H-Scene Count- 30
Created by Studio e-go, translated by Mirror Moon
Length- 10-20 hours, depending on how often it crashes
Story
This is a remake of the original, with better art and voice acting. It follows a man named Cliff as he learns how to be a Hunter, someone who can fight monsters and protect people.
It’s a turn based RPG where you control 3 people at once. The characters are Cliff, his cousin, a priestess, a siren, a ghost, and a succubus.
Gameplay
Each character has a set of unique moves(usable only with enough Force, this games MP), with the cousin being the most different character of the lot(she tames things, which tend to be weaker then her. Good for status effects and healing). The game also has a strange level system, where battles will level characters, but most of your stat points will come from missions. All characters get their own points, so you can use anyone at any time for the most part, the others will just be low on HP and Force. These increase only at level ups, and go up more with higher Health and Will stats. Most characters have a skill that heals, and Force is gotten by hitting things, more from a higher Will stat.
Every character has an element that lets them chain attacks. By having people attack in the right order they do a little more damage and recover more Force then normal. Another thing to know is that the game tells you turn order, but you can change your parties order by inputting commands in the order you want. This makes comboing easy, but can end with all your people going last as the start of the combo could be the slowest and the others will go after that one.
One thing to note is to never use the heroine you are pursuing, as they will become unavailable for a part of the plot, which handicaps your team.
Also of note is that the max Force is 80. At that point every character will learn there ultimate, and if Cliff and a girl has max force they can unleash a dual attack, an ultimate that has a full cutscene and will deal 10x more damage then other attacks.
Equipment with buffs in this game is key, as they make your characters about twice as good in a stat. Each character can wear three pieces of gear, with it being possible to have all the good buffs on every character, except one. Gear transfers to NG+, and the final piece can only be gotten on the ghost’s route.
For NG+, everything transfers save character levels, HP, and stat points. You keep your items, your Force(and moves since moves learnt is dependent on Force), your equipment, and you get your money plus some. Old equipment is replaced with money, so no doubles. Also, since your will score is so low Force is hard to get back, but overall the game becomes a joke because of the early gear plus all the items you can buy, and almost everything is as strong as the first run.
Gold in the game can only be found or rewarded, enemies don’t drop things and you will gain all the levels you will need just going through. Gold does transfer over in the newgame+ system the game has, which is the only way to see everything. Some things are just to expensive on your first run(upgraded bath), plus only two of the 5 routes can be done at the start. You must do cousin or siren, then the other, then succubus, then priestess, then ghost. You trigger route through affection, which you get by visiting the girls in the academy whenever they are around.
Dungeons work in a grid world state, you click where you want to move, and sometimes you get into fights. The random encounter rate is really high, which serves to anger the player as most fights really aren’t that hard or worth the time. This is also when you find gear and money, they glitter on the maps.
Story
The game splits into routes very late though, and so every playthrough will feel samey. Combine that with a tendency to crash(in the longest dungeons, at the end) on 64 bit systems, and the game becomes old quick.
The plot is simple, with only the ghost’s route being of any real note. For the most part it goes intro to city/academy where you live, get characters, route events(very short), h-scenes while grinding the end, boss time. The plot is to segmented and just does not feel very compelling till the end. It doesn’t help that a majority of the quests in the game don’t have anything to do with the main story.
H scenes and other things
H is short and bland. The system works that every time you visit the girl you are on the route of, you get another part of the scene. Do this about x times, reading through the same bits, to get them all. The text is way to straightforward and bland to make the scenes appealing, and some of them end a bit quickly. There are two special scenes, one being a threesome the other being more fan service for those who played the previous game. The rest are just vanilla and are segmented, and the voices don’t really help. This is where the game shows its age the most.
One thing I will say to the games benefit is that the main character is voiced, which is pretty rare in general for h games. Raidy from Lightning Warrior is voiced due to being female, but most male protags are never voiced(Hewie from C.F. is also voiced in everything). If Cliff wasn’t so generic male lead character(nice and easy to command are his only real traits) I might have actually liked him more for this fact alone. He is voiced in the h-scenes as well.
This is an old game, and it shows. If you can run it without crashing, the first playthrough can be fun. But beyond that the game will get repetitive and not really worth it. For the most part, playing the full game means doing the same exact thing 5 times with only a different ending sequence.
Save contains all cg/replays. It also contains a NG+ save that has done all the routes and gotten all the equipment, so if you want to play any specific route you can.
Men at Work 2~Welcome to Hunter’s Academy~