Today on the blog, we have a Rance Quest Magnum tester’s corner from Umbelia!

Hello, my good dude. Do you like aimless adventures where the plot suddenly turns intense halfway through? Do you like cute girls? The Alicesoft Morurun is looking for new victims- Rance Quest Magnum is here.

For anyone who needs an explanation: Rance Quest Magnum is the 8th entry in one of the biggest names in eroge history, Alicesoft’s Rance series. They are overwhelmingly closer to plot-heavy RPGs with eroge elements than the other way around and it works out amazingly well. The genre from game to game often varies wildly, and in Rance Quest Magnum’s case, it’s taking the form of a top-down dungeon crawler RPG.

The plot itself is a bit hard to talk about for a couple reasons- Rance Quest and Rance Quest Magnum are both totally solid standalone games with completely separate (though related) stories. On top of the distinction, Rance Quest is following up pretty much immediately where Sengoku Rance (which I strongly recommend playing) left off.

After returning to the continent from his adventures in Nippon, Rance is faced with the dilemma of -SPOILERS- and sets off on a quest to… solve the problem that, again, is completely impossible to talk about without blowing up major plot points of Sengoku Rance.

Through taking a spread of fairly random and unrelated quests, shenanigans lead to Rance falling victim to a curse called the Abstinence Morurun, which… does a lot of things, but most importantly he can’t have sex with anyone under level 35. Did I mention that this is incredibly hard to talk about?

Rance Quest Magnum picks up immediately after the end of base Rance Quest… and goes in a completely different direction from Rance Quest‘s general meandering and aimless nature- having a very pointed (and standard) JRPG plot about the world’s dominant religion and drama surrounding it and appointing a new bishop after the previous one recently deceased and… again, as a direct sequel to base Rance Quest, this is essentially impossible to talk about.

Outside of lore stuff, Rance Quest (and also the Rance series in general) has a huge cast of (mostly girl) party members that you can pretty much freely mix and match according to your taste… or min/max if you want to go hard.

The gameplay has a STEEP grind element to it, as dungeon crawlers tend to, but be ready to spend a lot of time farming! But if you decide to really go at it you’ll find that Quest is a pretty deep and solid RPG.

Aside from the writing and gameplay, Rance (and Alicesoft at large) is known for pretty great soundtracks and of course, Rance Quest Magnum is no exception. Hammering the point home that, really, Rance is more like a normal RPG than an eroge.

That being said, if it’s not already obvious- Rance is NOT a nukige by any stretch of the imagination. The art is good, the writing is great, the experience is amazing- and if you’re looking for something more in line with a horny RPG than a basic VN experience, then Rance is here for you!

Rance Quest Magnum is now available for purchase exclusively on MangaGamer.com!

Today on the blog, we have a Rance Quest Magnum tester’s corner from threepwood007!

WARNING: This post contains spoilers for Rance 5D, VI, and Sengoku Rance.

Rance is, if nothing else, a pretty story in the visual novel medium. From a company that just about burned itself out to the point of not wanting to go on, the Rance story burst forth from those ashes to continue to be one of the most unique franchises out there. Whether you can stomach the tastes of Alicesoft or not, the green anti-hero of the Continent has definitely Gahahaha~’d his way into the hearts of enough to make the series one of the most desired localizations here at MangaGamer for ages.

Which is appropriate, because in the grim darkness of the far future, as it turns out there is only Rance. And quests. And levels. And item upgrades. And quests. And Malgrid.

Rance Quest Magnum marks the 8th entry into the franchise, continuing the new canon timeline from 5D as Rance settles down in the Continent to continue his all-important life directive of banging every beautiful woman in the world. There’s a side bit about his longtime companion and slave, Sill Plain, being stuck in ice from the curse of an Archfiend, but the hole you have access to trumps the hole you don’t, apparently.

Rance Quest is well-known for having a major plot device being a curse placed upon Rance such that he cannot, however, penetrate a hole belonging to a woman under level 35. This sends Rance on a campaign of fuckin’ and fightin’ as he searches for powerful ladies as well as the means to break the curse. A Rance game with the core of Rance as the driving gameplay mechanic: level up, fuck it up, and then do it all over again.

Working on the game actually proved to be even more of a challenge than Sengoku Rance, and that’s mostly because it’s a great deal longer (more than twice as long, as the numbers suggest).

It’s helped by TADA, bless them, adding a nice little 2x XP mode to boost the grind along should a player choose, but the sheer enormity of Rance Quest Magnum is intimidating. There are dozens upon dozens of recruitable characters, over 200 quests, and loads of plots and subplots to keep track of. There are also, of course, tons of features in the game that need to be examined lest they prove a headache for you, dear player.

Tooltips, quest descriptions, quest triggers, multiple endings, end credits flags, etc. etc. etc. Rance Quest Magnum has it all, and the big takeaway here is that this game is absolutely worth the time that you’ll put into it as the payoff is enormous.

Protip: Don’t bang the queen the first time you get the actual choice, and you’ll see one of the more brutally emotional endings Rance has to offer. Oof.

As a wrap-up, the QA process been coming up on “the Internet” more and more recently. If we could, we’d test until every bug was squished and our eyeballs could only see XP gained and Gold drops.

Sadly, our time is limited and so the production team does their best with what we have. This human on the other end of the ethernet cable simply hopes that you enjoy your time with the official localization of Rance Quest Magnum as much as he enjoyed getting it ready for you.

See you in Helman~!

Rance Quest Magnum is now available for purchase on MangaGamer.com!

Today on the blog, we have a MUSICUS! tester’s corner from threepwood007!

Like DEARDROPS and KiraKira before it, MUSICUS! is a musical story from the hands of OVERDRIVE and Milktub.

Unlike DEARDROPS and KiraKira before it, MUSICUS! is probably not what you’re going to be expecting as you fire up the grand finale to the encore of OVERDRIVE as they take their final bow on the stage of visual novels. Unless you were expecting their trademark protagonists with their fondness of soliloquies, or the inclusion of one last school arc.

MUSICUS! does a lot of things that are very satisfying from a storytelling perspective. It’s an engaging game that embraces many of life’s common problems: an estranged, cheating father; the aimless, goalless wandering of youth; some good ‘ole depression; and of course, the exploitation of talent for money. That last one may not be all that common, but MUSICUS! separates itself from its predecessors as a story about music early on and does not look back, except wistfully.

Taking the story of a fledgling band as they pursue stardom would be an easy repeat of their previous plotlines, but MUSICUS! goes after different perspectives. Told from the viewpoint of a protagonist who (at least to this tester) was pretty noticeably different from the average human in their handling of emotions, relationships, etc., MUSICUS! doesn’t necessarily make the literal power of music the forefront of the story. More often, it lingers on the hardships and trials of “making it” or “getting noticed,” and the reader will note that this doesn’t change for most of the story.

Which is okay, of course; it makes for a different experience performing the beta test as the density of the text creates a very misleading forecast of the time required (by lines, MUSICUS! is very short; by “words”… oof). This is mostly due to the classic OVERDRIVE protagonist thought space, but the story is also driven by some pretty heavy conversations that add to the work’s bulk.

Then there is the slew of extra features with the game. The routing itself through the arcs isn’t necessarily intuitive, as the choices of the game center upon your views of music and the industry. Each choice of course relates to a character’s path, but there are secret choices and other paths that only appear in extreme circumstances so keep an eye out and try different things!

But naturally, it’s an OVERDRIVE game powered by Milktub so of course there are concert scenes, right? Well… you’ll have to play and find out. I can say with absolute confidence that the tracklist is a banger, but one song, in particular, had my hairs all on end.

Here’s hoping your experience is as enjoyable!

MUSICUS! is now available for purchase on MangaGamer.com and Steam!

Today on the blog, we have a Funbag Fantasy 3if tester’s corner from threepwood007!

“So this is a pretty hardcore H game, right?”

“Yup. Big boob fetish.”

“And you’re geeking out over the…”

“The Roman history bits! Aw man so the scenes in taverns are actually accurate depictions based on what’s been uncovered in-“

Welcome to Funbag Fantasy 3if, the latest game in the series of games with some of the best plot ever showcased. And good “plot” too, if milking and Tig ‘Ole Biddies is your thing.The most important thing to remember is that while FF 3if is a very solid, very densely packed (so dense) nukige, it also has one of the better stories to go with it.

Unlike previous games in the series, this one does not deal overmuch with daemons – at least, not as main character. 3if follows the story of Julinas, a minor god – the minorest, really – and his adventures in the mortal realm and beyond. As always with Funbag Fantasy protagonists, Julinas is quite the lover of boobs, and favors titjobs more than anything else. So much that the word itself may begin to look strange and alien after seeing it so often.

It may seem like beating dead meat, but FF 3if truly is a good read – and if you’re not a fan of the large breasted ladies and the boobjobs, you will have a lot of content to enjoy on that end as well. 3if combines the original game and the expanded storylines into a seamless presentation. While the choices aren’t always easy to determine which routes they’ll lead into, the experience is fun regardless.

The game has Julinas travel all throughout the Underworld, the Olympian realm, and the mortal realm all to experience the busty pleasures they have to offer, and each route is varied enough to make them all worthwhile to read.

But working on a game like FF 3if comes with its own share of trials and tribulations. There’s a particular style of writing that the game prefers, and indeed the repetition of titjobs and other such epithets can make the words blur together in ways that make the process tiring on the eyes at times.

Yet the perseverance has a good payoff. Funbag Fantasy 3if is definitely worth the time, and one should not be fooled by the appearance of the game for it’s much more than your usual fetish title. Also, it’s set years and years before any events of the other games; if 3if is your first experience, the adventures of Lute and Ruin are also very worth the time.

Funbag Fantasy 3if is now available for purchase on MangaGamer.com and Steam!

Hello, all! The name is arccun, and this is my first Tester’s Corner as a part of MangaGamer! I hope to be a part of this for as long as possible! For my first project, I was tasked with going through Nekoday’s debut project, Christmas Tina: Ephemeral Views of Winter!

For a somewhat short summary, Tina is what you would call a “kinetic novel,” one that has a static start-to-end, no branching paths. It’s a story taking place in late-1980s Japan, in the full embrace of Japan’s bubble economy, where times were fast and technological advances were even faster. We center ourselves around two main characters. In one corner, we have the main girl, Kanna Sakurai. A country girl coming out of a car crash with a guilty conscious and injuries to her legs, she intends to travel to Tokyo to earn money for her sister’s surgery fees. In the other corner, we have our main guy, Jing Xiaoran. A Chinese man recovering from failing his university entrance exams, he intends to earn the money he needs to retake them in Japan. Through their own avenues (shady or otherwise), the two find each other at the same location to perform a job meant for that one person. And what, pray tell, would that job be? Admittedly a simple one: live in an abandoned train station for one calendar year, and nothing else. They’ll have to split the pay, a paltry 400 yen/hour, but the 24/7 aspect of it alleviates it a bit. Now the two must live together, staying in a station that doesn’t have water or electricity, and a heavy language barrier not helping matters.

To go on a small tangent, as someone that had just started working at MangaGamer recently, I didn’t know much of this game (or the studio, NekoDay, for that matter) beyond the initial blog post MG posted detailing their acquisition of the license, so I came into this very blind. For instance, after reading that Jing was Chinese and the game was fully-voiced, my first thought was that the novel would do that thing anime usually does where the “foreign” characters would speak not Chinese, but a very broken form of Japanese. However, I was shocked to hear that Jing spoke Chinese. So bonus points for cultural accuracy (though since NekoDay’s a Chinese studio, perhaps bonus points need not apply here haha…).

Back to the main point, the story is a bit of a slow burn. I’ll be honest, it took a bit for Kanna or Jing to really mesh with me. They were both stubborn to a fault, understandably so, but the miscommunications did get a bit much after a bit. However, as the game went on, and they started to gel with each other more, I found myself getting really invested in the two of them. Whether it be Jing’s budding friendship with Kanna’s sister Emi, or Kanna hanging out her boss Sakura, the two really came into their own as characters. Not to divert attention from the rest of the cast, as they were well-written as well. The story also did a great job of contrasting the hustle-and-bustle of central Harajuku and say… the late-night hostess clubs that were ever-so-present in that area of Tokyo. I got really invested when everything started to hit the fan at the end, to where I was barreling through the story just to see what happens next. 

Now to talk about the art and music, something that always catches my eye in these sorts of games. The art is, to put it bluntly, really damn good. It’s got this… soothing atmosphere to it, amplified by the music provided by bermei.inazawa. Some points in the game, it’ll provide these jaunty themes you wouldn’t find out of place in say, Atelier, to match the mood. Other times, they’ll come in with some vocal themes with Mega Ran providing vocals, which honestly shocked me a bit. I find myself listening to Mega Ran on the rare occasion, so I honestly did a double take when I saw his name in the music credits.

Overall, Christmas Tina: Ephemeral Views of Winter is a relaxing go-through. It’s a calming story with good slice-of-life elements, with good music to listen to, and pretty art to look at. It’s a tale of two people from two completely different situations, coming to understand on another in such tumultuous times. I give this a hearty two thumbs-up, and await to see what NekoDay chooses to bring over to the West next! And to MangaGamer, thank you for letting me be involved in the process!

I am going to be completely transparent- I expected nothing going into Nekoday’s Christmas Tina. Normally, when I agree to beta test a game, I have a very specific reason to be excited about it. The art, the concept, the STUDIO, something! This is the first time I blind grab bagged a title and hoped for the best, and I was pleasantly surprised. I hope you are ready for some shilling, because it is happening!

So first off, I wanted to give a little bit of my own background- I promise this has a purpose. When I was a wee college student, I chose to obtain a degree in Chinese. Something that, since graduating, I have hardly used. It was a great part of my life, something that drove me, something that made me want to see the world and try something new—and then I abandoned it entirely because I couldn’t for the life of me keep myself motivated nor find a use for those skills. My Chinese and my drive for it slowly faded away. Turning on the game, I never expected to hear someone speaking Chinese. Let alone having the Chinese language and communication be a center piece. I felt a part of me that has been long dormant spark. I listened to the Chinese lines and understood many of them! I was overjoyed. This may make my views a bit biased, but I think that is one of the beautiful things about visual novels—finding stories, characters or otherwise that pry you open and make you feel something, sometimes personally. 

Now that I have my own personal gushing out of the way I want to talk about some of my favorite parts of the game as a whole. The story of Christmas Tina had me hooked from the opening cinematic to the closing credits. I was captivated by its characters, their struggles, and their triumphs. I literally could not get any more emotional about how well this story drove home the value of learning about someone and their circumstances regardless of if there is some sort of barrier in the way (In this case, a language barrier). I loved it. I think this is the first piece since I reviewed eden* back in the day that openly made me weep. I don’t want to go into detail, as I feel this is a story I would love people to experience for themselves, but please take my word that it is unique, powerful, interesting, and bittersweet. Each of the main characters is given time to really show what makes them tick, both with themselves and with each other. The tension that exists from the get-go begins to loosen over time and then build again in some of the most solid writing I have seen in a long while. I really cared about everyone present in this visual novel, I wanted to see them succeed. And I was heartbroken when they failed. That is just good writing.      

The only nitpick I truly have with Christmas Tina is addressed by the game itself. The amount of movement and CGS is slim. There is not a lot of variation in the art that is displayed on screen; However, the developers of the game refused to make that a weakness. Most CGS and sprites, while re-used, are done so in various ways with unique and different points of view, effects, or both! When a new piece of art does appear, it is almost always a turning point in the story as well. They draw your eyes to the screen on purpose. They make you care about what you are seeing whether it is the first or fourteenth time you have seen the sprite or CG. I was floored by how truly creative this team was in displaying emotions through movement and how they made a weakness a strength in my eyes. I haven’t seen anything like it before, but I sure hope I will again soon. I want more visual novels like this. I want to see something new and innovative being shown from a team that very obviously cares about the story they are telling.    

I expected nothing when I opened this title. If I am being honest, it was probably the first title I have accepted just because I wanted to play a visual novel. I had an inch and I wanted it scratched. Well, I got way more than that. This is one of my favorite titles I have worked on with MangaGamer. I cannot express enough how much I hope anyone who is reading this will give it a try. I finished Christmas Tina in tears at 2AM because I couldn’t stop playing it at a point. Christmas Tina reminded me why I love visual novels. 

Today we have our third and final Christmas Tina tester’s corner!

So pretty much the first thing that happens before I start a test: I get linked a vndb page and asked if I’d be interested in it.

“Chinese Protagonist,” huh. Nothing super unusual here, though I feel like there’s definitely a conflict between “80s” and “Modern Day Tokyo.” Sure! I’ll bite. It could be cute!

I was, of course, 100% right about it being adorable, but the tags VERY MUCH understate how unusual it actually is… the mixup here is that the devs for this adorable piece of work, Nekoday, are Chinese. This is a Chinese VN. “Chinese Protagonist” is played totally straight- he’s an actual Chinese speaker… and mostly does so for the entirety of the game. The tone and subject material absolutely blindsided me on what I basically expected to be a nakige. Prior to MG’s release, the game actually already was on Steam- released in Chinese only. Our version is to be released on the MG store of course but also as an English language add on to the Chinese version, which I thought was neat.

Which brings us to the story itself! I called it cute earlier, and I’ll stand by that… but also I’m not entirely certain if cute is really the right word. It’s a story set in late Showa(80s) about a high school girl, Kanna, who dropped out in order to work and save up money, in order to help her parents afford an expensive heart surgery for her younger sister, Emi. Between her desperation for work… and other circumstances, she decided to try moving to Tokyo and ends up accepting a shady job from a girl where all she has to do is… live at an abandoned train station for a year.

At the same time in China… Jing decided he was fed up with the life he was living, working in a resturant with basically no future. He had been rejected by the universities he applied to and didn’t have a plan beyond that… In order to continue his studies, he decided to work somewhere more profitable, and also headed to Tokyo. His contact there ended up… being a shady man, who offered him shady work- to live in an abandoned train station for a year.

Having both taken on the same job, but neither of them being able to DECLINE the job, they end up just splitting the pay… 

Having outlined all that, EVEN WITH THAT INFORMATION, I feel like it’s probably not possible to actually predict the directions the story goes. Rather than a visual novel, it reads more like a period film, almost. It’s good! Great, even. I don’t have a good word to describe it, but overall the writing is touching in ways I definitely wouldn’t expect from a VN. It ends up dealing with several heavier topics completely uncharictaristic to the genre, which I suspect is just a concequence of being made in a totally different culture in the first place.

From my perspective, this is extremely refreshing!

The music is pleasant, and again is… very different from what I’m used to. It’s very… Kitschky, almost? It’s definitely not Showa-era bgm, but it does kind of have an olden feel to it. A lot of instrumentals- especially piano and guitar, but every so often they’ll throw some curveball synthy sounds. It’s neat! In spite of their curve-ballyness, they match the tone to everything really well so you never really notice it until you go back to the music mode and listen to them and write a review and you’re like “Oh this is nice, actually.”

Sounds like something I’d expect from a Story of Seasons game.

The CGs, like the music, definitely aren’t the focus of the game… but are again kind of subtly overperforming in a way I can’t articulate very well. The art style is very cute! There’s not much to say- it matches the tone and everything very well. This is an all-ages game… so we’re not looking too closely regardless but ultimately it’s part of a package that’s very comfortable and… like, grounded or something.

All in all, this is definitely a story I can recommend to anyone who wants a more real read.

Namaiki Dark Elves is a nukige coming from Waffle, who’s generally known for the Funbag Fantasy series. This one isn’t as similar to Funbag, given that there’s only a few busty characters along with a flatter heroine. However, it boasts a good amount of H-scenes just like that series, but is there a harem ending? I won’t spoil it.

The plot is about a half-human, half-dark elf boy named Ober, who’s grown up in a household consisting of around three dark elves sisters of his. They all tend to treat him rather badly, using him as a slave and all. There’s the idol, Supra, the manly and tomboyish Sheila along with Diano, who’s the academic prodigy. Given how the cover has the four of them getting somewhat intimate, one could know what to expect when it comes to playing the game.

At one point, their father tells them that there’s an oracle that reveals that Ober is the chosen one of the dark elves whose children will bring glory to the dark elves for a thousand years or so. Since he doesn’t want this to pass onto the other families, he tells the family that Ober’s going to have to impregnate one of his sisters.

The H-scenes in this are rather creative, making use of various toys that Ober’s father had used in the past. Some of the heroines have H-scenes circulating around these, Supra’s is exhibitionism, Sheila’s is to do with humiliation and Diano also uses her fair share of devices on Ober as well. There’s some scenes that could turn off those who aren’t open-minded with H-scenes, however.

Ober, from the beginning, is very fond of these sisters despite the way they treat him. The thought of having sex with his sisters pleases him immensely. As the story goes on, you’ll see development in how the way his sisters treat him changes, resulting in some standard nukige fair, I’d say.

In the end, if you’re interested in some fun action with three pretty dark elf sisters and their brother.

Pick up Namaiki Dark Elf Sisters on MangaGamer.com or Steam!

Hello! I’m Feinerine, back for another Tester’s Corner article! This one I’ll be talking about is Horny Elves and a Moral Orc, a visual novel from Waffle, the creators of Funbag Fantasy, along with originally a 4-panel comic by Tomokichi! Just from the title, you can guess that it centres around a few horny elves and an orc who has to put up with their shenanigans.

The general gist is that there’s an orc named Donovan who has spent his life secluded, as the orc race was basically annihilated many years ago against the elves. While he would have normally died as a child, the Goddess spared his life and told him to never have sex with an elf or else he would die.

To his dismay, he’s been discovered by two horny elves named Myshla and Eymie, who are basically on a journey to experience the feeling of being penetrated by an orc dick! While he tries to convince them that he’ll die if he ever cums inside or on either of them, he goes through painful (to say the least) experiences every time they try to have sex with them.

While I should try not to spoil it, I’ll say that you might wonder what happens if he lies with them? Well, I’d highly recommend reading the visual novel and finding out, it’s quite fun and makes reading the story more enjoyable!

Aside from that, there’s plenty of comedic bits in the visual novel, mainly to do with how Donovan reacts to Myshla and Eymie’s horny attitudes in general. As for the H-scenes, there’s not much variety in the first few, but about halfway through, there starts to be more that might fit the fancy of some others.

All in all, I’d recommend Horny Elves and a Moral Orc if you’re looking for some comedy and are okay with horny elves in general!

Today we have some insight from one of our testers on our latest release, ClockUp’s How A Healthy Hentai Administers Public Service!

Long time no see, Kitty-tama here! It’s always a real joy to work on CLOCKUP games, and How a Healthy Hentai Administers Public Service is no exception to that rule. It’s in the same universe as How to Live a Healthy Hentai Lifestyle. There are also cameos from the heroines in Healthy Hentai Lifestyle, but you don’t really need to play one to enjoy the other. You’ll enjoy the nods to the first game a bit more if you’ve played it, but besides that, the casts are fairly different. Even the protagonist is an entirely different character! So if you find the cast of How a Healthy Hentai Administers Public Service appeals to you more but you haven’t played How to Live a Healthy Hentai Lifestyle, fear not! You can still enjoy it on its own merits.

How a Healthy Hentai Administers Public Service follows recent graduate Jin Shintani as he enters the work forceÅ\the Sex Officer work force, that is. Sex Officers relieve civilians’ sexual frustrations, fulfill fantasies, and keep society as a whole peaceful, admonishing any sexual criminals. Jin works alongside his endearing coworkers: lively though average-looking Hiyori, the adorable, youthful twins Mireille and Camille (who can’t be more polar opposites in terms of personality, as well as genitals!), maternal and luscious Taki, and buff, rowdy Rinko. We get to witness what Sex Officers experience in their line of work, including the various clients and kinky antics they get up to. I found myself becoming attached to the characters quickly, but I do have my favorites. Those being Taki, the twins Mireille and Camille, and Emmanuelle, the twins’ mom.

I so deeply appreciate how the Healthy Hentai world is one of bustling sex positivity. No fantasies or desires are off-limits, and there’s never a need to feel shame for the desires one has. I really love this attitude embedded in the fabric of the series itself, and in this particular installment we see some refreshing variety its predecessor lacked. No pairings are off-limits: we can see relations of all flavors, including male-on-male, futa-on-male (and futa-on-female!), and even a few mentions of girl-on-girl, too. Sex Officers are trained to fulfill every desire, so of course they’ll cater to anyone and everyone! There’s no discrimination in the Healthy Hentai world, and seeing the wide variety of fetishes and pairings catered to was a total blast. I can’t lie, I had a huge smile on my face for so much of the game for how it’s bursting with this joyful, carefree attitude about sex!

On a related note, none of the heroines in this game are virgins. Not even the side heroines! Seeing a cast of characters unabashedly asking for what they want, when they want it, and owning their sexuality is so fun, and it’s a refreshing change of pace from the usual blushing, embarrassed heroine H-scenes we might typically see in a more romance-oriented title. If you like heroines who take control, or heroines who aren’t afraid to admit what they want, this title is right up your alley!

Of course, we can’t talk about the Healthy Hentai series without mentioning the gorgeous art, and this installment is no exception. Butcha-U’s artwork in How a Healthy Hentai Administers Public Service is eye-catching, with a gorgeous color palette and a very erotic variety of body types. Do you like your girls curvy? Check. Do you like them more lithe and tiny? Check. How about right in between? Also check. There’s something for everyone here, and the character designs here in particular are amazing. I mean, have you seen Emmanuelle?!

This isn’t a game you play for any semblance of a meaty plot. The porn is very much front and center here, and it’s quite unapologetic about it. But then, why feel apologetic in the Healthy Hentai world? What little story that is here is nothing deep, but a kinky, fun romp that’s bound to fill many fantasies and desires. Why not see for yourself what the daily life of a Sex Officer entails when you play How a Healthy Hentai Administers Public Service!

Today we have some insight on our latest release, How A Healthy Hentai Administer’s Public Service, from one of our always wonderful testers!

Alright, here we are with another Kenzen. We’ve been here before! I know what to expect, right? …Right?

Turns out, not really. Kenzen 1 was a pretty good nukige. Kenzen 2 is a pretty good nukige that *also* happens to have my favorite, and hottest heroine(s???) I’m pretty sure I’ve encountered for a billion reasons that I’m not actually going to fully dump here, but just know I love them a lot.

‘Who is she?'(spoilers: ‘are they?’), you ask? Well, first, let’s look at all of them, and what makes Kenzen 2 fantastic:

As you can see, these are all ladies in… a uniform of sorts. If you’re coming from Kenzen 1 you’ll recognize this, and it’s core to what makes Kenzen 2 great in my eyes: it’s the uniform of the sexual relief officers in their world. Two of them are even familiar faces! The protagonist is joining their office as a male sex officer, whose jobs are to solve their town’s problems- both reactively and proactively, preventing crimes of sexual nature. Unironically, this is fantastic and it’s taking everything I have to not gush about this idea in and of itself. That being said, one of the girls in particular stands out a little… and she has a tiny surprise. Or at least, it was a surprise to me going in- I didn’t really know much other than it was a sequel and the splash art and other stuff PR put out.

You see, this little piece of garbage-

She has a special secret that I didn’t know she had until I saw the opening video. That is:

There are two of her.
The person scolding her is her sibling!

‘Wow!’ I think. Cutting edge twin technology. Fantastic. Flawless. I am thrilled. What a great surprise!

But you also might have been like me, and noticed the censoring on the op is a bit odd. Hmmm. W-Wait… could it be…?!

FINALLY a game catered exclusively to my tastes and actually just no one else’s. This is objectively false, but I literally can not think of this set of tags ever being in a setting even remotely like this before and I didn’t know how badly I wanted it until now.

The twins themselves share everything- including their route. I’m going to spoil as little as I can because, again, this is the most charming VN I have interacted with in ages… (Which is bizzare to me, given the subject matter is a nukige, but here we are.) but there’s no real way to talk about this sort of thing without getting into some spoiler stuff.(Namely, CGs)

Just know that their route involves both of them, and most of their CGs do too. I can not underline how much I want to gush about these two and how hard I’m holding myself back. Please appreciate my wives.

I am not going to spoil it, but the hottest one is the one that involves a towel. It is my favorite scene in literally any eroge I have played period. Anyway…

…I should talk about the game, huh. It’s good. Give it a try. Relatively low amount of extreme fetish for clockup. Very high amount of sex positivity. Very fun. There are side routes also, as usual. Please play it.

Today we have some insights from one of our lovely beta testers, Kitty-tama, into our latest release: ClockUp’s DEAD DAYS! Enjoy!

Hi everyone, it’s Kitty-tama! It’s always a real joy getting to work on ClockUp games, and this one is no exception. I had the honor of beta testing DEAD DAYS, and I felt compelled to share my thoughts. I’m sure lots of you are looking forward to it. It’s an excellent game, of course, but I can’t just leave it at that! There’s so much to say! 

DEAD DAYS has an intriguing premise out the gate: strangers awaken alongside each other in an unknown location, except there is a twist here. By rights, they should be dead. Yet here they are in this unknown location. The main thing connecting them, beyond their confusion, is a mysterious figure who grants them an extension on their lives, so to say. There’s a catch–they must defeat the spectres, creatures only those who have been resurrected can see and interact with. How will they come to terms with this spectre hunting life combined with keeping up appearances? Doubly so with how horny everyone becomes after their missions! 

Sounds like a pretty basic premise, right? While much of the beginnings of the VN are centered on this ragtag group consisting of our cocky, arrogant protagonist Teru Kuresaka, fashionista and gyaru Aira Mitsumine, housewife Minami Mera, and the mysterious stranger known as Tengan Soukichi and how they go about defeating the various spectres they come across as part of their “work”, that’s only part of the story. What’s so fascinating about DEAD DAYS is that, yes, Teru is the primary protagonist, but we get to see from other perspectives outside of him. It makes the narrative that much richer, and if you’re a fan of seeing what heroines are thinking or feeling (especially during H-scenes), you’ll have a fun time with some scenes contained within DEAD DAYS. 

It’s hard to say who my top favorite character is, as everyone is flawed in fascinating ways and nobody is portrayed to be “perfect”. But I have to say, of all the characters, I had the most fun watching Kiruru and her antics. Tokio Aoi gives a stunning, fantastic, straight-up unhinged performance with Kiruru, and her trademark cackle will stick in my brain for quite some time. She’s nuts, but that’s what makes her so fun! While every character has something up with them, Kiruru is such a standout. I hope you like her as much as I did! It’s funny because she isn’t the typical kind of character I’d be into–I’m usually more inclined to like Minami-type heroines who are warm and nurturing. And don’t get me wrong, Minami is adorable. Sexy, too! But Kiruru is that special level of crazy to where you just can’t help but find her endearing. Our main protag, Teru is arrogant and manipulative, but there is more to him than that–by the end of the VN, I did soften up to him and felt for him more than I’d expected to out the gate. 

When it comes to VN devs I highly respect, ClockUp is up on that list, hands down. One thing I really admire about their darker games in particular is how they blend eroticism and storytelling–the H-scenes aren’t solely there to be fap fuel (although that’s not to say they aren’t there for that purpose, at least in part). The H-scenes can’t merely be stripped away from DEAD DAYS, or any of their darker games for that matter, without impacting the main overarching storyline. And the storyline here is excellent. But the H-scenes are equally handled with care. Yes, they go about as off the walls as you’d expect from a darker ClockUp title in particular, but one thing I really love about DEAD DAYS is how we can directly see what heroines are thinking or feeling during their perspective H-scenes that come up.

ClockUp knows how to write women in fucked up situations from a very respectful lens, so to speak–they have their motives for doing what they do, for feeling how they do, and they aren’t just two-dimensional cardboard cutouts. This makes their H-scenes stand out all the more, doubly so because it goes far beyond mere titillation. We can actually see into their psyches during such moments. This isn’t to undersell the character development that occurs from Teru’s POV, though–he experiences his own conflicting feelings and thoughts throughout the H-scenes, and it makes them all the more entertaining to read.

For any guro fans, don’t fret, you’ll get your fill too! It’s not quite Maggot Baits levels, but it’s absolutely there, and it’s my hope you’ll enjoy such scenes. Also, there’s no scat to be seen here, so if you’re worried about that, don’t be. If you were looking forward to that, well, that might be one disappointing aspect.

I would say, of all the dark ClockUp games, DEAD DAYS is probably the tamest in terms of harder content (of the ones in English). There is some sensitive subject matter I’d be remiss not to give a heads-up for, including Juria’s story arc which toys with junior idols and sleeping to the top–not everyone will be comfortable with this. But it plays a very important part in how she sees the world around her and perceives the people around her, too. She’s one of the only other characters who gets Teru beyond surface level, next to his childhood friend Mao. There’s also some body horror elements in the spectres, as well as gore (which, as always, can be filtered off in the settings menu per your comfort level). But of the darker ClockUp games, DEAD DAYS is what I personally consider the tamest among the ones that have been licensed so far. If you’ve been curious about ClockUp’s offerings but have been too scared to try euphoria or Maggot Baits, this might be a potentially good starter VN from their darker library.

I’m always thrilled when the time comes to beta test a ClockUp title, and I’m doubly happy I got to work on such an eagerly anticipated title as DEAD DAYS! I love ClockUp’s lighter titles, too, but there’s just a special charm to their dark games that have a little extra oomph, a little extra depth that makes playing them feel all the more worth it. It’s my hope you’ll enjoy playing DEAD DAYS when it releases!

Steam Prison – Beyond the Steam – is coming to MangaGamer, Steam, and Nintendo Switch in just under two weeks! Today we have some insights into the game from one of wonderful our beta testers, Sharpest Rose, for your reading pleasure:

Steam Prison -Beyond the Steam- exceeded any expectations I could have possibly had for a fan disk of the original game. It caters to both the lighter, more romance-oriented elements of the original while also expanding on some of the darkest aspects of the base game, meaning it has something for everyone.

The sequel portion of the story, Cainabel, takes place following the ‘Grand Ending’ of the original Steam Prison. This means that everyone is in a relatively comfortable, happy situation as the beginning status quo – Ines might not like doing middle management very much, but he’s back in the Heights, you know? Fin hasn’t gone through major trauma. The heroine’s parents are alive. We build from a solid foundation.

I don’t want to give much away about the actual sequel story, but I felt it was very much a worthy successor to the original, offering sufficiently complex and interesting new characters and engaging things for the returning characters to do – the way Saint Yune’s unique situation is weaponised in one of the arcs is particularly inspired.

Something that’s particularly noteworthy are the extra scenes that unlock as you play through each route, because these serve to expand and deepen the relationships between characters aside from their interactions with the heroine. Seeing Sachsen Brandenburg peer-pressure Adage Roselite into trying smoking and then trying to mock him for being a virgin was a character dynamic I never even thought of, but it adds shape and colour to the world as a whole. 

Speaking of Sachsen, the second major element of the fan disk is A New Theory, which returns us to the context of the original game and offers greater depth to the story of Sachs and Fin in the HOUNDS. Anyone who remembers the original game will know that this was some of the darkest stuff, first time around, so you know what you’re in for – but if you were among the hordes clamouring for a Sachsen route, or if you like your Fins extremely screwed up, then this game caters to your desires. Other characters, such as Ines and Adage, also appear in this portion of the game. 

The third part of the fan disk is a surprisingly difficult spot-the-difference chibi game, with charming artwork and full commentary by a character of your choice. It’s worth 100%ing this section, as you can earn a truly adorable bonus CG for your efforts.

All in all, -Beyond the Steam- is everything a fan could possibly hope for out of a Steam Prison continuation, offering all the delicate, complex romance between the well-developed characters that fans of the original will want. Whether it’s light or dark that draws you, you’ll find it here.

You can pre-order the game on the MangaGamer shop right now to save 10% or wishlist it on Steam!

Steam Prison – Beyond the Steam – is coming out on MangaGamer, Steam, and Nintendo Switch next week! You can pre-order right now on the MangaGamer store or wishlist it on Steam!

Today we have some more insights into the game from another of our wonderful testers, Arccun!

     Hey all, this is Mangagamer tester Arccun, here once again with the latest Tester’s Corner, this time tackling the fandisk to the acclaimed visual novel by HuneX; Steam Prison: Beyond the Steam.

     This fandisk’s main story, the aptly named “Beyond the Steam,” serves as a continuation two years after the original Steam Prison’s Grand Ending, revisiting the main group of characters led by one Cyrus Tistella (or whichever name you happen to give her) and her six potential suitors from the first game, as they adventure beyond the foggy boundary of the Depths, and happen upon a whole new locale, complete with a new land immersed in a completely foreign culture to the puritan ideals of the Heights. The new locale plays host to two new potential suitors in Jevite and Jereme, brothers and dual kings of the kingdom of Cainabel, a land taking clear inspiration from locales you would sooner see in something like the 1,001 Nights, as they are thrust into that position after the untimely death of the previous king. Jevite is a playful and casual sort, treating everyone around him warmly, while Jereme is a more cold and serious type of person, keeping people at bay. Depending on the route you take, your group becomes entangled in a game of political intrigue, leading you down endings dependent on the choices you make. Nothing to the extent of the original game’s 33 endings, but there are still a sizable amount of endings for what is simply a fandisk.

    Along with the main story involved in this fandisk, a second story lies in wait as well, called “A New Theory”, which gives an alternate look into the first game’s events, revisiting Cyrus’s fall from grace after being falsely accused of murdering her own parents. This sort of retelling gives more focus to two characters: Fin Euclase, one of the potential suitors and Cyrus’s partner in the police force, and a newfound focus on Sachsen Brandenburg, the heartless lead commander of the HOUNDS, the Depths’s ruthless watchdogs.

     The game also plays host to several additional features for fans of the original game. The primary extra is a minigame where you play Spot the Difference across several cute art pieces of the game’s main suitors in several scenarios, whether it be a sunny beachshore in the middle of summer, or a house made of sweets you’d see in Candy Land. The game also includes galleries to gaze upon any CG you attain from the stories, along with profiles for each main suitor that details their likes, dislikes, and even includes comments from the characters’ VAs that detail their experiences revisiting the character after 8 years. And if you wanted more laid-back stories focusing on a certain character, there are also bonus scenarios dedicated to each male character, as well as bonus episodes for A New Theory and the Grand Ending from the original game.

     As someone that had played through the original Steam Prison to prepare for testing Beyond the Steam, I wholeheartedly give my recommendation towards this, and feel that this would be more than a satisfactory package for fans of the original Steam Prison.

Steam Prison – Beyond the Steam is out next week on the MangaGamer store, Steam, and Nintendo Switch! Pre-order on MangaGamer and save 10%! You can also pick up the first game, Steam Prison, for 50% off right now on MangaGamer or Steam!

Today we have some insight into our latest release, Alicesoft’s Beat Valkyrie Ixseal, from one of our testers!

Fun gameplay, surprisingly good writing, and a protagonist who would unambiguously be a villain in another setting, who has chuunibyou tendencies, a crazy sex drive and superpowers that fell onto his lap by chance? Sasuga Alicesoft, though the Hyper Weapon is missing… Oh, it’s not. Welcome to yet another Alicesoft maserpiece, Beat Valkyrie Ixseal!

Quickly- if you’re new to the Alicesoft scene I want to establish that, as a rule, their games to be fantastic as eroge, but their gameplay elements and writing absolutely are major highlights as well. To the point that I personally consider them the focus. Their erotic content is great, but it’s similar to older renai in that you end up working for it. Absolutely not a nukige. 

Further, if you’re new to the Beat series… they’re raising sims with a focus on branching paths through both the girls stats and your decisions in battle- similar to Princess Maker if the rpg segements took a central focus and… you know, it was an eroge. Insofar as being an eroge, there is an extremely heavy focus on content for the heroines. Combined with the heavy narrative focus, they’re the sort of game where you’re meant to fall for one (or all) of the girls hard, and commit to the bit- giving gravitas to the story regardless of where your decisions take you. The vibes from how they tend to balance fridge  horror content with humor is very similar to sentai-style content… though, per having the possibility of failure, it’s not always balanced. Take care of your girls. Or don’t sicko.

Beat Valkyrie Ixseal is the third entry, coming after Beat Blades Haruka, and then Beat Angel Escalayer- but even though knowledge of the prior entries will make the experience better, they’re not necessary to enjoy it at all. I’d say Ixseal is actually a good entry point, since it’s a bit easier than the earlier entries. 

That out of the way I’ll actually talk about Kirika Ixseal!

Spoilers for the first five minutes of the game: our beloved protagonist, Oudou Tsuguhiko, happens to be the most recent in a long line of reincarnations of Aidam, the demon king. The demons have been on the losing end of a war with the angels, and unsurprisingly the old heads in the demon military are mildly upset and decide to take matters into their own hands. 

Betraying the latest version- Tsuguhiko, during his awakening… stealing six of his seven sources of power: Greed, Wrath, Pride, Glutttony, Sloth, and Envy… leaving him (hopefully, unsurprisingly) only with Lust. Skipping a lot of details, he joins hands together with his previous near-killer, the Valkyrie Ixseal, because it turns out divine power and demonic energy is totally interchangeable as a power source, to defeat the demon army before they take over the world!

Also, Lust demonic power is best transferred through sex.

I went in expecting an experience similar to Haruka and Escalayer… and I absolutely wasn’t disappointed. I found myself getting even more attached to Kirika My Wife the girls than I had in the earlier entries. The writing, especially after (spoilers for the cover art) Kirika joins the party, picked up really quickly and maintained a fantastic balance of dark comedy by nature of the setting and… surprisingly sincere romance Kirika my beloved? 

Well, “surprisingly,” I say. I don’t know why it surprises me every time, I’ve been with Alicesoft literally forever and this happens every single big release they make. I may be stupid. Whatever. I love Kirika. Moving on.

The gameplay, as usual, is very solid. Like I said before: the Beat series are “raising” style games, where you increase the stats of your girls to fight in a turn based rpg that sort of hybridizes dungeon crawler combat and autochess style games. 

Losses are recoverable- and even rewarded if you’re the type of person who enjoys watching women they love get violated by other people. Or things.

I found the balancing act of sex-rest-combat that Ixseal required to be more lax than the Escalayer remake, only getting hard stuck once for my first playthrough… Which is actually really welcome, to me. In each segment of the game there is a timer- about a week in which you need to defeat the boss of the zone, which ends up being a little tight if you mismanage your schedule, or have a poor attack loadout for Ixseal and Kirika, but the fact that it allows for any mismanagement at all is kind of a blessing!

But, here I am, talking about the gameplay and story focused eroge like it’s not an eroge- it shouldn’t really need to be said, but the variety and quality of CGs is fantastic as usual. Again, Alicesoft has a tendency for their bigger ticket games like this and Rance to have a lot of H scenes that cover a lot of bases- trying to avoid spoiler territory, but by nature of having “losing” scenes there’s a lot of coverage for content made for you little freaks who enjoy suffering(emotional or physical) in their sex, or you bigger freaks who have… inhuman proclivities. “Inhuman” includes both of noodly appendage and recognizably… animalian… natures. Of course, if you’re a good person and love Kirika like you should  assuming you’re not a total monster then you’re just more invested in avoiding these things. Right? …Right? God, right? 

It IS worth noting, though, that this game pretty much exclusively features Kirika the two main Heroines, Ixseal and more importantly Kirika. Do not develop a thing for the hot demon ladies please.

This game is massive. Which is, of course, partially a function of how many H scenes there are, but in general I’d actually approach this more as a traditional RPG than an eroge… again, sasuga Alicesoft. This was cooking in QA for just barely short of two months! I wasn’t timing myself, but I’d spitball getting through to my first ending was probably around 60 hours? Similar to Rance or Evenicle, the branching paths and one off “daily life” events quickly makes the scope for checking everything spiral out of control. Terrified of Rance X on the horizon. This, to me, is an absolute win. I hope you like what we’ve done, and crazy props to Yukino for pulling through all of this. 

I wasn’t really sure where to put this, but I also wanted to mention that Minatsu Eru put out a banger soundtrack again. I miss Shade in the context of Alicesoft, but Minatsu tends to lean more synthy and upbeat-ey, which goes a bit better with the Magitek-esque vibe of Ixseal. No one asked, but Jinki was actually kind of formative for me. Lesbians who fall in love with one another but are actually more in love with their giant robots? It’s me.

Anyway 10/10 would marry Kirika again.

Beat Valkyrie Ixseal is available right now on the MangaGamer store, pick up your copy today!

Look who’s back. Back again. Rance is back. Hide your friend.

Or at least, hide them if they’re a cute girl. Rance games don’t strictly fall into the cheating/NTR category, but according to Rance: “All cute girls in the world belong to me. Gahahaha.” Or something like that, with more enthusiasm.

Testing a Rance game is like wrestling with a pig in the mud. It’s good QA work, the pig likes it, it’s a lot of fun… OK, maybe testing a Rance game doesn’t actually have anything to do with wrestling a pig in the mud. But the games are filthy, at least. Rance 03 is no exception to the norm, though it is the longest one out of the remakes. Easily longer than Rance 01 + Rance 02 combined, Rance 03 takes the original title and more than doubles the runtime. And it has voices! Even Rance gets a voice, though it’s battle lines only. Which is a shame, because they absolutely crush the trademark gahahahaha’s.

So that means a nice, comfy test run with minimal issues? Well, actually, kinda. There’s always stuff that comes up during a test, but the Rance game tests tend to be more like what people probably think about when they think of video game QA. Examining gameplay, noting abnormal behavior, checking to make sure gameplay instructions make sense and more is all on the table – in addition to the standard localization work of helping with typos, clarity, etc from the excellent work of the TL and editor.

As with Alicesoft of late, the battle system in Rance 03 is pretty unique compared to the other games in the franchise. Players will select party members not by choosing who will be active, but by selecting which “skills” they’ll be able to use. Each character has four skills; any character can field 1-4 of them, up to the maximum limit at the time. It starts low and gets larger, but it never feels like enough. Standard for games with so many party members, perhaps. Some skills have cooldowns, others don’t, but the availability of skills, enemy lineup, and fun dungeon field traps will challenge players to find a winning combination against the latest challenge. And there are a ton, including optional dungeons and bosses.

So that means, as noted, a nice, comfy test with minimal issues – and tons of shop talk. Which skill for this boss, what lineup, where can we get this item, etc etc. But that’s fun in a way; it’s enjoyable to work on something together and share progression and tips. Testing Rance games in that regard is always a blast; it also helps to cathartically vent with the fellows on the project regarding… well, Rance games.

I personally hope you enjoy Rance 03! It was a treat to work on, and I hope everyone’s effort shines through to present an excellent adventure.

Rance 03 — The Fall of Leazas is out next week! Pre-order and save 10%!

Hi all, the name’s dubjay. It’s my first time here at the Tester’s Corner, and today I’m gonna be telling you all about Alicesoft’s Rance 03, available now on MangaGamer.com. 

First, a little bit about myself. Those of you who attend conventions might have already met me in person, as the dude tucked off in the corner with the piles of Rance-related merchandise, singing the high praises of this wonderful series to any passers-by who are willing to listen. It’s safe to say I’m a pretty big fan of the Rance series in general, and as such, when I was offered the chance to work on Rance 03, a game that was already one of my favorite entries in the series,I was over the moon. 

Now, the first question that a lot of returning fans might be asking goes something like: “Well, I already played the original version of Rance III from 1991, is there any point in playing the remake?” That question has a simple answer: You’d honestly be doing yourself a disservice not to. While the rough plot outline of 03 follows the same beats as the original version, the story and gameplay are both so massively expanded that it’s honestly difficult to even call them the same game.

Let’s start with some of the most obvious stuff. Of course, the art has been completely redone from the ground up. The game uses the same visual style as Rance 01, with the amazingly talented Gyokai returning as the lead artist. Gyokai’s art strikes a perfect balance between cute and erotic, with every character rendered in loving detail, staying faithful to the original designs while simultaneously updating them for the modern era.

This is a glow-up for the history books.

Of course, those of you who are here for the H-scenes will not be disappointed. Rance 03 has them in droves, each one featuring voice acting, and the uncensored art you’ve come to expect from a MangaGamer release. There’s a great variety of girls, scenarios, and fetishes here, so regardless of your tastes, you’ll definitely find something that you like.

We’ve got the H-scenes that’ll get you horn-y.

Speaking of updates for the modern era, the story has been modified from the original version of the game to better fit into the modern Rance series canon. Rance 03 released between Rance IX (which you can purchase here) and Rance X (coming soon) meaning that Alicesoft was able to take a bird’s-eye view of the overall series, and make sure that the events of 03 would properly fill in some of the holes and inconsistencies left over by the original version of the game. In addition, players who have caught up to the English releases will be delighted to discover all of the fun references and subtle foreshadowing to later games. 

The gameplay of Rance 03 is a “perfected” version of Rance 01’s chip-based combat and card-based navigation. As 03 uses a party system, the simultaneous action of 01 has been replaced with an ordered system of actions that encourages planning ahead to deal out damage most efficiently.The dungeons are bigger, more complex, and more dangerous than ever before, including some optional areas that will really put your skills to the test. 

I don’t think I’ve ever seen this guy before. Probably just another nobody.

If I had to pick my personal favorite addition to the remake, I’d definitely have to say it’s the voice acting. While the voice acting is a first for the series, it fits so naturally into the game that you would be forgiven for thinking it’s been a staple of the series since its inception. Every character is fully voiced, with the exception of Rance himself, who has combat voice lines. The casting choices here are perfect, with every character’s voice being exactly what you’ve likely imagined for them in other series entries. I’m particularly partial to Himekawa Airi’s performance as the ex-6th-class devil Feliss, who is understandably pretty fed up with Rance’s shenanigans for the entire runtime of the game.

Maria decided she would help us out with the testing process. How nice of her!

Now, it wouldn’t be a Tester’s Corner without some fun bug screenshots from the actual test, right? Here’s a few that I found pretty funny while we were going through the beta process.

“Well guys, we found the Archfiend. Turns out she was working for the Hornet faction the whole time. Problem solved, series over.” – Satella, probably

This one was a simple case of a transcription error from the translation sheet when creating the image asset for Topaz’s name tag. It does make for a fun what-if sort of thing if you want to imagine how the series would play out if this was canon, though.

Kanami can’t catch a break, even when she’s getting stronger.

In the initial beta build, there was a really fun bug where every character portrait was replaced with an image of Rance getting electrocuted. This image was supposed to be used for when Rance steps on a certain type of trap in a dungeon, but some reference errors caused it to be used in every single event popup that would otherwise have a portrait. I was almost sad to see this one get fixed, it was always a good laugh.

Anyways, I think that just about does it for this installment of Tester’s Corner. I hope it helped shed some light on what this game has to offer. Rance 03 is out right now and you can grab it here. I can’t wait for you all to get your hands on this one. We here at MangaGamer have poured our hearts and souls into getting you the best version of this game we could possibly create, and I think it’s gonna show in the final product. I hope to see you all again when it’s time for the next one. Until then, this is dubjay, signing off.