Games for Adults: Boob Wars

Boob Wars Review

 

                As I’ve admitted before, back when Mangagamer announced its partnership with Softhouse-seal, I wasn’t that thrilled about it since the lineup didn’t exactly look that enticing. Sexy Demon Transformation however managed to prove me wrong and now I have to admit I’m looking forward to what this new company has to offer (and anyone else who’s been paying attention to MG’s plans for 2013 can see they have quite a bit down the line). So as you can expect, I had good expectations once I’d downloaded and installed my copy of the next in the Softhouse-seal English lineup, Boob Wars, released in English on October 19, 2012. After playing it…I can at least say it’s a decent time killer.

Pros: Fun card battle system, good artwork, some of the jokes are funny, Teresa makes for a good heroine.

Cons: Not as funny as I was hoping, characters aren’t really used that well, the harem ending pretty much makes the other two endings kind of pointless.

WTF?!: I hear this every time I tell people I don’t really hate Mass Effect 3’s ending with the Extended Cut…

                You know considering there wasn’t much point in a summary for Sexy Demon Transformation, I’ll opt to quote Mangagamer again:

“At the beginning of the 22nd Century, an anomaly began occurring in the bodies of women...
All the women of the world became either E Cups and up or A cups and under.
"Big Breasts" and "Flat Chests"... Due to their division into these two groups,
the debate over which was superior began.
After the first incident of armed conflict, known as the "Nyuuhen Tragedy,"
the entire world was split between the Big Breasts Tribe and the Flat Chests Tribe and an intense conflict ensued.

87 years later...

The secret organization of Erorists, "Eagle", has ordered our protagonist Takamura Manabu to pursue the mission of his career: "Seduce Queen Milk Elioto of the Big Breasts Tribe and Queen Teresa Premadasa of the Flat Chests Tribe and bring this war to a close."

"Eagle" immediately sent the Erorist, Takamura Manabu, to the two queens!!

Can Manabu stop the two queens and bring this war to an end!?”

                And that’s basically this game’s story…but considering this is softhouse-seal, a story with depth is not to be expected. Really, in a light hearted sex romp game like this, what you should hope for is that the characters are likable and the humor works. As for how Boob Wars handles those…I’d say it really only does an okay job. With the characters (click here for profiles), most of them are just passable since while all the characters with a character portrait are given a personality, it’s really only Milk and Teresa who get the most  significant screen time while Suzuka and Sophia get significantly less. This is further confounded by the fact that Milk isn’t all that interesting as a character either.  Really, aside from Teresa the rest of the cast is pretty forgettable.

                Now I realize that this game isn’t supposed to have deep characters considering its genre and shortness, but SDT was able to have characters that were memorable and they all got a fitting amount of screen time and humorous scenes and it’s about the same length as Boob Wars. While we’re comparing the two though, I should also point out the Boob Wars isn’t as funny as SDT. Don’t get me wrong, it has a good enough amount of jokes to make me chuckle, but for every funny joke there’s a joke that falls flat or I simply just don’t get. I think part of the reason is because the jokes in SDT had a better focus on what it was making jokes about: the ridiculousness of the monster rape genre of eroge.

                Concerning the routes of this game, there sadly isn’t much to talk about considering the individual endings for Milk and Teresa are obviously fake endings with the harem route being the true ending. I can say that if not for the last part of it, Teresa’s route is pretty good considering she has some good interactions with Manabu that I found cute and kind of funny. Can’t really say the same for Milk since like I said before she isn’t that interesting and the same can be said of her route. The harem route, while better than Milk’s, is just okay.

                As for the gameplay, this is where Boob Wars actually does its best as throughout the game you battle enemies in a card based game similar to Princess Waltz where you and your opponent alternate between attacking and defending, receiving two randomly picked cards each turn. In each phase you can use up to three cards and the combined numerical value of each card determines how much damage you do when attacking and how much you block when defending. If the value of the attack exceeds the defense, a lot of damage is inflicted but if the value of the defense is higher then only a few points of damage are dealt if any. While the battle system is simple it can actually be pretty fun, especially on hard mode where you actually do have to put some strategy into fights such as how may high number cards should you use for attack vs. defense. If you don’t want to play the story again, but want to just play the card battle’s there is a free battle mode in the extras section.

                In the area of presentation, I’d say the artwork is pretty good as is the voice acting even if the music is pretty forgettable.  As for the ero scenes, they’re good, but nothing special.

In Conclusion:

                Boob Wars is an overall okay game that won’t be a waste of your money if all you’re looking for is a sex romp game. The gameplay element is a nice addition and may have you playing the game even after you complete the story mode. I will admit some of the humor may not be for everyone, but it gets enough laughs to be a passable comedy in my book. There are better games in MG’s lineup though, so I recommend only getting this if you want something to pass the time until the next big title releases.

Final Score: 5/10 Average

Author Recommendation:  Try it out.