Crystal Maidens

Since it first came out in 2017, Crystal Maidens has been one of the best examples of Nutaku ingenuity and devotion to interactive smut. Yes, Nutaku have taken a lot of flak over the years for bringing nothing but freemium titles to the market. These games seem to serve to get you to spend money to hasten the process of getting to the smut and many are curious as to why you should do this when you could just as easily hop onto a hentai site and enjoy yourself that way. The answer for these naysayers is that even though some Nutaku titles are extremely repetitive, others can be extremely immersive and fun to play. Further, all Nutaku titles feature some worthwhile payoff.

Among the Best on Nutaku

Both in the immersion and the payoff, Crystal Maidens is easily in most people’s top 3 when it comes to Nutaku’s games. They really went all out on in the production quality of this game and it shows. Now, Nutaku have never technically had an issue with quality, especially when it comes to the art, but given that their games all fall within genres that have already come out, they’re more of a mix-and-match than they are original titles. No-one can fault Nutaku for not coming out with original gameplay. After all, they are a smut site first and foremost. Still, with Crystal Maidens they obviously went back to the drawing board and put together a gameplay concept that is original enough to be exclusive. You can’t get this particular type of gameplay anywhere else, lest you play something retro that has similar vibes. Specifically, it is a mixture of RPG and auto-chess with some tower defense vibes – except you’re the assailant, not the defender. You’ve got a playing field with branching paths and enemies distributed throughout. You prepare your team and start the action, then watch as they walk their way, left to right, exploring the entire battlefield and fighting any enemy that dares stand in their way. The tower defense elements are visual more than anything else and the auto chess resemblance is tiny. If this were a mini-game, it would be extremely lacking because your involvement is minimal during the fighting. It is, however, not a mini-game, but an exploration of a gigantic world with tons of missions that pull the story along. You prepare your team in between these fights and pursue other elements to the gameplay like purchasing and crafting items as well as conversing with your party members, all of whom are extremely attractive and nubile beauties. They all have their own specialties which come in handy during combat and you have to plan ahead. They even have their own levelling system so it’s very clever to try and level them all up so that you can use them down the line. For the first few hours of the game you can more or less coast through the fights with any girls and any composition, but as the difficulty ramps up and the story takes off, you’ll need to think hard about which girls you’d like to send into the fray.

Nutaku Fanfare

It wouldn’t be a proper Nutaku title if it didn’t bombard you with reasons to keep coming back to it. Even though the gameplay is already addictive enough on its own, Nutaku do not enjoy taking chances when it comes to giving you incentive to give them money. Therefore, you’re going to see a ton of in-game features that get better the more you play and the more you pay. Right off the bat you’ve got daily rewards that can keep you going for weeks. The first 13 days, for instance, you get gems and other currencies that help you get through the game. Ultimately, though, they just help you get back to the action, so they’re pure time-wasting incentives. On day 14 you get an actual girl for your party, which also happens on day 28. These are absolutely wonderful rewards considering all you have to do is log-in once a day to get them. Then you’ve got the various bars on the top of the screen. There are four of them and they all contribute to the gameplay in various ways. The energy bar seems to be the worst culprit out of the four, since you need energy to get anything done in this game and eventually you’ll hit a glass ceiling. To shatter that glass and break through to the other side you have to wait until you recharge or pay real money. This is beyond annoying considering the game goes way out of its way to promote really addictive gameplay that you’d love to keep coming back to. Other Nutaku titles might need incentive to keep you coming back for more. Their smut might not carry them far enough to stay afloat. Crystal Maidens does not need any of this. You don’t need an excuse to play it. It’s a wonderful game that stands well on its own and the core gameplay is extremely entertaining. You can easily sink tens of hours into this game on the basis of its RPG elements alone. If you factor in the story and you actually enjoy it then it might even reach all-time favorite status for some of you. Still, the game’s loaded with standard Nutaku tricks and it’s a pity. The worst part is that this game might just boast the absolute best smut art out of all the other Nutaku games, even if you were to combine them. For some reason the sex scenes in this game are overdrawn to such extents that even the backdrops leave you slack-jawed. If you can’t go and check out a screenshot and you’d like a description, well, imagine a standard hentai art style image of a girl getting penetrated by a very large member while she’s covered in several bodily fluids at a time. Now imagine that image has very vibrant colors and is extremely well shaded throughout. Now add to that some hours of polish on top of all the quality and you get close to what you can see in Crystal Maidens. Unfortunately, the sex scenes are not classically animated. Instead, they follow a slide-show format. You see an image of a girl getting it on with your main character and it stays frozen while she utters some sweet nothings. Then, her mouth will go from closed to agape while she moans in pleasure. Then you’ll see her eyes go from closed to wide open and so on. You only get a few actual sexual positions, so it’s basically one scene with a bit of faked animation. Still, it’s well worth it considering the level of quality you get, on top of a game that is very entertaining regardless.

Technical Comments

As a Nutaku title, this game boasts perfect compatibility on every device under the sun. It uses pure 2D animations with no hardware acceleration needed, so it’ll work quite well in any browser on any internet-capable device. Your mileage may vary if you try using a device that is ancient, but it’s unlikely you’re going to experience slowdowns or frame drops. Recently they’ve also come out with an Android version of the game which is great news for all of you mobile phone lovers. The game’s interface features few buttons and they’re all extremely oversized, so it’s a perfect fit for small touchscreens. Just make sure to keep away from the sex scenes while you’re playing this game on public transportation, lest you get kicked off the bus.