Kunoichi Botan is the latest game from hentai game publisher Kagura Games who also brought us other great HRPGs like Treasure Hunter Claire.
I like to “play” my eroge, not just to “read” them, so I’m thrilled that naughty doujin games with real gameplay are getting more and more popular here in the West, thanks to publishers like Kagura Games who are dedicated to bringing us these underrated gems in a language that doesn’t rely on moon runes.
Kunoichi Botan describes itself as a Stealth Action RPG, and that makes sense. If you’re not playing one of the many minigames this RPG Maker game has to offer, you will spend most of your time exploring maps filled with treasures and traps while sneaking up behind poor enemies to send them to the afterlife before they can do the same with you… or something much worse. Yes, you guessed it: this game is quite lewd. And can be pretty dark at times, too.
Do I have your attention now? Then let us get started!
Botan is a kunoichi; a female ninja specialized in seduction and infiltration. One day, she and the inexperienced (both sexually and in the art of ninjutsu) Yasuzu are summoned by the village chief Kikyou who has an important mission for both of them. Botan’s master Kaede was captured during a mission and Botan has to finish the job now. Her task is to sneak into the large manor of a local merchant who, according to rumors, is gathering half-oni. A half-oni is a normal human being who has been immersed in the bloodthirsty will and spiritual energy of an oni, a supernatural demon who gives his host superior strength and also unsatisfiable lust. Botan must do what her master failed at; assassinating him and the imminent threat of the half-oni. And while Botan is carrying out her mission, Yasuzu’s assignment is to investigate how exactly the merchant managed to gather an army of half-oni in the first place.
Wait? Gathering intel when Botan is already on the way to eliminate the threat itself? Doesn’t seem like Kikyou, the leader of this ninja village, has much trust in Botan successfully accomplishing her mission… Can it be that this assignment is too much for our poor heroine?
Botan isn’t a particularly talented kunoichi, but while her combat skills are barely mid-level, she did master her summoning jutsu. It’s possible for her to produce a concealed weapon, so if she was able to get close to her unassuming targets, she could kill them easily.
No wonder that the focus of this game is on stealth, not combat. Botan is on her own, and the merchant’s estate is a big, long dungeon, filled with enemies and traps. There is no benefit in fighting enemies, so her best course of action is to memorize enemy patterns to avoid them entirely or, if possible, kill them from behind which is the only way to get rid of them without the danger of an actual fight. Every fight can end deadly, but even in the best case scenario, it will still be a waste of her vital resources that might be necessary for one of the more challenging and often unavoidable encounters.
While sneaking through the mansion, Botan not only has to defend herself against the merchant’s guards but will also find half-oni who are less interested in fighting her and more interested in raping her instead.
Luckily, Botan is not only skilled in summoning weapons but also in the art of seduction. While she can’t just fight the half-oni directly because of their superior strength, she can try to tease them with her body. She might find the right time to attack them with a fatal strike when they are focused on her lewd body parts. However, if she misses, the half-oni’s retaliation will mean certain death for her. And if she doesn’t strike soon enough, the half-oni might rape her for real, and the aphrodisiac effect of a half-oni’s sperm will surely turn her into a brainless half-oni bitch herself.
On the way to the merchant, guards and half-oni are not the only obstacles she has to overcome. Not everything can be solved with fighting. Kunoichi Botan offers a multitude of minigames, most of them involving skillfully pressing buttons at the right time. Losing a minigame will probably also end in Botan getting captured but even though there are many opportunities for Botan to fail her mission, the game is never unfairly designed, and even if you’re being surprised by a minigame, you’ll always have a reasonable chance to win. And if it’s one of the harder minigames, the game is generous enough to let you save beforehand.
Balance is the pivotal strength of Kunoichi Botan and the main reason this game is so enthralling. When your game is focused on limited resources and stealth, it’s a hard task to not make it too easy and thus rendering the survival aspect trivial, or, even worse, making it so hard that the player might be put into a deadlock after he has used up all his resources.
Kunoichi Botan achieves this difficult feat of always being winnable but still challenging at the same time.
If you are save-scumming (you can save wherever you want as long as you’re not in an event scene), you can play a room over and over again until you can take out all the enemies without wasting heal items on Botan. But you will still feel anxious in the next room because you don’t know what kind of danger will await you there and how many of your precious items you have to use after an encounter you didn’t see coming.
Even if you’re not abusing the save system and are allowing costly mistakes to happen, the smart map design with hidden items and escape routes that let you avoid enemy encounters if you’re just looking carefully enough always provides a way out of a difficult situation. I strongly recommend playing the game this way.
Most hentai scenes are Game Over Rape scenes. That means, losing a battle or a minigame will treat you to a hentai scene that will inevitably lead to a game over screen. I’m really fond of this concept, and to my delight, Kunoichi Botan implements it in a way I don’t see that often and is exactly how I like it. Let me explain.
When playing a hentai game, the player obviously wants to see hentai scenes. That’s the point after all! However, in the case of Game Over Rape, if you’re playing well, you don’t see them! Even worse, you might be inclined to play poorly just so you can see what you’re here for! But if you’re losing on purpose, the point of the Game Over Rape scene is lost; it’s supposed to be a punishment for your failure!
Just as many other dark fetishes, part of the appeal is that you actually don’t want it to happen. Botan is a cute girl. She is fighting for her friends, and for what she believes is right. The merchant and his army of half-oni are evil. You want her to win, overcoming all obstacles, rescuing her friends and slaying the villain. And still, you’re interested in this game and reading this review because you can’t help yourself wondering how her fate would turn out if she didn’t win in the end.
In a later part of the game, you also get the chance to control Yasuzu. She can’t fight, and her only skill lies in evading immediate danger, but due to her sexual inexperience, she can’t help herself being fascinated by the carnal desires radiating from the half-oni, wondering how it would feel being overpowered by them and forced into submission. I was amazed at how closely her line of thought resembled mine. Her minigame evading the half-oni wasn’t particularly hard, as long as I stayed focused and pushed the correct buttons. A dark desire in me hoped for me to mess it up, even though I knew it would be the end for Yasuzu, just as something in her hoped to feel the half-oni’s strength firsthand despite the fact that it would mean her certain demise.
Remember when I said that balance is the pivotal strength of this game? How the game is always fair, and you always have a chance to win even if winning is pretty challenging?
When Botan loses, and she will, you know that it was always your mistake and not the fault of bad game design. Maybe you wanted to save your heal items and underestimated the strength of the enemy? Or perhaps you didn’t pay enough attention during a minigame because you thought your chances of winning were already high enough. Or did you lose on purpose after all? Whatever the case, Botan will now have to deal with the consequences of her failure.
Oh, don’t misunderstand me! You will surely enjoy these consequences! The game features most of the fetishes you would expect, and more: From simply rape scenes to training sessions for wannabe cum-dumpster to hilariously funny stuck-inside-a-wall mishaps, you will surely find many arousing and entertaining moments while strolling through the merchant’s mansion.
But now you might be saying: “I’m not a sicko like you, I don’t want my waifu to die! I just want her to be screwed into submission and be a semen-hungry slut for my personal usage!”
Well, luckily for you, it’s possible to deactivate the usage of the more horrible CGs showing the inevitable death of your heroines. Thanks to the aphrodisiac effect of the half-oni, the hentai scenes itself are pretty tame, even when they include harsher elements since our poor ninja girls are already under the influence of the drug and are starting to like it. So if that’s your fetish, you’re also covered.
Or maybe you’re saying: “But I’m a feminist! I want the kunoichi to overthrow the patriarchy by solving the problem of the half-oni’s toxic masculinity and then enjoy some quality vanilla time with her lesbian comrade!”
And in this case, I say to you: Git gud! And maybe your wish will be answered too.
Perhaps you don’t even need to get that good, because, if I had to point out one single problem I had with this game, it’s that the last part of the game is far too easy, especially compared to the beginning. At some point, you can completely heal yourself for free and that as often as you want. It kinda ruins the challenge at this point which is a bit disappointing.
(Silly me still managed to get himself killed in the final boss fight. Just shows you how fatal a moment of carelessness can be.)
Even though my final boss saves is showing me a playtime of approximately 3 hours, it doesn’t include the many more hours of me failing horribly at protecting my ninja waifu and watching around 15 different Game Over Rape scenes. It’s possible to finish the game quickly, but that doesn’t mean there isn’t much to discover.
If you count just the unique event CGs, it might not seem like much content, but the many variations (some even animated) that adapt to your current situation really make the difference in how you perceive the scene.
What I really like are the many different facial expressions and how the current state of your character reflects on the tidiness of her hair and her ninja outfit. Botan can look like an honorable assassin or like a slutty temptress. It also matches her character. Despite her being a cute and kind girl at heart, she’s also a kunoichi who will use her body if it helps her accomplish her mission. (Even though she prefers to not do it, like the pure waifu she really is deep down, I’m sure!)
I also liked the excellent pacing. No scene overstayed its welcome. Event scenes have a nice length, and the stealth sections between the minigames and story events are just long enough to test the players understanding of the different gameplay elements before they can start to bore you.
I immensely enjoyed Kunoichi Botan. If it sounds like something you might enjoy too, you can start to help Botan on her mission by visiting the Steam page or the JAST USA store.
And if you don’t, she and all her kunoichi friends will probably die a horrible death. Please don’t let that happen. Please help her!
