Kamihime Project R

Some Background

Back in 2017, Nutaku brought fourth one of their most successful video game porn titles, Kamihime Project R. The game was poised to be a success both as a smut title and as a standard video game. This review covers the version with the R in the title, but the two games are almost identical. The main difference between the two versions is that Kamihime Project R features full-fledged animated sex scenes.

Nutaku have been winning the online porn games development race for the past few years with several successful titles and while they do not technically have a flagship title, Kamihime Project R is certainly one of their more recognizable products. The game is an RPG with many standard Final Fantasy-like themes and concepts. Your team stands on one side, the enemy’s on the other and you duke it out in turns across two dimensions. If one were to hide the sex scenes and show you the combat, you could easily swear that it is in fact another Final Fantasy title of old, rather than a new and improved smut game.

Primo Quality Anime Art

However, that is not to imply that the game is particularly retro. Yes, the visual styles are simplistic and two dimensional, with the ever-popular kawaii art style. However, the game also makes great use of modern technology in the resolution of the art, to the extent that even the backdrops during combat are proper works of art. There are no visible cut corners in Kamihime Project R. It really comes across as a labor of love.

Further on the art style, it’s nothing you haven’t seen before if you’ve played any “cute” Japanese inspired game. It’s simply worth noting that the artists that worked on Kamihime Project R are very talented and went the extra mile to make sure Nutaku had a ton of quality assets to work with.

Funnily enough though, Nutaku decided to use two completely different art styles for the game, separately, between the combat and the visual novel sections of the game.

When you’re in combat you get the aforementioned cute art style with tiny renditions of the girls in your party duking it out against cute looking monster girls. However, in between missions, when you get to interact with your party and talk to NPCs, which is the visual novel portion of the game, you get a completely different art style. This one is much more mature, but still a standard anime trope. However, nothing about this other style is cute. It’s more artistic and true to life, with realistic body proportions. It’s no surprise that the smut filled portions of the game are wrapped in this style rather than the cute one. It wouldn’t make much sense to serve the smut using the cute versions of the characters.

Riveting Gameplay

Given that the game draws inspiration from older RPGs like Final Fantasy, it’s no wonder that the gameplay is actually very interesting and properly fleshed out. For one, the spells and combat interaction between your team and the enemies are all very satisfying to use and watch. A lot of porn games suffer from a condition where the combat, if there even is any, is used as more of an excuse to get to the action, rather than the real meat of the game. You don’t get any of that grief with Kamihime Project R. This game is a proper RPG title with all the bells and whistles that you might enjoy from a non-pornographic experience.

There are a few too many gameplay features, however, especially if you’re new to the game. These can feel a bit intimidating at first. And since it’s Nutaku you’re dealing with, you always have to contend with the fact that they keep adding new features to their games. Normally this would be considered a pro and not a con, but in the world of pay to win, you never know what you’re going to get or how it’s going to impact your experience.

Cash Money

The game has been described as an RPGatcha, which is a fun play on words combining the game’s genre with the ever-popular Gacha machines of the East. In extreme layman’s terms, these are slot machines, i.e. gambling devices. That implies that Kamihime Project R could be a gamble as well – and it is. While the community isn’t technically complaining about this, the game gives you ample opportunity to throw money down the drain, if that’s your cup of tea.

The game itself isn’t pay to win, per-se. Yes, you can use real money to purchase in-game currency and use that currency to buy items, but you don’t have to. The game is perfectly free as is and you’re more than free to enjoy it without spending a single cent on it. However, if you want to speed along your progress, you’re going to want to crack open the old coin purse. And if you’re a Gacha man you can pretty much forget about the free to play aspect of the game. Gambling costs money.

Deep and Immersive Story

You’re not going to find a Stephen King novel hiding under the covers of Kamihime Project R, but it’s not like you’re on the prowl for good literature if you’re checking out porn browser games. Still, the story that Kamihime Project R brings to the table is filled with enough Japanese video game tropes to justify it being called a story, rather than a loosely held together bunch of plot holes.

It’s standard fantasy RPG fanfare with much ado about demons, ghosts, goblins and the like, and you get to defeat every single one of them throughout a riveting single player campaign. Throughout this campaign you are accompanied by a very large number of very busty, very attractive anime babes who are all willing to party within your party, and get to know you on a deep and personal level.

In short, the girls in this game are both your love interests and your party members. In combat, they’re your brothers (or sisters) in arms. In between fights, you gear them up, spec their skills and decide your team composition. And on longer breaks you work on building your rapport with them so that they might someday agree to have sex with you in a fully fleshed out, though somewhat lacking 2D animation. 

The Smut Rewards

Once you actually get one of your girls to like you enough to give you a reach around, you get a few short clips of yourself having intercourse with them, in various positions. For what it’s worth, these animations are of the same high quality as the art in the visual novel portions of the game. Also, when strung together, all of these scenes clock out several hours’ worth of content, so there’s definitely a lot of smut inside this game. However, you have to keep in mind that this is an RPG in which you dump dozens of hours on combat, so if you consider the smut a payoff, it’s going to feel like more of a rip-off.

This doesn’t make the game any less playable, however, especially if you’re the kind of person who likes 2D retro RPGs and you consider the smut as a sort of bonus on top of the gameplay. If you’re not in a hurry to pleasure yourself, and you’d like to enjoy some quality gameplay, Kamihime Project R has the perfect amount of smut and combat for you.

Some Technical Comments

There’s a lot of props to be handed around to Nutaku’s technical departments because they’ve been evolving their approach to video gaming in recent years, very quickly. Even though they’re famous for being an in-browser video game production company, they’ve been branching out really quickly to target platforms directly.

This is really smart because a game played inside a browser will never truly match the experience of being able to run a proper full-screen experience across your entire monitor. On top of that, browsers come with a bunch of limitations that you, as the player, don’t really notice. But they’re there and they kneecap the quality of the game.

That’s why it’s very refreshing to see that Nutaku have been reaching out to companies like Steam and getting their games listed alongside all the greats of triple A video gaming. Kamihime Project R is unfortunately still not available on Steam, however, it does have an independent PC port, so it’s advisable that you check that out ASAP. On top of that they even have a proper Android port for the game which is very recommendable as the game’s UI is perfect for touch screens. Plus, the 2D high quality art style is going to look amazing on a phone screen. It’s the perfect game to play on the go. You can enjoy the smut sections once you’re home, at the end of the day, but play the rest of the game on your commute.