Cyberpunk Crisis is a 2D Action game set in a far future where cyborgs are the norm and mutants have recently begun tormenting the world as well. This premise of humans as we know them becoming increasingly more rare is an interesting backdrop to this dystopia. We play as a spy named Erika, who is sent in to gather intel about the suspected cause of mutants. Being fully human, she is comparably weak in a fight compared to the fully armored soldiers and monstrosities standing in her way. There is nothing to be gained by killing enemies in this game, so using your invisibility cloak and fleeing from unnecessary battles become a crucial survival tactic.
When push comes to shove, Erika is far from defenseless. She wields both a primary and secondary weapon alongside a few grenades. All of which usage is quite limited. While being quite a deadly fighter, her ammo will quickly run out if you try to go guns blazing through an entire level. On the other hand, your invisibility cloak has unlimited usage but requires a 30-second cool-down timer. With how tiny the stages are, 30 seconds feels like absolute ages and really should have been reduced even if it would be overpowered. We could just wait around for it to refill as well, yet that would be incredibly boring. Due to how close the camera is zoomed in, it is unlikely we’ll be able to avoid foes before they notice us.
So there goes the stealth mechanic for the most part. Your best bet of survival comes from preparing beforehand and purchasing some ammo or health items you can use during a mission. As a straight-up action game, it is not too shabby. You need to stay in one place to aim and fire, so good positioning becomes quite important in how you engage your opponents. All you can really do when on the move is slash with your sword, which is fantastic to deal the killing blow as to save ammo, but less so against a foe with full health. After you saved enough cash and upgraded a weapon enough, you don’t have to worry about ammo or stealth anymore, which is a great late-game feeling.
Death in Cyberpunk Crisis is possibly a bit too forgiving. You simply click retry and are revived on the spot with full health/ammo an infinite number of times. It essentially breaks the gameplay entirely. The real issue comes in that there is no benefit to clearing a stage without dying. A simple payment detraction for each death would have sufficed, yet as is, you aren’t incentivized to interact with any of the game’s mechanics at all. Buying items before a mission becomes useless, weapon upgrades too, and in effect everything requiring money which is the game’s sole reward.
Having an overly easy hentai title is hardly unheard of. Another issue greatly amplifies it and leads to possibly the worst thing a game can be, which is boring. There are only three unique levels. After beating one, you are given multiple other tasks on that same map. They try to mix it up a bit by having some locations locked off at times and other slight tweaks. With how small the stages are, alongside the fact that these missions are given instantly after you cleared it, there is no sense of excitement. I do love how open-ended the maps are, but it just didn’t work out for repeated treks. My suggestion would be to add one cohesive story to glue them together instead of the straight-up side quest approach that makes up most of the game. That, in turn, can allow the dev to set the pace while not front-loading all of the reused assets off the bat.
This brings us to the mech battles. You can bet I immediately added Cyberpunk Crisis to my cart after reading about its inclusion and seeing the cool screenshot. Allow me to say it is not great as to deflate such a cool idea immediately. Unlike Erika herself, there is no mech customization here or much of the way of combat strategy. Most of their combat involves waiting for abilities to recharge and using your basic attacks while stationary. The overly zoomed-in camera makes knowing their location difficult if you try to put space between you two and it all plays out like a very simple MMO fight. Thankfully, mech combat is rare and only occur in specific story sections without any other uses throughout. They are more of a gimmick than an overall negative, really.
I was hesitant to write this review. I take no joy in bashing into an indie game. It’s just that too much of the content in this title is excessively basic and feels like they’re included for the sake of adding another selling point. This brings us to the prostitution system. While not on a mission, we can walk through the hub world that consists of a weapon shop and a brothel. The weapon shop is where we can spend our money on upgrades and items. Meanwhile, the brothel is where we can make a little extra on the side. Once in there, we are given four cards signifying the sexual position and mood you do it in. Including a mood is a step too far, adding far too much randomness to this process as you have to match both the position and mood a customer wants with only four cards. You can redraw all cards a single time to slightly help matters, and you do level up your sex skills given enough practice.
There is never a point where you’re really itching for money, and if you are, it’s still far faster and profitable to replay a mission. It is a neat curiosity you’ll likely only do a few times to at least unlock all the sex scene CGs. Say what you will about Cyberpunk Crisis, but there is no denying it is pretty beautiful to look at. From the environments, character sprites, and CGs, it is all of high quality. About the only negative you can say about them are the really short looping animations in some of the CGs. Aside from the brothel mini-game, most of the H scenes will come from being defeated by an enemy as they proceed to violate you. It will have a unique in-game animation, followed by a CG involving that foe.
There is a Gallery mode in the main menu to freely view all of the lewd scenes you have unlocked. There is no way to unlock them without going out of your way to lose to that specific foe which I’m never a fan of. It is made even more difficult by how they are ordered in this game as it makes it quite difficult to guess which foe you are missing out on. Given that you have infinite continues, it wouldn’t be a bad idea to purposely lose to every enemy your first time through as to avoid that. With all that being said, most of the lewd content is relatively vanilla. There is some slight vore, and the zombies are bleeding quite a bit in the CGs, but I’d imagine most people wouldn’t have an issue with anything.
All of this content will last you about an hour. My issue is with how little of that is of substantial gameplay. I’d much rather of lost some of the side content if it meant more than having only three unique stages. The nine missions or even more wouldn’t have been a problem if they had some pacing or method of connecting them. As is, the story is barely there and feels like it’s been given bare minimum effort. For a game priced at a whooping 1980 Yen ($17.29 as of this review), it fails to compete with products costing a fraction of the price. It has potential, no doubt, and was an enjoyable enough experience, but it’s one you should definitely wait for a sale on.
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