Original Release: Acid Style, 2015, PC
An interesting but limited game idea further hampered by a kinda out-there fetish
Ethereal Legion (PC, Acid Style, 2015)
Where to Buy: DLSite (free demo available)
Review by: Master-B
Ethereal Legion is an interesting concept and kind of fun to play, but in contention for the least erotic adult game … at least unless you have a VERY specific fetish that I hadn’t even thought about before.
Like the previous Acid Style game we’ve reviewed here, Barrage, it’s basically a run-n-gun but one that’s more about #SquadGoals than shooting everything up with your protagonist. In fact, in this one, the little girl you control is basically defenseless. She relies entirely on summoned monsters to protect her, and if an enemy monster gets to Graping her with no companion monsters left on the screen, that’s it, game over man game over.
The setup is our protagonist is the young protégé of a more experienced summoner, both seemingly members of whatever race the Black Mages are from Final Fantasy. One day her master has her do sadistic “training” by having her go through a bunch of dangerous areas to find her, full of horny monsters with one thing on their mind and only whatever guardian creatures she can summon to protect her.
Each level is broken up into at least three segments. In each segment, you start with 100 mana, and each creature you summon costs a set amount. You replenish 1 mana for each enemy you kill, and occasionally an enemy will drop a potion that gives you 5 more back. You start with three summon types: a big ice monster who acts as a tank, flying lightning monsters that provide range air support, and flame monsters that provide ground support. You can only “equip” two types of monster per stage. Enemies also drop crystals when defeated, these can be taken to a shop (between stages) that upgrades your starting monsters or lets you buy new ones.
Summoner Girl has nothing to defend herself with otherwise but a hearty jump and a little “force push” attack that just knocks monsters away from her temporarily. She wears a magical robe that keeps monsters from getting too frisky with her, but this wears away with damage and there is only one opportunity to replace it per level segment. Once she loses her robe, the lustful monsters all make a beeline for her. If she’s caught in a Grape she has a “Willpower” bar to hold out for some time to give her summoned monsters time to swat the enemy off her, but if you have no summons left in play or they’re too weak to kill the assaulting monsters, it’s all over for you.
So, at least according to this game, it turns out Black Mages look exactly like you would expect under the robes – an indistinct and featureless blob of black. So this is pretty much the most unsexy protagonist we’ve ever seen here. I never even considered black mages getting ravaged by giant bugs and spiders was a fetish, but hey, you hit the lotto with this game if it is for you. Or if all those shadow person puzzle indie platformers of the 00s revved you up, I dunno.
But the gameplay is somewhat interesting, if a little straightforward and grindy … you basically just need strong enough monsters to truck through the level and boss, repeat the level and gather more crystals if it doesn’t work out. Each boss has its own little tactic, the first one simply bum-rushes and jumps on top of you and you have to have summoned enough monsters to kill him before he does that, but the next few are some combination of having to run under their jumping patterns or jump over their attacks to buy time for the summoned beasts to do their work.
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