Written by Otaku Apologist
Neostesia 2200, a free hentai card game developed and published by Erogames. Released on June 12, 2023. Available for PC and Mobile. Play for free at Erogames.com. Full English voice acting. Uncensored genitals.
Having terrorized the Neostesia ladder for weeks since launch, I’ve reached rank 4 at the time of writing. Here are my thoughts about my most excellent experience. This ambitious card game is the second free to play release from Erogames following up on the heels of Naughty Nyx. It’s another clean release from the publisher, a quality product overall. There are some glitches, but having sent multiple bug reports myself and seen the issues addressed, my confidence in the developer is high.
Note, this being an actively updated live-service game, this review can be out of date by the time you read.
STORY
From what I’ve read the exposition-heavy visual novel segments in between tutorial levels, Neostesia is a final bastion of civilization after cataclysmic wars devastated the rest of the planet. Everyone is packed into this gloomy metropolis, angsty about the social problems, the lack of space and the mediocre governance, so everyone’s just fighting each other in street wars. This venting of existential angst has a plot involving a tragically dysfunctional family. It doesn’t take long from booting up the software that you’re fighting your estranged father, a ruthless gang leader nicknamed Black Mamba.
Like, everyone’s a gang leader in this world. The damn mayor is a gang leader. The head of police is a gang leader. The cyborgs are gang leaders, and so are mutants. If your mother wasn’t dead, I’m sure she’d be a gang leader too. As expected, you start building an entourage from these messy individuals you meet and beat, many of them saucy babes, of course. Your aim is to conquer Neostesia and change it into a better place to live. Based on the size of the scenes gallery, the main game offers forty scenes to unlock. That’s a lot of gang leaders to pump full of cum!
If you’re not getting the vibe yet, the story is basically just setting up some context for the card games. After the forced tutorial was complete, I just hit the ranked ladder, because that’s where the meat of the game is. I did not complete the entire campaign, because it’s basically just a long tutorial, and I rather beat up fellow nerds. There are rewards for completing the campaign, so you’ll definitely want to. I’ll write more about the story in an additional post, if I resume the campaign.
GAMEPLAY
The gameplay is absolutely excellent, as mentioned in my preview post. You have a deck of cards and two resource systems. Each turn you gain 3 money, which can be increased by placing units next to a bank. There are 4 banks total, 2 on your side and 2 on the opponent’s side of the map. Each bank nets you 1 additional money each turn, if you have a unit nearby to collect it. Once you’ve completed your desired moves, you pass the turn to the opponent.
You build territories, your turf. The grey territories can be built 2 at a time per turn, and colored territories that actually let you play the strongest cards are built at the pace of 1 per turn. Basically, to play gangsters (red), you’ll need usually 1-3 red territories before you can summon these badasses, and only on the red zones. The cards list these pre-requisites.
There are 4 different “tribes”: The mutants, the cyborgs, the government and gangstas! You have just one winning condition: Reduce the enemy gang leader’s health total to zero.
A basic breakdown of the flow of a match: You both start building your turf, then one of you decides the timing of the engagement and the fight begins. One of you loses that skirmish, yielding the banks in the region to them, forcing them to build territories and summon troops in the other direction, or doubling-down their efforts to smack you off the corners.
The engagements usually start much sooner than both of you would like, but the map is intentionally small to facilitate aggression. You can reach your opponent in two turns and start attacking them, if you have any cards that let you build an additional territory. The direct path to your opponent is just five zones, while most units move one space at a time. You can definitely play aggro decks, but you’re unlikely to overwhelm your opponent, because as mentioned, units move one zone at a time, and it’s very easy for a player to fortify their position, if they catch whiff of your intentions. The restrictive resource system also discourages fast games, as you simply won’t be able to outpace the production of a fortified opponent. As a result, you’ll find yourself fighting skirmishes around the banks, constantly shifting the focus of the battle.
The game is brilliant in this regard, because design like this leads to long and skill-based games. I have not been able to win a legit match in less than 9-10 minutes. Perhaps I’ll see more snowballing and broken strategies when the playerbase gets more experienced, but currently, I’m having fun. This is exactly the kind of well-paced PvP experience most people enjoy. Because most matches take a long while and include so many decisions, there’s no doubt at the end of a match who was better.
Read my super rushed guide on Red Starter rushing strategy to achieve quick victories.
My strategy is usually to start building turfs towards my opponent’s bank, ignoring my left-side, as this lets me gain an advantage in the mid-game, with him having one bank, while I have two. If they try to mirror, building turfs to take over the abandoned bank on my side, I’m one defensive skirmish away from having an advantage, because then I’ll have three banks while they have one. The opponent can counter in innumerable ways, sure, but that’s the correct way to think. You want to build towards gaining some long-term edge, like increased income, more territories than them, or higher-value units in good positions.
As if these options weren’t interesting enough, some cards are victory conditions on their own right. If you play a unit with the ability to cause damage to a gang leader each time units are killed, your entire game plan can be to instigate trades, even unfavorable ones. There are ranged units who can snipe your face across the distance. There’s a nuclear fucking missile card!
The people who designed this deserve praise. I can only imagine the hell of a job it is balancing this complicated experience.
GRAPHICS
Neostesia’s visuals are quite beautiful. The product arrives on the market at a time when truly stunning eroge are slightly more commonplace than years ago, thus some people’s standards may have gone higher. But I remember the early days. And compared to what most products look like even today, by simple contrast, you could rate these visuals 10/10 anime goodness.
The western variation of Japanese anime gives the characters a very approachable and fetching aesthetic. Same-face syndrome is definitely plaguing the girls, but that is the offset of anime. Line art and coloring are tight and vibrant.
There are hundreds of character artworks with each card illustrated, while every nook and cranny of the user interface has details. The sprites are animated and you even see them talk. There are a ton of backgrounds in the PvP matches and the visual novel segments, so there’s never a time when you have to stretch your imagination too much. The cute little animation you see when hovering over interface buttons is something I really, really like. To pay that level of attention to detail is called love.
MUSIC
The soundtrack has a handful of songs, more than these free to play types tend to. Perhaps I’ll encounter more songs in later campaign levels, but right now, I’ve mostly been hearing three synthetic songs while waiting for my ladder matches to begin. The style of the music gives you the urban vibe, it fits the context. I sometimes get 80s sci-fi vibes, so gritty is the atmosphere. I’m thinking dystopian movies like Running Man, Mad Max, Blade Runner, maybe Terminator, since there are murderous cyborgs!
The songs are competent and distinct from each other, slightly annoying when looping in a longer session, as is the nature of techno beats.
VOICE ACTING AND SOUND EFFECTS (SFX)
The English voice acting is very competent. The guys have the right amount of roughness to their performances, while the girls sound as aggressive, sultry, or insane as befits their characters. I found myself very much enjoying the voice work. You don’t hear voice acting outside of the campaign.
On the audio side, the sounds are immersion-enhancing, to say the least! The sheer range of sounds is excellent. I especially like the metallic sound the Drone card makes when it swoops in to kill something. Most sounds are abstract battle sounds, like something hitting or cutting or shooting someone with futuristic weaponry. Fact that they nailed those cues speaks of some higher understanding of audio design. Everything just feels right. Clicking around in the menu is also enjoyable in part thanks to the competent sounds.
HENTAI
There are 40 scenes to unlock in the main game. The scenes are animated and voice-acted. The art and animation are lively, with a definite western deviation from the Japanese anime style. The 2D anime girls feel three-dimensional on their best moments, like they’re there in your room doing the nasty, an impression enhanced by the lip-syncing and voice acting. The immersion is there, but the scenes seem to end too quickly to be fully enjoyed. The game could use more ecchi material too, to enhance the titillation leading up to the sexual encounters, as the hentai content right now feels like an after-thought. I wouldn’t call this an erotic experience, but the potential is definitely there.
CONCLUDING WORDS
Neostesia is one of the most interesting western eroge published in recent years, with complex and deep strategy elements. While it’s still in a state that looks like public beta, it’s one fucking polished beta. I run into the occasional glitches and login issues, but much fewer than other live-service games from supposedly more experienced developers. To make a comparison, Diablo 2: Resurrected was broken longer than six months before I could play online. Meanwhile, I’ve already played tens of hours of Neostesia ranked ladder on PC and my smartphone. Production values are high on all levels. The music, audio work, English voice acting and storytelling are solid material. The hentai content could use additions and improvements, as it almost feels like an after-thought, with the story focusing on setting up battles, rather than seduction of hotties.
I give this card game my highest recommendation. Keep this one in your radar. Download Neostesia for free.
Overall
- Graphics
- Gameplay
- Story
- Music
- SFX
- Hentai
