Written by Rastafoo69, edited by Manfred Manson and Otaku Apologist
Minerva’s Adventure, a hentai RPG developed by Ebisen Works. Released April 8, 2016. Download on DLSite for $20.00. For PC Windows. No voice acting. Censored genitals.
Minerva has awoken on the troubled island named Pastor, currently ruled by the Great Demon Fatigor. In order to defeat him and restore peace, Minerva must acquire six magic crystals spread in dungeons across the island!
New to Japanese eroge? Read our guide How to download DLSite games.
STORY
Conquer the castle and defeat the demon! But before that, you’ll inevitably need better weapons and armor. Plus, the six magic crystals across the island will help you out with immunities to spells, which you certainly need in the final dungeon.
For every crystal you reclaim, a town or village will be liberated from demon control. This unlocks more NPCs to interact with, extra quests and sexual activities across the region. Defeat Fatigor, liberate the towns, and help the people on the island via side quests and sexual encounters.
As an open-world action RPG, the order in which you play the dungeons is up to you. For example, will you head straight for the coliseum? Or maybe straight north to visit the blacksmith? Perhaps the eastern dungeon with the water gem is the most enticing?
Early on I got cursed with an evil tentacle armor that could only be removed by paying a lot of gold. It drained my stamina regularly, so I had to make a choice. Will I borrow money from the bank? Maybe I’ll make the money in the arena fights? Or perhaps I’ll just power through and earn the money from treasures inside the nearby dungeon?
The game is effectively told like a Legend of Zelda game. You know where the final castle is, but you’re likely going to engage in episodic side quests first. This means the plot is scattered overall, but the writing in general is well done.
GAMEPLAY
Minerva’s Adventure was created in an engine unique to this developer. Alongside your game download comes a Windows XP edition, in case you have an older system. The controls in this game are varied and complex, so I encourage you to view the readme-file with your download if you forget the following.
Press Shift to dash, this consumes stamina outside of villages. Press Z to use your primary weapon, if your sword is not equipped you’ll simply punch forward. Press X to use your secondary weapon, like a shield or spell. Press C to interact with your surroundings or talk to an NPC. Press TAB to open the pause menu. Press M for the world map. Press V to get dressed, because some enemies can knock off your clothing. Press D to spread your legs and initiate sex, (this is an ability unlocked with gameplay).
There are three difficulty modes, normal being well balanced. As an action RPG, combat occurs in real-time rather than turn-based encounters. This means you can dodge enemy strikes and use the length of your sword to create space between you and your opponent. While the game can be played one-handed with only the mouse, I recommend using the keyboard for the sake of all the hotkeys named above.
There are five primary stats. Health points and mana points being obvious. Stamina is the green bar and goes down as you strike enemies or run around, like Morrowind. Shame starts high and decreases as you spend time naked or get molested by monsters. Once low enough, you can tempt monsters into sexual encounters and freely walk nude around town. The heat stat is how horny Minerva gets. It’s raised by nudity and aphrodisiacs. It’s lowered by climaxing or doing a bible study. If it maxes out, Minerva is forced to masturbate on the spot, even in the wild.
There are 30 quests in total. Sexual encounters are available at event location “spots”, tracked in the pause menu. For example, an NPC tells you a rumor about an abandoned house with a bed in it. That becomes registered as a spot, and if you sleep there, a sexual encounter will begin. There are 40 in total, and you can also have sex outside these spots once you learn the D-key ability. Not to mention sexual encounters with monsters in the wild! There’s always something new to find in Minerva’s Adventures.
Some features in the game are poorly explained or downright incomplete. For example, there’s a faction reputation system that tracks your relationship with elves, orcs, witches, and more. However, all you do is a quest or two to raise the relationship level and it never goes back down. It seems like the developer originally planned to do more with the system. Still, even when the game has incomplete features, it still proves to be an engaging and enjoyable RPG experience.
GRAPHICS
The game includes 30 unique animations for a variety of scenes. Animations repeat often, though the setup is always different. While the game lacks fullscreen CGs, the focus on seamless motion in place of pose art makes for a wonderfully dynamic experience. After all, look at these artworks! Minerva is too cute to restrict to still images!
Much of the visuals in this game play homage to Legend of Zelda. For example, sword strikes are always horizontal rather than vertical, allowing players to cut tall grass and pick up rubies. However, the developer gave a unique flare to certain aspects of the game like status conditions. For example, getting drunk causes your character to hop across the screen at random.
While the visuals are positive to me, there are some glaring negatives. For example, a bug on the map-screen that can cost you a lot of progress. You cannot exit fast travel until you have chosen a location, so if you accidentally toggle fast travel while exploring, you’ll be forced to backtrack and lose all your progress. This is a stupid flaw, and could be easily resolved by allowing players to exit the fast travel menu whenever they please.
The user interface to this game is completely unique and almost feels like a web-game. Your character art is on the right-hand side of the screen while the gameplay takes place in a large box on the left-hand side. Your current equipment loadout is on the bottom of the screen, and your stats are at the top. While it sets this game apart from the rest, I don’t really see why it was necessary. I’d much prefer to turn off the standing art and simply play it as a fullscreen experience. Especially because some enemies knock off your clothing and leave your girl nude on the side of the screen. I’d much prefer to turn that off and just treat this like a normal game after I’ve fapped.
The world map is huge but a bit unrealistic. Sometimes you follow the road exactly as the map shows, but end up failing to reach your goal. And the minimap is no better! It’s just a portion of the world map pinned to the top right of the screen! While I do have my complaints, still – some form of map is better than nothing!
VOICE ACTING AND SOUND EFFECTS (SFX)
Minerva’s Adventure has no voice acting.
The most glaring flaw you’ll find with the sound design is when the game starts. You can change the sound effects volume level in the options menu, but it won’t affect the loud chime as you scroll through menu choices. This is the kind of incomplete game design that plagues the experience. Sometimes sound effects don’t seem like a perfect fit, or seem overused over time. It’s not bad, just flawed.
MUSIC
There are about 10 tracks used throughout the game. Although licensed assets are used, the developer chose some extremely popular artists like MusMus. This means, you’ll probably recognize the slums theme or the dungeon theme.
Often times, a track doesn’t seem to match its location. Like the slums sounding like a hyper-scary pit of doom, when it’s just grassland and houses. Why use such heavy bass and low pitches for such an innocuous location? Although the Legend of Zelda visuals are impressive, the game lacks the music and sound design that made those games unique.
HENTAI
Minerva’s Adventure features 30 animations across upwards of 50 unique scenes. This of course means that animations repeat over time.
Some monsters instant-fuck your character, some humans try to but can be resisted by rapid-pressing the Z-key. And if you prefer to be in control, once you unlock the D-key, you can sexually proposition any guy in the area by taking off your clothes and spreading your legs for them.
Sex positions range from missionary to doggystyle. Many of the monster sex scenes are hard to describe, but are basically bondage-focused. Once you acquire the blindfold, you can wear it during sex scenes for the extra kinkiness factor.
Whether you’re fucking in the first town or the third town, it all blends together over time. I wish there were more named NPCs with personality traits to really set each scene apart.
CONCLUDING WORDS
Minerva’s Adventure is an earnest attempt at a “Legend of Zelda” style hentai game. The graphics are unique, the gameplay is fun, and the episodic storytelling is easy to follow. If the game had a better soundtrack, it would be a true classic in the genre.
Download Minerva’s Adventure. If you liked this game but want a turn-based experience, check out our review of Demon Sword Snakes.
Overall
-
Graphics
-
Gameplay
-
Story
-
Music
-
SFX
-
Hentai
