Setalia the Demon Realm is one of the more bizarre H-games one would usually find, with many extremely strange enemies, H-scenes, game designs and alike. Despite its presentation, it's surprisingly good at what it's doing and sometimes makes my boner goes hard at places where it truly shouldn't.
*Artstyle: uzura's artstyle is pretty interesting. It's posterized assets like what you see in Dead Cells and such, creating this "fake" pixel art aesthetics. This makes the game stands out from the usual bunch of low resolution pixel art and spine-animated 2D art. I really like this style, the touch of uniqueness it gives elevates the game's unique designs.
*Atmosphere: the game's overall atmosphere is dark and very scary at times. Setalia aims to be a mix of horror and horniness, which is something it... is really successful at. Some other horror-mix games seems to miss this mark, as they either are just following the recipe of an established normal horror game, or their choice of game design quickly contradicts the horror elements. Setalia is different. In most places, you are shrouded in darkness with glimpses of light occasionally. You'll also find plenty of... "victims", tormented women trapped in tentacles plants, losing their sanity, strapped to a statue, and I can't even fucking explain what the hell is a tentacle tree and why a bunch of girls is trapped in it. These all adds up to put you on the edge while exploring the many enemies, some of which are abominations that makes you constantly think of two things: "What the hell happened here?" and "This is fucked up". It's from the presentation of the game alone is enough for it to be scary, even if 90% of such things are sex-related.
*Design: the designs themselves are well-made, for abominations that is. Some enemies in here are rather simple: zombies, slimes, bigger slimes, etc. But then as you go deeper into the game, the enemy's designs becomes... haunting. Bouncy heads with a bunch of chains and disembodied arms at the tips? A... caterpillar with a human head? Oh god, why is this pink slime thing has two halves of a human body, one flying, one on the ground? Yeah, body horror at its finest. Despite that being the case, the sex scenes themselves isn't that bad, and it's pretty good, but we'll get to that part later.
*Sound design:I LOVE the sound design in this game. Japanese SFX packs goes hard. The sound effects really pops out and really carries that strength at times, while also being useful at other times. Some enemies have their own unique sounds, which really brings a lot of personality into them, even if they're just monsters. I especially love the sound when you get hit, as it plays into the theme of the game very well. It's a really loud sound, accompanied with a big red flash warning that you just get hit, almost as if you're being jumpscared, and well, you're in a horror game so it works pretty damn well if you ask me. Also, the music, the songs the dev picked for this game is really good. They really fit the areas and bosses this game has.
*Story: it's one of those games with really vague stories. The game really presents lots of strange phenomena that questions the player what really went down, like the various tentacle trees, weird demonic creatures, altars, statues, etc. Hell, even the character we're controlling is mysterious. Who is Anika? Why are we an exorcist and why does that mean we get to use a minigun. Why does the minigun uses your horniness as ammo? Etc. The game starts with telling you that a girl wished on a statue for the world to become peaceful, then after showing you just how fucked up the world is and even after beating the final boss, you're still left wondering so many things, all the way back to questioning "Girl, what statue did you wished upon because holy FU-". If you ask me, I think it's one of those stories where it's open, it wasn't meant to tell you a narrative of what went down, more just telling that something did went down and it become this messed up place for you to "enjoy".
*Gameplay: Setalia the Demon Realm has some pretty interesting gameplay choices, which it manages to do pretty well despite its initial strange concept.
**Movement: pretty limited. At first you're granted a single jump, and then early on you can obtain a double jump. And... that's it. Yep, walk forward, backwards and double jump. Setalia is not exactly a platformer nor is it a deep metroidvania, so the game doesn't give you much. What is there definitely works, as the game is rather short so you won't really be bored by its rather simple layout design and movement abilities.
**Offense and Defense: is really simple. You're given a minigun that can be upgraded as you go. You are also given a laser gun upgrade, which shoots out a big laser by pressing F after you've accumulated enough shots with your minigun. And... that's also it. No melee, no different guns, no laser variations, just the same gun and same laser throughout the game. It's not bad however, in fact, I find this combat system really interesting, especially when we get to the enemies. The gun is also given a dead zone, because the bullets comes out from the end of your muzzles, you can't actually shoot things between you and muzzle, which forces you to take an advantageous position to shoot down the onslaught of enemies in tight corridors. The big laser also gives some strategic depth into your encounters, where you might want to save it for some quick kills on annoying enemies or clear out a big lane of smaller enemies. Defense wise, yeah, just move aside. There's no defensive mechanics other than movement, which emphasizes on the playstyle I just mentioned before.
**Enemies: simple as the combat goes, the depth comes from the enemy. Yes, you can just camp on the ledge of some platforms and shoot them down without fear of getting hit... or can you? As you progress, enemies get increasingly good at invading "safe" spaces, some being pretty fast, some has long reach and fills the screen with projectiles, some is hard to shoot down. Whatever the case, you're gonna need a lot of planning when you encounter specific enemy synergies. There is a few problem with this however, some enemies tend to be too damn annoying with this design. Sure, it works, but a few specific ones can really be unfair. For example, one enemy is a ground walker, who can snipe you with a long range hit from the edge of your screen to another. Once it gets into your screen, you have a really short time to react and dodge accordingly. Another is an enemy who can shoot out fast projectiles from outside of your FOV, which makes them literally unreactable. There's a few more, but yeah you get the picture.
**Bosses: similarly, the bosses are pretty good but some have a few problems. The 1st boss is well-designed with recognizable patterns and requires some strategies. The 2nd boss is a bullet hell-ish boss who can be no-hit with some good strategies too. Before the last boss, there's two sub-bosses, one being too easy and the other being the complete opposite. The harder sub-boss is definitely everything bad about this game compiled into one singular boss battle, as this incomprehensible horror can dispense flying mini-projectiles, caterpillars and summons worms with a shit ton of RNG and hardly any time to react to whatever is flying towards you, and even if you can see, you can't shoot it due to the small target. RNG, unreactable, sometimes undodgeable bullet hell dispenser. The last boss is pretty mixed, as she has some good designs from earlier bosses with one singular attack being also RNG and sometimes undodgeable. Not a bad arrange of bosses, but not extremely good either.
**Level design: the game's horror aspect is particularly really good in zone 2, the haunted mansion. There's two sections in this part I really want to compliment, which is the ghost chase sequence and the giant watcher levels. In the ghost level, you'll need to find 3 medals while being chased by an invincible ghost. Despite going through it more than a dozen times by now, it's still horrifying and makes my heart race really hard. Then you have the giantess that watches over you, where you'll have to hide behind walls to not slowly die. It's pretty intense as the sounds of her eyes being active really urges you to take cover. Other than these special levels, the level design are pretty standard for a game with just a double jump.
**Difficulty: the game is very well designed overall, but what about its difficulty? Non-existent. The game is extremely forgiving, and there's no difficulty option at all so the game will always be easy. Why is it easy? You're one of the most stacked H-game protagonist to ever be played. You have 3 bars of armor, which can tank anywhere from 6 hits to 12-15 hits, each armor's bar damage will not transfer to the next, so even if your previous is 1 pixel long, it'll not affect the next armor bar. This is just armor, you also have the actual hearts, which you start the game at 3 and if you pick up all heart upgrades, it becomes a whopping 11. You are extremely tanky and can withstand so many hits before you're in grave danger. That's not all, the invincibility when you get hit is 4-5 seconds, which is enormous compared to other game's invincibility period. When you get hit by most enemies, you begin a sex scene which you can promptly mash out, multiplying your tankiness when your armor runs out. Then you also have the fairies, who heals your heart hp by initiating a sex scene, so you can even have extra heals, and you can heal infinitely by going in and out of different rooms. Also, remember the ammo making you horny thing? Yeah, each reload fills like 1% of that bar, so even if you shoot hundreds of enemies, you'll not get even close to losing a heart from reloading. Basically, the amount of times you'll die is either zero or very close to it.
*H-content: the game is extremely good at this part. The game's many H-scenes shouldn't make my boner go up, but it did somehow and I applaud the game for that. They constantly shove into your face that it's a H-game, with everything around being about sex in one way or another, no matter how twisted it is sometimes. The game constantly ties H-scenes to the gameplay, you'll need to fuck statues to open two gates, then whenever you get hit while your armor is off would start an H-scenes. As said before, you'd even cum from reloading too much, but that rarely ever happens unless it's intentional. Setalia has no chill being a H-game and I usually don't see this in other games, as they're just normal enemies until they hit you and pull their cocks out. This one, all cocks and tits out, even on the most abominable creatures ready to tear your armor down.
*Overall: Setalia is a fun game experience, but it's probably not the best game out there period. It's not challenging at all, so at best you can treat this game as an experience through the madness more so than a game you can challenge yourself to. All of its goods are pretty goods, but the bad, little as they are, are pretty damn bad. Overall I'd still greatly recommend you playing through this game, but if you expect something with greater replayability or difficulty, then you're better off with some other H-games. 9.25/10.
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