Why The Spirit Master of Retarnia Left A Bad Taste In My Mouth

I began this experience with the full intent of giving The Spirit Master of Retarnia a complete and well-thought out review. As I first started playing, though it had nothing extra special, the game certainly was enjoyable enough to keep me interested. I’ve played tons of dungeon crawlers in my life, so I figured playing this one on Hard wouldn’t be an issue. For the most part, it wasn’t, but I did lose to the first boss. This resulted in a scene that left me not wanting to play the game anymore.

WARNING: I will make it perfectly clear that while I don’t show any NSFW pictures in here, I do talk about some NSFW items. The game is totally a hentai game, as you probably know going into this, but I leave this warning anyway, to be safe.

She seems regal and graceful...

Before I jump into what made me dislike the game, let’s take a step back and talk about the game as a whole. The Spirit Master of Retarnia is a generic dungeon crawler akin to something like Etrian Odyssey, the older Shin Megami Tensei games or the original Elder Scrolls. While the general gameplay is similar to these games, Spirit Master lacks much of the charm that makes this genre so interesting. To begin with, the story is absolutely dull and lacks anything truly unique. The story does progress, and has some detail, but it’s also unnecessarily predictable. There are some potential plot twists that could have been interesting, but early on these plot twists are thrust into the player’s face rather than letting the player figure it out in clever ways. That’s not to say that the twists are necessarily blatantly said, but they are obvious nonetheless. The story revolves around the opening of a demonic portal, in which a descendant of an old Spirit Master must attempt to close while using the help of the timeless Spirits. The Spirits are, of course, all females, which leads to potential romance scenes.

...but you'll soon learn that she's exceedingly perverted.

As you roam around dungeons or explore the town, you can trigger random scenes that allow you to increase the affection of the Spirit. You can also acquire presents to give to each Spirit to increase their affection. Along with unlocking romance scenes, you also get to unlock abilities for the main character from the appropriate Spirit. The implementation isn’t anything crazy, but it is done in a way that works, and doesn’t feel as out of place as some other games I’ve played.

The dungeons can be navigated with mouse or keyboard.

Along with a passable crafting system and enough combat variety to keep you invested, the game won’t seem all too bad despite the generic and predictable story. The art is good, the music is ok, the gameplay is mildly enjoyable and there’s plenty of skills to choose from when levelling. Everything is looking good. You even have the option of viewing all romance scenes independent of the game along with viewing each individual CG image as you unlock them. As far as games with hentai in them, this would seem like one of the more decent ones to play through.

The combat can be a little clunky due to the lack of an auto-attack.

Let’s go back to my mention of losing the battle to the first boss. When that happens, one of your Spirit party members gets raped by the boss. Now before I start demeaning this whole concept and run it into the ground, I want to make something perfectly clear: rape when used to demonize a villain or when used for the intent of forcing the player to feel terrible and express the horror of the act can arguably be acceptable in a narrative. The problem here is that these scenes are clearly done for the sake of fan service. There is no emotional trauma the writers are trying to impose on the player; there is no demonizing of the villains. Nothing. It merely exists to fuel the fantasies of people who are interested in the horrible act of rape. Each scene ends with the death of said victim. Despite my disgust with this, I decided to give the game the benefit of the doubt and continue further.

The big bad of the game.

Eventually I got to the second boss, and with a little more preparation, I was able to defeat him without losing. I did the same with the third boss and then got a little further before I decided to explore the menus after saving. At that point, I noticed that two new scenes were unlocked in my gallery. It was then that I discovered that whether you win or lose to each boss, you unlock each rape scene. Ultimately, this means the game is rewarding the player for progressing through the game with multiple scenes depicting rape for no good reason at all.

The first boss caught me by surprise.

At this point, I gave up on the game and uninstalled it. Depictions of horrific acts within video games are difficult to pull off without making it feel wrong but have been done successfully in the past. Unfortunately, The Spirit Master of Retarnia has no shame in showing that it does this for the express purpose of fan service, and it’s disgusting.

More of the Queen's ridiculous pervertdness.

Despite the acceptable gameplay that is enough to keep the player interested, I can’t encourage playing this game. If you’re looking for a good game with hentai scenes, or just a good dungeon crawler, there are tons of other games out there that will provide these things without being tasteless and glorifying rape. I’d recommend looking elsewhere for a good dungeon crawler.

- Teepu

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Note: This was intended to be a full review of the game. While I put in about 4 hours and have a good enough idea of what is contained within the game to provide a full review, I would not feel comfortable doing so without completing the game. So, there will be no rating provided for this partial review.

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Disclaimer: This game was provided by the publisher for the purpose of this review.