Hentai RPG Game Review: Brave Soul

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Written by Rastafoo69, edited by Otaku Apologist

Brave Soul, a hentai role-playing game developed by Crowd. English localization published by JAST USA. Originally released in Japan on April 10, 2003. Download on Nutaku.net for $15.00. Download on JAST USA for $8.49. For Windows PC. Full Japanese voice acting. Uncensored genitals.

You were kicked out from your home and disowned by your father. You decide to follow in his footsteps and become an adventurer! Because nothing inspires a boy to follow his father’s ideals like total abandonment! Many exciting adventures and sexy high-standards women await you on this journey!

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STORY

You join the Hunter’s Guild and begin searching for treasure. Along the way you meet a mysterious girl named Alicia who appears to be the spitting image of the Moon Goddess!

The plot feels like it could be adapted to a weekly anime series with ease. Look forward to a colorful cast of characters working alongside one another to solve a great mystery. The game has eight endings in total. Six are unlocked by romancing a girl, while two endings are possible regardless of your relationships. Take your girl with you into dungeons! Dialogue choices you make while adventuring decide whether she falls in love with you.

The story is full of comedic moments that keep you smiling all the way. A girl might say she’ll pay you back with her body, only to clarify that she meant healing magic. Who doesn’t love anime-style sex jokes from the early 2000s?

Speak to people in town to advance the story, then go clear a dungeon. These dungeons have unique monsters, bosses and characters that you’ll meet, who reveal more about the mystery of the Moon Goddess. The story progression would be easy to keep up with, but the dungeons are very long. You spend hours in a dungeon and completely forget key story points.

The first three hours of gameplay are spent searching for ingredients to a hair growth formula. You fight through groups of goblins, plow through deep dark ruins, all the while wondering “Am I still on the same quest?” Then you realize there are two more dungeons to complete before the story can progress further.

Another downside to the game is a complete lack of character interaction. You’ll pick up six girls in total, and none of them speak to each other even once! Outside of romantic scenes, the girls are very incomplete characters.

CHARACTERS

Alicia is a blue-haired girl looking for her elder sister who disappeared years ago. looks exactly like the Moon Goddess. She’s a healer who also has offensive spells. She’s your first romance option.

Carol is an intelligent, haughty redhead, who wields considerable skill in ice and fire magic, but prefers fire. She’s always on the lookout for rare spells, and won’t join you at first. She’s prideful, but loving.

Marin is a catgirl. She’s lost in the human realm, and keeps getting into trouble. She can talk to animals and even ask for help from elemental spirits.

Ruby is a beautiful thief who steals from the rich. She often gives them fair warning of her intent before she strikes. She’s street smart and jaded from all her experiences. She prefers a bow and arrows to swords.

Rudy is the protagonist, he’s a swordsman. His behavior is dependent on player choices.

Claire is an accomplished fencer and expert in lightning magic. She can also wear heavy armor, making her a very versatile member of the party – if you can manage to find her.

Caren is the daughter of the King and Queen of Valencia. She’s completely ignorant of the world outside the castle walls. She’s sneaks out of the castle for an educational trip!

Shell is your pet baby dragon. He breathes fire and growls at people he doesn’t trust.

Your Dad is retired. He used to be an adventurer like you, but then he took an arrow in the knee. He wants to live a simple life until the grave takes him. You may just meet him again on your journey.

GAMEPLAY

Brave Soul is a hentai RPG created nearly twenty years ago. There’s no buttons for things like “skip dialogue”, or any other fancy controls. You click the screen to direct your character to move to the clicked square. Sometimes the path finding gets confused, and you’ll need to click again to clarify your goal.

The game cycle is your typical dungeon crawler. Defeat enemies to gain experience, level up, return to town for supplies. The real fun starts after you beat the game once. The first time you beat it, you unlock “weak mode”, where experience points are doubled. Beating the game three times unlocks “expert” mode where you gain ten times the normal experience while enemies are much stronger.

With eight endings, you’ll need to replay the game many times to unlock all the content. You get access to a New Game Plus Mode, as well as new difficulty levels.

The game takes ten hours to beat at minimum. A single playthrough is a lengthy endeavor, not because of puzzles or level design, but because of movement speed. Your character moves very slowly across the screen.

Save your game at an inn. Note, if accidentally click off the game window, the entire application will crash. Be careful when you’re saving the game, so you don’t lose progress to stupid game bugs!

The combat feels like a simulation. You have no control over your partner’s abilities. You press right click to use your special move whenever you’re in trouble. Everything else is automatic. Enemy encounters are simple stat checks; If you’re high level enough, you’ll probably emerge victorious. Buy booster items back in town and kill those pesky monsters!

Your companions only gain new skills when you date them. Meaning, your girlfriends cannot learn every skill during one playthrough. This encourages replay value, sure, but you’ll never know what you’re missing! One girl has the only revive spell in game. If you don’t romance her, your playthrough will be much more difficult than it should have been.

You choose which missions to do in the adventurer’s guild. There are no save points in the dungeons, many of which are ten floors deep! Your choices during these missions will determine whether a girl will like you. Make the wrong choices and the game becomes even harder!

GRAPHICS

The art is Japanese anime style from the early 2000s, drawn by the famed hentai artist Mogudan. Outside of hair and eye color, most girls look almost the same. The game has almost 100 fully colored images.

Characters’ body proportions may seem strange, but that’s only because of their armor hiding the goods. Once they get naked, you’ll be unzipping your panties. Every girl has perky B-cup breasts and the same sexy body type.

The in-game tile sets and environmental assets get boring to look at. Especially within dungeons, it will sometimes be impossible to figure out if you’ve been somewhere before. The same gray stone bricks are everywhere! There are way too many dungeons colored in earthly tones in this game!

VOICE ACTING AND SOUND EFFECTS (SFX)

Brave Soul has full Japanese voice acting. From the pitch of their voice to the speed of their words, you can tell when things are heating up. Every girl has a unique voice done by a professional. If you’re an ardent watcher of anime, you’ll easily pick up common phrases.

While the voice work is good when it’s around, you get disconnected from the characters very quickly due to long and grindy gameplay. You sometimes go hours without hearing any dialogue. The gameplay kind of sabotages the voice acting.

The sound effects are prevalent and varied. From the impact of a fireball to the slash of a broadsword, each action in this game is enhanced with unique sound effects. The audio work really brings the world to life. The game also has sex sounds, which serve their purpose well enough.

MUSIC

The soundtrack includes 44 tracks. Most of them are a mix between techno and bass alongside an electric piano that’s definitely reminiscent of the early 2000s. Most songs rely on a techno beat.

The music is similar to the older Final Fantasy games. There’s a heavy emphasis on violins and cymbals. These instruments are sometimes overshadowed by the vocals. Yes, there’s singing! The vocals are in Japanese naturally, so your enjoyment is limited to jacking off at the intonation.

HENTAI

The game has 12 hentai scenes in total, each with multiple CGs and variants.

Six of the hentai scenes are devoted to vaginal sex. Every girl gets her dose of dick. The other six scenes featuring the male protagonist peeping on the girls, or bathing with them. The content is sexy, but kind of limited.

Each sex scene has a missionary and doggystyle variant. There’s no tittyfucks, no animations, only plenty of dialogue about how much the characters love each other. The hentai is very damn  basic and there’s not enough romantic setup to get you in the mood. The images look pretty, but the sex ain’t very good, trust me.

There are no real sex scenes for most of the game, and you’ll only get two scenes on each playthrough. If you want to pop her cherry, you better start a new game plus and romance her!

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CLOSING WORDS

Brave Soul is a classic hentai JRPG with a focus on character-driven narratives. The art is beautiful and the game has incredible replay value. With full voice acting and romantic moments around every corner, this game is worth.

I recommend RPG fans who love their anime thots check this one out. Download Brave Soul. Download on JAST USA. Remember to also get yourself a Japanese pocket pussy to maximize your masturbation pleasure.