Knights of Xentar

The Good
this game is not so much a hentai game, but an ironic take on the classic RPG. the jokes generally centre on sex and the main characters supposedly tiny dick, and once every mini-quest is completed, there is almost always a horny woman to serve as a reward (these women feature a not-so-innocent little red riding hood, snow white who's into bondage, an encounter with a now married ex, and later a nudist collony...) the jokes are hilarious, and one I started playing, I found it hard to stop... (not such a good thing as I should have been revising for GCSE's... ahem...)

The Bad
There was very little not to like, although the fights soon became slightly repetative, in a similar way as in Final Fantasy... but otherwise this has become one of my favorite manga/hentai games.

The Bottom Line
A witty, sex-oriented game, with brilliant hentai, and a great plot.

The Good
Adult RPG is a genre virtually unknown in the West, save for Cobra Mission and this game. Like the rest of hentai industry, this genre is represented by particularly crude and unimaginative design, compared to which regular Japanese RPGs seem like the epitomes of sophistication.

The one good thing in Knights of Xentar is, curiously, the English translation. The writing is surprisingly good, so good in fact that I found myself interested in the dialogues way more than in anything else in this game. Those conversations can get very funny, and it seems than the creators' inspiration for silly jokes can never be drained. Whatever Desmond or his sidekicks Rolf and Luna say is almost guaranteed to put a smile on your face.

The real-time battle system is somewhat fun, though it is woefully simplistic. In order to spare you the tedium of "clicking" attacks, the game assigns you a role of a party manager. Basically, you watch the battles, interfering when you want to cast a spell, use an item or change your strategy (at this point, the game pauses automatically). You don't have to care about simple physical attacks - Desmond and Rolf will do it for you. You control Luna with her offensive and healing spells, items, and basic attack choices: there are eight attack gauges, from the weakest to the strongest. The stronger your attack is, the more time you need to perform it - but the damage will be higher, of course.

Elf is generally among the less offensive hentai developers; in this game, like in most of their titles, the adult content does not go beyond erotic pictures. Sexual situations are strongly implied and described, but not shown on screen. And I suppose we should thank this particular Japanese developer for not including a tentacle rape scene in this game.

The Bad
Knights of Xentar is a very basic Japanese RPG, with means incessant random battles, automatic leveling up, simplistic customization and all the other limitations of the genre. It is extremely bare-bones, sorely lacking those extras that made the Final Fantasy games of its time rewarding. Formulaic to the extreme, it takes you on uneventful trips punctuated by maddeningly frequent fights during which nothing is required besides having the right level, the latest equipment, and occasional quick interference on the player's part.

Dungeon design is horrendous. After having wandered on a plain, needlessly zoomed-in world map, tired of never-ending pointless battles, you are forced to go through linear, featureless corridors offering more of the same. Like most other hentai RPGs, Knights of Xentar is aesthetically displeasing. There is not a single interesting or even colorful location in the game. The visuals, despite a certain fake 8-bit charm, are utterly amateurish and unattractive, lacking detail and taking the sadly known blockiness of the Japanese video game art of the time to the next level.

Since this is a Japanese adult game, the erotic scenes are, by and large, completely meaningless. The quantity of Desmond's amorous encounters is hardly matched by their quality. The women are, as always in this type of games, too similar - they behave more or less the same, and they even look the same. I haven't met even one girl with normal breasts in Land of Xentar - silicon must be a popular product there. There are no real situations preceding an erotic adventure - they all appear out of nowhere, as obligatory part of a town quest, all resembling each other, without a real purpose.

The Bottom Line
Knights of Xentar really has only one thing going for it - the vivid, humorous writing. Everything else in the game is quite forgettable. Seeing as this is one of the most solid hentai RPGs gameplay-wise, it would be advisable to disregard this sad sub-genre altogether.

The Good
An (illegal?) port of a classic japanese role playing game, Knights of Xentar stands today as a very interesting game that went sadly overlooked at it´s time. The main gameplay premise is the same as in many other console rpgs, you control a party of 3 typically stereotyped characters (you, the courageous and slightly offbeat hero, the sexy but powerful mage that doubles as romantic interest and the baddass super-strong warrior) and navigate them around a top-down world talking to npcs and battling enemies as well as solving quests (usually go kill X baddie) and buying new equipment and weaponry.

If it sounds cliche then you are absolutely right, but the fact is that the game lifts things up with plenty of funny dialogues and situations as well as interesting locations to explore and optional quests to solve. The combat system is semi-pasive, with you issuing commands in the form of stances and agression levels and watching as your characters fight around in a lateral 3rd person perspective similar to other classic rpgs like the early SNES FF games. Surprisingly enough the fights are varied and hardly ever become frustrating, quite a feat considering the amount of random fights you have to endure in the main map and dunegon crawls as well as the requisite boss fights!

The graphics are slightly dated and can feel downright obsolete, but the play area is quite large and the graphics all have that cutesy super-deformed animé style that manages to overcome all technical difficulties and still be functional. Of course, the graphics loose the SD look in the hentai scenes which (lest I forget) are actually a nice addition to the game.

What´s that? You didn´t know Knights of Xentar is a hentai game?? Oh, well then you´ll be glad to know that Xentar can also excite your overworked hormones with a plethora of gratituous sexual situations! You see, in this game you finally get real rewards when you rescue the many damsels in distress, namely the hot 2D static animé bodies of said damsels, which include every classic animé hentai fetish like the nymphomaniac slave, the virginal princess, the cat-woman (gotta love those cat chicks!) and the chick that has sex with a penis-endowed tree (what, you´ve never heard of that one??) among many other.

The sex is also evident in the many dialogues in the game and while most of the time it´s just crude, it does make for an unique experience and the whole thing ends up not taking itself too seriously (a clever idea that helps mask the cliched plot) and results in a very good parody of classic fantasy rpgs. Didn´t you ever wish you could fuck the beautiful princess you are supposed to save? Or tell some annoying guard to shove his sword up his ass? Or screw that stupid innkeeper´s daughter?? Well, in that case Knights of Xentar is your game!

The Bad
Soundwise the game is anything but memorable (tough I seem to recall a partially talkie cd version...). The game also ends up being very cliched in most regards, with your typical ancient evil that returns and ancient prophecy and bla, bla, bla...

The Bottom Line
A rather good console rpg ported to the pc that happens to have plenty of sexual situations and wins by not taking itself to seriously. Sick and tired of getting stupid innane magical swords and defeating ancient evils and fulfilling prophecies? Well they are here too, but you get to curse around a lot and ridiculize all those medieval fantasy elements while getting yourself some nice animé ass in the way.

And heck, at the very worst it´s just a nice example of a sub-genre that has barely ever made it out of Japan (with the prime examples being the Dragon Knight series of which this game is a part of or other classics such as Mad Paradox), prime collecting material folks.