Monday, July 20, 2015

Erotic dungeon-crawler Lightning Warrior Raidy 3 strikes English shores



Genre: First-person dungeon-crawling RPG
Tags of interest: defeat rape, yuri, nukige
J-List (box)
JAST (digital)


Synopsis

After her adventures in the previous game, Raidy continues her adventures, with the three monsters Fonfon, Tiss and Folles following behind her, upset at having lost their home in the dungeon. They head to the crime-ridden town of Vice, where Raidy hopes to get help from the local Thieves' Guild. When the four are unable to pay for their meal at an inn, they get in big trouble. The only way to pay off the debt and get their weapons back is to enter a dungeon and remove an evil alchemist who's been kidnapping the humans in the town to perform experiments on them... 
Once again Raidy must enter a series of mazes and defeat wandering monsters and evil bosses who do naughty things if she loses. But this time there's a new twist: a magical item that allows Raidy to merge with one other individual, allowing the creation of a new being with new strengths that are suitable to take on this new challenge.


Overview

Lightning Warrior Raidy 3 is the third in a series of dungeon crawlers from Zyx which pit the protagonist Raidy against various evil foes bent on sexual exploitation and other evilness.  The story in Raidy 1 and Raidy 2 is pretty light--just enough to provide context for the wacky sex scenes and set up the dungeon crawling.  The gameplay is very simple and revolves around grinding to overpower foes with superior level and equipment.  There's some focus on exploration, as some bosses cannot be defeated without the proper item or trigger event.

Sexual content

The sexual content revolves around "sex if you win, sex if you lose".  Raidy encounters various female bosses as she explores the dungeons, who are typically engaged in sexually tormenting a captive.  A battle unfolds, and depending on the result either Raidy prevails and gives the boss a taste of her own medicine, or Raidy loses and becomes a sex slave, triggering a game over.   Some of the sex scenes are animated with simple but well-executed loop animations.

Fusion system

Raidy 3 introduces a Fusion system, which lets Raidy fuse with each of three heroines from previous games and inherit their characteristics and abilities.  These Fusions influence the H-scenes as well.  Some bosses may be difficult to defeat without a particular Fusion, which gives players the option of choosing the appropriate Fusion for a given dungeon excursion, or challenging difficult encounters with their favored Fusion and using other means to prevail.

Background and my perspective

Raidy 3 is actually the first new entry in the series; the others are remakes of older games from the mid 1990s.  As such the story and gameplay in Raidy 3 may be more up to date.  Raidy 2 is significantly longer and more content-filled than Raidy 1 (with about 3x the content of Raidy 1), and I'm hoping Raidy 3 continues this trend.  Raidy 1 is very short and not worth the asking price of $25, in my opinion.  While there's some small degree of continuity in characters and setting, this is a series I would recommend jumping in wherever you feel comfortable; don't get hung up on missing previous entries, especially Raidy 1.  Above all, keep in mind that these are gameplay nukige with very primitive gameplay and storytelling; don't get your hopes up too much.  If you're looking for meatier H-RPGs, check out Brave SoulAselia the EternalYumina the Ethereal, JAST's upcoming Seinarukana (~November 2015), and Mangagamer's Beat Blades Haruka.  Fans of the Raidy series should also check out Demon Master Chris, a doujin yuri-focused dungeon crawler from Mangagamer.

Raidy 3 is now available from J-List and JAST USA.  The hard copy version includes a download code, which should be e-mailed to customers shortly after placing their order.

A short first impression is available in the comment below.

5 comments:

  1. Apologies to the people who posted comments here. I've been fiddling with the comments settings (I want people to be able to post anonymously without Google+) and the comments were lost in the process.

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  2. In answer to Alex's question, there's a spot that turns your character around. Instead of stepping forward after being turned around, turn your character around. Then proceed as usual.

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  3. Just played through the prologue and the first floor of the initial dungeon. As promised, the prologue is pretty substantial--took me 1-2hrs on auto mode pausing for all the voices. Raidy 3 actually has a story. The setting gets some development, and characters other than Raidy and her trio of comrades have their own motives and place in the world. For a Raidy game, the development of the characters and setting was unexpected.

    The gameplay is... as expected, barebones dungeon crawling. Not much different from Raidy 2 in that respect. Fusing with the 3 heroines buffs Raidy's stats in different ways. The wolf girl gives Raidy high hit rate and evasion, but penalizes her defense. The demon girl gives Raidy high attack power and defense, at the expense of hit rate. The elf girl is balanced with medium attack power. Unfused Raidy is pretty weak with very low attack power (at least with her starting weapon), and she won't be able to deal with threats unless she outlevels them significantly.

    In the very first floor the demon girl is not very useful, as her hit rate is so low you'll have to attack 20 times or so to kill anything. There's no true "shop" in this game, at least at this point; instead you automatically trade random drops from enemies and are rewarded with various items. Until she hits level 3 Raidy is extremely weak, and she can be 1 or 2-hit by the strongest mob on the first floor, so you'll want to save often. Of note is that the H-scenes, both victory and defeat ones, vary significantly depending on who Raidy is fused with (they're not simple palette swaps with added lines or added characters). This adds some degree of replayability, as each boss encounter can lead to 8 unique H-scenes.

    It's worth mentioning that there's absolutely zero explanation what the various stats do in-game. DMG and DEF are fairly self-explanatory, but AP and PP are not. My guess is that AP affects hit rate and PP affects evasion rate. While I don't see any issues with the dialogue translation, small issues like this do mar the experience (it's not good when I feel like I need to hunt down Japanese screenshots to figure out what's going on with the system).

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  4. Looks like a VERY interesting game.

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    Replies
    1. It's an iterative improvement on the basic Raidy formula. If you're looking for a dungeon crawler nukige, there's not a whole lot of other choices in English. Kagura Douchuuki would be a solid competitor if the English release wasn't censored.

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