Normally, I don't jump on games from the same dev this quickly after doing another one... but I made an exception here because I was hoping for a passable TL for this game for a
long time.
As with the last game, thanks to
Alex(GoD) for the TL. It may not be the manual TL of my dreams, but it's entire dimensions away from the garbage, shit tier MTL we had before. In this day and age, this sort of TL should be a good standard of quality for a TL that gets shared publicly. That said, it's obviously not going to be perfect. There's small mistakes here and there that are typical of MTL, with confusion about speaker or gender, but those are relatively few and far in between when compared to the vast majority of the text. Also, some bits of bizarre wording are inevitable because of Ore No Hut's own particular twists of the language, so keep that in mind when playing.
Basically, unless you're
absolutely fixated on having a manual TL (which is honestly unlikely at this point if we didn't get one by now), then you should give this version a spin. It does a good job of showcasing Ore No Hut's insanity.
Moving on. This is the 1st of Ore No Hut's games, the one before they got into their established style, and the one from when the circle was apparently calling itself Ore No Koya. This should be kept in mind if you come here from latter titles, because there's quite a few differences from them simply because their usual ideas hadn't happened yet.
The first thing to note is that Crystal Mina is not really much of a game. It's a scene collecting VN in RPGM. The gameplay is barely there and you can skip most of it. The fights are extremely bare-bones. The only choices are about the order in which you collect scenes between milestones. Basically, your biggest concern will generally be worrying about dehydration from the parade of smut with barely any interruptions.
However, the biggest differences between this game and older Ore No Hut titles are:
1. You play from Mina, the slut's perspective, and not the tiny dicked cuck.
2. The game only has 1 ending. There's no avoiding the NTR like in later titles.
The story is nothing much to write home about. It's the usual "transforming heroine" silliness, with the twist that Mina needs "life-force" to use her powers, and said life-force can be obtained via semen. Not particularly original even back when the game was new. That said, the game does use the twist well enough to justify the nature of its smut. The game doesn't go into "slut around" territory because Mina doesn't want to be a slut, and sticks to a single "bull" because Kimo-ota (Apparently a shortened name for Kimo-Otaku, more or less literally Gross Otaku, which the game explains) discovers Mina's secret and basically blackmails her into "helping" her... Though in a number of ways, his help really is needed because Mina's BF can't keep up with Mina's life-force consumption and the only other alternative is basically sucking dicks from bunches of other men.
This set-up is what leads Mina to be dicked more and more by Kimo-ota, which in turn causes her to become increasingly addicted to his dick while discovering that she's a total masochist. Inevitably, this leads to her becoming more and more slutty while also ensuring that her BF, her literal blood-related older brother, can't satisfy her no matter how hard he tries. With the end result being what's seen in latter Ore No Hut titles, aka her being Kimo-ota's sex-slave, and the BF being turned into a tiny dicked masochist that is only there to be bullied and used as a point of comparison with the bull... and to take responsibility for the children of course.
It's different from later titles though in some ways because, with the game being from Mina's perspective, you see the events as you trigger them, and you have a clearer view of her thought process. It's clearer to see that she was genuinely resisting at first and only doing it because she needs the life-force, and the transition into cock-drunk slut is notably smoother than in later titles. It still starts with her already being fucked up the ass and apparently being an anal masturbation addict, but the curve from closet-slut to total-maso-bitch or whatever is smoother and makes "more sense", so to speak, for the context. The scenes are also somewhat less extreme in terms of misogyny than latter titles, not by much, but enough that the difference can be noticed. This is because, to an extent,
Kimo-ota actually loves Mina, unlike the bulls in most other Ore No Hut games. In the end, it's her that ends up pursuing him to re-ignite their relationship, even though she had the option to end if she really tried.
In some ways, I can definitely agree that this is the best of Ore No Hut's games in terms of writing. The progression of the scenes between levels 1, 2, 3 and 4 are much clearer and much better justified. On the other hand, it's likely a much weaker NTR game, since the focus is much higher on Mina's corruption, rather than Cuck-kun being cucked... Not that there's not plenty of that either... We might not have his perspective, but there's still plenty of the typical Ore No Hut micro-dick bullying in the latter events.
All in all, while this isn't much of a game, it's still an excellent smut dispenser. In some ways, it's a better one than latter games, because the smut doesn't require you to hit the gallery for anything except one bonus scene that seems to have been added in a patch between the ending and the epilogue.
So if you like the art-style and/or Ore No Hut's writing, definitely give Crystal Mina a shot. Just make sure to stay hydrated.
Oh, and, here's my
View attachment 5029784
save folder, with the save break-downs:
1. Random early save.
2. Save before the 1st boss fight. Useful to trigger corruption event and Tier 2 events if you want to see them manually.
3. Save before the 2nd boss fight. Useful to trigger corruption event and Tier 3 events if you want to see them manually.
4. Save before the 3rd boss fight. Useful to trigger transition to final corruption event and Tier 4 events and later EX events.
5. Save before triggering final H-event.
6. Full save.
Have fun.
