"Lightning Warrior Raidy is an average tepid attempt at the RPG hentai genre."

"Lightning Warrior Raidy" is a English hentai PC title made by the developers at Zyx and translated by G-Collections. You control a young, beautiful, adventurous warrior woman appropriately named "Raidy," possessing the innate ability of channeling lightning into her attacks. One day, she stumbles into the village of "Saad," a decrepit town deserted with the exception of the elderly. The elders share a gloomy tale: All their young women were captured by monsters and sent to a nearby tower. All the young men went to rescue them, but all have failed. Raidy, feeling obligated to help, steps alone into the tower.

Unlike the majority of hentai games utilizing only text and graphics, "Lightning Warrior Raidy" borrows simple RPG (role-playing game) mechanics inspired from old school first person dungeon crawlers. Other hentai titles have also incorporated RPG elements, like Brave Soul, so the concept isn't new. Regardless, it's a clever approach. Unfortunately, the concept fails in some respects.

As a dungeon crawler, the game utilizes a navigation system to traverse the various dungeon hallways. This navigation is the biggest fault in the game's design. All the dungeon's hallways look identical and getting lost is problematic. All the hallways are narrow and movement is restricted to 90 degree turns. You'll often feel like a mouse trapped in a maze. There is a map feature, but you have to find the map in a treasure chest located typically on the opposite end of the dungeon from where you start, so until then, you're wandering blind. To make matters worse, as you ascend the floors, the game includes cumbersome navigation elements, such as walls you can walk through, teleportation, and tiles that flip your character around. These features are frustrating, confusing, and are awful attempts by the designers to instill challenge into the game. Using the maps on GameFAQ's is almost essential. It's not impossible without them, but it's frustrating to say the least.

Like most RPG's, finding treasure chests is essential to gameplay progression. In addition to the map, you'll find potions, weapons, armor, keys, and other special items on each of the dungeon's floors. The problem is these treasure chests are technically invisible! You'll walk into an empty 4x4 tile room, find nothing is there, then immediately walk out. It's only by accident you'll realize you must walk on a certain tile in the empty room to open a dialog box displaying you've found a treasure chest. A lot of headache would have been solved had the designers simply made a graphical representation of a chest and placed it on one of the tiles in the room, but instead you're left to wander into a room and step on every tile, searching for a dialog pop-up displaying you found something.

Combat is simple, albeit too simple. Raidy has five commands at her disposal: attack, defend, item, run, and Thunder Slash. About 80% of combat is devoted to mashing the attack button, clicking away repetitive text windows displaying damage you and the monster deal to one another. Players will grow accustomed to the attack mashing, but it's hard not to question whether a more efficient design could have been used to display damage. With the exception of the "Thunder Slash" ability, there is no "spell" option or any other abilities. Perhaps this is appropriate since Raidy isn't a wizard, but the lack of spells and other skills means attacking is almost your only option to defeat enemies. This makes combat feel bland and repetitive. The Thunder Slash ability is a useful alternative, but attacking is a much easier way of delivering consistent damage over time and since Thunder Slash's damage output is dependent on your mana, it's hard to recommend it over simply attacking. Don't expect new abilities as you level up -- leveling is strictly for adding to your maximum hit-points and mana. Raidy also traverses the dungeon alone, so don't expect accompanying companions with different skills.

Thankfully, "Lightning Warrior Raidy" compensates for its flaws with excellent hentai. The game appeals to a number of fetishes with each boss having their own unique sexual preferences, including whipping, tentacles, candle-play, and enemas. For unknown reasons, monsters in the dungeon have assumed forms of female humans, each wearing distinct costume designs encompassing suggestive themes, such as the "Minotaur" dressed as a cow, the scantily-clad "Amazon," and the demonisque "Chimera." Not surprisingly, with a heavy female cast, there are strong yuri (lesbian) themes. There is some guy on girl action, but it is very rare.

Graphically, the game is superb. Artist Kazuma Muramasa brings the monsters and characters to life with an attention to detail rarely seen in most hentai titles. The hentai scenes are beautiful to watch with excellent attention to light, shadow, backgrounds, and conveying emotion in character's faces. The female monster costume designs look silly, but are appropriate considering they are parodies of stereotypical RPG monsters. The only flaws consists in the game's navigation, such as the lack of treasure chest displays and inadequate dungeon design.

The audio harks back to the ancient Super Nintendo era when RPG's were plentiful. Considering "Lightning Warrior Raidy" stands out as an RPG title, the audio sounds appropriate, especially the boss fight soundtracks. Voice acting is also fairly solid, but not perfect. Raidy gives the best performance with her innocent, childish, yet demanding "knight in shining armor" demeanor. The only serious audio issue was the beginning when the game decides to borrow the same music from the main menu once you start a new game. It initially sounded like the game's music was stuck looping the main menu music. Only until Raidy enters the dungeon is it apparent this was just an audio design blunder.

On par with other RPG's, "Lightning Warrior Raidy" is very short. Expect to complete the game in a dedicated day in roughly 10 hours. Without spoiling anything, the game has only one ending, with the exception of the multitude of bad endings. Every time you lose to one of the game's bosses, you'll receive a short bad ending of the boss character utilizing their preferred sexual appetite to take advantage of Raidy, so it's worth losing on purpose at least once to every boss. You'll only obtain the good ending when you, of course, beat the game, but the ending leaves a lot to be desired. Characters aren't fleshed out enough, leaving you to wonder what happens to them. You also never learn why Raidy possesses the ability of lightning in the first place. Overall, you're left with a sense the designers wanted to reach the credits as quick as possible. In addition, since there's only one true ending, there is no motivation to replay the game, unless the player missed a particular hentai scene. Something to reward a player's efforts for completing the game, like harder difficulty settings, edit options, boss modes, etc. would have been a nice feature.

Thankfully, the abrupt ending gives way to a sequel. Two sequels to be precise. Already there is a Lightning Warrior Raidy II & III. The third is pending release in Japan. The second has already been released in Japan and has been confirmed for an English translation. The third is expected to similarly be translated, but it's not confirmed. Characters from the first game will make return debuts in both sequels. Hopefully the sequels will depict more of Raidy, the supporting cast, and the world Raidy inhabits, but for now, don't expect to learn anything of the sort from this first title.

Overall, "Lightning Warrior Raidy" is an average tepid attempt at the RPG hentai genre. Because the game is Zyx's first RPG and since they're a hentai publisher first and foremost, it's hard to hold them accountable for flaws in RPG design. They should be commended for delivering a unique approach to hentai gaming. This first title should be intended as an experimentation for Zyx into RPG territory rather than a fully fleshed title. If you're looking for a playful distraction from serious RPG's, then "Lightning Warrior Raidy" is recommended, but if you're expecting an excellent RPG on par with console titles, you'll be disappointed.

Average Score: 5.4
Gameplay: 4/10
Graphics: 9/10
Sound: 8/10
Value: 2/10
Tilt: 4/10

Reviewer's Score: 5/10, Originally Posted: 05/12/08

Game Release: Lightning Warrior Raidy (US, 04/08/08)