If you’re following the Japanese doujin game scene, you probably already have heard of the developer ONEONE1. The studio enjoys a legendary reputation, putting out games with production values that far surpass those of their competitors. With hundreds of hentai scenes, fully animated cutscenes and professionally voiced dialogues, it was no wonder that Kagura Games got their hands on Ideology in Friction.
It was said that the natural enemy of all living things would be destroyed by the emissaries of night, the dark elves.
“You finally found your way here, huh?” mutters the blue-haired elf.
“I said that I’d bring you back, didn’t I?” replies the elf with golden hair, but as she does, the woman silently shakes her head.“I’m glad that I got to see you one last time,” she speaks softly with a smile on her face while stroking the golden hair of the other elf.
The two elven knights have lived through harsh times. They were separated and reunited on multiple occasions, but have at last made their way here.
In this nameless church, where no one has been, what are they thinking? What have they left behind?“This was my only choice…” said Clacier, who became a knight to live.
“I have something that I need to accomplish, no matter what. I’m here because it’s necessary to reach that goal,” said Annette, who also became a knight for a very important goal.
Ideology in Friction follows the story of two knights, Clacier and Annette. While both are playable, Clacier is the main protagonist, and most of the story is told from her point of view. You will follow her life as a Knight in the royal Special Corps – making friends, going on dangerous missions and fighting overpowered beasts called Behemoths.
At least at first…
Ideology in Friction is one of the best examples to point to when somebody claims that all H-RPG are cheap and amateurish. It excels in both story and visuals.
It’s easy to call Ideology in Friction a nukige – after all, you probably will spend most of your time with the over hundred hentai scenes the game has to offer. However, that didn’t prevent the developers from telling a thrilling story with a multitude of different characters, all of which have their own lives and goals.
In fact, it might be the most “serious” story of any Kagura Game I’ve reviewed so far. Not only is the plot interesting and the characters engaging, but an effort was also made to craft a setting that can be taken seriously. It’s not often that a hentai game can make the player to actually care about what happens in a world most people intended to visit just for the faps, initially.
If the goal was just to titillate the player, it surely wasn’t necessary to create an hour-long prologue, slowly introducing all the characters and explaining every small detail of the world they live in… but Ideology in Friction did it anyway. It also wasn’t necessary to include the many optional events and different points of view the game has to offer, but it’s precisely this kind of effort that raises Oneone1 games above most of its competitors.
I was shocked to find out how much care was put into the arcs of seemingly semi-important side-characters. Hentai games usually don’t want to break immersion by giving characters other than the protagonist too much focus, but ONEONE1 clearly wasn’t satisfied with telling a simple tale of a pure maiden falling into debauchery and instead wanted to paint a multifaced story that sees its characters as more than just sex objects.
But even if you play Ideology in Friction mainly as the high budget nukige it clearly is – by showing the relationships and struggles of characters unrelated to Clacier’s journey it only adds to the diversity of themes and fetishes the hentai scenes cover. And more variety is always a good thing.
Clacier’s own place in this story can be very different, depending on which path she walks down. Ideology in Friction consists of three routes which are vastly different from each other. Clacier will find herself in opposite positions depending on how well she does during her missions. If she fails too many, she will go down a less prestigious route.
Clacier starts as a Knight, which is also the default route. If she fails at least 3 of her missions, she will lose her status as a noble warrior and join the Resistance. If she keeps messing up her assignments, she will eventually end as a drifter.
The more she fails, the more hentai scenes will be available. While Game Over scenes are available even in the Knight route, actions that require a more promiscuous personality like prostitution or working as an escort will only be possible after Clacier’s fall into degeneracy.
Some might find this limiting, but I think the clear distinction between pure virgin route and turboslut path, which both spawn from the same beginnings, makes for a thrilling and engaging character journey which helps to emphasize with Clacier’s choices during the different story arcs.
Still, if you plan to play this game for the hentai scenes, you should try to fail your missions as most of the lewd scenes are in the Resistance or Drifter routes. Ideology in Friction has over a hundred scenes and even more variations of them. As I mentioned before, the diversity of the fetishes ranges from vanilla to bestiality, with nearly every kink you can imagine between.
But what ONEONE1 is really known for are their animations. Fighting scenes even have fully animated cut-ins. As with the story, the production values didn’t only go into the porn; there are full battle animations for both possible protagonists and numerous story-related high-quality CGs and dozens of character sprites in different stances. If you like a battle or chuuni visual novels like Fate/Stay Night, you’ll probably like the attention to detail that went into the visual novel scenes. Epic background music isn’t missing either.
This may sound like the perfect hentai game, and for many people, it probably is, but it has one fatal flaw that kinda ruins the game for me. And seeing how I focused on this topic in all my other reviews, I also have to mention it here: The game is too easy.
And when I say “easy,” I don’t mean easy as in Fallen, where you can cheat your level up or can easily beat every boss if you spend some minutes fighting the monsters in the area leading up to him.
When I say that Ideology in Friction is easy, I mean that you literally can beat every single enemy in the game without ever changing your equipment, leveling up or using any other skills than your default attack. Yes, you can literally speedrun the game by avoiding every single enemy, ignoring all the treasures and shops and mashing the default attack command during boss fights and you will still don’t even break a sweat. And this is on the hardest difficulty. (Yes, there is even an easy mode which mere existence I find baffling.)
In the later stages of the game, you get access to the berserk skill, which is essentially an auto mode that will just continuously attack the enemy without any button input necessary. And, as I said, you will never lose.
Since there is no reason ever to explore anything or fight any enemies that roam the maps, you will probably decide to try to avoid all enemy encounters. This is easier said than done though since many dungeons have pretty narrow floors. If you happen to encounter an enemy, it’s always an annoyance since you know that this fight is entirely pointless because you’re already stronger than any enemy you will ever meet and experience points or loot doesn’t matter in any way.
Even in Fallen, there was a point to battle some enemies, find some loot and money, and upgrade your equipment. While in the end most battles weren’t exactly thrilling and also ended up in just repeatedly executing the default attack command, the player could at least feel the satisfying progression of his protagonist getting stronger which is one of the main reason to play RPGs, to begin with.
Ideology in Friction‘s game design might be perfect for you if you just want to enjoy the story and the lewd scenes, but as I explained in my Slave’s Sword reviews, I think the unique charm of hentai games is the amalgamation of gameplay, story, and porn.
As I said before, on which route you end up is decided by how many missions you fail. But you will never fail any mission. It’s impossible to fail if you play the game normally.
If you want to see the defeat scenes or fall down on one of the other two routes, you have to deliberately lose your battles, most easily by using the concede option that is presented to you at the start of a boss battle if you chose to display them in the config menu.
This wouldn’t be as much of a deal if the rest of the game weren’t so perfect. After all, Ideology in Friction‘s story is the ideal playground for an epic and lewd hentai RPG. We have a ruthless world in which good people want to do good things, but terrible monsters, evil politicians, and fate have other plans for them.
Clacier is a perfect female protagonist for this kind of game. She’s not terribly strong – in fact, she’s clearly far weaker than her rival Annette and even many of her colleagues. She’s also an elf, which means she’s the constant victim of racism as elves usually work as prostitutes or slaves in this society and not as noble Knights. There is a real incentive for her to keep her position as a Knight. But that isn’t so easy because Behemoths exist in this world – seemingly invincible giant monsters that threaten humankind and a Knight’s duty is to fight these.
Can our weak Clacier get stronger and fight these beasts or has she to give up her dream and live a life in depravity, as it is expected of her kind? Do you see what a fantastic and surprisingly exciting premise this is?
However, it only exists in the story, not in the gameplay.
It’s kind of ridiculous when the story tells us over and over again how dangerous the monsters in this world are and how life-threating the life of a member of the Special Corps is – just to be instantly undermined when an actual battle begins and Clacier one-hit-kills everyone that stands in her way.
Ideology in Friction? More like Ludonarrative in Friction!
The ludonarrative dissonance is at its strongest during the defeat scenes when the writing goes into detail how terrified Clacier is – of the ferocious monster that is going to abuse her and her own inadequacy that brought her into this situation in the first place. but the player knows that this isn’t true. Clacier is in this situation because the player deliberately chose to let Clacier lose… since she is far too strong to ever lose to any enemy naturally.
I have to emphasize how great the writing in these scenes actually is. The terror, the helplessness, the despair is masterfully told, accentuated by the thrilling music and the detailed, high-quality animations… and I felt nothing because I had to laugh at the thought of how ridiculously easy this mighty beast was and to what lengths I had to go to actually lose to it.
The same ludonarrative dissonance is also present when it comes to Clacier’s corruption. The story makes it clear that Clacier is a pure maiden who doesn’t want to do lewd things. Only when she fails as a Knight, she has to resort to these things as a means to keep living.
What a tragic and highly erotic tale!
None of this is actually punctuated by the gameplay. The player has to deliberately choose for her to engage in this activities and even though the (as always) well-written narrative tells us how she is forced in this situation by her unfortunate circumstances the player knows this isn’t true. Clacier swims in money and has no problems finishing her missions. She only does these things because the player made her do it.
Compare this to Slave’s Sword. I praised how the prostitution scenes reflected Luna’s actual position in the story at this point in time. In the beginning, she sold her body because she actually needed the money. When the player amassed a fortune and upgraded all her stats, she doesn’t care for money anymore and engages in promiscuous sex out of her own volition, to satisfy her awakened lust and desire.
This is the kind of character arc Clacier is supposed to have during the evil routes… and even though the story tries to make us believe this is indeed what happens, the gameplay never signalizes that.
As a result, if you play this game like a regular RPG, you’re going to end up with the best ending by default, only seeing a few hentai scenes containing lovey-dovey vanilla sex. If you, however, choose to ignore the RPG mechanics and just lose to every enemy you face, you’ll experience one of the most degenerate stories you’ll find in the English-speaking hentai game market… and isn’t that why you play these games?
I really have to wonder whether Ideology in Friction hadn’t been a better game if it was made as a pure visual novel. An enormous amount of effort went into the cutscenes and writing – and the gameplay does nothing but to ruin all that was built up in the text and audiovisual presentation.
It’s especially unforgivable since ONEONE1 already implement different difficulty modes – ironically, an even easier mode as if this was necessary…
It would have literally only needed one additional line of code to turn this game into the best hentai RPG available in English by just doubling the stats of every monster in the game and calling it a hard mode. Even if you don’t care for a challenge in your naughty games, it wouldn’t have hurt anyone to add another difficulty mode that is not insultingly easy, and it would have cost ONEONE1 virtually nothing to realize that since the function is already implemented in the game. There is no excuse.
That said, Ideology in Friction is still the biggest hentai game currently available in English with production values that can’t be challenged by any other competitor in the market. If you play these game for the lewd, you will get so many faps for your bucks, you probably should spend the saved money on stamina drinks.
Even if you’re just in for a nice, entertaining fantasy story full of interesting lore, engaging characters and chuuni fights, only a few other doujin games can match up to this level of storytelling. If you’re not a despicable pervert, you might not even be offended by the default Knight route which is very tame and vanilla and can also be enjoyed by normies.
But if you look for at least some kind of gameplay experience, I can’t recommend Ideology in Friction. I can, however, recommend another game of Kagura Game’s which was released a weak before Ideology in Friction and was sadly overshadowed by it: Ordeal of Princess Eris. A game that blends an engaging story, an open world, different routes, a challenging difficulty, a deep combat system, and many exciting hentai scenes together.
Whatever you choose, Kagura Games is still going strong and securing more and more high profile games for English speaking erogamers to enjoy. For example, just in a few days, Escape from Fortress Lugohm will be finally released. I guess I really have to buy those stamina drinks.
