Requiem Hearts

Requiem Hearts is in Japanese, I can't read Japanese. :) I still collect Japanese games simply because I hate missing a good game just because it is not considered economically viable for a company to export it.

When I discovered Requiem Hearts, I was looking for a good first person game. Searching around I found screenshots of this title. The graphics were nice, and the fact that it seemed to be a game from a female perspective, made in Japan, intrigued me.

The screenshots did not show one thing that I learned upon receiving the game. It is a hentai title. Even besides the fact that I generally don't play adult titles, I found myself finishing this game several times. If my w/u degenerates into a sort of 10 year old describing the game type of feel, I apologize. These games and writing (or should I say, discussing it with others) about these topics is something I have little experience in.

Graphics

The graphics are beautiful. Characters look rather realistic, especially in the hentai cut scenes. Movement of the character across the screen is in most cases fluid, with a few small exceptions. The look of the characters is extremely well done.

My few small exceptions statement needs to be clarified. Someties the character's movements are kind of halting or seem to be completed in steps. Also sometimes lighting effects from the right angles will interfere with vision. This second point is very seldom and does not obscure much of the screen.

The cut scenes, whether the pictures, movies or um... hentai games, are of varying quality. The pictures are almost crystal clear, using full advantage of the common PC's video capabilities. The movies are very well done except in one respect. For some reason, when the hentai movie scenes were made the game managed to keep the same level of great animation quality except for the eyes. They are understandably hard to make, but the developer left them as having a basically dead sort of feel.

The cut scene games generally involve some type of fetish or extremely uncomfortable looking position for the female characters. The graphics here get much less (comparatively) nice here.

Sound

The music is very good. It never gets to loud or too soft, always right for the current mood. The intro and conclusion music is especially good. During some of the maps, the selections will cause you to pause occasionally to listen. Eventually it blends into the game, so I could not call it overtly stunning, but simply very good.

Game Play

You would expect playing a game in a language you can't read would make it impossible. In fact it doesn't. The puzzles in the game are rather straight forward. Though some of them can kill the active character, simple trial and error can get you past that part pretty quickly. Since the puzzles are rather easy, there is very few (two) that have text to help out, so the fact is, those who can't read Japanese are not going to be forced to play this blind much more than those who can read it.

The game itself is almost completely mouse driven. The left mouse button causes the character to run forward/fire gun, and the right mouse button causes the character to back up/reload the gun. Simply by moving the mouse in the appropriate direction you can cause the character to turn.

Inside almost every map are battle scenes. These scenes happen when you reach certain points in the map. The game screen goes to a mode much like the old arcade games. (Area 51, Revolution X) You are now in a first person mode. Enemies will jump out of almost every available hiding spot. The screen itself moves on its own. You are now basically only guiding the character's hand, and firing and reloading. Occasionally power ups (health, offensive, firing round size, defensive) will appear. You gain these increases by shooting the icon.

Puzzles are solved by; finding and approaching objects which causes interactions, finding the right objects to move to and from in certain maps, and by using good timing. Overall, it is a fairly simple but hard to explain system. The only key which is used besides the mouse is the Escape key, which brings up the save, load and exit menu.

Only one of the cut scenes has any type of interaction. The internal hentai games involve various positions and one of the bad guys trying to get the girls to a state of ecstasy.

Cut scenes occur at the end of each of the 8 stages (which generally include more than one map).

Story

Basically, the year is 2197. The Japanese government is under siege by organized crime. Even the police many times take part. The biggest area of this crime is narcotics production and distribution.

The problem has become completely out of hand, as a single crime syndicate has risen above the rest. Two of the games characters (Ä¡»ç¸Þ and Å°Äí³ë) work for the narcotics division of the police. While investigating a lead, they are captured. An international agent (»ç°íÅä) is dispatched from Geneva to rescue her two colleges and to finally put an end to the syndicate.

Along with the three female characters, their is a fourth male character who's goal is to rescue everyone else when they get into trouble.

Mote: Players able to read or understand spoken Japanese will undoubtedly be able to get more out of the game through the dialogue and written areas in the cut scenes.