The main thing to know about Aina Hunter's Quest is that this game was originally released in 2014, so obviously it has not aged well trying to play it in 2022. Also, the version I played was the 2016 "YummyTiger" translation and not the official english that the release later got. I have no clue if the translation is better, but this version has some unique miniscenes where Aina shows her breasts to a few people in the town which was not in the original game from what I can tell. It's weird having a translation project have more content than the original release, so credit to YummyTiger for that part. The scenes were short but I kinda liked them.
I did try and be fair to this game knowing it's quite old, but overall this game is mostly just average and didn't do anything for me to stand out among other games I've played.
The Story is..not great imo. You are a brand new Hunter registering at the guild and you pass your exam by killing a single demon flower. At this point you take one side quest, exploring a forest for ingridients to a prince or killing a demon snake, and now the guild has tasked you with saving the world by preventing rogue hunters from resurrecting a great demon and recovering the demon parts from dangerous places, sometimes even the guild doesn't know whats there.
It bothered me a lot how the guild put a lot of trust into someone brand new for something as important as recovering parts of a great demon who could destroy the land and everything they know. While Aina is a compotent hunter, you'd think they would leave something like this to their vetereans. Maybe I didn't pay attention enough, but nothing in the story really stood out for me. It's the usual hero stops the villains kinda deal.
The combat is as you would expect, the usual RPGM turn based combat where you use skills and MP to clear through enemies in 2-3 hits. The early game was decent enough as you had a few skills and enemy weaknesses, but by the midgame the economy goes out the window as they drop 1000g+ so you can just buy all the expensive equipment in the store and the skills too. It's passable enough that you don't get bored unless you really hate this type of combat, but didn't really do more than that.
Also, I encountered an event where a trader gave me the "Guardian Angel Ring" which makes you immune to all debuffs besides being knocked out. A lot of enemies like to apply debuffs like confusion or stun, so having this ring equipped really just made a lot of encounters a breeze. One dude in the town sells an AOE lightning spell that has a 40% chance to paralyze, which I used to cheese some bosses near the end of the game. So yeah, besides some elemental weakness and debuffs the combat never really expands beyond the basics.
The CGs are a hit and a miss for me. While Aina is good to look at, I think this game suffers from the overexaggerated dialogue during the rape scenes. I'm going with the assumption that it's not the translators fault, but the dialogue during many of the monster defeat scenes just were kinda unsatisfying as she would start talking about how good it feels and such which is not what I want to read from a character who is assumbably inexperienced with sex at the start of the game. Maybe some people like that style of dialogue but definitely did not work for me.
The art is at least good enough in most of the scenes, although for some how Semen is drawn might be offputting. It's definitely not the usual way its drawn. Also the music was nice, I noticed some different tracks to the usual that RPGM games like to use so points for that also. A lot of games neglect the audio aspect and just default to the usual standard music.
My biggest overall problem with the game is the "Corruption". Calling it corruption is not really accurate, it's more just a stat check for some scenes and the endings. Aina never has a mental change in her character due to the corruption, nor do any scenes change at different levels because of it. As far as I could tell, the only changes it has is allowing her to work at the brothel for some extra scenes, and one requirement to the 4 endings the game has. She still acts the same in every other scenario from 0 corruption to 100, and the only changes she gets are to do with her bikini and whether you take it off.
While some NPCs change their dialogue with Ainas bikini removed, it's otherwise just the same character interacting with people and this is just not what you really want from a corruption system. Even some of the more basic corruption systems have changes in scenes at higher values as the characters morals are more distorted and they begin to enjoy sex, but not here. Aina basically always ends up enjoying herself near the end of the scenes, even at 0 corruption.
I should mention there are 4 possible endings based on if you fail contracts and if you are above 80 corruption, which is more than some games provide. Getting the best end is as simple as just beating all 8 contracts under 80 corruption, with different endings based on failing 2 or more contracts, and whether you are above 80 corruption or not.
Still, despite my criticisms I can't give this game lower than "Average". There is at least a moderate amount of CGs here and the game took me 3 hours to complete one ending (you can probably do it in 2 if you skip losing to enemies for the defeat cgs) and while I think the combat is very standard, I've seen worse. I appreciate games who don't just become a walking simulator and have at least some engagement as a game.
Final note is there is Pregnancy, but it's ending only and you have to intentionally fail missions to get it. Just beating all the missions as normal will get you a different ending with no pregnancy.
I did try and be fair to this game knowing it's quite old, but overall this game is mostly just average and didn't do anything for me to stand out among other games I've played.
The Story is..not great imo. You are a brand new Hunter registering at the guild and you pass your exam by killing a single demon flower. At this point you take one side quest, exploring a forest for ingridients to a prince or killing a demon snake, and now the guild has tasked you with saving the world by preventing rogue hunters from resurrecting a great demon and recovering the demon parts from dangerous places, sometimes even the guild doesn't know whats there.
It bothered me a lot how the guild put a lot of trust into someone brand new for something as important as recovering parts of a great demon who could destroy the land and everything they know. While Aina is a compotent hunter, you'd think they would leave something like this to their vetereans. Maybe I didn't pay attention enough, but nothing in the story really stood out for me. It's the usual hero stops the villains kinda deal.
The combat is as you would expect, the usual RPGM turn based combat where you use skills and MP to clear through enemies in 2-3 hits. The early game was decent enough as you had a few skills and enemy weaknesses, but by the midgame the economy goes out the window as they drop 1000g+ so you can just buy all the expensive equipment in the store and the skills too. It's passable enough that you don't get bored unless you really hate this type of combat, but didn't really do more than that.
Also, I encountered an event where a trader gave me the "Guardian Angel Ring" which makes you immune to all debuffs besides being knocked out. A lot of enemies like to apply debuffs like confusion or stun, so having this ring equipped really just made a lot of encounters a breeze. One dude in the town sells an AOE lightning spell that has a 40% chance to paralyze, which I used to cheese some bosses near the end of the game. So yeah, besides some elemental weakness and debuffs the combat never really expands beyond the basics.
The CGs are a hit and a miss for me. While Aina is good to look at, I think this game suffers from the overexaggerated dialogue during the rape scenes. I'm going with the assumption that it's not the translators fault, but the dialogue during many of the monster defeat scenes just were kinda unsatisfying as she would start talking about how good it feels and such which is not what I want to read from a character who is assumbably inexperienced with sex at the start of the game. Maybe some people like that style of dialogue but definitely did not work for me.
The art is at least good enough in most of the scenes, although for some how Semen is drawn might be offputting. It's definitely not the usual way its drawn. Also the music was nice, I noticed some different tracks to the usual that RPGM games like to use so points for that also. A lot of games neglect the audio aspect and just default to the usual standard music.
My biggest overall problem with the game is the "Corruption". Calling it corruption is not really accurate, it's more just a stat check for some scenes and the endings. Aina never has a mental change in her character due to the corruption, nor do any scenes change at different levels because of it. As far as I could tell, the only changes it has is allowing her to work at the brothel for some extra scenes, and one requirement to the 4 endings the game has. She still acts the same in every other scenario from 0 corruption to 100, and the only changes she gets are to do with her bikini and whether you take it off.
While some NPCs change their dialogue with Ainas bikini removed, it's otherwise just the same character interacting with people and this is just not what you really want from a corruption system. Even some of the more basic corruption systems have changes in scenes at higher values as the characters morals are more distorted and they begin to enjoy sex, but not here. Aina basically always ends up enjoying herself near the end of the scenes, even at 0 corruption.
I should mention there are 4 possible endings based on if you fail contracts and if you are above 80 corruption, which is more than some games provide. Getting the best end is as simple as just beating all 8 contracts under 80 corruption, with different endings based on failing 2 or more contracts, and whether you are above 80 corruption or not.
Still, despite my criticisms I can't give this game lower than "Average". There is at least a moderate amount of CGs here and the game took me 3 hours to complete one ending (you can probably do it in 2 if you skip losing to enemies for the defeat cgs) and while I think the combat is very standard, I've seen worse. I appreciate games who don't just become a walking simulator and have at least some engagement as a game.
Final note is there is Pregnancy, but it's ending only and you have to intentionally fail missions to get it. Just beating all the missions as normal will get you a different ending with no pregnancy.
