This series has a strange history… this is the third entry in it. After around 20 years. And this isn’t really a full game in it’s own right, but more of an intro arc to the sequel game. It’s a bit weird…

You play Wanan with his Fae nanny, Fluffy is what he calls her. You run around and learn stuff, then fight stuff, then it ends in tragedy for the sequel. Yep.

Story-3

The game is divided into two days. The first day is mostly lore, background to the world and the foreshadowing that the great evils are coming back. You see, the demons were on this planet and were sealed after a rebellion and a great flood. Human evil is bringing them back. That’s only vaguely relevant here. Mostly you are just running errands with lore dumps between.

Day 2, your sister sets off on her holy pilgrimage, but the village chief wants you to go check on a rock to the east that glows really bright and fades when danger is coming. You do, the rock isn’t glowing. After fighting a series of increasingly bad monsters, you continue to go deeper into the very evil forest. Tragedy happens. Game is over.

There’s also a side plot with a catgirl the protag of this game can’t tell is a girl. You basically chase her around, get art of her naked or her clothes coming undone, and throw her in jail twice. She’s the only sidequest in the game, and I’m pretty sure she’s the second game’s protagonist.

Gameplay-4

Barely a metroidvania. You get double jump after the first boss, and a big kick a bit later. Charge attacks are your only other movement/path unlock option and you get those after fast travel unlock from the fourth or fifth boss. Other then the final sidequest needing a hidden weapons charge attack, no other movement upgrades happen. You also can never sequence break. The game is very linear.

You have a three hit combo, a decent jump and double jump, your fairy can be used as a projectile and can stun bosses and other enemies, and eventually one of 4 charge attacks. The game is mostly running around triggering cutscenes until near the end, when it’s just a gauntlet of enemies and actual puzzles and traps.

Powering up is done either via buying gear, with new stuff from scrolls bosses drop and two are found, or from finding HP up horns in the world.

It’s really more a platformer that pretends to be a metroidvania.

Lewdness-7

The catgirl is naked. A lot. Almost every bit of fanservice comes from her. She’s topless, bathing, really early on and you only see her from more angles and sometimes slightly more clothes as the game goes on. The only other time other girls get fanservice stuff is when catgirl is sneaking out from jail the first time and three girls are just bathing right there. Since for whatever reason the pub has a hot spring and a jail right across from each other.

For how short the game is, the catgirl gets a lot of art so this scores pretty high.

Sadly, the game lacks a gallery so the best I could do is get saves next to these scenes.

Final Thoughts

Barely long enough to form an opinion really. It’s like 5-6 hours long, and half of that is exposition. That only matters if you go right into the sequel, or have played the really old two original games.

The only real reason to play this over Heroine 2 is if you like the catgirl and want to see more of her art. I honestly won’t be surprised if the sequel does a good enough job explaining what happened here since so little does.

Save for Heroine Anthem Zero -Sacrifice-

Save to each fanservice moment, with a guide to how to trigger the scenes. Save 1 is right next to the final boss with everything I could find(missing 1 scroll, so 1 weapon. It’s not even better then the weapon you need to get the scroll so whatever.).

Gameplay: 4/10 Eroticness: 7/10 Story: 3/10

Completion:

Finding the final sidequest bit was a pain… it’s in a hidden spot in a random place only 3 maps from the end of the game. Then doing that quest requires going to very specific spots for a while before getting that whole chain. The reward? 4~ total cgs during the chain and 1 HP upgrade.

Everything else was linear. I grinded a bit of gold to buy all the gear since it’s cosmetic, but you play as a guy so I doubt most players will care.