SWORD x HIME is a lewd 3rd-person action-RPG about a princess and her fight against the evil demon king (and his rapey goons).
At-a-glance
(Adult) Content?
(F, FxF, FxM) Sexual content.
Censorship?
No. Woot! Woot!
Hours of Gameplay?
Three or four hours.
Modding Support?
No.
Patch Available?
No, not necessary.
Gameplay
Kill baddies to grind for upgrades to defeat bigger baddies. Each kill nets one or more money, which is essential to progress. Money can also be obtained by completing quests, which are generously scattered about each level. All of the protagonist’s stats are primarily advanced via purchasing upgrades, so it’s wise to battle mobs of low-level enemies until you can quickly defeat more worthwhile bosses. All enemies have a chance to drop new outfits and weapons, the latter providing massive enhancements to your damage output. Enemies can knock you into an “h-state”, where they may take hold of the protagonist and rape her until you hit the “esc” key. You literally can’t lose the game; if you lose all of your life, you’ll be off the ground in seconds.
Now, let me give you some advice on the game.
First of all, invest all of your money into the “dash” skill cooldown time, reducing it to 0.1 seconds; this will allow you to rapidly traverse the map, stay out of trouble, and eventually curb stomp anyone that gets in your way. Then, be sure to invest into the dash skill’s damage multiplier and your “base damage”. Once you max out your dash’s damage output, it can deliver up to ten-times your base damage, and it gets even more bonkers when you factor in critical hit-rate, critical damage and the fact it has a 0.1 second cooldown time. By the end of the game, I wish dishing out enough damage to one shot just about every boss and enemy, with the exception of the last boss — I ended up somehow glitching the game with the dash attack, creating an infinite damage loop while he was unable to attack me. The dash attack can also be used to stun-lock and kill enemies leagues above you.
When in doubt, spin dash attack — gotta go fast!
Story
Hime is recruited by an unnamed woman in Morningstar City to beat-back the Demon King Azmodan and his army. For the purposes of this article, I’ll call the unnamed lady “Patchy”, because she wears an eyepatch. Hoping to enlist the aid of Polarnight City, Patchy asks Hime to defeat the Brutal Cyclops’ army from the east. After killing the Cyclops, Hime is then instructed to free a nearby village from the Hell Palace Guardian’s rule. Once the village is liberated, Patchy gains the confidence to launch an offensive against the Purgatory Hunter’s troops in the Southern Mountains. Hime assassinates the Hunter, and Patchy locates the Demon King’s hideout. All eyes are on Hime to save Morningstar, for (according to Patchy) they have suffered too many casualties to continue fighting.
The story sounds cool, but you don’t get to see any of it actually happen — I think Patchy is just making shit up.
Visuals
The titlescreen looks fancy, but it doesn’t say anything about the content of the game. However, the user-interface is generally very good (though a little buggy). From the “Setting” menu you can adjust a variety of audio, display, language, gameplay and graphical preferences. The in-game visuals are a mixed bag, it’s clear that a number of premade assets were constitute the majority of the game. Some of the characters look like they belong in a bad wrestling game, and others some sort of memey-memeware. As much as I liked to see the protagonist get her pussy wrecked by the buster sword, the off-hand anime chicks totally killed my immersion. My immersion dammit!
The Goods
By the far the biggest selling point of SWORD x HIME are the nearly three-hundred sex-animations to see. There is a diverse cast of enemies that Hime will encounter, most of which capable of raping her using a special stun attack (or by pressing the “H” key.) It goes without saying none of the sex is consensual but you know, it’s not rape if you like it right guys? There’s boys, girls, and a wide variety of things in-between (like grotesque fish monsters!) The animations are decent, and each monster has up to three animations to see. The climaxes are lame, and there are no money shots to see, which kind of blows. Some of the sex positions look painful — like really painful — could you imagine having a bladed instrument shoved in and out of your sexual orifices?
Verdict
Wait for a strong sale and much needed updates. In it’s current state, I wouldn’t recommend paying more than five dollars for SWORD x HIME, or about half its asking price in the States. This game is a buggy, visually abhorrent mess with awful optimization and terrible balance. I enjoy playing bad, unbalanced RPGs but if you are expecting any sort of refined experience you’re going to be very disappointed.
Wombat Woe — Gallery
When viewing animations from the “Gallery”, it’s impossible to move the actors or change the environment. In the context of the game, the Gallery’s modern pool setting doesn’t make sense in the slightest.
Wombat Woe — Nudity
I don’t understand why full nudity isn’t an option, where the main character is wholly anatomically correct. I think full-nudity should be an option from the get-go, along with the default clothes Hime starts with.
Wombat Woe — Key Bindings
I would have liked to have seen a way to rebind keys. While the default (and only) control scheme was serviceable, I found myself accidently cycling through clothes all the time, and it was frustrating to cycle back to my preferred set — given the option, I would have disabled that command. Having abilities set to the number keys made it difficult for me to activate them in the heat of battle, and I would have much preferred my abilities to be relegated nearby the movement keys
