Review: The Fairy Tale of Holy Knight Ricca Two Winged Sisters

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Written by ThatCheesyBastard, edited by OtakuApologist

The Fairy Tale of Holy Knight Ricca: Two Winged Sisters, a hentai action game developed by Mogurasoft. Released December 25th, 2021. Download on DLsite. For Windows PC. Available in English and Japanese. Japanese voice acting. Censored genitals. Free demo available.

After her village was destroyed and her sister captured by monsters, Ricca is chosen by God to become a “holy knight”. With this newfound power and the ability to defend herself against the evils of the Archlich’s army, Ricca sets out on a quest to rescue her sister and bring peace back into the world. Will she succeed? Or will lust overcome her?

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STORY

Ricca begins her tale as an average girl living in your typical fantasy world with her elder sister, Miria. This all changes when her village is ransacked by monsters and Miria is taken hostage. After finding a fairy and a magic brooch, she’s blessed with the powers of a holy knight, granting her the abilities needed to save Miria and help those in need along the way.

What sounds like a fairly generic premise actually becomes very interesting. Ricca is a charming, but immature character who’s forced into this dire situation. Though she’s not very smart or courageous, she has to do her best to save her sister and the world from a terrible fate.

It’s simple storytelling, but effective. Things drag on at the beginning while the writer establishes the characters. The pacing smoothes out very quickly afterwards. Ricca ends up going through loads of trauma on her adventure, even the very beginning of the game has her at the brink of death. This comes to haunt her later, as she has visions of her experience with the goblins, remembering every last horrid detail until she feels sick. It feels incredibly real. She’s a very tragic character who’s easy to sympathize with as the story progresses and watching her try to overcome every horrible event that befalls her definitely kept me invested.

This story has a few interesting twists that, of course, won’t be spoiled, but actively take advantage of how simple-minded Ricca can be. Small details shown early on such as Ricca’s distaste for tomatoes are even brought up later to emphasize the person she used to be. There are a few times where the game gets legitimately disturbing. In chapters 7 and 8 in particular. These hard-to-watch moments serve to make Ricca’s journey feel all the more taxing. The way they break her spirit only for her to bounce back with the help of her friends and her goal to save everyone is endearing and inspiring.

Each character feels very distinct from one another and has their own arc. Even the fairy, Iris, actively grows from her experience with Ricca, something that didn’t need to happen for a character who was intended to be a guide and mentor for her. Their relationship as a whole is one of the highlights of the game. The way they interact is almost as sisterly as Ricca and Miria, two actual sisters. Their journey brings them closer over time, going from being complete strangers to two people who rely on each other for both emotional and physical support. There are tons of great moments between these two and other characters, too many to even list. The only complaint I have is that there aren’t very many characters in the main cast to begin with. It’s really just four of them, plus the main villain.

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GAMEPLAY

Holy Knight Ricca excels in its gameplay. It’s your typical side-scrolling action game with a skill tree where you can spend currency for buffs, new abilities, passives and other things that slowly give you more and more options during combat as the game progresses. There are 3 difficulty levels: casual, normal, and hard, which can be changed at any time as long as you aren’t in the middle of a stage. To start with, you’re given a regular attack, a low poke, an upwards strike and a strong attack, all corresponding with a direction. For example, pressing up + attack is your upwards strike, down + attack is your low poke, etc. These also translate to your attacks in the air, being able to attack forwards, upwards, downwards and without holding a direction. You’ll gain more abilities as the game progresses like special moves and extra hits per attack by unlocking them in the skill tree.

You also have the ability to block, which turns into a perfect guard with good enough timing, negating damage and pushback significantly. You’ll gain a skill later that will turn perfect guards into counter hits, but that’s the extent of the depth in gameplay. There are elemental attacks which will deal more or less damage to enemies corresponding with another element or theme. Ice attacks are good for getting through fire-based enemies, electric attacks swat out bugs, birds and other flying creatures, fire attacks destroy plant creatures and so on. It’s classic and very intuitive.

Regular enemies (and even some bosses with the right set-up) can be launched upwards for some incredibly satisfying combos once you gain the right skills. Eventually you’ll gain faster attacks and abilities that allow you to jump cancel moves and cancel attacks into specials, leaving it up to the player to test out different combinations of attacks and learning when to cancel into different moves to see what nets them the biggest reward. With the game also having controller support and letting you map specials onto different directional inputs, the game gives you plenty of incentive to get comfortable and learn what works best for you.

Because of this and the overall well-balanced enemies, bosses and terrain, Holy Knight Ricca is an exceptionally fun game to get good at and adapt to. Once I got the hang of it, there were many instances where I felt like I was in total control of Ricca and was able to use her robust kit to cut through waves of enemies like nothing. Holy Knight Ricca isn’t exactly a hard game, but it’s challenging enough to make you have to think about almost every interaction in a meaningful way after the first few levels. You may be able to mow through enemies sometimes, but you’ll never be mindlessly mashing attack in order to win.

The game is a level-by-level venture. There are hidden collectibles within each level that will either grant you more specials, unlockables in your skill tree or are simply there as an additional bonus to see if you can find them all. This gives you a lot of incentive to explore. Many levels offer a good number of hidden areas and minor platforming challenges where you can find them. It helps this game’s replay value and keeps it from feeling too one-note.

Holy Knight Ricca also has another thing that breaks up the normal levels: bosses. There are around 13 in total and they’re fairly distinct from each other. Sometimes the enemy is similar in size to Ricca and can be juggled and comboed like other enemies. Other bosses are large beasts that tower over her, forcing you to play around their non-flinching attacks and recognize patterns in their moves. It’s enough to keep the game fresh and interesting.

The Petrifying Beast boss was the single time I found myself getting frustrated while playing. That’s one of the only fights in the game where you can die instantly with bad luck and there’s constant wind coming from the beast that completely messes with your positioning and can even throw you off a cliff if you’re close enough. Not very fun. Other than that, each boss’ gimmick (or lack thereof) is a great challenge. There’s also a boss rush at the end once you’ve completed the adventure, which is always a nice feature to have.

Adding to the replay value, there’s achievements. As usual in games with this system, you’ll get an achievement for completing some sort of feat within or sometimes even outside the game. These can range from simply clicking on the link to the developer’s Twitter to performing a combo with over 200 hits. These don’t earn you anything, but they’re a decent enough challenge. Some of these achivements are hours-long slogs. I don’t recommend going for all of these, but they’re there for completionists.

Upon defeat, you’ll trigger an H-scene under the right conditions. You’ll always have the ability to skip these, which is very handy if you’ve been defeated by an enemy whose H-scene you’ve watched before or if the monster in question isn’t appealing to you.

GRAPHICS

It’s a very visually appealing H-game. The models for the main characters such as Ricca, Miria, Iris and even all of the bosses look great. They’re nice 3D adaptations of an anime art style. The final boss of this game in particular has an amazing design and is incredibly detailed all around.

The animation is surprisingly thorough. During the visual novel-esque parts of the game, character portraits change very frequently according to their emotion. However, the 3D models that display the actions of what’s happening also emote and are almost always animated with every other line of dialogue. The game is very visually enticing as a result and makes the characters and environment feel alive.

However, it’s not all great. Any background character or low-priority enemy is given a lackluster model with minimal detail or polish. Sometimes it works, like the goblins and soldiers look okay, but there are a few times where they’ll show a model that’s more polygonal than the others or has sunken eyes and a lack of facial features. It’s a little creepy. There are also a few instances of the models clipping into others, but it’s nothing major.

The backgrounds get a thumbs up. The set pieces in different scenes and the levels have loads of detail and polish. There are quite a few legitimately breathtaking shots and the game’s camera work as a whole is very well done.

Adding to the visual appeal is the ability to customize Ricca’s appearance. As you play, you’ll gain different costumes that you can see Ricca in. This includes her hairstyle, her shoes, accessories and even things like nipple rings and pasties. But what’s most impressive is being able to change Ricca’s body to your heart’s desire. You can change her hair color, eye color, how big her head is, the size of her thighs, the sky is the limit. Not every feature allows you to change her assets too drastically, but the option is very much appreciated.

And of course, you can change the look of her breasts. This is the most in-depth piece of customization in the entire game. You can change their size, how big the nipples are, how long her nipples poke out, how the breasts are angled, even the amount that they jiggle and how long they jiggle for. If you have an exact preference, Holy Knight Ricca probably has you covered!

VOICE ACTING AND SOUND EFFECTS (SFX)

Holy Knight Ricca’s voice acting is entirely in Japanese, even in the English version of the game. You’ll get to hear Ricca talk many times throughout this game and her voice actor puts on a great performance. Her, Iris, Miria and even Claret all do their jobs and sell the emotion of each scene they’re in.

However, those are close to the only characters who have voice acting. Those are the main four characters of the game, so that’s understandable, but it is noticeable when an enemy or minor ally comes in and doesn’t exchange words with the others. It’s not a big deal, but it’s there.

In contrast, every hit dealt to an enemy, box or opposing projectile is music to the ears. Slashing, breaking and collecting things always feels rewarding and makes me want to attack things even when I don’t have to! Really, there’s so many instances where I would just attack enemies and start combos just because it feels great to hit people in this game. Those sound effects get even more punch when Ricca is equipped with elemental buffs, adding to the incredible feeling of charging through a large group of enemies.

Even when Ricca whiffs an attack, it’s accompanied by this large, heavy sword sweep sound that really sells the power of her swings. The game just has some impressive sound direction overall, stuff that makes something as simple as moving around feel really good.

MUSIC

The music is consistently thematic and grand the whole way through. There are 34 tracks in total, and they all do their job well. Lots of tracks use strings and drums to give the feel of a triumphant battle or a magical war. The main theme is also very memorable and has this sense of whimsicality to it. Theming and tone are extra noteworthy in the corruption scenes, which use a lot of strings with a slower and darker pacing than every other track. It gives these “defeated” moments a lot more weight. Not much to say otherwise. It’s pleasant to listen to, every track feels distinct, and it’s balanced very well with the action. Track 32 in particular is an absolute banger. It’s like you’re fighting in the middle of a rave.

HENTAI

Holy Knight Ricca’s good animation translates over to its H-scenes fairly well. There are around 40 erotic events in total, most of which pertain to a different fetish or gimmick each time depending on the monster that defeated you. There’s one for almost every enemy in the game, so if you see something, you’ll likely be able to fuck it. Lots of scenes revolve around corruption or Ricca being captured, but there are a few scenes like Ricca masturbating or Miria making sweet love to her partner that attempt to balance this out.

Some of these get a little freaky or go down routes I don’t think I’ve ever seen in a hentai game before. There’s a scene where Ricca gets petrified and squirted with poison from tentacle monsters. There’s another scene where Ricca is tickled by a bunch of severed hands after being experimented on by a skeleton. There are also a few scenes that involve the main character peeing (though it’s never a focus). It gets weird, but the variety is admirable. You’re bound to find something that appeals to you.

The models used are the same ones from the normal gameplay, which usually works out well, but sometimes you’ll still have that issue of characters with low-effort models getting the spotlight. This can make it awkward to watch, but it doesn’t happen too often and there’s an option to turn them into a silhouette or outline if you really aren’t a fan.

Your customized Ricca will also be used during the majority of these H-scenes, so keep that in mind. If you made her look ridiculous, you probably won’t have a very good time. If you suit her to your preferences however, every scene will automatically be at least a bit more appealing than it would’ve with Ricca’s standard design. If you’re into tan lines, go for it. If you’re into nipple piercings, go for it. If you’re into cat girls, body graffiti, bunny outfits, small breasts… you get my point.

The sheer number of options you have really help make every event that much better and is this game’s key strength in terms of sexual content. Though I still wouldn’t say this is Holy Knight Ricca’s strongest area. If corruption isn’t your thing, then most of this game’s scenes aren’t for you. And even if it is, not every monster is as appealing as the last.

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CONCLUDING WORDS

The Fairy Tale of Holy Knight Ricca has fun gameplay with mechanics that feel rewarding to learn, an intriguing story with characters that grow as you progress and customization through the roof. It has a little bit of everything and excels in a lot of areas. Even its weakest aspect, the hentai, still has a lot going for it in terms of sheer variety. If you’re looking for an exciting adult title to get truly invested in, look no further. Download Holy Knight Ricca on DLSite.