Written by Milkmaster. Edited by Otaku Apologist.
Today we’re looking at Eroico, developed and published by Kyrieru for Windows, and released on February 22nd, 2017. For a change, I thought it was time to play something with more action. Eroico, an action platformer, seemed like a good fit.
In Eroico (whis is Italian for “heroic”), you play as an unnamed prince on your quest to… do something. Reclaim the throne, perhaps? Take over a kingdom of monster girls? The game never really says, so I don’t know. In fact, there’s not much story at all. But anyway, the actual details are unimportant. You travel across three levels slashing the shit out of hot and bothered monster girls with your sword.
To attack, you can swing your sword in a variety of ways (a basic attack, lunge attack, bounce attack, and a downwards plunge), or shoot a magic missile. You can also block with your shield, which is handy, because if you get hit you might get knocked dpwn, and if you get knocked down, the closest monster girl will fuck you. The first level is in a nice forest, and introduces us to our first batch of enemies, that include cat girls, slime girls, fairies, trees, ghosts, and more.
In addition to these monsters, there’s a number of environmental hazards; prickly vines, swinging blades, and spikes. Lots of spikes.
And it is challenging. Fucking hard. I played it on normal difficulty the first time, and I barely made it to the end of the first level. I managed to beat the game after switching it to “Very Easy” but it was still fucking difficult. And fortunately, it was still fair, not difficult in a cheap way. You have to be skilled to get past a lot of parts, making difficult jumps and attacking and defending against multiple enemies at a time. If you die, it’s your own fault, not the game’s.
The final boss is a good example; while the first two bosses are easily accessible during the majority of the fight, the final boss spends the majority of the fight in the air where you can’t reach her. While she’s up there, she shoots copious amounts of projectiles at you, and you have to be quick to dodge them. When she finally does come down, you can get two hits in at most before she flies back up. So, in order to defeat her, you need to really focus on not getting hit, meaning precise jumps and fast dodges. I died a lot, but when I finally killed that conniving bitch and saw the final cutscene, it was a good feeling. A damn good feeling.
You also get help from a mysterious girl that restores your health, and magic, when you come across her checkpoint zones. She also mocks you when you die. I don’t know who she is, because the storytelling is shit.
Once you come across a monster, she’ll be unlocked in the gallery. The gallery works like your average eroge gallery, letting you see the unlocked CGs to spank your weiner. But there is also a second gallery, essentially a special level where you have infinite health, and monster girls roaming around. You can even re-fight the bosses. This is a clever way to show off the animations, but also a good way to work on your tactics against the monster girls.
So, the gameplay is really good, especially for a porn game. But how does everything else add up? You may have noticed from the pictures, the sprite art is incredible. The game was made by Kyrieru, after all, who is known for incredible pixel animations. Everything has superb colours, and amazing detail considering the small size of the sprites. Combined with the tight controls, it really feels like it could be a proper SNES game. Even the pixel sex scenes, combined with the wet and gloopy sound effects, are enough to get you a boner, and the orgasm scenes, which feature explosive bursts of cum, will have you jizzing.
The proper erotic CGs, which you get if you died while having sex, actually lack in quality compared to the pixel scenes. Maybe it’s the smooth animation the pixel art has, but while the CGs are pretty damn good, they aren’t as good. You’ll be spanking it more to the animations, though it’s nice to see what each monster girl looks like in greater detail.
There’s also the music, which fits into the 16-bit aesthetic. It’s energetic and fits the mood. The final boss theme, again, is a great example. There’s this moody chord progression going on with a slow and tasteful electric guitar on top. The final battle is in a dungeon, and it gets sexy.
However, there’s a problem with the music that ruins the immersion, and that is the fact that it just stops. I mean, it’ll start back up again, but when a song ends it’s silent for just a little bit too long. The developer failed to implement a clean loop.
I want to mention sound effects. I’ve talked about the soppy wet fuck sounds that accompany the animations, but when you jump, it goes BLIP. When you attack, it goes BRSHNG. When you do magic, it also goes BRSHNG, but a different BRSHNG.
The one main gripe I have with the game is how short it is. You have this awesome game that’s challenging, fun, with great controls, nice music, fantastic art, and even a twist ending, but you only have three levels to play. I beat the game in maybe two hours, which is dissappointing because I was just starting to get good at it. It’s all over too fast, though there’s still a lot of replay value if you play on higher difficulties. It would be awesome to see more of this game in the form of a DLC or a sequel. Download at Nutaku
Overall
- Graphics
- Gameplay
- Story
- Music
- SFX
- Hentai
