Previously I wrote a review about Slave’s Sword and I left you with a big cliffhanger, but today Luna’s journey will finally come to an end. Will she achieve her goal of ending the evil Empire or has fate decided that she can find her true calling in one of the country’s brothels? Let’s find out!
After liberating the Free City of Cellway, Luna is helping her rebel friends to attack the Maldonia Empire directly. During a raid of an Imperial outpost, Luna meets the Sorcerer again who was the reason she got into this mess in the first game. But he is not the only familiar face appearing in front of her; accompanying the Sorcerer is her little sister Diana who she hasn’t seen since she left the Empire years ago to become a mercenary. By now, Diana has become an Ether Knight herself and is full of hatred for her sister who is in her opinion the reason that their family has fallen from grace which led to the imprisonment of their father.
Hence, Luna not only has to fight against the Emperor who wants world domination but also has to stop the evil plans of the Sorcerer and needs to reconcile with her estranged sister – and trying not to get killed by her in the process.
As you can see from this short synopsis, Slave’s Sword 2 is far more story-driven than its prequel. Gone are the days when Luna could stay at a comfy base and leisurely do filler quests during the day while selling her body in the night like most girls her age do. Now she has to travel the lands to find the four elemental spirits before the Emperor can get his hands on them, a journey that will eventually lead her to the capital of the Empire and ending the epic story in a way that depends on how you played Luna during her adventure.
And it indeed feels like a big adventure. Luna will wander through thick woods, sandy deserts, poisonous swamps, and even explore underwater ruins and a volcano. Not only are all those maps connected, but most areas are also vast labyrinths you have to examine carefully, or you will never find your objective. While dungeons in the first game often felt like replaceable filler material, every area in Slave’s Sword 2 is unique and memorable.
I’m sure that the more traditional approach as a JRPG will please many fans, but if you liked the more open nature of its predecessor, you might feel a bit limited by the game’s restrictions.
Even though the dungeons itself are big and confusing, the areas are connected sequentially, which results in your journey being very linear. Luna also has a harsh limit cap which is extended by only 10 every time she finds a Spirit. You will never go out of your way to fight an enemy because you’re going to quickly gain the next ten levels on your way to the next just by fighting what stands in your way.
That’s a bit of a problem because the game is pretty hard and it’s not easy to make Luna stronger since you aren’t allowed to level her up too much.
Rarely you can fight with Leon and another rebel together. Last time I mentioned that you’re limited in a battle when you fight it alone since you only have one action during a turn against many enemies. Slave’s Sword 2 tries to address this, but adding two party members, who you can’t even equip or level up, for only a few specific battles doesn’t help much. Both party members only have one skill that won’t change the progression of the fight in any meaningful way.
Ironically the two even accompany Luna during most of her journey, so they could have been made permanent party members, but I guess Luna has to battle alone or else Game Over Rape or other lewd events during a battle would have been awkward.
In that regard, however, I have no issues. Slave’s Sword 2 is full of new monsters ready to distract Luna from her mission. In my opinion, the Game Over scenes are even better than in the first part, mainly due to the enemy design being more interesting which makes for very entertaining hentai scenes.
The new enemies also know new tricks. Instead of traditional ailments, they now try to defeat Luna with lewder methods, like using tentacles to district her movements or knocking her down, so she has to get up again to continue fighting. Being stricken with these unique states will even change her battle image accordingly. Luna can remove these states that hinder her combat ability by choosing the correct situational action in the battle menu, but that means that she can’t attack or use other skills during this turn. The player must decide if he wants to spend a turn removing the lewd state or if he can allow Luna to continue to fight with this handicap active.
While it’s nice to see Luna in ecchi situations during the battle, personally, I found the addition of these attacks to be more of an annoyance than a meaningful extension of the battle system; battles don’t get more interesting by continually having to waste a turn to remove a condition – they just get more tedious.
Since Luna is always traveling, she won’t stay at one place for too long. That doesn’t mean however that she can’t try to seduce the men in the village she is currently staying. I really liked that. Luna arrives in a new town with new equipment she can buy, but it’s too expensive. Will she try to earn money during the night or will she go to the next dungeon without the proper armor? If you like to roleplay your character in an RPG, this is an excellent setting – an honorable knight who falls into depravity due to the circumstances while trying to save the world.
Remember when I said that the maps are big and you might not find your objective when you’re not carefully looking? One of the best moments in the game for me was when I had to solve a puzzle, but an NPC was offering me the solution for a hefty price I couldn’t pay. I visited him at night, and, as expected, he was willing to give me the info if Luna were going to pay for it with her body.
This is precisely the kind of choice I like to see in my hentai games. Corruption is part of the gameplay. The degradation of the character is a result of the shortcuts the player takes. Will you try to solve the puzzle by yourself or are you going to choose the easy route – by whoring out Luna?
Unlike the last game, earning money by selling your body is actually not a bad idea.
Gacha cards are back, but you have to pay twice the price to use the gacha machine. They are still the only way to give Luna meaningful abilities, though, so you probably want to test your luck sooner than later.
New equipment is costly and crafting material is pretty rare. I never bought or crafted new stuff because I knew that I will get access to better stuff in the next town and if I buy now I won’t have the money or the material to get the better equipment when I might need it.
In fact, my biggest complaint about this game might be that it doesn’t really give you many opportunities to use all the different features it offers. When I arrived at the capital of Maldonia and Leon implied that the point of no return is just a few events away, I noticed I never really used the gacha machine or the weapon crafting to its full potential. I still used the same Slave’s Sword save I finished the first game with, not accessing its full potential that was already foreshadowed in the early hours of Slave’s Sword.
It’s really a shame. All the ingredients for a great JRPG are here: an exciting story, well-designed dungeons, several options to customize your character, but it doesn’t come together quite perfectly.
However, I’m nitpicking here. I complain that this game is not as perfect as I would expect it from a professional JRPG. And I can do that because Slave’s Sword 2 is an excellent game overall – easily one of the best in Kagura Games‘ current lineup and one that doesn’t need to hide from its all-ages competitors.
If Kagura Games keeps on releasing high-quality titles like the Slave’s Sword series, the preconception that “Hentai games” are cheap smut will thankfully be a thing of the past soon.
