I hope that despite the game's shortcomings it'll one day receive a proper translation. Mijiishi's games serve such a niche audience, it's already tough to find good netorase media in general, and even more so regarding games.
Mijishi's game Luxoria was one of the best NTR experiences I ever had for that matter, and after reading comments that Mercenary Band has even more "netorase turning into netorare", this would probably rise to an even higher spot (I played Amor too, but didn't quite like the back-and-forth gf stealing aspect).
What made Luxoria good was the gameplay and how the player has basically full control over it, Mijiishi got the core design of Luxoria absolutely right and the implementation of the gameplay, right. Luxoria works as a complete unit, everything works together properly, the end result making Luxoria fun to play, the game feels right. Luxoria has shortcomings, the pure love content is severely lacking, particularly in character and relationship development and the Player does not really have enough h-scenes. Saria's character never really changes, she comes across a bit generic at the end. Saria is not used a sex toy, unless you the Player consent to it, that's whay Luxoria is "True Netorase"
Netorase games should work like this:
"Pure Love routes and ends" then "Pure Love / Netorase" and "Netorase to Netorare routes and ends" This formula gives you a ton of content potential, great! The downside of this is that the "Pure Love" and "Netorare" content have to extensive enough for the game to be played either way. To phrase it another way: you're making 2 complete games in one. Netorase is the combination of a gameplay mechanic and h-scenes. NTR is just h-scenes, or a CG gallery (what this game is).
With this game, Mijiishi would be making 3 games in one, including the bar/brothel management simulator on the upper floor, with other scenes located around the town. This is enough content to be a game on its own.
That's why you don't see many true Netorase games, there is not really a generic template to copy (unlike for regular NTR games, where thay just rehash tropes from over 25 years ago), the dev has to have proper writing ability, which Mijiishi lacks. Netorase games are much harder to make than the generic NTR games (like this one became). Luxoria was much easier for Mijiishi to manage since there is only 1 main heroine, not 5.
Regarding the translation of this game here is what I said on this issue before:
MTLs really only cause game progression issues in the following situations:
1) The game has a lot of lore or deep story content, parts of which gets lost in translation.
2) Character or relationship developments, again this does not get across well in an MTL.
3) Complex puzzles that require full understanding of the riddle given.
4) The MTL came from SVS and it broke the game.
None of those apply to this game, and in fact the MTL here is pretty good.
"There are 2 types of games in this world: good games with bad MTLs and truly terrible games" This the latter.
This is a game that needs a proper translation:
click here that game being a proper romcom and dating simulator meets criteria number 2.
You cannot consider this just a "shortcoming":
Just one last thing here, that I just noticed while writing this, regarding the story which is basically a succubus saved your life, but lost their energy or life force and requires the player to collect the lost energy in the form of Magical Seamen. In order to make this more efficient the player is forced into the NTR. I already said in my review that the Magical Seamen had no effect on gameplay, it doesn't matter if you had 20ml or 20,000ml since nothing changes. Since you have no target to meet, the succubus is never really healed or restored? The first thing is that the succubus' complete form is never shown, I have unpacked the CG's and there isn't one there. The endings are just the two non H generic ends with the rest basically being NTR ends.
That means the entire story is pointless, since the primary objective of the game is unfulfilled.
That fact alone makes this game a 0.1/10, a proper translation is not going to fix that.
You cannot call this just a "shortcoming" either:
Somehow Mijiishi manages to set the bar even lower, some time ago Mijiishi made a post on his ci-en page stating: He would not fix a bug relating to if you change your player character name after taking Kuno's virginity, the new name would not be displayed in the H-stats, after acknowledging the bug and claiming he had a fix for it, he refused to fix it saying something like it "enhances the cuckold experience". At the end of the day, a developer should not be making a public display like this, you just fix it and move on, all he achieved by doing this was in effect sticking his middle finger up at his paying customers and paying supporters. Mijiishi is selling a commercial product here and he needs to keep himself professional, to an extent.
This means that there would be no guarantee that Mijiishi will fix bugs in his future games. Mijiishi has no honesty or integrity and clearly cannot be trusted. A proper translation will not fix this.
Then this game is missing basic features, like multiple outfits. Multiple outfits for the characters aren't a bonus anymore - its a standard feature now. A proper translation will not add it.
Mijiishi said this at the end of the 1.20 announcement on ci-en: (My direct English "Translation")
"This game took me a long time to complete, I am an incompetent dev who messed up and over complicated the programming (and screwed up just about everything else). The end result is that as I added more events to the game the more difficult it became to add new ones, due to complex flag/ switch management and I no longer know what my own code does anymore. I have lost motivation to continue working on this game. I had similar problems with all my games released after Menimis. My plan is to make my future games simpler and smaller. I also have plans to release products in different formats, I have not fully decided on what this will be just yet. I feel like I am in a continuous cycle making similar games over and over. I was worried if I would be able to complete this game."
In regard to this game being better than Luxoria? the potential was there, Mijiishi bottled it.
The only real actual dialogue in the introduction. The only other dialogue this game is is just "Ahh Ahh Ahh". The entire game is just the introduction and then a sex scene gallery, that's it (apart from the walking and grinding simulator, I guess).
Mijiishi, at every turn cut as many corners as possible. You can see this in game, this game has the most blandest, boring and most generic world I have seen in one of these games. The story is almost nonexistent. The female characters have no real personality, since all their dialogue is just "Ahh Ahh Ah". The pregnancy system is inconsistent. The dungeons are just straight lines with no effort put into them at all. The soundtrack is just a copy and paste job from the other games.
As I said my review (in the review tab) the entire gameplay is pointless. Uka is quite literally just a five minute redraw, recolor of Remina, Uka even clearly has the same base personality. Mijiishi is not even trying to hide it at all.
A proper translation will not fix these core problems.
Mijiishi underestimated the size and scale of this project. What I would do in this situation is make a new game where the linear story used here fits properly and take the time required to make this game the right way. The combination of a management simulator with a full RPG adventure is an excellent concept but as I said in my previous posts (and review), this game was poorly executed.
Other notable problems include: The NTR is forced on you, its uncontrollable, the Player cannot go on the quests, the bar/ brothel on the upper does not generate any monetary income (making it useless), the Player cannot form any relationships with the girls and has no "good endings". The biggest issue of them all is: The Player has no ability to be a leader, you have no control over anything at all. As I said once before a long time ago: the entire game is designed around keeping the Player as the weakest (both level and relationship wise) character in the game, even though the Player is in the most powerful position.
A proper translation on it's own is not going to fix all of that add all of that missing content.
