The Greatest
Inventions of the Sexy Era!
Well,
here I am reviewing another softhouse-seal game, a company I admit I’m a tad
cautious about after the geyser of crap that was Super Secret Sexy Spy. Still,
a lot of people who had played this game before it was localized seemed happy
about its announcement and I had more assurances that this would be funny
(though to be fair, I had no assurances with SSSS), so I preordered The
Greatest Inventions of the Sexy Era! and come its release date of June 21, 2013
began to play it. Upon completion…maybe SSSS was a fluke after all…
Pros: The comedic
stuff is genuinely funny and mostly works, the main characters are good enough,
the artwork is good, the music has a couple of nice tunes.
Cons: The minor
characters could have been handled better, harem ending is a let down, WHERE’S
MY SAKURA ENDING DAMN IT!?!?
WTF?!: One of Kyousuke’s inventions is the Asura bun (extra
points to those who get the original pun)…
Considering what it grants you to make you like Asura, does that
mean in Asura’s Wrath…?
In The
Greatest Inventions of the Sexy Era! you play as Kyousuke Daiguuji, the gym
teacher of Hanabatake Academy with a secret passion for inventing many a wacky
contraption in the name of science (and
who bears an uncanny resemblance to the title character of Toriko). When it
comes time to reform the school’s science club, Kyousuke is mortified when the
school’s science teacher is picked to be the head of the club instead of him
(gee, I wonder why?), so he decides to form his own science club for the
purpose of taking revenge on the school for this great offense with the aid of
his trusty (but not too bright) new club recruit/minion, Fuuka.
In the
case of this game’s story, we see SHS essentially use a similar set up to Sexy
Demon Transformation by taking a much used genre of countless dark eroge and/or
hentai OVAs and manga. In this case, it’s the “evil rapist teacher” genre and
while the writer does turn the trope of the main character of said genre on its
head similar to SDT by having Kyousuke be a foolish but not really so bad guy,
it’s both distinguished from that game and helped by how effectively wacky his
portrayal as a mad scientist comes off. Almost all of the scenes where Kyousuke
introduces and uses his inventions are hilarious, and many of the joke
references and puns associated with the inventions are at least chuckle worthy.
Our two
main heroines, Fuuka and Matsuri also make for good parodies of tropes from
that genre too. Fuuka is a play on the “accomplice” heroine of the genre, but
that trope gets turned on its head by not only having Fuuka join Kyousuke over
extreme gullibility, but also in the many leader-minion comedic scenes between
her and Kyosuke in place of the generic master-sex slave interactions of the
very genre it parodies. Matsuri actually
makes for the better of the two parodies as she’s a take on spending time the
heroine that tries to go up against the rapist MC but always fails, and the
trope is spoofed by making her a hot headed magical girl with a bit of an
indifference to some of the finer points of heroism who frequently challenges
Kyousuke and kind of wins at the end of each battle.
Now
while this game does as well with comedy as SDT, it doesn’t do as well when it
comes to the handling of its minor characters. Part of the reason is because
there isn’t much plot diversity compared to SDT (which isn’t a problem by itself), and aside from Fuuka
and Matsuri there really isn’t much of a sense of character exposition. Two of
the sub heroines, Yuuki and Ururu are introduced and after their obligatory ero
scene(s) that follow just completely disappear from the plot. You never see or
hear about them again. This just comes off as weak writing even for a sex romp
game and leaves you wondering what the point of the characters were aside from
introducing some new inventions. Our remaining sub heroine Sakura fairs
slightly better as she has a little more screen time which does help to make
her character interesting and likable, enough that you wish she had her own
ending. Alright, technically she does but all that happens in that ending is it
hints about her possibly hooking up with Kyousuke, but we never see it.
The
final story related problem this game has is its weak harem ending. First off
the name is pretty deceptive since the only heroines Kyousuke ends up with are
Fuuka and Matsuri with the side heroines (of course) being nowhere to be seen.
Still, that’s the least of this ending’s problems with its main one being its
lack of substance compared to the other endings in the game. The harem ending
is basically just a threesome ero scene and that’s it, and while the other
endings also end on ero scenes at least those had enough writing around them to
convey a better sense of closure.
In the
area of presentation this game does well with the character artwork being good
and the design of some of the inventions are amusing. The voice acting is all
around good with the voice actresses for Fuuka and Matsuri doing a good job at
bringing the comical aspects of their characters to life. Also the music for
the game has a couple of good tunes to it, particularly the menu theme with its
upbeat sound to it and the music that plays when Kyousuke and Fuuka are meeting
in the club room does a good job in conveying a feeling of the fun of light
hearted mischief making. I’d say what the names of these two tunes were, but
there’s nothing in the extras section that gathers or names the music.
As for
the ero scenes, they’re pretty good and most of them are pretty funny. I’ll
even say they’re the funniest ero scenes I’ve seen from softhouse-seal so far.
In Conclusion:
The
Greatest Inventions of the Sexy Era is a good example of how softhouse-seal can
release eroge that are short and cheap, but still enjoyable. While this is by
no means a perfect game, it’s definitely a recommend for anyone who wants a
decent sex romp type eroge that also has some good laughs to offer, at least
enough to make up for the lackluster endings. I will say the jokes might be easier
to get for those with some trope familiarity in regards to hentai, but that’s
something you’ll have to see for yourself. Let’s hope this game does well
enough that we get the sequel.
Final Score: 6/10
Above Average
Author Recommendation: For Fans Only!
