September 2018 Eroge Releases

There’s a lot of low-priced games this month and even those that are the usual length are more character-focused than heavy on story. MadoSoft’s Raspberry Cube is the most prominent of the bunch, but AkabeiSoft3’s CharaBration! ~Otome wa Koishite Chara Bureru~ might be worth a look as well. It should be a pretty crazy month.

Interesting month this September. While there are few, if any games that could be considered a major release there is a surprising degree of competence shown this month. I can only hope those games that were competently assembled do well enough to perhaps prod the entire industry in a more positive direction. 

Kiss&Crisis

Company: pure more
Game site: Kiss＆Crisis
Release date: September 28, 2018
Comments:
Jin is a talented undercover agent for the National Police Agency’s public security department. He would do anything as part of his job, even if it meant getting in a physical relationship with female persons of interest. While on an infiltration mission, he reunited with his former lover Yayoi, who was also a police investigator. Despite knowing that they shouldn’t be close to one another, they ended up having sex once again, resulting in him to re-evaluate his work and love relationships.

pure more is mainly a nukige brand that tries to somehow justify the sex scenes. We all know that doesn’t really matter in the end, as a cursory glance at the gallery or cover can immediately reveal. Are undercover agents supposed to get away with anything?

I honestly don’t understand this kind of nukige. The entire point is to avoid all the text spam called story to get right to the H scene finale. Trying to somehow make a plot that justifies it all feels rather akin to putting a cart before the horse when it comes to nukige. Ah well, all the best to them. 

CharaBration! ~Otome wa Koishite Chara Bureru~

Company: あかべぇそふとすりぃ (AkabeiSoft3)
Game site: きゃらぶれーしょん！ ～乙女は恋してキャラぶれる～
Release date: September 28, 2018
Comments:
Rikka’s dream is to become a servant for his sickly cousin Hai. This spring she joined him at Rinka Gakuen, a school for the upper class, but she caused trouble shortly upon arrival and was confined to a special correctional dormitory known as ‘the prison’. He refused to believe that the pretty and refined Hai would do such a thing, so he dressed as a maid to infiltrate the dormitory as Yuki with the help of the student council president Yukia.

However, when he met her again inside, he discovered that she was actually a carefree tomboy… exactly the opposite of what he thought she was! Moreover, everyone else there had a completely different side! Hai had an absurd request for him: she wanted him to help set her up with… himself. His dual life with doubled-faced girls has begun!

This is 100% a comedy game and the chara PVs were pretty amusing. More crazy than Taira Norimitsu’s previous work, Maho×Roba. Yuki is voiced by Kusuhara Yui and there’s H voice clips too. There really is two sides to everyone… Viva gap moe!

The latest in Ensemble’s long line of classy traps. This time with more comedy and less contrived reasons for our stalwart protagonist to prance around in a skirt.

Mockery aside this is much more enjoyable than the garbage Ensemble churns out with increasing regularity. Rather amusing to see another company randomly make essentially the same game but better after all the attempts Ensemble has made. Either put the work in to make at least some degree of sense or make things lighthearted and comedic. As such I am really looking forward to this one, something fun to play that doesn’t take itself too seriously and seems to strike a good balance between the various eroge elements.

Sono Hana ga Saitara, Mata Boku wa Kimi ni Deau

Company: Campus
Game site: その花が咲いたら、また僕は君に出逢う
Release date: September 28, 2018
Comments:
Akito came to Mahoshi Gakuen as a transfer student and got lost as he walked around the unfamiliar vast campus. A girl with gentle eyes, Yuki, called out to him. She showed him around the school, ending at a flower garden where the flowers were still budding.

“Let’s meet here again when the flowers bloom”

Campus’s latest low-priced game is a love story with a magician. It is said that magicians can only have unrequited love, so there’ll probably be some bittersweet moments along the way. These games are short and Yuki is cute, so why not give it a try.

Needs to use some magic that makes her look less like a 5 year old with water balloons in her shirt. 

Mama Haha 2

Company: bootUP!
Game site: ままはは2
Release date: September 28, 2018
Comments:
This is the sequel to Mama Haha, although with a new set of heroines. Shouta was raised by his father after his mother’s early passing and he has yearned for a mother figure in his life. Even though he tried to look at his next-door neighbour Hitomi as his mother, those feelings never completely disappeared. Then his father remarried a younger woman named Rena and he finally had the ‘mother’ that he had always wanted. She was very caring and showered him with motherly love, but it ended up spoiling him.

One day, he started sucking on her breasts like a child and she let him continue is daily. His father soon found out and thought that Shouta was making a move on his wife and kicked him out of the house despite Rena’s attempt to clear the misunderstanding. He was left without a place to live, but fortunately Rena arranged for him to stay at her sister Marika’s home. Even though they were complete strangers, they gradually trusted each other and soon lived like close siblings.

Two years passed and Rena paid him a visit.

“Shouta, please come home and make up with your father”

Not my genre. Pass.

More incredibly bad artwork, the game.

Aerial Life

Company: プレカノ (Prekano)
Game site: アエリアル・ライフ
Release date: September 28, 2018
Comments:
The protagonist is a part-time beta tester at a game developer company which runs the popular VR game Aerial Life. However, there was an unknown bug after the latest major update and he became trapped in the VR world, along with fellow beta-tester Otome, who lost her memories of the outer world. Unable to log out, they had to stay in the virtual world for a while and complete the grand quest. Will he be able to recover her memories and break free from the game?

A spin on the SAO theme with Kusuhara Yui voicing the heroine. She’s your kouhai who is secretly in love with you. It’s nice to see Tenmaso back after working on the illustrations at Whirlpool.

Ever since the success of .Hack this theme has been pretty endless. At this point should we ever make these VRMMO games people will probably try to engineer hacks to keep them in the games. Truthfully though the whole .Hack thing doesn’t interest me. It is little more than a lazy way to create a setting to tie things into a realistic world. Want to set things in a fantasy world without having to make sense of everything? Don’t bother just make it a game so you can explain things with exp, levels, gear, and basic game rules.

I’m waiting for the inevitable fully-immersive eroge VRMMO.

The day that happens is the day civilization grounds to a halt.

Kemono Musume no Sodatekata

Company: SWEET&TEA
Game site: ケモノ娘の育て方
Release date: September 28, 2018
Comments:
Shuuji picked up a strange girl in the mountains near his hometown and ended up taking care of her. Iroha had been ‘spirited away’ more than ten years ago and lacks common sense and the ability to converse. Even though this constantly caused him problems, he was enamoured by her innocence.

However, the world is not always a friendly place and her lost time will never be restored. An uncertain future awaits Iroha, but Shuuji is determined to protect her.

The staff is completely different from SWEET&TEA’s previous title Karehana. I don’t mind a short heartwarming tale with a kemono girl (there’s also a cute osananajimi and imouto).

So get spirited away, acquire cat ears. Seems legit. Simple game, which means just take it at face value. No need to worry too much about story or setting it seems. I can’t say I particularly mind that. As long as a game is upfront about what it is trying to be, and sticks to that it’s all good no matter my personal preferences. Well provided there are no magical girls or silly wishes to ruin all cause and effect and dramatic tension that is. If they go either of those routes all bets are off no matter how decent the rest may be.

Boku no Amayaka Seikatsu -Seishou-chou Kankouka, Mainichi Ecchi na Locodol Katsudou!-

Company: Carol Works
Game site: ボクのあまやかせいかつ‐星湘町観光課、毎日えっちなロコドル活動！‐
Release date: September 28, 2018
Comments:
New release date after being pushed back from July. As soon as his summer vacation started, Hikari was called to the Seishou town office where his older sister Meika and cousin Niina worked. He was shocked when they told him that since they had used the budget for the Seishou Shiosai Matsuri to cover up a previous mistaken order, it was clear that some of the planned events at the festival would have to be cancelled. They were afraid that there would be found out and fired in disgrace, and expected him to do something about it. Meika sensed resistance from him, and took drastic measures. She forced him to dress up as a girl and work as a temporary worker doing PR for the town’s tourism division. Together with help from Niina’s imouto Eiru, will the festival proceed with no problems?

There’s two clear lessons to take away: 1) if you screw anything up, get your younger sibling to fix it; and, 2) girls will do a better job of PR than boys. And for some reason, it all ends up with them having sex together. Well, it’s an eroge after all. Hikari passes the cute trap test with flying colours.

In all fairness girls being better at PR isn’t exactly a surprise so at least his reasons for cross dressing are better than those found in Ensemble games. Pretty straightforward story though, girls get protagonist to do their job for them and pay him in sex.

Raspberry Cube

Company: まどそふと (MadoSoft)
Game site: ラズベリーキューブ
Release date: September 28, 2018
Comments:
Satoru was a delinquent who one day decided to change for the better and aimed to do one good deed each day. He returned to his hometown to live by himself and saved the landlord’s daughter Mikoto from some thugs, helped the lone gardening club member Minato with tending the fields, and did part-time with Yuu at the military shop since they were short on staff.

However, his meeting with the student council president Ruri was somewhat different. The next day, he saw her once more and thought that she had come to thank him, but when he chased after her, he soon found himself waist-high in a pit. She took a picture of him in his pathetic state and left without helping him out.

“Does she have a grudge against me because of something I did in the past?”

Some days you could try your very best and still end up in a pit. C’est la vie. There’s less balloons this time with Hasune as the main illustrator, while the story is written by Oumiya Yuu (mostly Whirlpool games, also PRIMAL×HEARTS series). Most of the seiyuus are new, with the exception of Kitami Rikka as Mikoto. While the set-up is not too different from their previous works, this could bode well if that’s what you’re looking for. I probably will give it a shot. Minato is too cute! Hau~ omochikaeri~!

As seems to be the running theme this month there is no silly plot looming over the game and characters raining on the parade of heroines and ruining everyone’s day. It is somewhat arguable that his whole good deed for the day is a bit much, but it is still within the realm of sensibility so it gets a pass. Since this is the case choose more based on the heroines. Provided the writing holds out this should be a rather safe pick for the month.

Hime to Otome no Yakimochi LOVE

Company: Princess Sugar
Game site: 姫と乙女のヤキモチLOVE
Release date: September 28, 2018
Comments:
The former girls’ school Kokoronomori Gakuen recently became co-ed, but girls still greatly outnumber boys. Kazuki is the son of the school’s chairman and serves as the student council president. However, only he knows that his father had disappeared after incurring grave debts and that he is also acting as the chairman. His childhood friend and vice-president of the student council Sara and former student council leader Nanoka began to suspect something was amiss.

At that time, a group of exchange students arrived from overseas. It was another one of his childhood friends, the princess Alize, and her attendant Majoroline. The students’ excitement seeing these mysterious foreigners was palpable, and it became even more chaotic when Arize suddenly kissed him in front of the whole school.

“I’ve always dreamed of the day when I would be able to meet you once more”

Majoroline explained that the school had been formally acquired by the Kingdom of Stanhal to serve as a cross-cultural bridge between the two nations. He was greeted by them when he returned home, and had no option but to live with them since he was saddled with debt. His co-habitation life with the deeply-in-love Arize begins.

This title is also written by Oumiya Yuu, and while I think Raspberry Cube will have a better story, this game has a very impressive cast, including Kusuhara Yui (again), Fujisaki Usa, Aoba Ringo, Ogura Yui, Kitami Rikka, and Hayase Yayoi. Mikeou art is always good too. Belle is extremely adorable and I love her casual clothes with the beret. Definitely gonna be waiting for her! Hau~ omochikaeri~!

Agree with Micchi that Raspberry Cube is the better bet between the two, the story here crosses the silliness line. I’m not saying you can’t do a princess childhood friend story line, but set it up better. Not only is it rather cliche to have her just walk up into his life, but it reeks of no effort.

Boku to Kanojo no Gohoushi Dousei

Company: とこはな (Tokohana)
Game site: 僕と彼女のご奉仕同棲
Release date: September 28, 2018
Comments:
Satoshi lives together with a housemaid in a Western-style building while his wealthy father is away on business. One day, she got in an accident and was hospitalized. His classmate Shino was at the scene of the accident and felt partially responsible for the maid’s injuries. She proposed that she will take over the maid’s duties until she recovered. That’s how a girl that he was a bit interested in at school ended up being his maid. It was the beginning of heart-throbbing days living together with his classmate.

This is the second of Tokohana’s Dousei series. There’s an interesting pricing scheme where you can pay an extra ￥12,000 for the protagonist to use your name. Gotta love these games where that girl of your dreams falls into your lap. And she serves you too? Don’t mind if I do!

Well boobs on the cover gives away this is not the game for me.

Though I am not convinced the protagonist didn’t sacrifice his maid in some kind of dark ritual to summon the girl he likes to do his bidding. Which may make things more interesting.

Micchi’s Top 3 for This Month

1. Raspberry Cube
2. CharaBration! ~Otome wa Koishite Chara Bureru~
3. Hime to Otome no Yakimochi LOVE

Zen’s Top 3 for This Month

1. CharaBration! ~Otome wa Koishite Chara Bureru~
2. Raspberry Cube
3. Kemono Musume no Sodatekata

Why adopt a pet when you can find one in the wild?

Rabies?