ASIA ANIME BLOGS

With this and G senjou no Maou I think I fulfilled my quota of the year for drama/tragic stories from eroges. My and Japan’s quota. Seriously this is amazing, two winners in a row.

Anyway, Ikusa Megami is the third episode in the Ikusa Megami series by Eushully. Eushully is a powerhouse that bangs out RPGs/SLGs every year that sucks up 40~60 hours of your life before you know it, and the Ikusa Megami series is their beloved child as the first episode was their first game in 1999. The sequel, Ikusa Megami 2 came out almost three years later in 2002. Six years later, we have the third episode, Ikusa Megami ZERO which takes place before the first two and tells of the origins of the man to be known as Kamigoroshi Serika, or Serika Shirufil the God Killer.

Opening Movie

What started as the story being the weak point of Ikusa Megami series is now its best point. This epic story is told in four distinct parts with ten chapters total. The first part takes place in the town of Macl where our hero, Serika Shirufil lives with his sister while doing missions for his temple. On a fateful day, Serika encounters a girl at the ruins of a dungeon. She introduces herself as Satia Seiluun, a patron of the god of knowledge who travels across lands to learn about its legends and races. She believes in fate and tells him that their encounter was no coincidence and joins him.

How they met

Though Serika currently only has a low rank within the temple, he shows the potential to become one who can channel their god, Barouhart the God of Wind’s power. And so he was entrusted with the important quest of finding a way to purify the temple’s sacred artifact. In one of the journeys to find out more about the artifact, Serika meets a beautiful woman who displays overwhelming, godlike powers. She easily defeats him but was amused enough with the fight to give him one wish. His wish… was to know what her name was. Even more amused, she laughs and casts a spell on him- When the time comes, he will remember her unholy name, the name of a Devil, Haishiera.

How they met

Safe to say, this tale revolves around these three individuals. The world of Ikusa Megami is an unfair world. When two people can not freely love each other, there is no other word to describe that world other than unfair. Not only is their love taboo, their existence themselves is taboo, beings that should not exist. That is the world’s view to them. That is their world. That is the world that Serika, a dreamer who wanted to protect all the innocent people and hurt no one, has trained all his live to defend. This is a story of ironic tragedy.

As before, Ikusa Megami ZERO features a similar RPG system. You can have a maximum of five members out in the field with two at the sidelines playing support. Supporters don’t get directly involve with the battle and has passive support bonuses. You’re free to swap members around during battle. Battles takes place in a real time system with each action taking a certain amount of time to execute and then current amount of time before you can make another. There is familiar leveling up system here with one exception, you can choose how to use your experience points to level up Serika. Want to boost his attack power? Please do. Want to buff up his magic defense? Go right ahead. There is also abilities and powers that get stronger as you use them more.

Experience allocation screen. You’re free to put your experience points where ever you want though there is an upper bound of how high a single stat can go

Movement takes place in a map of many different types; You’ll visit ruined castles, haunted forests, deep dungeons, mountains, volcanos, and not yet ruined castles. Inbetween maps is the overview of the lands where you can choose where to go. Usually this means picking between going to some kind of city to buy supplies, get information, pick up new missions, or going to a side quest location, or going to the next story location.

Overview screen

Now I personally think the RPG side was very fun. But also extremely easy. Even though the random encounters scale with you to a certain extend, there are very few non boss encounters that were challenging. The ones that come to mind is endgame monsters who have crazy abilities such as insane evasion, full heal revives, aoe attacks etc. Though at that point your party is also pretty cheap. Heck, there weren’t even a lot of bosses that were challenging. This is understandable that petty demons won’t pose a threat to a god slayer but that brings me the next point- there is no difficulty setting. You don’t get to choose to something like Normal or Hard or Impossible or Impossible + Infinity even in your second or more runs through the game. This also brings me to the next point- there is no real reason to play through the game the second time.

Battle screen. Note the auto button, by picking that the computer decides all your moves until you cancel it. In their character screen you can choose what they do in auto mode like only attack or occasionally use attack magic or support magic etc etc. Why can’t more RPG have something like this?

Let me elaborate on what I mean. Besides the playing for the story point of view (it’s a linear story, no different endings), there is no new events or challenges for new game+. You can choose to keep your items, levels, etc when you start a new game but for what? There is a few tough optional bosses and bunch of super items you can get, but you could’ve gotten them in your first playthrough if you want to. For those that don’t know, usually Eushully games have extra bonuses and stuff to do when you play the game again. In this case, everything you could do you could’ve already done. Though one could argue that this is a serious enough story that they didn’t want to ruin immersion by adding flying maids who attack with brooms and could turn cakes into monsters, it’s still a point to make for people who looked forward to the new game+ content.

Map screen. Note the white feather, that is a restore point, which means it will completely heal you, for as many times as you want at no cost. Couple with the feature to force random battles on the spot, you can see how this game is super friendly towards the player. Because of this, the most challenging maps happen to be ones where there are very few restore points that are hidden and can only be used once.

One more thing I would like to add is that at a certain point there is a timed mission. That means the time is ticking and you have to get to a certain point or it is game over. However, there are two critical flaws that made it possibly less intensely fun than it could have been; 1. The timer doesn’t tick down during battles 2. In maps, you have the option of pressing down the CTRL key, the standard key for skipping things in eroges, to run around very fast. The timer obviously doesn’t take into account that you can run across the map in five seconds so you end not really in a hurry at all. Just minor nitpicking at what could have been a very fun/challenging and/or frustrating mission and grasping straws for negative points.

What late game fights look like- numbers that are off the charts, and this isn’t even Serika attacking

As for all the technical stuff; graphics, music, voices etc etc, they were all very well done as expected of Eushully at this point and time. And for the ero aspect, there is a total of 41 scenes with 700 CGs. Usually I start fast clicking half way through sex scenes because they start getting boring, repetitive, pretentious or whatever but that impulse didn’t come up in any of the 41 scenes here. Some of the them were even interesting, with the Haishiera scenes coming to mind. One thing to note is that in Eushully’s world there something essentially called sex magic, or the magic of sexual energy. It’s a battle of magic with sex as the medium and the winner takes the loser’s life energy. For beings who are extremely magically powerful, this is one of the few methods to replenish their ever growing need for energy, which is like food and water to them.

Encyclopedia of ingame lore, characters, monsters and items

In short, I came for the RPG, stayed for the story, and 45 hours of my life disappeared. I give; A+ for Story, A for Characters, A for Gameplay, A- for Music, and A for Ero - for a numerical total of 93 out of 100.

Serika Shirufil
The protagonist of the first part. He grew up in a small village with sister, Kaya. To many people, he is the definition of a hero, a brave person who protects the weak. He is strong, good with his sword, and has a high sense of justice. He never looks back and only moves forward with his sword, ready to defeat another demon who threatens peace. In order to realize his small wish of defending the people he loves, he joins the temple of Barouhart to gain power. It really, was just a small selfish wish.

Satia Seiluun
One of the main heroines. A patron of the God of Knowledge, she travels across lands to learn about their legends and races. She believes in fate and believes her encounter with Serika was not chance. There is an aura about her that fills Serika with ease. They both easily fall in love with each other. However, there is something more about her than she lets on.

Devil Haishiera
One of the main heroines. Only a few people know her name, to everyone else she is known as the fearsome Devil of Earth (Not Earth as in our planet but earth as in the ground, soil, land etc). She likes interesting things and loves fighting even more. People who are strong interests her long life while weak beings are mercilessly killed. She has strong respects for bravery. She watches with interest as Serika grows from a weak human to a being of her equal.

Kaya Shirufil
Serika’s cheerful older sister and a priest of Barouhart. She takes care of Serika since they are their own only family. She watches his back in battle and does almost everything else for him outside of battle since Serika is pretty useless outside of fighting, training and polishing his sword.

Godkiller Serika
The protagonist of the second and fourth part. He killed a god and took its body for himself. And so he was named the god killer, the sin of all sins. The truth is lost since the person in question lost his memories. He was prophesied as the Seeds of Misfortune, a cursed being who brings misfortune and tragedy where ever it goes.

Abiruus Kassre
A magic researcher, he travels with his familiar, Peruru. He can’t help stopping to help a person in need, especially if its a female. His dream is to create a country where humans and half human half demons can coexist.

Godkiller Haisheira
The protagonist of the third part. With the body of a goddess, she takes over an uncivilized region for demons. When her new neighbors which includes Devil Amudoshias decided that she’s unwanted, she plots to overthrow Amudoshias and make her her familiar.

Shumineria Teruka
A young princess of the small kingdom of Isora. In order to defend her people, she lets herself become a tool of politics for Haishiera. Unfortunately for Haishiera, her husband Viruto Teruka is a hero of Marsterria, the God of War; And he isn’t going to sit there and let his wife be taken by a devil.

Shamaara Kurupp
A cheerful merchant who loves treasures more than anything. She hires Serika to be her guard as they crawl dungeons for treasures. Though he doesn’t understand why, he feels something nostalgia about her.

Favorite Character
Haishiera by a whole level, which is saying alot since all the other characters are good too. Tsundere, enough said.