Knights of Xentar: Won! (with Final Rating)

There's no single "won" screen, so we'll go with this.

      

Knights of Xentar

Japan, with United States update

Elf (developer); MegaTech (U.S. publisher)

Released in 1991 for PC-98, 1992 for FM Towns, Sharp X68000 as Dragon Knight III; released in 1994 for DOS under this title

Date Started: 22 November 2017

Date Ended: 3 December 2017

Total Hours: 27

Difficulty: Easy-Moderate (2.5/5)

Final Rating: 40

Ranking at Time of Posting: 225/274 (82%)

I ended up disliking Knights of Xentar before the end, but not because of the sex. Rather, it was because of the extremely long periods of time, particularly towards the end, when I wasn't so much "playing" the game as "watching" it. I gather this is a frequent criticism of JRPGs, but I confess that Xentar is the first game in which I personally experienced it.

Desmond had a lot more sex and attempted sex throughout the game. I didn't keep count, but a walkthrough I consulted lists 33 different NPCs depicted nude in a total of over 50 separate nude (or at least suggestive) images. Desmond has or attempts sex with about 25 of them. (Towards the end of the game, there's a recurring joke where he gets interrupted repeatedly by his fellow party members.) I should mention for those not familiar with Japanese erotica that in keeping with custom, the women's genitals are always hidden or covered and there is no depiction of male nudity, not even in sex "scenes." Then again, I'm still not 100% sure whether I have the "censored" or "patched" version of the game.
       

Desmond never loses his charm.

     

Although the game started with a pattern in which Desmond saved his partners from sexual assault, this did not continue after the last entry, meaning that the particular trope was only used three times, all towards the beginning of the game. On the whole, then, I'd have to say that the depiction of sex and nudity in the title is mostly harmless. What bothered me more was that the dialogue in some of the scenes just wouldn't end. I'd keep hitting ENTER over and over and over, knowing that the laws of physics prevented insipid new dialogue lines from being generated eternally, but still starting to question it. There were times that I thought maybe the dialogue had looped back on itself, and I was stuck in an endless cycle of banal dirty talk. I cannot imagine making it through this game with the CD-ROM version with voiced dialogue.

There were bawdy episodes aplenty. In one town, a brothel offered a choice of women. No matter which one Desmond chose, he didn't get any satisfaction, either because the prostitute was so terrifying that she scared him away or because she delayed long enough that his time ran out.
    

I don't like the look of those tools.

       
In a forest episode, Desmond stumbled upon a woman having sex with a tree. Mortified at being caught, she forced Desmond to also have sex with the tree so that they would have equal blackmail material on each other. His companions showed up while this was happening and hilarity ensued.

Aside from the sexual hijinks, the master plot wasn't bad. There were some interesting twists, including even some explanations for Desmond's "luck" with ladies, and the ending was damned near wholesome.
     

Desmond's companions never let up.

      

The overall game world ended up consisting of two separate "lands." The first had 9 towns, 4 dungeons, and 5 other small interior locations. The second land had 4 towns and 2 dungeons. Many plot points required returning to places or NPCs already visited, and since the clues to do this were interspersed with a lot of nonsense dialogue, it was tough to figure them out. Each town has a lot of items and treasures--some plot-significant--hidden in jars, barrels, bushes, wells, and similar locations, and it was tough to search them all since you might have to approach them from multiple sides. Because of both of these issues, I ended up relying on Shay Addams's QuestBusters: Keys to the Kingdoms 2 (1995) for assistance. The book easily shaved a dozen hours off the game.

The game manual explains a lot more about the characters' backstories, though I don't know how much is taken from the Japanese editions and how much was made up by the American publisher. It relates that Desmond was abandoned as a baby and raised in an impoverished village where he was passed from house to house. Eventually, Rolf took him under his wing, taught him to fight, and started to notice Desmond's effect on women. (Which is repeatedly given as mysterious, as Desmond is poorly endowed and has incurable body odor.) Their adventures in the first two Dragon Knight games are recounted. "Xentar" is, I guess, the name of the game world. The Dragon Knights were creation of the "light"--good gods--who went native, turned venal, and sacked Strawberry Fields. After Desmond saved the city, the women re-named it Arcadia, and the sorceress Luna erected an energy field to keep men out. Desmond's Genji Armor and Falcon Sword were crafted by Rolf and Pietro in Phoenix based on some ancient diagrams.

You'll recall that Knights of Xentar started with Desmond being robbed of both sword and armor. His quest to recover them is basically the entire driving force of the game. During the quest, he starts to get hints that the theft may not have been entirely random, but otherwise most of his wandering is aimless and I suppose many of the city encounters and quests are optional.
      

Desmond starts to question the official narrative.

      

Rolf had re-joined my party as I wrapped up last time and together we visited the nudist resort called Nero's Retreat, oddly one of the few places where Desmond didn't find anyone to have sex with. From there, we moved on to a city called Carnage Corners, which was having some kind of tournament that involved going into the dungeon in the cemetery and clearing out the undead.
       

Navigating one of the game's dungeons.

      

The undead foes were tougher than anything I'd experienced in the game so far, and Rolf started fairly weak. Some of them were capable of swatting away half his hit points in one blow, and I soon exhausted my healing potions. I had to settle in for a long period of grinding to both level-up the characters and purchase them the best equipment available. Generally, I found that equipment upgrades did more than simple leveling.
       

Grinding against "Fire Birds."

      

There were several other periods in the game where I had to stop for grinding. I noticed that as the character levels increased, the experience won from enemies decreased--to the point where some early-game enemies only provided 1 experience point. However, there were still some benefits to returning to the early game areas and grinding against slimes, as these areas were highly likely to produce items like healing potions and smoke bombs at the end of combat.

Eventually, we cleared what we could of the cemetery but there was an area that we couldn't complete. We returned to Carnage Corners with a "sexy drawing" that an old man had lost there, and in return for it he gave us some "transsexual nuts" that temporarily turned us into females. These allowed us to walk through Luna's magic barrier to the city of Arcadia, where Luna joined us.
       

The game otherwise didn't have as much fun with this scenario as you might expect.

      

Getting Luna, the third and final member, into the party had several repercussions. First, it marked the beginning of continuous inane dialogue. I really enjoyed the party "banter" of the Infinity Engine games, but the writing has to be good. Here, it just wasn't. And yet every time we entered a building, walked up a staircase, encountered an NPC--and especially when Desmond was about to get jiggy with some townswoman--Rolf and Luna had to commence and endless series of jokes, puns, and insults about Desmond, his body odor, and his small penis.

On the positive side, Luna came with spells, including an extremely useful "Warp" spell that took us to any city we'd previously visited, and an equally useful healing spell that kept us from wasting potions until her spell points were used up. Since it took a while to exhaust her spell points, and they recharge with every stay at an inn, it allowed us to grind for far longer periods before having to stop and rest, and we stopped wasting healing potions during this process.
        

Having Luna in the party made large battles go much faster.

      

Luna also came with a fire magic spell. Eventually--and with the help of Mr. Addams--we started finding gems that gave Luna "Blizzard" and "Thunder" powers and then enhanced all three. The first gem let her acquire the power in the first place, the second gem extended the power from one enemy at a time to all enemies, and the third increased the damage (I never found more than three). These spells were extremely effective in most combats, to the point that towards the end of the game a single casting of "Thunder" might eliminate all six enemies at once.
      

Luna's "Blizzard" spell is going to hit all of these killer dogs.

      

With Luna in the party, combat became less a series of watching and using the occasional healing potion and more a process of casting the right spells at the right times. (Note: if any character dies, the game immediately ends. There is no resurrection mechanic.) It still wasn't very tactical, but it was a little more interesting.

While I'm on combat, I should mention that the game also offers a variety of interesting magical items that you can purchase or find on enemies' bodies post-combat. In addition to healing items, some of which affect the entire group, they include "skunk oil," which keeps enemies from attacking for a while in the wilderness, "smoke grenades" which enable instant escape from combat, and magic nuts and magic potions to restore spell points. The smoke grenades were particularly useful in dungeons when I wanted to conserve my healing potions for the final combat.
      

A store with some of the optional equipment items.

       

There are also a lot of items like "speed drinks" and "vitamin mixes" that provide permanent boosts to attributes. Finally, something called an "eraser pen" allows you to change the characters' names. I only found one, though, and I didn't use it.

Luna's magic allowed us to finish clearing Carnage Corners' cemetery and get the reward. Then we took on the Castle of Kalist, which we had to enter using an iron medal that turned to gold when a virgin held it. Luna completed this transformation, revealing her secret, which of course Desmond handled maturely. Dialogue during this point conveyed that Luna and Desmond were secretly in love, with Luna a bit pained every time Desmond wandered off to a bedroom with some floozy, which of course was near-constantly.

Desmond found his sword and armor in the castle, but they turned out to be fake versions. There was a bit where Luna disappeared from the party and was later found, nude of course, in the custody of a demoness named, in either the best or worst naming in history, Haggis. She hinted something about Desmond's parentage, calling him "lightspawn."
     

Luna, being a PC, gets a measure of modesty that NPCs do not.

     

Desmond and Rolf defeated her in a long combat. This was one of two major "boss" combats in the game. Luna is absent for both of them, meaning that all you can do is watch Desmond and Rolf hack away and heal them when necessary with potions. Success or failure comes down entirely to how many potions you brought.
     

      

Luna rejoined the party after Haggis's defeat, the castle collapsed, and the trio found themselves transported to a new land, although Luna's "Warp" spell could take them back to the first land quite easily. The new land had a town of cat women who had the trio retrieve their cat food from a dungeon of dog monsters. I'm serious.
     

Oh, yes, this is exactly what the game needed.

       

There were several towns, lots of grinding, numerous equipment upgrades, and so forth, but I'm getting bored with this narrative, so let's skip to the end. Everything culminated at the Temple of Xentar, to which some NPCs had seen Desmond's sword and armor taken.
      

We approach the final area.

      

As they arrived, they encountered the Black Knight, named Arstein, which sounds like a Jewish pirate. Desmond had been incidentally encountering Arstein the entire game. He brushed past Desmond in one of the early cities, and in a lot of other places we visited, he had just been there or something. He wandered out of the Temple of Xentar, battered and bloody, having been trounced by the monsters there. He expressed admiration for Desmond and the two became friends.

In the Temple, we recovered the real Genji Armor and Falcon Sword, the best items in the game.
       

       

At the apex of the Temple, we came face-to-face with the goddess Althea (note that Might and Magic III had used that name for an NPC the same year), who began a series of screens and dialogue lines that took me about half an hour to get through, even speed-reading. She started by revealing herself as Desmond's mother. She had given Desmond a blessing that he would "never have to seek a bed to lie in," which "had some unexpected side effects." Desmond's lack of endowment and body odor are explained as a disguise; if he had been too perfect, everyone would have known his heritage.
      

       

As an aside, she mentioned that Rolf is a descendant of the Dragon Knights. She also complimented Luna and acknowledged her inexplicable love for Desmond.

Althea said that the Temple of Xentar was a nexus between the mortal world, the realm of light, and the dark realm of demons, ruled by the demon lord Deimos. She related how the forces of light and darkness had been vying for control of the mortal world, and the hearts of humans, for eons. Eventually, they reached a pact: Althea and Deimos would both sire children, and after 20 years, the children would fight a duel to determine control of the world.
     

The otherwise-serious narrative is occasionally interrupted by a joke.

    

When the damned speech was finally done, Althea transported Desmond to the cave that would serve as the arena. There was another interminable conversation between the three characters. Then, Desmond entered the arena to find that his foe--Deimos's son--was none other than Arstein.
     

     

Arstein expressed consternation that Desmond was his opponent and said that he didn't want to kill him. The two engaged in a seemingly hours-long discussion of the relative philosophies of good and evil punctuated by idiotic jokes. Finally, Arstein attacked and Desmond counter-attacked, but Arstein turned out to be bluffing. He didn't defend himself and he let Desmond kill him, explaining "I couldn't drive the friendship out of myself no matter how hard I tried." Aww. That's an NPC who deserves to be in a better game.
       

Of course, the game manages to ruin the solemnity of the moment.

     

Deimos showed up and has is own protracted, long-winded speech that boiled down to reneging on the agreement. He wounded Althea and then attacked Desmond himself.
     

      

What followed was the most absurd, pointless combat in the history of RPG combats. It took about 25 minutes, and it consisted of nothing but Desmond hacking away at Deimos and Deimos healing himself every time his hit points got low. (With Luna and Rolf not participating, there were absolutely no tactics.) Meanwhile, I had to stop and give Desmond a healing potion every 20 seconds or so. At the advice of the walkthrough, I had brought hundreds of them with me. By the time that Deimos finally ran out of spell points and died, I was down to only a couple dozen potions.
      

This screen didn't change for an entire episode of Cheers.

      

Deimos died. Some god named Altair appeared (or his voice did) and lifted the wounded Althea back into the heavens. Altair--yes, this was yet another long dialogue--revealed that he was Desmond's father, and he explained his plan for Desmond to come up and take his place in the court of gods. But Desmond doesn't want to leave Rolf and Luna so he elects to stay behind.
     

Desmond reveals his true motivations.

     

Demond, Rolf, and Luna had yet another endless conversation about the implications of the plot. Desmond and Luna confessed their love.
    

I'm not sure Desmond has exactly "earned" this.

      

At this point, the game let me keep playing from outside the Temple of Xentar. I wasn't sure what to do. As I visited the various towns, I noted that nearly all the NPCs had some line of dialogue acknowledging Desmond's victory, which may be an RPG "first."
      

      

I had to look at the walkthrough to realize that to really "end" the game, I needed to return to Arcadia and visit the queen, Diana. Previously in the game, Desmond had sex with her, but I forgot to relate that. Anyway, Diana had another interminable speech praising the three heroes, and then she married Desmond and Luna.
     

Rolf gets no respect.

      

Some fourth-wall breaking words from the developers culminated in a series of screens telling how various NPCs fared post-game. Rolf married Alice, the granddaughter of the mayor of "Moronvia," and became a senator.
       

      

The game ends with a scene of domestic tranquility in a little house where Luna is making breakfast for Desmond.
      

It's hard to judge just from the kitchen, but I'm not sure this is the "palace" that Diana promised.

     
Desmond announces his plans to go adventuring again, and Luna chases him outside and around the house while the credits roll.
       

Ultimate irony: Desmond and Luna sleep in separate beds.

       

Between all the dialogues and cut scenes and that long battle with Deimos, the only "playing" I did for the last 90 minutes of the game was to feed Desmond healing potions. 

I guess I was supposed to find a magic mirror at some point that would let me revisit all of the nude scenes in the game. I'll just have to live without that.

I was reminded of Keef the Thief (1990) in that the plot and its resolution were pretty good, which made them all the more unwelcome. No game this goofy deserves to have NPCs who die tragic deaths or a plot that engages you with its twists. Oh, there are good writers who could have balanced them both. Shakespeare could have done it. Whoever wrote Galaxy Quest could have done it. But Xentar was far too overwhelming in its self-parody to pull off any real drama. It makes me wonder if the Japanese version did it better.

This is already one of my longest postings in history--I'm guilty of the very vice I levy against the game--but I'm still going to wrap it up with a GIMLET:

• 5 points for the game world. It had an interesting plot, told a consistent set of lore, and actually responded to the player's actions and plot developments.

• 4 points for character creation and development. There's no creation process, but development is relatively fast and rewarding and makes a notable difference in combat. I just wish it offered some choices.

      

Character stats at game's end.

      

• 6 points for NPC interaction, perhaps the strongest element in the game. There are dozens of NPCs and boy does Desmond "interact" with them. He finds out key elements of lore and plot from the NPCs, develops friendships, and even gets married in the end. But the game offers no choices or role-playing; all the interactions are scripted.

• 3 points for encounters and foes. Xentar offers an original set of monsters, I'll give it that, but although some of them have special attacks, there's no real way to defend against them. Aside from the copious NPC dialogues (already rewarded), there are no encounters that offer any role-playing opportunities. There aren't even any decent puzzles.

       

The "Mad Hand" is unique in that it jumps over the warriors to choke the mage.

     

• 3 points for magic and combat. The "knowledge" system is interesting, and the various presets are worth exploring, but ultimately the combat process is too devoid of any real tactics, strategy, or even action on the part of the player.

• 4 points for equipment. There are several equipment slots, regular upgrades, and a nice selection of magic items to use.

      

Statistics make it easy to see which items are best.

      

• 6 points for the economy. Another strength. You always need money for equipment upgrades and healing potions. There were some high-value items that I never got a chance to buy because I didn't want to grind that long.

• 3 points for quests. There is a main quest with no options. I think there may have been one or two side quests, but because progression in the game depends on hitting the right set of plot points and finding certain items, I'm not 100% sure.

• 5 points for graphics, sound, and interface. I don't care for the Japanese cartoon style, but I can't say the graphics were bad. Some of the backgrounds were particularly well done. Sound effects were minimal but realistic. The redundant mouse/keyboard controls were welcome, but lacking in a few areas where I never found an easy keyboard approach, like administering healing potions in combat. There were a lot of times in combat, particularly when casting spells, that the game simply didn't acknowledge the input.

      

Luna casting a fire spell on some skeletons is accompanied by appropriate graphics and sound. I just wish I could hit the "F" key instead of clicking on "Fire."

     

• 3 points for gameplay. It's almost nonlinear, almost the right length, and almost the right difficulty, but it falls a little short on all of these areas. The pacing completely goes off the rails at the end, but this category alone isn't big enough to account for that.

This gives us a subtotal of 42, a reasonably high score, from which I am going to subtract another 2 points for the horrendous pacing at the end. Forcing the player to sit through that much dialogue, one line at a time, plus such a meaningless final combat, is essentially unforgivable. But even the final score of 40 puts it in the top 25% of ranked games so far. If it had offered any serious role-playing, it could have cracked the top 10%.
      

I didn't think the game's humor was great, but this one made me laugh.

      

Add or subtract whatever points to that total you want depending on how you feel about the erotic content. It occurred to me while playing that while most RPGs reward the character for development, few of them have any mechanism for rewarding the player. Those of us who love RPGs play them for the characters' rewards and that's enough because we identify with the character, but it's inescapable that having your character's strength increase to 18 is a far cry from getting stronger yourself. Games that offer nude content, on the other hand--as long as the player likes that content--have a mechanism for directly rewarding the player. Solve a puzzle, see a pair of breasts (if unrealistic ones). In the pre-Internet era, I guess I can understand some of the appeal.

Because of the content, most mainstream reviewers didn't touch it. I haven't been able to find any contemporary reviews (although I know from experience that having said that, commenters will somehow produce ten). It's surprising to find it in QuestBusters, even, where it's discussed in a completely straightforward manner.
      

Indeed.

     
Elf would go on to make Dragon Knight 4 in 1994, which involves Desmond and Luna's son, Kakeru, and then to remake the original Dragon Knight in 1995. They offered a number of other adult titles throughout the 1990s, none of them enjoying an English release.

As for MegaTech, their brief experiment bringing eroge to the west was over quickly; they went out of business a year after Xentar was published. But we'll have one more of their titles--Cobra Mission (1992), another Japanese adaptation--next year. Finishing Xentar in a single entry brings us incrementally closer to reaching that year; only two more titles are waiting to appear on my "upcoming" list. Let's start the countdown with Quick Majik Adventure.

Knights of Xentar: Vanilla Casanova

The game's basic attitude.

       
One of my favorite holiday tunes is the old Frank Loesser standard "Baby, It's Cold Outside." I have about 15 covers including the sublime Dean Martin version. Because I like it so much, I get a little irked at the customary annual reminder that it's basically about an attempted date rape (or perhaps even a completed one; the song ends before a definitive decision). This article is particularly noxious. Talk about overanalyzing! I mean, yeah, the woman clearly wants to leave and there's an implication that the guy slipped her a roofie, but come on! It's just a light holiday song with clever lyrics! Bing Crosby sang it! Lady Gaga and Joseph Gordon-Levitt did it with a clever role-reversal! Do you politically-correct m#%@##$ers have to take everything?

I think the comparison to Knights of Xentar is apt. The game affects a tone similar to the song. Yes, women are depicted in the throes of sexual assault, but it's not serious sexual assault. They're saying, "no, no, stop," but they're doing it with a wink and a smile. I mean, if they were really traumatized, they probably wouldn't be so eager to offer sex to Desmond as a reward for "rescuing" them, right?

This is all to say that I get the negative backlash. If you like the Japanese eroge genre, and you've managed to play games like this for years without displaying any sociopathic tendencies yourself, you don't appreciate some guy coming along who nobody forced to play this game--a game that is 100% clear about its content and purpose on the box--and find him criticizing it for doing exactly what it says its going to do. I recognize that I'm the interloper here. Knights of Xentar was intended for a certain audience, and that audience probably appreciated what it got. It satisfies the same market as cheap 1980s sex comedies like Zapped! or Hardbodies: lots of nudity, and enough jokes and plot in between the nudity that you can plausibly claim that you're watching it for the comedy and the plot.

I also want to make it clear that I'm not coming down on the side of people who say that video games directly influence behavior. Plenty of studies have shown that playing violent video games doesn't make someone more violent, so why would I believe that playing video games that are at least a little insensitive about rape would affect the plight of any real women? I wonder sometimes if there are more subtle effects that the standard studies don't measure, but I don't have a strong opinion either way. It seems likely that video games, like all art and entertainment, affects attitudes, but it seems equally likely that video games, like all art and entertainment, could serve as an outlet for desires that might otherwise claim a real victim. I don't know.

In any event, this blog is about the mechanic and content of role-playing games, so that's what I write about. If a game is about dragons, I write about how it handles dragons. If it's combat heavy, I write about the combat mechanics. If it's primarily about sexual content, I write about my reactions to the sexual content. It would be absurd to cover a game like Knights of Xentar and not focus to some degree on the way it handles sex and nudity. I'm not interested in any more comments that suggest I'm "overanalyzing" or that I'm somehow worthy of ridicule for even discussing the primary content of the game.

If you don't agree with my analysis, fine. You might not agree with how I analyze dragons, either. All I can do is report on what I experienced and what I thought of it. I don't mind disagreement. What I mind is the amount of negativity, the amount of anger, the amount of ridicule, in that disagreement whenever I write about nudity or sex. If I say that a full-frontal shot at the end of the game is unnecessary and a poor substitute for real plot, and you disagree, you ought to feel about as angry as if I said I prefer red dragons to blue dragons. If not, consider that perhaps it's you, rather than me, who is over-invested in the issue. Maybe delay commenting until you can figure out why it bothers you so much in the first place.
    
In that spirit, here's what I can say about the sexual content in Knights of Xentar: Regardless of the intended humor or tone, I find many of the images creepy. The girls, to the extent that they look like people at all with their enormous eyes and bouffants, look child-like. They are often depicted in the throes of molestation by groups of men. The protagonist kills the molesters, which makes the game's ethics mildly superior to Rance's, but he then usually enjoys sex as a reward. I have never rescued a woman from sexual assault in real life, but I suspect that few of them are eager to immediately turn to sex to display their gratitude to their rescuers. Humor or not, as a player, I don't like the role-playing implications of that scenario.

              

I don't care how old the game says she is, this does not look like a sexually mature female.

    

As for the humor, I find that the jokes, never thigh-slappers in the first place, get old relatively fast. Desmond is universally presented as sexually insufficient, unspectacularly endowed, far more "vanilla" in his preferences than the women he encounters. But they still want to sleep with him, about one in every town, village, or hut. The occasional "small penis" joke can be funny. Eight "small penis" jokes in an hour--and I say this realizing that I'm a little "vanilla" myself here--just might be crossing the line into too many "small penis" jokes.

      

Ah, every man's fantasy.

     

Xentar is never content to simply let the joke be the joke. The dialogue has to go on forever and make its point with all the subtlety of a jackhammer. I'm going to make up this example because I didn't write it all down, but at one point Desmond rescues a woman who has been tied up by her attacker. A clever game would have Desmond defeat the enemy and then say, "Let me untie you!" to which the woman might reply, "Now, why would you do that?" Wink wink, fade to black, and we'd all get the idea. But Xentar handles it like this:

      

Desmond: "Let me untie you!"

Girl: "Now, why would you do that?"

Desmond: "Because you're tied up! Don't you want to be untied?"

Girl: "That depends what you're going to do with me."

Desmond: "I don't understand."

Girl: "Are you always this dense?"

Desmond: "Are you saying you want me to leave you in knots?"

Girl: "Only if you know how to tighten them."

Desmond: "What do you mean?"

       

On and on for a dozen more lines. The jokes never really end on a punchline; instead, they just kind of play out. I might chalk it up to cultural differences, but I had the impression that the western release was completely re-written by English-speakers.

That isn't to say that I haven't been laughing at all. Desmond's clueless comments are occasionally amusing. "Do you want it hard or soft?" he says during one sexual encounter, perhaps qualifying for the most inept dirty talk in history. Here's a guy responding to a request for directions:

    

     

But the good jokes are few and far between.
       

At the end of the last session, Desmond had been defeated by a wolf attacking a girl in a cabin. I leveled him up a few more times, tried again, and defeated the wolf. The girl naturally slept with Desmond as a reward, and offered her cabin should he find himself in the need of lodging again.

Continuing counter-clockwise around the game map, I next ran into the city of Dreadsden, where I got some minor item upgrades but not much else. Nearby, in yet another cabin, I found a woman being assaulted by seven dwarves (perversion of fairy tale classics is something of a theme with this game). The graphic that accompanied this, in which all seven of the dwarves managed to occupy themselves in one way or another, left me wanting to take a shower. 

    

Sorry about this, little guys.

      

I killed them. The woman introduced herself as Priscilla. She said that she lived in the cabin with the dwarves and normally they were friends, but an evil mage named Visel had cast a spell on them, making them lecherous. That made me feel bad about killing them, although Priscilla didn't seem to care. After sex (of course), she asked me to kill Visel, noting that I would have to get a magic marble from a hermit in Dreadsden to bypass the entrance to Visel's cave.

      

See, I feel like this crosses a line somehow.

     

I did as instructed, killed Visel in a long battle that took most of my healing potions, and got a "magic nut" from him. When I returned to Priscilla, she gave me a magic mirror.

       

The epic battle with Visel.

      

As I headed down to the next town, called Coventry, the random wilderness combats started to get a bit harder, both in quantity and quality. It gave me a chance to experiment a bit with the different settings. The game is somewhat unique in that it offers a "knowledge" setting for each enemy. Every time you face an enemy of that type, the percentage increases a bit. "Knowledge of the enemy's strengths and weaknesses" is one of the combat modes, and I've found that once your knowledge of an enemy passes 50%, the mode is extremely effective.

Otherwise, I've had the most luck with offense-heavy settings. It seems to burn my healing potions at the same rate as more defensive settings, but combats are over much more quickly. A lot of enemies have the ability to restore their own health a few times in the middle of combat, and a strong offense often prevents this.

In Coventry, I heard of a nearby demon named Tymm, who guards a passage east, and a knight named Arstein told me I could kill him with Priscilla's magic mirror. In the far southwest, by some cliffs, a well-meaning NPC assumed I was there to kill myself and suggested I visit some place called "Nero's Retreat" instead.

     

Buying weapon upgrades in town.

     

Moving east, I ran into Tymm but killed him immediately with the magic mirror. He'd been holding a woman named Marie captive; she seemed to know Desmond from a previous game. She rewarded him with sex.

    

The authors named him "Tymm" after presumably rejecting "Stievve" and "Fraynk."

     

Through Tymm's pass, I came to the city of Phoenix, where Dragon Knight II had been set. Desmond is apparently something of a celebrity there, with many of the buildings and other things named in his honor.

     

I get the idea.

     

I ran into a woman named Kate, who also appeared to know Desmond from the prior game. She immediately slept with him despite being married to someone named Pietro. Understand that all these encounters are scripted and do not give the player any options. You move near an NPC and you're committing adultery, role-playing be damned.

    

Pietro, I've got some bad news, buddy.

     

Most important, I ran into a brawny, horned man named Rolf who had apparently been a companion in a previous game. After some persuasion, he joined the party. I outfitted him with some extra items that I had. He frankly doesn't seem to make combat any easier; on the contrary, he's using far more healing potions than Desmond.

      

The game seems oddly fixated on pig gristle.

      

The second character's attack options are tracked separately from Desmond's, but I think the "knowledge" variable applies to both of us. There seems to be room for one more NPC. So far, neither Desmond nor Rolf have any items or options that would fit with the grayed-out magic menus at the bottom of the combat screen. I have managed to get Desmond to Level 26, where he was before he lost his levels in the scripted event early in the game.

      

The two friends take on some "evil sprites."

     

I don't find any of the RPG elements in Xentar particularly outstanding, but neither are they bad. The rapid leveling provides a constant sense of character improvement. I wish there was more to do in combat, but at least it has the virtue of brevity.

After I had written most of this material, a reader sent a manual, which I'd been unable to find, so I look forward to seeing if it explains some of these NPCs. I wouldn't mind if I could wrap this up in one more entry, but I'll give it at least two.

Time so far: 8 hours

Game 271: Knights of Xentar (1991)

Knights of Xentar

Japan

Elf Co. (developer); MegaTech Software (publisher)

Released 1991 for PC-98, 1992 for FM Towns and Sharp X68000, 1994 for DOS

Date Started: 22 November 2017

     
If there's some subset of readers chortling in anticipation about what the Puritan CRPG Addict is going to say about an erotic role-playing game, I suppose I'm going to have to disappoint you. Context is everything. Yes, it's a bit weird for nudity to appear in a mainstream RPG, and so I've commented on it when it happens. Commented--not expressed outrage or demanded apologies or indicated that I was somehow scarred by the experience. Then I get a dozen comments misinterpreting what I said, and I spend so much time responding to them that it seems like I care more about the issue than I do.

Rance was an exception. That game actively bothered me. It wasn't about sex or nudity; it was about rape. In a genre where the driving game mechanic is murder--mass-murder if we're being honest--why should we care so much about rape? That's a legitimate question--one that I wrestled with and perhaps did not satisfactorily answer. Perhaps it's that sexual violence is always gratuitous in a way that regular violence is not. Perhaps it's that enjoying scenes of rape has implications that enjoying scenes of regular violence does not. Perhaps it's that there's a good chance that rape has occurred to someone you know--perhaps you yourself--whereas comparatively few of us have been stabbed with swords. All I know is that if there was a version of The Punisher in which Frank Castle systematically sodomized everyone who had wronged him instead of killing them, it would feel messed up--unwatchable and unenjoyable as entertainment--in a way that the regular Punisher does not.

Knights of Xentar doesn't quite have these problems. While there is still something vaguely creepy and exploitative about the number of nude women depicted in the opening stages of an assault, the game at least depicts such situations as wrong, and the hero (at least so far) intervenes to save the women. His own sexual adventures are consensual. As for the nudity, anyone buying the game knew what he was getting. It's not gratuitous; it's half the point of the game. I won't be showing uncensored images in this entry, not because I care but because I don't want Google to flag my blog as containing adult content. Such images are easily searchable.

      

A typical Xentar scene. At least in this game, the protagonist rescues women in this situation instead of putting them there.

                   
Knights of Xentar is part of the Dragon Knight series from Japanese developer Elf. It was known as Dragon Knight III in Japan, and it's the only game in the series to receive a western release. That release wasn't until 1994, so some of the shots below are a bit more advanced graphically than we typically see for a 1991 game, although they reflect their original PC-98 counterparts. A lot of the text was apparently changed to incorporate more North American references, and the graphics were at least slightly censored, although this is reversible with a patch. To confuse things even more, in 1995 the North American publisher released a second version on CD-ROM with recorded dialogue. I'm pretty sure I'm playing the patched version but without voiced dialogue; I listened to a bit in a YouTube video, and it's pretty bad.

The original Dragon Knight series comprises five titles between 1989 and 1995, all with adult themes. The hero is named Takeru in the Japanese originals, but the default name is "Desmond" here. Dragon Knight was a first-person game in the style of Wizardry in which Takeru saved the all-female kingdom of Strawberry Fields from the titular Dragon Knight. Dragon Knight II is also first-person and concerns Takeru's liberation of the town of Phoenix from a witch queen.
      

The title screen in the Japanese release.

       

This third edition changes the interface completely to a third-person oblique-angle perspective. It's the uniquely Japanese style, favored by console games of the era, in which a childlike protagonist bustles about on squat little legs and interacts with people and objects mostly by running headlong into them. The style goes back to the proto-RPG Tower of Druaga (1984) and was made famous in RPGs like Dragon Slayer (1984), Hydlide (1984), and The Ancient Land of Ys (1987) as well as non-RPGs like The Legend of Zelda.

The protagonist in this game is named Desmond (unless you change it), and there's no creation system (which is also common to this type of Japanese RPG). He starts at Level 25 with 255 hit points, 49 dexterity and speed, 56 strength, 25 intelligence, an attack score of 56, and a defensive score of 6.

The back story isn't very inspiring: Desmond wanders drunk into the city of Squalor Hollow (that name's got to be tough on property values) and is immediately set upon by a gang of thugs who steal his weapons, clothing, and jewels. He awakens in the home of an old man named Larrouse and immediately sets out in his birthday suit, determined to recover his gear.
       

Already, I can identify with the lead character.

       

The NPCs and shopkeepers in town have various comments on Desmond's state of undress. The town is small, consisting only of a couple of residences, an inn, a tavern, and a weapon shop/pharmacy.
    

Your clothes. Give them to me.

    

Desmond's first ribald adventure comes as he enters the tavern, where a gang of bandits is assaulting the tavernkeeper's daughter, Mona. Dialogue is mostly on the main interface screen, but for longer encounters it transitions to full-screen graphics, lightly animated (e.g., the speaker's mouth), with the dialogue text below.
     

At Level 25, Desmond doesn't need a weapon or clothes.

     

This encounter resolves automatically, with no player input, as the unclothed Desmond somehow manages to brawl the gang to submission. Before he can reclaim any of his property, they run off, but Mona tells Desmond that they live nearby on Mount Litmus. There, a great demon protects them, and in return for the favor, the bandits "impregnate women with his evil seed," creating half-demons who "do not reveal their true nature until their 19th birthday, when they take a knife to their parents." The town's baron--Don Frump--is offering a bounty to anyone who can end the raids. This being the kind of game it is, Mona conveys all of this while barely concealing her exposed chest with one hand.
    

Desmond makes a resolution.

     

Desmond can get 50 sovereigns from the tavernkeeper and then see Don Frump for a leather suit and a knife as an advance on killing the bandits. Frump promises to reclaim Desmond's weapon and armor from the pawn shop if he succeeds in the mission.

For commands, the interface uses menus that can be activated with either the mouse or the SPACE bar. I wish there were keyboard shortcuts for the sub-menu commands, but I have to live with such omissions in most titles. I have no idea what the bar to the right of my name is showing, but everything else is relatively straightforward.
     

Desmond checks out a menu while wandering the wilderness.

    

A child NPC told me that the mountain was to the west, so I left the city to try to find it. Leaving brought me to a smaller-scale map, and the mountain wasn't very far. On the way, I fought my first combat--or, more accurately, watched my first combat. Particularly at the beginning of the game, there really isn't anything to do in combat, as the character automatically attacks using the default settings. "Tactics" are found within those settings. The first is an "attack gauge" that, if I understand it correctly, balances speed (lower settings) with power (higher settings). The second sets the balance between offense and defense, and the third determines how you prioritize multiple enemies: weakest first, strongest first, or mix it up to "scatter" everyone.

      

Doing battle with some giant clams, which seem tougher than they ought to be given the lack of appendages.

     
For now, I've left the settings at the defaults until I have time to experiment more. It appears that later there will be more in-combat options as I acquire magical capabilities; I assume that's what the grayed-out options like "Earth," "Fire," "Blizzard," and "Thunder" are along the bottom. Right now, the only thing I can do in-combat, other than watch, is use an item like a healing potion.
      

This enemy, on the other hand, would terrify me in real life.

      
The mountain led to a windy corridor in which I fought numerous "giant clams" and picked up experience, gold, and the occasional healing potion to keep me going. I leveled up during this process and got boosts to my maximum hit points and attributes. Treasure chests supplied items like smoke grenades and healing potions. I soon ran out of the latter, though, and towards the end of the maze, I had to flee from combats to avoid dying.
      

Entering my first dungeon.

      
Eventually, I met the "bandit leader," who revealed himself as a demon and intimated that he had known my mother. He suggested he knew the purpose of the jewels I had been carrying (and lost to the bandits) and mocked me for my own ignorance. I'd assume that he's my father except that he calls me "heavenspawn" at one point. "Why am I so important?" Desmond asks, and he replies, "Why? You truly do not know? That explains why your few thoughts are always nestled between your legs." Ouch. One for you, demon.
    

Is it just me, or does this demon have a really small head?

   

Promising that his pillaging was done for now, the demon banished me from the mountain. I returned to Squalor Hollow to learn that Don Frump had gone to some other village to sell jewels--my jewels? Either way, I stayed at the inn to restore hit points, then went to the shop and bought a shield.
      

The shop menu.

    
I wasn't sure what to do next, but an NPC told me about a village called "..." to the North. (She acknowledged that an ellipsis was a stupid name.) Heading north, fighting easy battles with slimes, battle bees, and "daos" along the way, I found a passage through the mountains. Don Frump had set up guards to block me, but Larrouse was there and gave me a magic medal that, if I kissed it, would stop time long enough to run past the guards.
      

That turned out to be a bad idea.

     
On the other side of the mountain, my health (both current and maximum) depleted rapidly as I entered the nameless city. Checking Desmond's character sheet, I found him busted back down to Level 1, with 0 experience and single digits for all his attributes. As Desmond reacted with despair to the situation, I entered the village and found Frump in what looked like an inn. He said that he had my sword and asked me to follow him into a basement. There were numerous levels of stairs, passing skeletons, before I caught up with him. He called me a fool and revealed his true form as "Byrt, master of hatred." He said that the medal I had kissed was "poisonous to the spawn of Light," accounting for my level loss.
       

I guess this is the same as the last demon? There's no way to be sure.

     
The demon prepared to kill me, but some blinding light appeared and drove him away. A woman's voice explained that a group of demons had orchestrated the theft of my equipment and the reduction of my skill, and that I should continue on my quest to find my jewels, sword, and armor. She disappeared, and on the way out of the dungeon, I found Frump restored to his own body, promising to give me a reward for the bandits if I returned to his mansion in Squalor Hollow.

NPC dialogue is clearly a major part of the game, which I admire, but sometimes it goes on a bit too long. Having to take it in one line at a time is a little annoying. Humor is, of course, a key part of the dialogue. Mostly, it pokes fun at Desmond's characterization or RPG and fantasy tropes in general. None of the jokes have been gut-bustingly funny so far, but neither have they been groanworthy. I smirked a few times.
       

An NPC from the town of ...

      
On the way back to the city, the same enemies that I'd blown through before gave me much more trouble now that I'm starting over from Level 1. I spent some time hanging around the city--where I can rest to restore hit points--and grinding before heading out to explore more. It didn't take more than 30 minutes to get to Level 6.
    

After a couple of kills. I acquired a leather helmet at some point, too.

     
I was just beginning to think that the game's reputation as an eroge was overblown; then I wandered into a random building and found a sentient wolf assaulting an unclad girl on a bed. He killed me in the ensuing combat. Guess I'll have to grind some more.
      

Did it have to be to the groin?

     
After the first session, I'm on the fence as to how well Knights of Xentar plays as an RPG. It has some decent elements but no truly outstanding ones. The NPC interaction is nice, but all of the conversations are scripted. Because of that and minimal character creation, there's a strong sense of simply watching the plot rather than participating in it. While I don't care for the graphical style, I admit that in both graphics and sound it feels more like a 1990s game than most of the titles we've seen so far. I hope it doesn't last into the dozens of hours, but I'll be glad to see where it goes for at least 10-12.

Time so far: 3 hours

*****

I had to skip Quarterstaff temporarily while I work out some issues with Mac emulation so I can play the earlier version alongside the later version. It'll probably be the next game.