A flash series that had it’s last game turned into a Non-Flash buyable product released on Steam. No need to worry about backstory or world lore, this is a mostly standalone entry.

Natalie, the girl above, is the poster girl of fanservice for the whole series, though only 4 and 5 really do much other then have her jiggle. She’s the whole reason I decided this got into the ecchi game list, and I’m glad I played this. It was a satisfying turn based RPG.

Story-4

One day Matt’s playing a game, like he does every day. Then he loses power. He suspects pirates and goes out to check. He ends up meeting a cat, a hot/smart girl, a pretty evil dude, and a young reckless nature girl. They save the world.

There is slightly more if I went into every plot beat, of which there aren’t many. By the time you get the whole party together the rest of the game is getting to a crash site at which point the final boss explains what’s actually going on. Little happens between those points beyond the party bickering. They talk a lot.

I actually like how often they talk in fights. They comment on everything, it’s impressive. Plenty of it is tutorial like stuff but things like different swords and armor get comments on how they feel about them.

Story is simple, campy silly at times, but the writing is fun.

Gameplay-8

This is one of the most solid turn based RPG’s I’ve played. It’s remarkably well done without being hard to keep track of things, with proper challenges to actually make use of all the mechanics and ideas the gameplay systems offer. This is likely to be a pretty long write up of the gameplay, there’s a lot of small nice touches.

Let’s start with out of combat as that’s the simplest bit. Click to move, the entire game can be controlled with just the mouse. If you ever need a one handed game that isn’t a VN, EBF5 is perfect. The cursor will change if you hover over somewhere you can’t go or something you can interact with, including a bunch of hidden items and just general secrets through the world. As you progress the story you pick up a few items that allow more travel options like a boat, don’t slide ice boots, and a bridge. These open up old chests for you to go back to using the game’s decent map marking mechanics to keep track.

The most complicated world travel stuff would be the block puzzles or the don’t walk over the same spot twice puzzles. These require some thinking and some of the optional dungeons might even make you reach for a guide to get everything. Most puzzles are easy enough and are just a nice in between of the huge amount of fights the game offers.

No random encounters. You click on enemies to start fights, with most enemies either blocking the forward path or standing in front of chests. You heal passively between fights quickly so there’s little downtime. Most enemies stay dead after you beat them, though there are options to turn that off, amongst many other gameplay options like giving enemies more resists, having them counter all attacks, turning off your counters and free attacks, and a range of beneficial buffs as well. Difficulty can be switched on the fly, though to 100% the game all bosses must be beaten on the Epic difficulty. Nothing else does though, so you can swap around as you please for normal fights. It’s fairly customizable.

So the combat system. You have 3 party members active, with 2 backups once you have the full party. Think of turns as belonging to the spot a character is standing rather then the actual character, as you can swap people out freely but not to slots that have already finished their turns. You use up all your slots turns and then the enemies have their go. If the enemies have waves and you finish them off, the turns do not reset. So the new wave might walk into you having one single attack left, or if the enemy ran away because it realized it was screwed, the full enemy wave goes before you. When/how to end a wave is part of the many things to track in a fight.

A really cool UI thing is the game remembers up to your last 6 actions each character has done. So in a boss fight or a set of trash enemies you don’t have to hunt through their entire move list every time, your last few actions are right there ready to use.

As for details. You have 10 elements and about 15 status effects, all useful in some ways. You can curse the enemy, which lowers their 2 defense stats at the end of each of their turns and makes them weak to holy damage. You can stack poison and burn to do a bunch of damage every round. You can inflict burn on yourself but make your resist so high you absorb it, plenty of enemies actually do this. You can make your party wet to lower fire damage and make the enemy wet to deal more ice or lightning. There’s lots of depth with just this honestly and it’s one of the better status effect systems in a game I’ve played.

Then you have the unique buff system. Buffs max at 100, and fall by 5 every turn. Debuffs do the same. But buffs don’t add or stack, the game takes the highest set number and applies it, unless the buff/debuff is coming from a separate status effect like curse which does add 10 debuff to defense every turn. Enemies resist debuffs up to a value, and you need higher debuff values to apply a debuff at all, though things like curse ignore their resistance.

Each member of your party has 6 gear slots. 1 weapon, 1 body armor, and 1 helmet, of which there are 21 of each with each character having their own weapon and armor being split by gender(the cat is male for this). Then you have flairs, or accessories, of which there are around 45, and each character can have 3 of them equipped. Each piece of gear has it’s own resists, stat ups, and special modifiers like making an element do more damage or having a missile land and blow up an enemy between turns. Every piece can be leveled to be made better and all of them are viable at any point in the game depending on how you want to play. Each character has 6 savable loadout slots to swap around if you like different builds for different things, and gear can be changed in battle though you get less information in combat then on the equip screen.

Then you have monster capturing. Around 95% of the enemies in the game can be captured. A small number of those are used to upgrade weapons, and all of them have in battle effects. You have an SP gauge in the bottom left which is your parties pool for summons. If you have a turn where a party member can’t do much or a perfect summon for the current situation, just summon instead of attack. You have like 18 options equipped to summon at any time. This opens up a lot of status effects and big element attacks you usually wouldn’t have.

Finally we have the skill system. Each character has a set permanent list of skills but completing sidequests will often reward other skills you can swap between party members. This can fill a lot of missing element options in skill lists if you want to play favorites or let you really build a character into a role, like I made the cat a healer.

That’s not even getting into the optional level scaling dungeons to actually let you use all these systems, the monster cards that just give you buffs you can find, weather effects in combat and more. There’s a lot here. The last thing I want to talk about before glossing over the rest and not rambling on this game forever is medals and why they made me enjoy this game.

So the game has achievements in game, it calls them medals. One of the optional areas in the game is called the Grand Gallery, which has a bunch of locked doors. These doors unlock as you get medals, with the final door only opening at 100% completion. A lot of these medals are just basic things like capture monsters, do big damage numbers, or explore the world. It’s the ones that require doing all the challenge content in Epic difficulty that made this really fun for me. Knowing I was being reward for basically playing hard mode and winning is nice, and there’s enough non Epic achievements that you can get all but the last room without touching the difficulty ones. There was a lot of thought, a lot of planning, and honestly it made me focus on the parts of turn based combat that are actually fun. Making hard decisions, pre planning, and executing strategies against actually difficult enemies. And being actually rewarded for the effort.

As for what was behind the final door, it wasn’t really worth it. It adds more cheats to one of the option menus and you get a bunch of stat raise items that I guess would be nice if I wanted to mess with all the remix game modes, as medals are tracked separate from your game save. So using my save you could start a new game and get most if not all the Grand Galleries treasures right at the start of the game.

Lewdness- 3

Two main things to talk about here. Seventh Heaven and the Grand Gallery.

First is Seventh Heaven, which is where the image at top comes from. Natalie, the unwilling fanservice girl of the series, has an ultimate where she buffs the party and heals them. She does so by making a projection of herself wearing a swimsuit/lingerie version of whatever armor she is wearing and posing. There are 21 female armors with a mix of actual fantasy armor and cosplay stuff she can equip, they all work with this skill. Her boobs bounce if you click on them. They actually bounce in most of her art if you click on her actually.

Special note to the Cow armor, as that also makes her boobs bigger. By like 2-3 cup sizes.

Anyway, the Grand Gallery. Artwise it’s filled with fanart and concept art. In total there are like 4 or 5 lewd images of Natalie(all in the cow armor) in the whole gallery, so not exactly filled with them. Still had to get all the medals to unlock all the rooms though, just in case.

Final Thoughts

A great gameplay turn based RPG, with a light story, some silly banter, and some lewd here and there. As a package, ignoring the gameplay, it’s okay. If you just play on a low difficulty to bum rush the whole game I don’t think you’d get much out of it other then maybe a chuckle or two and a few shots of Natalie showing her curves off in lingerie cosplay.

Gameplay is the core of the game, though I won’t deny even I turned down the difficulty around the 70% point to speed up fights. At some point the game became a challenge fight turn based thing and it was fun. Few turn based RPGs are actually complex enough for the whole strategy part of the gameplay to really come into play, there’s a reason the genre has it’s mash attack reputation and it’s well earned. I didn’t feel stuck in the heal loop or feel immortal, it was hard and I had to make decisions that would decide the fight turns down the line using moves I rarely used.

Basically I enjoyed the challenge. It felt fair, I felt rewarded for the challenge, and had a good time. It’s not something to play for lewd but as a game? It’s a really solid turn based RPG.

Save for Epic Battle Fantasy 5

Save at the end of the game in the Grand Gallery to look at the art. All outfits gotten for Natalie’s ultimate, just use a spice on her to let her use it. All medals gotten so the whole gallery is open.

Gameplay: 8/10 Eroticness: 3/10 Story: 4/10

Completion:

Do everything. Had to do some pixel hunting to get all the gear, made sure to capture every enemy just for the sake of it, beat all bosses in the highest difficulty mode with no cheats, and be very thorough. Also had to do half a run of the just the main story to get one extra medal, it took like an hour.