss out on scenes and even an ending that depends on a high shame value in the second half of the story.
Next time, we’ll see how Luna’s journey will end. Until then, you should probably help Luna liberate the Free City of Cellway by buying Slave’s Sword in the JAST USA shop or other online stores. Just remember to use the 18+patch if you buy it on Steam.
However, if you like your heroine to stay pure and just play the game for the story, that is totally possible, too. I did. … really!
