Queen’s Blade is what happens when you take Senran Kagura and make it for adults with adults. And a fantasy adventure instead of faux ninjas. I also don’t think it happened in that order. Implied sex, lesbians, one of the girls has a kid, lots of almost nudity, and some of the hardest characters to cosplay in fiction without being indecent.

So what kind of game would you expect from Queen’s Blade? Well its about a tournament so a fighting game would make the most sense, right? It’s not. The only genre’s to come from this license were a MMO(that just uses the name and nothing else but is also filled with ecchi and big boobs), and two strategy RPG’s for the PSP, never localized. And really, the game’s are far better then you would expect from that console and this IP.

I’m going to start with ecchi, because really that’s the biggest reason to play this. So there’s a decent chunk of this. Movies, cgs, cutins with ripped clothes. Basically every bit of the game plays some fanservice in some form. The cgs are sadly the weakest point, mostly being used for establishing character shots instead of ecchi. Like Dora, one of the two main villains, has a cg of her just standing in a hallway. You can see a lot of cleavage, but her art for when she’s talking shows the same amount. Basically every character gets a cg like this even ones who show up basically just to be like,”I’m a Queen’s Blade character, here’s my cg, you’ll never see me again.”, and really they feel a bit much. The point to a cg is to show something you can’t from narrative text, or to set a tone better then with just music and text. These introduction cgs don’t do that. And they take up around 1/2 to 1/4 of the gallery. Then you have the few loli’s each getting more attention then you would expect, though all of their cgs are played for ecchi. The cgs just don’t match with the great cutins. A few do, such as Melona the slimes or Menace’s cg, which will require a a bit of explanation.

So Menace is the Egyptian pharaoh girl of the lot. Her clothes are basically a necklace and a transparent loincloth with a swimsuit bottom. To make having her be decent easier, they gave her a bikini top, which I guess means they censored her in a way. They then give her a full frontal in a cg. In a PSP game. They honestly look more like sunburn and that was what I thought her nipples were until I double taked. They really went farther then I expected them to go in a lot of ways. The slime girls aerola are see able on a decent amount of her art to, so maybe it’s just their artist went further/didn’t get caught?

The movies are next on the list. About half of them are fanservicey in a way, like a hot springs trip or the male leads delusion of two girls about to get it on. The other half are basically actual story stuff. The quality is good for the platform, though they are short. Do wish I could turn the subs in them off, though I guess I could just grab an unpatched version and play the movies there…

Then the cutins, the best part. Each girl has five clothing slots with health bars. These take damage based on the attack the enemy uses and when they reach zero, a cutin for that girl plays. The chest and bottom tend to have gainaxing or animation while the head, arm, and legs tend to be basically a sexy pose of some sort with clothes ripped. Lose all clothes and that unit is defeated and you get one of two special images for there modesty defeat depending on if they have health left or not. Then you have the fight intro for each girl(most contain some boob bounce) and their normal defeat image. Their sprites even change based on broken clothing, so by the end of most fights scraps are all that keep the girls decent. While skipping combat animations is easy, thankfully, actually watching the fights gives some good eye candy. Each girl even gets an ultimate that tends to give another quick bouncy pose, though those tend to not be played for as much sex appeal as basically everything else.

So after writing this up, I went and looked at the actual cards that are Queen’s Blade’s beginnings. Most of the cutins are actually zoom ups of the cards. I didn’t see all the cards but it looks like the cgs and maybe the defeats are the only real unique art work. That doesn’t lessen the game for me, just noting why the cgs are so less erotic compared to the cutins. They are made at completely different times for different mediums.

So I’m going to start with some mechanics around the gameplay and end with the actual combat. Each party member has a relationship with each other that affects whether they join in to attack when another one does or guard for someone else, like Fire Emblem’s support stuff from Awakening except each character has there own for every other character. Between each level you can have two members of your party fight for a decent boost, and have the male lead talk to a girl for a good boost for him and her. That last one is a bit awkward. It’s like they wanted a dating sim side mode, and it’s obvious from the writing that a decent number of the girls end up liking Jean(the male lead) on some level, but won’t do anything cause of Cute(the female lead). There are no cgs from this, so it’s really just for some relationship building that won’t go anywhere, though it does make Jean useful in combat since he’ll support the more girls easily. The only thing the relationship mechanic does beyond this is affect one cg that takes a specific route setup to get the amount of affection Airi needs with anyone to get the cg, though on the third NG+ you keep affection so it becomes a non issue. Every other cg is just from story progression with no conditions. Ok, there is one more thing affection does. if you reach the third stage with the girl towards Jean, you get her measurements in the character bios. Not worth it, but it is an unlockable. How do you get the not recruit able girls measurements? Strip them completely. Only the four of them from Queen’s Blade, for some reason the monsters and original girls are not in the gallery.

The game has pretend routes. There are three splits where you go to 3-6 different stages with different characters. These are cool. Based on which you pick you get a different outfit for a specific girl(which does have gameplay effects) and the game’s final mission focuses on a different girl, one of three. These final missions are the route ends, and are more of joke/small bit to end that girls plot until the sequel that was very obviously intended. Upon doing all three endings you get the final stages where Cute fights everyone in the actual tournament which unlocks the final movie.

NG+ is interesting. The game is very obviously setup for at least two playthroughs, though it takes 3 to get everything for a single save. On the second run you carry summon monsters, costumes, and 1 of all items/equipment over. The third run adds affection and levels to that, and since the game auto levels people every time they leave the party to what they need to be when they come back, everyone will end up around level 30 except the summons.

Summons. Only Jean can summon, and to get those summons requires the perfect knockout aka the modesty defeat mechanic, with Jean landing the last hit. On my first playthrough these were horrible. From what I understood, attacks were the only way to damage clothing, and they also damaged HP. So there was no way to empty just clothing and so I had to have Jean and the other healer sit and use the field heal skill which can target enemies, to keep the enemy alive until Jean could knock off the last piece of clothing. There are two other ways to do damage that I didn’t learn until after run 1. 1 is the melt status effect, which the player only has 1 or 2 way to get. It does some damage to every piece of clothing every turn, but won’t break them, so it’s basically clothing poison. The other way requires animations to be on. When you destroy any piece of clothing, you can hit a direction and the character will do an extra attack that hits that clothing item in that direction you hit, for no HP damage. I don’t think the game ever mentions this, so I learned it by skimming a walkthrough for NG+ stuff(turns out I turned the graphics for this off when I started or it started off and got turned on at some point). As for the summons themselves, there are 9. 3 types with 3 recolors each. These are incredibly useful because of the type mechanics in play in combat as it helps cover for lack of one of the rock paper scissors you might be lacking. Also another unit when you only have 3-6 is incredibly helpful, and you can have 3 at a time out. Only real issue is it takes Jean’s entire turn, so he will end up behind in level basically guaranteed.

The actual combat is fairly simple strategy RPG. You move your units, attack and get countered, then you end your turn for the enemies to move. Once ina while you get forced into a Queen’s Duel, which is just a one on one. Each unit has a some pool of skills to get buffs or heal with, an attack range of two, different movement ranges based on their assigned class, two random activated passives based on clothes being destroyed which are pretty strong negative and positive, and a type. The last is the most important for a lot of the game. There are three. Strength(sword icon), Beauty(a moon), and Kindness(a flower?). It’s Fire Emblem like where not only do you deal more damage and take less, but accuracy is also boosted or lowered. Accuracy is actually a really important stat, as it’s very possible for a character to be completely incapable of hitting enemies if you don’t put points into it. Evasion is also better then defense for a lot of the game, at least for me.

Back to the types. Because the game controls who you have for a lot of it, the first playthrough has some rough spots because of which types you have and are up against. The first split, Leana’s side, has a perfect example. The stage has 4 bosses, three of which are kindness. Leana is strength, Cute is strength, and Jean is Kindness(but is also worthless). If you didn’t capture the one available monster, that’s all you get. It is very possible for the three bosses, who do you come at one at a time, to one shot one of your fighters because they are strong against them. Your healing is definitely not going to keep up either way. That one monster? Harpy with Beauty which these girls are weak to. The non bosses? All strength so that harpy can be easily killed at the start of the fight. It’s probably the hardest fight in the game save for the final boss if you don’t know how overpowered paralyses is. Of course, you can always grind, and since healing with Jean always gives him minimum 10 xp, he’s really easy to overlevel till no one can hit him.

The story of the game is actually really weird to me. Like for having 30~ stages, a lot of it is just wandering around and getting attacked by the two original villains repeatedly for no real reason until pretty late. The game starts with Jean(main male protag, original) and Cute(main female protag, original) lost in a forest because Cute rushed out from home to become a Queen’s Blade contestant for no reason. She’s never fought before. Bandits show up to rob them, and of course Leana, the basically main character of the show, shows up and saves them. Soon Tomoe shows up and sets the game as happening at around the end of episode 1 or 2, I think. From then on, the main goal of the party is usually either make it to a town, or find a companion that went missing. Until around stage 20 that’s about the extent of the plot which is really just focused on showing all the Queen’s Blade characters it can and have them mention their plot lines before disappearing forever or joining the party. Then the dragon plot starts and the rest is really just making it to the final boss with some exposition here and there about what and why things are happening.

I won’t go into anymore depth mostly because it’s really not that interesting. The game is very much a Super Robot Wars of Queen’s Blade. The plot doesn’t matter. What matters is fanservice of anything, from character stuff to sexy. Jean really exists just to highlight the sexy, since a few cgs and movies are just his delusions about what the girls are up to, mostly adding lesbian stuff into any interaction he sees. Beyond that, Jean’s kinda insufferable. I got lucky on my first run and somehow chose all the options where he’s at his least pervy, but the other side makes it clear there’s not much else to him. His traits are loyal to Cute(he is her paid servant after all), and perv. Oh and wimpy and a coward. Likable, ain’t he? For whatever reason all the free talks are written as if the girls are falling for him to some extent(but not doing anything cause of Cute), and they don’t really work. Except Melpha’s, since they actually do have chemistry, both being healers and having a lot of the same issues being surrounded by battle ready warriors. Kind of wish she got more content instead of Nanael getting bukkake’d by milk all the time, but the angel did become a full protagonist in a later season so I guess I shouldn’t be surprised.

What it takes to Complete:

A new section I’m going to put in ecchi games, new and old that I’ve finished. I’m going to highlight what I considered 100% and what it took.

For this game, you have the obvious full gallery/special mode. For 99% of this you just need to get the three endings while getting the three costumes and the missable Airi cg. That fills the movie gallery, the cg, jukebox, and almost everything in the character bio section. The last bit is getting the girls three measurements into their bios, which can only be done by getting them to support level 3 with Jean. For 7 of the 11 girls(monsters don’t count), this is easy. The talk topics between fights get you 50~ points a go, and it takes 750~ to get to the third tier. Jean being a healer, he gets a lot of random points by healing and just being around the girls in combat. So in run two and beyond it just takes a little planning/grinding in combat to get the main 7 to third tier. The other 4 are the problem.

Airi, Irma, and Elina only join in specific routes and conditions. They don’t have talks, and they are only in the party for maybe 5-10 fights at most. Sparring gets you 10-20 points if you play as Jean versus the girl you want to get points with, usually 10 since you are guaranteed to lose without grinding. So what do you do? For Elina and Irma, take take them to a free stage with damage floor(a lot of these are around when you get them). Stand them on a damage tile and heal them every turn. After around 100+ turns you should have them in love with Jean and be done. Cattleya can also be done this way, though she is far more available then those two. Airi is the actual issue. Not only do you need support points with her to get a cg(so she has a harder time limit), she is also the hardest to get said points. As Airi does not take field damage, because she technically flies. So with her, you need to enter a free stage and have her stand next to Jean and kill an enemy. Do this until they can support at all. Now purposely use those supports to finish her. Add those supports into the other three when you can, as they are faster then healing every turn. These will take around 2 hours each.

As for the 4 enemies measurements, they are fairly easy. Nyx and Menace are a bit annoying because they show up so rarely, and when they do they tend to end the fight early or start a Queen’s Duel, which is a touch difficult to strip them in. In the third run though, its easy do to being overleveled.

I don’t consider equipment that important, so while I made sure to never use up any items all the way so they would transfer over, if I missed any I don’t really mind. Did need to make sure to have saves at end game so that every girl was setup to spar for clothes ripping/animation viewing. That plus the final clear save, which apparently can transfer to the sequel and give the four costumes in this to that game for those girls. Hope that gets worked on at some point, but sadly I doubt it.

Verdict, it’s good. Surprisingly so. As an ecchi title it has great art spread throughout, and as an RPG it’s decently long and can be fun for the first run. It has replay value with around 10-14 stages being different if you take the other path. It can be broken fairly easy, which does make the bullshit final boss more tolerable. Not a fan of the lead character’s personality, or how 4 of the five original girls are flat but I guess they do equalize the roster. Then the sequel adds like 10+ more busty girls so I guess the flats do need whatever they can get.

I do wish that instead of unlocking the girls measurements via relationship 3, you unlocked a preset battle mode for viewing the cutins. Just give the player a character with moves that guarantee clothes breaks and defeat, and have the girl use her entire move pool if the player lets her survive. This gives the player control to see what they want as they want it and is really the only thing I feel the game really needed. That or just put the cutins in a gallery.

I also like that the final unlock actually fit the game. Unlike games like Mary Skelter or Criminal Girls, the final unlock in this is a slideshow of the girls in bikinis hanging out at the beach. It’s not the most erotic thing in the game, but it is at least erotic and fits the rest of the game well enough. It actually felt like a reward this type of game should have, instead of standing girl+background repeated for every member of the cast. Which I guess this game does do, it’s just not the final thing you get to see.

PPSSPP(emulator I used) Save for Queen’s Blade: Spiral Chaos

Save contains all cgs, movies, and full bios. Save 1 is to Leina Route’s stage, then clear game 1. 2 is to Ymir’s unique stage/clear game 2, it also has the full roster for any clothes breaking you want to see. Save 3 is to Nanael’s unique stage, has all the costumes, and leads to the true final fights. Save 4 is the last clear game save.

Gameplay: 7/10 Eroticness: 8/10 Story: 3/10