RPGM - Completed - The Mercenary's Adventure [v3.004] [Takamakuran]

The Mercenary Adventure is not an RPG. It is a narrative-focused adventure game with typical RPGMaker RPG features, such as turn-based combat and stats that increase after levelling up. It lacks character progression found in customization or build choices. You, as a player, simply observe the scene directed by Takamakuran, the game's sole developer.

As it is a narrative-focused game, your role and that of your companions is clearly defined, leaving no room for player agency. Your Mercenary and his companions use predefined weapons and armors, and behave in a directed way, working within preconceived roles.

The prologue throws you into Mercenary's world during his quests in a village. During one of these quests, the game reveals its premise: fighting off a demon results in being cursed and entering into a contract with it. If you fail to perform a specific action each day, you will face consequences. This premise tells you that in this game, you will work within the framework of the curse. You expect it to be a pillar defining your experience. However, the curse is quickly forgotten, both mechanically and narratively, after a few days. If you don't perform the required action, you won't suffer any consequences. The curse only comes up in the narrative when it is used to push the story forward — when it is convenient for the author. Otherwise, it doesn't exist. The game has a problem of ludonarrative dissonance.

Even then, the game's narrative is decent until you reach the City, because you are working within the premise established in the first village. You are the Mercenary, you complete the tasks, you journey around, you suffer from the curse. After reaching the City, soon the game becomes incoherent with the premise. You are no longer a low-mid level Mercenary with a curse; suddenly you are a hero fighting an evil organization. Because the story starts working within different thematic frameworks, and remember it is a story-driven game, it feels as if you're playing a different game altogether. What was in the prologue feels distant because you are playing with different themes, incoherent with the premise of the game.

It also fails as an adventure, especially for a game with ADVENTURE in the title. The story is directed to take you to various places throughout the world. In order to reach X, you go through the forest, fight off fifteen enemies (or try to go around them), enter a new area, engage in dialogues and receive an instruction to go to Y. To reach Y, you go through the mountain path, where again, you fight off fifteen enemies. The way of exposing you to new locations is a repetitive pattern, pushing you to embrace autocombat whenever possible. Without autocombat, the game would quickly become monotonous.

The game tries to discuss its world-building ideas. For example, the curse and magic surrounding it. These don't exist only in the narrative: they ARE established mechanically through passive skills, but the way they are explained is through a huge infodump dialogue within one scene. Rather than showing this within the game world in harmony with the passive skill, the author sends you to read a ten-minute dialogue.

What about different areas of the game?
- The art style is phenomenal, pixels as if drawn in MS Paint with coherent, connected motifs, pretty and distinctive character designs.
- Music often fits, sometimes creating a diegetic experience, like in the Estate or the Cathedral.
- Combat is weak. Although turn combat theoretically allows you to approach battles with various strategies, you will ultimately only perform three actions: use autocombat for random mobs, repeatedly ATTACK HEAL ATTACK HEAL when not using autocombat, and tank and buff for more difficult fights (as even stated in the game's guide on F95Zone).

Ultimately, the game promises a narrative-driven experience, but its story and mechanics undermine the premise, and world-building is told in huge infodumps. It still is a unique experience, more memorable and interesting than most games on this website. For that reason alone, you SHOULD play it.

I love this game! The game doesn't only have a great story but the art, H-scenes are really really freaking good (it reminds me of black souls but more polished). I have to say heavily recommended! Please give it a try.

As an RPG this is probably one of the best games here, combat, characters feel alive, satisfying and pretty well written, lots of hot girls even if they are drawn like somebody used paint for the job, gotta appreciate that the author can draw so many different cute girls, but as far as a porn game it's probably not satisfying, the sex scenes are very short, like 1 minute, if you want to jack off you can only do it by reviewing a bunch of scenes you already saw.

non ironically this little jrpg game offers better gameplay and sex scenes than many games in this site.

about 10 hours of fun. more if you want to grind like crazy for one of the endings

nothing much more to say. it s impressive how much the author did with how little he had to work with. cgs remember me of black souls. i need to yap so i reach 200 characters and can post my review

don't be fool by the goofy ahh title card, this game is legit skibidi af, it start out very simple but eventually got super fanum tax and fun and very sex


never do the genderbend route again tho, this shit not bussin at all, sussy af, my mind is now grimace shake

RPGMaker games on F95 tend to have a certain reputation. They're buggy, have horrible, elongated development times, milking Patreon, and are often too grindy. Thankfully this game isn't any of that. I read people having crashing issues, and that's deeply unfortunate because I had zero technical issues.

It took me a while to realize why I love this game so much. Many others have said this is, "just another RPGMaker game, bro," but something kept me playing it. The H-scenes are amazing, no doubt about it, but it's more than that. This game reminds me of JRPGs of the heyday of 90s/00s PSX/PS2 era. The story is rather simple and not all that special, but it's in the moment to moment gameplay that makes this game. Whether it's finding the many many missable secrets in the game, or just getting a new attack to see a little animation of it, or just going back to bang a girl you couldn't before, the journey really makes it here. The art style is also amazing, whether the intent is sexy, cool, or horrifying, it works perfectly.

This game is only decent for a quick fap, but is basically, in my opinion, the perfect indie/doujin H-RPG game. I've honestly become a huge fan of this developer recently since he seems to only crank out bangers. Only true issue with this game is, like in many of the older JRPGs I spoke of before, the endgame is bloated with overly long and difficult fights.

Not often you see a porn game where lewd part is not the only good thing about it. Is it, perhaps, not quite a porn game, in such case? Probably.

This one, however, has quite interesting world building and characters even without taking into consideration diverse 18+ content with a lot of lasses (some of gals even possess several different events with them).
Everything is topped with a small pinch of grim dark (which is terrifying, as it is nailed correctly) and humor (which is hilarious, as it is timed perfectly).
Don't forget multiple endings, starting with: "So yeah, you fuck til the rest of your days, FIN" to .

All of it, if done correctly, makes a peculiar and already outstanding mix on its own, however, do remember: this is a mere 200mb game, which is exactly why it deserves 5 stars. The only possible drawback of the game are your party members: without a proper and constant management, they can easily die, whereas auto-combat is rarely useful. However, MC is One-Man-Army by himself, so...

TL;DR Delight of 200 mbs: Slightly Dark, Slightly Humorous, Very Deep and Very Horny. 9/10. Must have. Let's hope the creator provides us with more content of such high quality in the future...

Game crashed after 15 minutes of playing for no reason. The game doesn't do frequent enough backup saves so I got thrown back at least 5-7 minutes and the game only starts in window mode from now on. Alt + Enter doesn't work, nor do the F1-12 keys.

Save your time and don't play a game in this state.

This is more of a report on my experience with the game, cause I ended up deciding not to play it, due to the constant crashing, and not so much a review.

A few months ago I tried this game (pirate version) for a couple of hours, and I thought it was pretty interesting, and that the succubus was adorable, so I put it on the list and told myself I'd get around to it someday. Note that I had no crashes back then.

Fast forward to today when I was finally gonna play it , and it kept crashing every 15 minutes or so. I thought maybe there was a difference between the store bought and the pirate version, but the version on this site also crashes (it didn't before). I didn't change any hardware recently, so something changed sure, but I don't know what, and I can't figure it out if it's some incompatibility with a program. I even bothered to reinstall it with the same result.

Based on my experience I can't recommend it (and I'm not gonna play something in this state, there's other interesting stuff out there) but it's a shame, because I was looking forward to it.

If it doesn't crash for you, then this is likely a pretty good game and worth of your time, so it's probably a good idea to try it and see how it works before buying it.

One of the best RPGM h games I have every played. The story itself is already solid, but the art is 5/5. The art is like Black Souls, but more polished. There's a huge variety of girls and the craziest thing about the game, is that it's an actual game. It feels like an actual JRPG unlike a lot of other RPGM h games.

The Mercenary's Adventure is a fun game with charming art and quirky characters, however the overall experience is significantly hindered by the constant crashes. Without the crashes, I would easily rate this 4 or even 5 stars. However as it stands, it is hard to enjoy the journey due to the technical issues.

This game has really lovely artwork with a unique aesthetic. The story is a bit basic but the characters themselves are likeable and cute. Combat is a bit repetitive but the grind is not too bad. My only major complaint is that there is no option to change the text speed, and the default speed is quite slow.

The guy below me doesn't quite understand the appeal of this game, so I came here to even out the scales.

The Mercenary's Adventure is a game by a very hardworking and extremely talented gamedeveloper Takamakuran. His previous games, as well as this one, are known for quick, dynamic, mostly non-committed lewd action(which, once you get into the game's rhythm, will actually start to appeal to you, due to how eroticism is presented in this game) and engaging story that, at first, doesn't seem much. But then, once you start digging deeper, you start finding... some rather curious details. If I were to compare his games to mainstream media that is known to most of the folk in the West, it would be something akin to Undertale in how the story is usually layered and hidden underlying themes.

This game has all of that which I described, however this particular title is different from the previous ones in a sense that the story's direction took upon a more common jRPG trope of a hero who eventually starts fighting against the greater threat in the usual jRPG sense. While it might seem weaker than previous titles, this one still has a few twists and turns that you can expect from this developer, and they spice up the experience quite a bit.

The characters are all pretty charming, and even if some of them have little in terms of dialogue - their design compensates for that. Artwork style in Takamakuran games is something called "oekaki" or a "doodle", child drawing-like pictures, and while some might be turned off by that by looking at the previews, many might become entranced by it once they actually get into the game. Despite the rough linework and sketchy(no pun intended) look, the art presents pretty high anatomical accuracy, which is especially noticeable during lewd scenes. Not only that, but the scenes themselves are very dynamic due to high amount of layering stills with text SFX and masked lighting, which further adds to eroticism.

All the enemy sprites are also drawn by the developer, which shows how far he was willing to go to give the game its own unique look.

From my muddled memory, it's hard to say anything about the music, but I do remember not getting turned off by it, so it's at least average.

And there is battlefuck(cat fights), it's just very selective. Most of the fucking usually happens after the fight, if the enemy is fuckable. In fact, you can pretty much fuck every female character in the game, enemy or not. The amount of sex scenes is simply insane.

All in all, this game is a labor of love, and it shows. Make sure to support developer if you liked it, we definitely need more games like these.

Overall 3/5: Slightly above average RPGM game, but forgettable.
Enjoyment 2/5
Graphics 5/5
Gameplay: Standard RPGM, no battlefuck, linear and guided.
Writing: 1/5

I decided to try this game because the artstyle appealed to me, and had good ratings.
The artstyle is indeed appealing.
Unfortunately the sex scenes are very poorly written. You fuck the innkeeper on the first day within 5 minutes of gameplay, without any explanations given. There is no build-up.

My main advice is not to judge a book by its cover. I've stumbled upon this game several times, but I've always avoided it. The preview images didn't inspire much confidence in me to play this game. But when I had nothing to play, I decided to give this game a try, based on the rating. And I did not regret it.

I can say that despite the unusual style of drawing, the game has a very high detail of female characters and scenes in general. About 30% of the scenes even have some pretty good animation.

The game itself has some elements of dark fantasy, which I personally love. The plot is simple, but interesting to move through, and the characters are not revealed very much, but still leave a pleasant impression of themselves.

The game has a very large number of scenes and hidden content. Even after you finish the game, you can walk through the world and see what you might have missed.

About downsides. Perhaps I should just mention the old rpgmaker engine, which feels like it was deliberately chosen. As a result, many of the good features of the newer engine simply are not present here. Such as mouse control, for example. The second flaw is perhaps the art. Throughout the game we see that the author really knows how to draw, and he is quite talented at it, but there are moments in the game where you get the feeling that he was lazy in drawing some characters or scenes. Luckily, there aren't that many of them.

Overall, if I were to look at the game in isolation from all the other games in the genre, I'd give it a solid 4. But compared to the others, this game probably deserves a 5, which I'll give it here.

This is easily one of my top 3 games. It has an interesting story and great H scenes. The grinding wasn't a problem for me since i enjoy RPGM games and turn based combat but if you dont like grinding take a Full Save from the thread and start a new game plus. Trus me its worth it, and dont forget to have fun not only in the game but in the real world as well take care!

Despite the initial surprise of the drawing style that seemed to be made with MS Paint (and afterwards I got to like them a lot), this is a superb game.

The characters are funny, the sex scenes are plenty and you don't have to grind too much for them, and the pace is excelent (nor rushed nor dragged).

However maybe it is not the style of game for everyone.

For me it is a 5/5

This game is proof that you can make nice porn even in microsoft paint if you're a good enough artist.

The plot is generic enough for an eroge, but the characters are the ones that carry it. I found myself finishing it just to see how they end up . Also, this is the only time in a porn game for me when the comic relief (in this case the demon girl) was actually funny. Perks of having a good translation.

The amount of combat was too much for me so I had to cheat though. I guess you can tell there's going to be lots of fighting from the start since the first 2 quests need you to kill X amount of monsters like in a korean mmorpg.

Review for v3.004

Truly a hidden gem among all the RPGM games on this site. It's always a treat to go into something with no expectations and come out loving it.

I think more than anything this game just has a lot of character. There's a certain charm you get with the custom art not only for the sex scenes, but for stuff like attack animations and simply moving around in the world. I personally love the art style as well, a huge plus for sure. I find it hard to put into words, but the game has a rather simplified air about it while still being complex and deep enough to really hold my interest. I really enjoyed all the characters despite the fact that there really isn't a ton of dialogue present with most of them. The world feels sort of mysterious with the strange creatures you run into, and because of that, fun to explore. There's just an overall unique feel to the game that I really enjoyed.

The sex scenes are numerous and well distributed throughout the game. Huge bonus points for having scenes with actual monster girls. I think almost every female character you encounter? is sexable at some point. Again I liked pretty much every scene.

I don't think the story is bad, and I ended up liking the ending I got (which I believe is the true ending according to guides). But it isn't the strongest part of the game by any means. Perhaps the one thing that suffers as a result of the sort of simple tone about the game. Combat by the same margin wasn't bad, but isn't something that stands out as really good imo. It was balanced and I didn't have to grind much, but I found some of the bosses at the end to be a bit of a slog as it was just about being able to tank/heal damage while whittling down big hp bars after applying like 10 different buffs. I definitely didn't have the most optimized builds to be fair though, and the custom art and animations for battles made it enjoyable regardless.

If I had to really critique anything, I would have liked to see more side quests/side content. The game does have a fair amount of secrets and optional things to do, but a large majority of the game is moving along a linear path with the story.

Still, it's a really fun RPG at the end of the day. Worth a play if you're a fan of them for sure!

This is the game that made me signup to dl-site and give it an obscene amount of money (my currency translates horribly to japanese yen). You can feel the artists love and effort for the art. The artstyle is definetely not for everyone, but I urge you to try until the first full scene with the inkeeper. The kind of sloppy drawing with the pseudo-animation somehow worked very well on me and I was in for the ride after that point. I used to avoid RPGM games like the plague, but this game broke my prejudice.
5/5 Played multiple times just to get that high again