Evening Starter is certainly one of the more clever games that Kagura Games have published lately. It’s a bit more than your standard ransom RPG and you’re actually going to get your money’s worth out of this one for it’s intriguing storyline, challenging gameplay, unexpected sexual situations and finally, battle mechanics with a bit more to offer than your common RPG Maker game. Let me come right out and say it. Evening Starter was designed in RPG Maker, which has a horrible track record of fly by night games that suffer from overuse of the base assets. That’s fine if you’re designing an isekai with heart like Spheria’s Familiar, but all too often I’m saddled with games that may as well just be hentai slideshows. That’s not what Evening Starter did and let me tell you not only why it’s different, but why I actually got hooked playing the thing.
Gameplay:
Evening Starter mixes a visual novel with an RPG dungeon crawler much like several games in the Rance series, most notably Rance VI: The Fall Of Zeth. However, the surroundings are quite bland I recommend looking at the bottom map grid to maneuver around. If you loved walking through the dungeons in early Wizardry or the first two Shin Megami Tensei games, well this is kind of a throwback to that style of dungeon crawling. Of course, there are items that you find and pick up, as well as equipment and treasures that you can sell and use to pay off your debt. Also, you will come across dialogue scenes within the dungeon that help to spruce things up a little and add to the overall narrative. Combat is an interesting situation, because not only do you have spells and techniques, but you also have an interesting gun and bullet system. You will need to purchase ammo for these guns in order to use them (and you can reload during battle, so don’t worry about that) but the double shot and triple shot attacks are extremely effective in taking out the demonic denizens you’ll face. It is worth noting that the main character cannot use guns and is strictly limited to her spells and standard attack techniques. Later in the game, you’ll be able to switch party member rows as you gain new recruits, and if one party member should die, a party member in the back row will take over for them. Interestingly, the dungeons in Evening Starter do not feature random battles. Instead, battles are placed on certain sections of the map. You can run easily, but you’ll still have to fight a battle if it is blocking your path, and sometimes that definitely happens. However, you are given an item that allows you to fast travel out of the dungeon if you need it. Death inside the dungeons sometimes results in losing some gold and items as well, so be aware of that.
The game doesn’t actually reveal itself until after the second dungeon, where a certain situation (which I’ll explain more about in the STORY section of this review) results in the character having to pay back a debt sum. You can do this by finding treasures, looting enemies and selling black market goods that you’ll find all over the place. Evening Starter takes place in the modern era, so you can also visit the bar for local tips, as well as the magic shop for shiny gems. There’s also a chiropractor who is so talented that he can bring the dead back to life. You also have your headquarters and the main shop, where you’ll be purchasing all of your items, as well as paying back your debt. Debt payment is timed, so if you are unable to pay back a certain amount of debt each week, then the character will have to perform for an underground bootleg porn video with various men. I’ll get more into that with the HENTAI/ADULT CONTENT section. The game also comes baked with three different difficulty settings which can be changed at will. You have baby mode (which I admittedly played a little of just to get the story and context) as well as normal (which I started out with) and hard for those who want a considerable challenge. So the game has your difficulty level covered, even though it still has portions where you’ll be tested at any level. There is also an included beastiary of all the enemies you’ve battled as well as their descriptions and weaknesses, as well as an H-Scene viewer. You’ll be able to access any of these options from the menu at your base or by looking at your status screen.
Story:
You play as a supernatural detective waifu who explores creepy areas looking to purge various demons and just plain possessed people from her city. After a training tutorial in an apartment that became flooded with undead, she happens upon a couple of shoggoths in the warehouse district. Try as she might, our heroine was just not strong enough to dispatch these shoggoths (and these were baby shoggoths too, I may add) so she literally, and I mean literally decides to do the dumbest shit ever and raids a military supply area as she just goes complete scorched earth on them. I mean yes, the shoggoths were destroyed… but so was the whole warehouse district! Upon returning to base, she gets scolded at by the mafia boss in charge of this whole ordeal. At first, our completely clueless heroine doesn’t feel that 4.6 billion yen is that much of a problem. She even says that she’ll just pay it off with the money in her account. Then of course, the mafia boss looks at her and says, “not yen, dollars!” So yes, your girl just caused 4.6 billion dollars worth of damage because she wanted to play army. Luckily, the mafia lowers that sum down to just two million. Even so, that’s not an amount of money that she’s going to be able to pay off any time soon. So with help from the mafia, she finds recruits that range from a priestess in the church to a hardened military soldier and more. A young man is the first person that you’ll meet however, and he comes equipped with a gun that you’ll find very useful. The story unfolds through various dungeons, each of which help to bring about a more interesting narrative over time. Just keep in mind that you will have to do quite a bit of reading at times, because the game presents it’s narrative in the form of visual novel cutscenes.
Graphics:
The graphics here are again, very 16 to 32 bit, but I’d find the art style to be quite appealing and of course there are a lot of professionally done pieces. As the game is part visual novel, I’d say that the quality is far better than you may expect for those scenes. It is definitely retro, but it looks good. There isn’t much to look at when you’re exploring the dungeons (which is the game’s only real flaw) but you’ll find that the game is enjoyable enough despite that.
Sound:
I’m not gonna lie, the whole soundtrack is jammin’. Instead of using traditional synths as you might find in this kind of game, the developers either commissioned or created several unique pieces that fit the tone of the game, whether they’re creepy dungeon jaunts or something more bright and urban. It’s safe to say that the music really keeps you in the mood. There’s even some heavy metal during the boss fights, so the developers pulled out all the stops. And yes, rock and metal are quite ideal for RPG battles, as Final Fantasy taught us decades ago. The boss music is surprisingly aggressive in lieu of drumming. They were definitely going for metal there.
Hentai/Adult Content:
Ah, yes. Here’s what you came for. Well, when you should lose in a dungeon (and no, not all of the time) your character will find herself filled up with tentacles. If you fail to pay your debt on time for a certain week, she will literally be sitting on the casting couch, preparing to get RAN THROUGH. Yep. I’m not even gonna lie. If you want to see how much of a promiscuous little minx our main character can be, just forget about the whole debt mechanic for a while. As you might expect, you’re also awarded with H-Scenes after completing dungeons. There’s a lot of H-content here and it is presented the old fashioned way, through detailed CGI scenes and dialogue. They really play up on the found footage horror aspect here too.
Conclusion:
Evening Starter is a fun mixture of a dungeon crawler and ransom RPG that has enough charm to win over even the stingiest players. It’s one of the best indie dungeon crawlers I’ve played in the eroge/H-Game genre, short of Rance VI. With challenging, yet customizable gameplay mechanics, an interesting horror-themed, yet comical story which features more than a few twists and turns, as well as engaging music and several different styles of H-Scenes to enjoy, from demonic rape to a casting couch; you are sure to find what you’re looking for here. My only real issue would be the blandness of dungeon crawling in general, but I’m sure that some of you are more than used to that.
Final Rating:
Get The Game Here (MangaGamer)