Midnight Castle Succubus DX.

I love the look of this Game. Libra Heart is an amazing pixel artist. I had been thinking of buying this from DLsite long time but it came to Steam! ... 2020... Is it still a good game? I remember reading some reviews about the game. Something about number H-scenes and unlocking.

The game runs fine on Arch Linux with normal Proton now. There were problems with it. There was an issue of unimplemented function but that has been addressed. I played with Proton 7.0. The odd thing about the game is that it is inset resolution as a window. I think they didn't want to look into how to avoid pixels stretching.

The game's controls are fine except the fucking special weapon. The special weapon is collected during gameplay like in the old style Castlevania (without experience points). Unlike Castlevania, the use of a special weapon depletes your coins. Coins are used for upgrade purchases as well. To use the special weapon you use the up + attack button. This is annoying since I press slightly up when I jump so I accidentally use a special weapon. When Castlevania was on NES amount of buttons was a problem. I'm using an Xbox controller so I don't have that problem. I could just press Y for a special attack. Can you remap this? Well, there is control options which does list special attack on the list. However, it does not work. It always puts up to any button you map it. Except when you swap buttons. Then options menu does not show the fucking button needs an up arrow which returns after going up a menu and coming back.

There is another problem with tutorializing the game. You can find companions on our journey. These characters are not changed with the character change button which is visible in the control options. These companions are activated from the menu under companions. This is not told to you and I went a large portion of my first playthrough not using them.

Anyway, you play as a female Succubus hunter. I guess Konami can't sue because it is not a vampire. You walk in town and realize that local girls have been kidnapped and the town's Guards have been killed. The story doesn't tell why the girls have been kidnapped or why you find them been raped by monsters but you find them on crossed the map. They are behind a locked door. Keys for these doors are dropped by the bosses. The story is not much more than this. I don't think it needs to be. Mention about the town's Guards being killed was enough. So go on the quest to get better whips and skills to defeat the Succubus and rescue the girls without being raped yourself.

I guess I could point this out. When you game over player character is raped. However, after the scene, it is not clear is the player in an alternative universe or just back after being raped? It is not big deal but considering I like mechanics where defeat in battle is not the end necessarily, I want to point this out. The funnier thing is that there are old guys next room where some of the girls are raped.

Map design is somewhat good. You have these doors in the game which teleport you around which most of the time are placed so that they do cut some backtracking. There are also some other methods like the high jump which prevent you from fast-tracking in the first go through. Location changes are also quite fun. Although in halfway point you have to do some backtracking to a location you may have seen. This place is not easy to backtrack to. Teleport door does go to the near location but it points you in the wrong direction. Even with the new playthrough, I had a hard time remembering the location.

There is some lack of enemy variety. In an early game where there is a lack of visually different enemies, but that fixes itself a late game. However, there is a lack of enemies who behave differently from each other. Most enemies are rectangle that walks straight towards the player or something that shoots straight or with an arc. Most projectiles in the game can be destroyed so most of the time this means you just spawn an attack and try to kill what is in front of you. Sometimes you just use terrain to be in positions where you cannot be attacked. There is a real lack of normal enemies which do weird attack patterns or a mix of enemies. At best, at the last zone, arc throwing enemies at a different level is used to force dodging.

The game is child's play when played on normal (difficulties are easy, normal, hard). For example, I didn't find special weapons were needed. There is a boss which I destroyed by standing still because she couldn't for a third of the fight have the accuracy to hit me. Bosses have set patter you must dodge to. Hence you have to remember the pattern and react to it.

After pumping difficulty to hard, I found that normal enemies did make enough damage that careful play would be needed in the late game. But since the Game Over puts the player back to the start of the room, there is not much urgency to play carefully.

On bosses, I started to use special weapons. For one boss, I backtracked to get a better special weapon for that boss. Some bosses I defeated by special weapon spam since the late game I had more coins than I could use.

While playing I almost forgot I was playing a porn game. In fact, the game has SFW mode (which is a different executable in the game's folder). I was reminded by it via loading screen images which often are pornographic. Player rape scenes work a bit differently than normal action porn games. Usually, there is a system where the player is raped by the enemy which defeated the player or nearby one. After this, there is maybe a close-up cutscene. In Midnight Castle Succubus player is teleported to the room where some monsters rape the player with an in-game cutscene. This does cut some corners on the enemy design part. Scenes themself still have variety since the not same position is used. Scenes end with close up of static pixel art without animation which is a little bit static. Art is still beautiful.

Standard gallery mode is available. You collect player scenes and scenes for every kidnapped girl. Kidnapped girl scenes are unlocked as rescue rewards and player scenes with defeats. After finishing the game once you can unlock everything if you found enough collectables. So game somewhat fixes the problem of rewarding a Game Over. The problem is that reward for rescuing the girls is lessened with finished game unlock. There are multiple endings depending upon how many girls you rescue so there is still value to rescue girls in the next playthrough. Extra images can be unlocked after finishing the game. These I think are just early draft versions since the art style is different.

In summary, the music is good, pixel art is excellent, the gameplay is lacking, replay content is interesting but a bit disappointing but for a one weekend game it is fun.