Nocturnal Illusion

No, I don't mind if you're 13. Hell, I like to kill old people with a hammer so fucking an underage girl is nothing for me!

Game Plot: "Nocturnal Illusion" is a "Look and Think" Hentai game. If you don't already know what that means, let me ruin your innocence. You start in a room. You must "Look" at the room. Then, you must "Check" every single piece of furniture inside the room. Twice, in quite a few cases. Then you sometimes get hit with the "Think" option, which prompts the character to fall into a long soliloquy about the room's furniture and stuff in general. After you've finished this process you can "Move" to another location and start over! But the real kicker comes when you have to go back to all the places you've already visited to "Look" and "Check" everything yet another time just to trigger some totally random event. I mean, if you didn't know that taking a third look at the toilet seat would suddenly cause a new character to appear in the motherfucking garden, then it's obviously YOUR FAULT.

The main character of "Nocturnal Illusion" is named Shinichi Kashiwagi, he's a university student who decided to go camping for a week instead of taking a real holiday. Serves him right: he gets caught outside by a typhoon and falls off a cliff. Instead of dying ("Aw damnit" was my reaction) he somehow gets transported to the gates of the Weird-Ass Mansion, where the Mistress of said Mansion discovers Shinichi's body and decides to revive him. Now correct me if I'm wrong, but the last time I checked, blowjobs or the cowgirl position were not treatment for massive blood loss. But hey, maybe that's just the paramedics around here being boring assholes! If they all followed suit… "For the love of God, Nancy, drop the defibrillator and blow this poor bastard back to the land of the living!"

You and me both sister!Through the miraculous healing powers of pumpkin-head's vagina Shinichi wakes up in a bed inside the Weird-Ass Mansion, weakened but still alive. It's here that the true fun begins! The gameplay is divided into "chapters" in which Shinichi focuses his attention on a particular female inhabitant of the Weird-Ass Mansion. Moreover, in an attempt to slap a thin veneer of refinement on Nocturnal Illusion, chapters are each introduced by a quote from a famous literary figure. Among the more famous ones are Aeschylus, Edgar Allan Poe, and Albert Camus. Just so you know, I study philosophy. Albert Fucking Camus is one of my heroes, and he has now made an appearance in a Hentai game. If you felt the earth shaking and heard a high-pitched whine that was good old Albert spinning in his grave like a jet turbine.

I don't want to go into great detail about everything that happens in this game, mostly because it took me approximately five hours to finish the first time. I want those hours back, by the way, and so if I ever meet someone responsible for the making of this game you can be sure I'll force their face to spend some "quality time" with me and an electric juicer. Except for the guy who had to beta-test this shit. I'll give him a big hug. Anyhow, here are the highlights of my Nocturnal Illusion experience:

After the panties I will take off the image mosaic over her vagina in case it is stifling her breathing!Chapter 1: Maya. Maya is a fiercely independent journalist who wants to write a story about the Weird-Ass Mansion. She hates everything endowed with a Y chromosome, but a single comment ("Yeah women are as good as men") will ensure that she falls for Shinichi. Sheesh, who ever said women were complicated? Shinichi almost gets to score when the two of them discover a dusty attic, but for some unknown reason Maya runs away, dons the cursed suit of armor in the lobby, and tries to kill him. She fails to do so ("Aw, damnit") and passes out. So in order to "help her breathe," Shinichi strips Maya naked. Including her panties. Because, you know, that might help her breathe air through her magical groin nostrils.

That's not enough, though, because the armor stole Maya's soul and therefore you need to find a magic potion to free her. Which leads to the next chapter and its joyous bounty!

Chapter 2: The Mermaid. No Weird-Ass Mansion is complete without a mermaid living in the well. Shinichi ventures down there through a secret passage and discovers one. She's lonely and confused. So she asks you to… Bingo! Have sex with her! As if this game wasn't perfect enough already, you now get to watch a man screw a mermaid! Not only that, but she's pregnant from her previous lover! The verdict is in: Nocturnal Illusion is the best game to emotionally scar your adorable nine year-old sister for life. Post-coitus the mermaid is able to magically leave the well, leaving you the magic potion and a knife - no "Slice Your Wrists" option though. You then take the potion to Maya and restore her soul. I shall leave to your imagination how she thanks you. (Hint: three-letter word, starts with "S," ends with "X." And it's not a musical instrument.)

Chapter 5: Yura. There's this storehouse on the Weird-Ass Mansion's grounds that has been locked so far. Only now does Shinichi gather the brainpower to actually search and discover not only a way to peep in but also the key. Inside the storehouse lives Yura, a young Japanese girl, and her nameless brother. Now, try to wrap your head around this interesting knot of a situation:

1. Yura is confined inside the storeroom and never goes out. Ever. That's not so bad, albeit a tad freaky. We're in the land of "confined spaces" so I'll let it slide.
2. Yura has sex with her brother constantly. We're talking incest 'round the clock, here. Again, abnormal but sort of predictable considering this is a Hentai game.
3. Yura's brother is a huge purple demon with a dick bigger than my arm. If that's not quality gameplay right there, I don't know what is!

Shinichi gets the idea to "free" Yura (we all know what that means), and once he finds a magic sword he decides to fight the demon/brother. You'd think there would be some danger involved in such an activity, but no, all you get are the options "Fight" and "Wait." You have to choose each roughly a dozen times to end the stalemate. And there's no way to lose. A blind eighty year-old grandfather afflicted with Parkinson's disease could click through and succeed.

For some reason I keep picturing the developers brainstorming for the game. One of them says, "Why not a demon raping a young girl 24/7?" Then the guy besides him takes a sip of coffee and goes, "Hmmm, that's not good enough, make it her brother too."

Chapter 8: Little Red Riding Hood. Oh dear God no.

In a few minutes I will be simultaneously raping a Hentai character and my childhood!The chapter starts with a quote from Perreault's famous fairy tale. Already dark clouds were coalescing at the edge of my mental horizon. "I mean… It's just a quote. They won't really put… the character… in the game…"

One morning Shinichi wakes up to a beastly howl. Of course, it's a wolf, but since they don't have those in Japan most characters think it's a big dog. Then he runs into Little Red Riding Hood herself, skipping and hopping in the backyard. At around this point I began to mutter the word "no" over and over in a vain attempt to repel the pure, concentrated, unadulterated evil of the situation. To what point has the world come when you need to put good-natured fairy tale characters in a Hentai game? What's next, the Tin Man fucking Dorothy while the Scarecrow watches and masturbates?

So Shinichi runs around with Red Hood while the wolf chases them, and eventually they end up in a cellar. A closed space, the main character, and a lonely woman. I don't need to give you too many details, except that I should mention the game's FAQ gives Red Hood the ripe age of thirteen (more on that below). So not only are you fucking a fairy tale character, but she's also underage. Is pixilated genitalia supposed to help? No, and neither does taping your eyelids shut. Don't ask.

To summarize this game as if it were the back of the box: This game is super fun number one with purple friend of sister in closet rapes them all the time! Okay, thank you! Now Red Hood is on the scene from big wolfs, look out girls! Shinichi can solve the happiest of problems with breaths of groins, uh-oh, whoah boys. Oh no you didn't!

Difficulty: Nocturnal Illusion is quite difficult, actually. First you have to go through the Introduction Screen, which assails you with a MIDI rendition of cocaine-induced piano playing. If that doesn't make your computer burst into flames, surely the mindless wandering and endless drivel the designers called "dialogue" will get you. I beat the game in 5 straight hours. Methinks even Hitler would weep.

Defining Moment: Seeing Little Red Riding Hood's face pop up on my screen. It was so erotic, just remembering it now makes me cream my fucking pants! Oh, wait, that's not semen...that's blood. Somebody call the doctor, I think I might need a blowjob to revive me!

Final Thoughts: I think we can all agree that Hentai games are a waste of time. Why anyone would subject themselves to these, save for the sake of warning others (the goal of the reviews here at SA), is totally beyond me. Nocturnal Illusion is a sad case because it's so fucking long, intricate, and pointless. By the way, there are two versions of this game, one full and one "edited" that removed the images related to Little Red Riding Hood and Arisa, the other underage character. (DO NOT EMAIL ME ASKING FOR THE GAME AND/OR A WEB SITE I WILL IGNORE AND/OR MAILBOMB YOU.) The "edited" FAQ lists their ages as twelve and thirteen, if I remember correctly, but in the "full" FAQ suddenly they're both nineteen. Wow! So in total you get to screw one fairy-tale character, one underage girl, and one underage fairy-tale character. Add a failed suicide attempt and three bottles of Prozac to calm my nerves and it's a full day for me.