Finding myself boarding a train that rolls through smut alley, I happened to stumble on a rather interesting, albeit bumpy ride.
Whether that ride is worth the ticket price is up to speculation, but so far it's been enjoyable. Some biases to keep in mind from me though is that this type of genre is one of my favorites which in spite of it's abundance as a meme for various doujins, hentai, and just being an overall perverted trope so much so that it affects the actual daily habits of Japan, the amount of games surrounding train Chikan can be counted on one hand with about (maybe) three of them being decent. I'm sure more are out there but many find themselves aged, lacking something and/or being outrightly repetitive (which this doesn't escape from). I have also given money to the dev as well in the past in hopes of getting a new version before the high seas could dredge them up.
Anywho, onto the review.
Lewd Passenger is a train chikan game, but one that lends itself to a titular lewd premise. The world is starting to realize that people are getting a bit too randy on the train, so they start implementing measures to have the police police people in not getting horny on a train. You however are a savvy chikaner that can navigate said pearl clutching and find others who are interested in sharing that seat with you. This of course lends itself to interacting with three girls, a business woman that's up for some fun, a student that shares the same view and an actual police officer that's on the watch for perps like you, needing to explore your methods and such. For investigational purposes of course.
The gameplay that trails with that is pretty decent, though one that at times feels like guesswork. And it does not find itself really evolving save for the recent version where now you can have threesomes. In spite of that, the gameplay mainly consists of you needing to chat up whoever girl you're going for, which has three tiers to it, chatting, flirting and outrightly suggestive talks, and once the girl is up for it, you can then ask them to start undressing while suggesting even lewder actions which would lead to outright banging.
That's pretty much the gameplay, the balance to all of this is both the time on the train before you get to your next stop alongside the prude police meter that when they either see you overtly having sex and/or their prude meter gets too high you get kicked out. Alongside this, you do have to get that lewd meter to the high end of the spectrum to get to the more rewarding scenes which at times it feels like the aforementioned guesswork. Sometimes they really are into flirting, but you can't really spam an option like that as sometimes it lowers the lewd bar so you switch to just chatting again which also lowers the bar and suddenly flirting just adds a massive amount to it, which makes this really feel like an RNG kind of deal as to what win or loss you're going to spin on keeping the lewd going. I'm sure there are personality types that the dev is trying to utilize, while also maintaining some means of a balance as to how and when to use the right option, but it feels as though it's never really outrightly stated on top of not having many chat clues either as to what is and isn't the right choice. (Hint suggestive gesture usually gets the ball rolling when you're halfway up the bar).
Which is a bit of a shame as I feel like a relationship meter that shows that yeah, we've done this before while also carrying something over such as characters dressing in more daring outfits or maybe being more suggestive in making moves the more rounds you do, would definitely enhance this roguelike sandboxey experience. Which unfortunately is absent no matter how many times you bang the same character, you still have to do the song and dance of raising them back up on wanting to have fun, talking the same old chats in spite of their lewd meter being just a bit higher than usual.
There are achievements that act as cheats the more you win however, such as making the grind easier to raise the lewd, and having them undress with just the click of a button, but it seems as though it's all there just to reduce the grind rather than outrightly award.
Aside from all that, I do feel as though this game is pretty damn good. The visuals are pretty nice, the amount of interaction you do get is pretty hot, and it is pretty swell to essentially interact with characters that want this but you just need to play your options right. I think it can benefit from more meat being added to the bones, in terms of having a more robust system to make the roguelike gameplay feel more rewarding other than just achievements such as the mentioned relationship system and with varying outfits added, and more options of course, but I do recommend this. It has grown significantly since it's first version and the variations of characters do feel different amongst each other in what they provide for gameplay and visuals.
Overall, not a bad train to get on, 4/5, potential 5 if the train conductor ever figures out how to make this a real ride to Lewdsville.
