Nutaku continues to bring the best of web porn games to mobile devices with Crystal Maidens, a port of Super Hippo’s web game of the same name, Nutaku is now offering the game for both Android and iOS devices through their website.
We’re going to be breaking this review into two major parts, gameplay and porn. Because make no mistake, there is actually a game here, not just a series of H scenes broken up by various dialogues. You will win and lose, and if your like me end up angry at yourself for not getting the full rewards of a mission.
Gameplay:
Gameplay follows a basic formula. Go on missions, kill enemies, receive reward. It’s a simple loop, that works well on touch screens both large and small. You select a mission, slot in your chosen “maidens” in for battle, and then deploy them. Each maiden has a specialty, some heal, some do more damage, some are ranged, and some are close range brawlers. Each also has an elemental affinity that’s denoted by their gemstone. These are important later on, in the porn section because they are what you need for the dating sim part.
So what’s the actual game like? Pretty boring to be honest. You deploy up to four maidens, in what ever area you would like behind a line. They then march down a pre-arranged lane, and attack anything they meet. There is some degree of strategy to it, in the sense that you don’t want your healers out front, and some characters have more power vs others, but its only skin deep. You can chose when your special attacks land, so for example a healer can provide healing to a dying maiden, some have buffing special attacks etc. That’s about it for strategy.
Maidens level up, based on how much experience you gather in each of the games over 30 levels. Each level has a variety of baddies to smash or slash or shoot magic at. As you level up each of your maidens will get armor that can be upgraded and new weapons that can also be upgraded. All of this is of course tied to system meant to get you to feed money in to the game (it is at its heart a mobile game) so casual players may have some difficulty finishing the game.
Everything in game runs off currency, there are several types, but the most important ones are Energy, coins, and gems. Coins can be earned by defeating enemies, energy re-freshes over time, and gems are a special reward for getting achievements, and the pay-to-win currency of the game. There are also colored crystals that you use for the games other aspect, unlocking the lewd part. You can also purchase raw crafting materials, more maidens, and other items from the in game shop. All purchases run on a gotcha system, so your taking your life in your hands every time you buy. This naturally pushes players over to buying Gems, with real money. And you will need to buy gems with real money if you plan to get to the other aspect of this game with out grinding for days.
Like most mobile city builders this game has several flaws for the non-money spending player, energy runs out after just a few missions, building takes time, and only building can be done at a time. Upgrading buildings will allow your maidens to do more damage and allow you to hold more coins, or upgrade things faster. It’s a fun system in general, but clearly designed to keep players feeding cash in.
Porn:
Finally, we arrive at what you all came here for. The hentai. I was quite surprised when the first thing the game showed me was a nice blowjob H scene. Pleasantly surprised of course, but surprised none the less. Sadly this was the last H scene I would see for a bit of time, as most of the games scenes require a decent bit of grinding or about $5 real dollars to see.
The way that the romance section of Crystal Maidens works is that you collect various colored gems, and spend them to unlock images of progressively more lewd poses for each maiden. Lower rarity maidens, like the ones you start with, can get to their H scenes for about 100 colored gems, but more powerful maidens will take much longer. It was with this in mind that I broke down and spent 10$ on Nutaku money which I used to purchase enough gems to get me through to a couple of the very good H scenes.
Each time you get enough gems to romance a maiden you unlock part of a still image. Each maiden has a series of these images, some have 4 levels, others have more. Each of these levels unlocks a new image, more lewd than the last. Eventually you unlock the full image, and then a scene plays. I use the word plays loosely here, because these are VN style scenes, text scrolls over images as what you are doing. In one case the maiden was the guard at the local prison, and her story involved a bit of light bondage. Her final scene featured her bound to a cage while the player character penetrated her.
The art quality is good, and despite only being able to get a few of the H scenes, I would say there was a good variety. If you are coming here just for the Hentai, the game is for sure worth your time. There are 30+ maidens, and each of those maidens has increasingly lewd scenes, until you arrive at the actual hard hentai. There’s a lot of variety to the characters and their scenes and body types. Each scene can be replayed and of course the images go to a gallery for perusal later on.
Crystal Maidens is one of those games that I will probably keep on my phone and keep playing as I get energy at least until I unlock the scenes for the maidens I like best. The game play is simple, but rewarding. There isn’t much for actual strategy, but in a mobile game I don’t really want strategy, I want something that’s easy to play and in the case of an H game, will make my nethers tingle. In the end Crystal Maidens is a mediocre city builder strategy game, but its redeemed by the great art, and good hentai scenes. Since its free to play it costs you nothing to give it a try, but if you want a good head-start, I suggest throwing 5 or 10 dollars at Nutaku credit to speed you along.