Epido is a top-down Bullet Hell in where we play as an angel named Miel. The story is told via a few chibi styled panels that see us shot with a cupid arrow and tasked with afflicting other women to their influence as well. Starting off, we only have one female to choose from, which is essentially a level. We can then pick our difficulty ranging from one to five stars. The more difficult the level, the higher the payout in gold will be, and the more affection you’ll gain from her in one go. Great for those with the skills and the confidence to quickly unlock everything there is to see, but ill-advised going too hard for those not acquainted with the genre. Despite the extreme amounts of lewdness in this game, it is a proper bullet hell that will require your concentration and will reward you with nothing should you fail.
You can choose to either play with a controller, your keyboard, or the mouse. The option to use a mouse was patched in later on and does make the game substantially easier. And you are off, fighting bras, panties, dragons, and other inexplicable objects. These grunt enemies pose very little threat. They are mostly there to collect power-up tokens from and upgrade your firepower before reaching the boss of that stage. Your character has both a mana meter and a health bar. She can take multiple blows before she goes down, while the mana is used to clear away nearby bullets with a swing of her sword. You then have two additional slots where you can buy and equip other abilities such as slowing down time or healing yourself at the press of a button. Using abilities does not require mana, they simply have a cool-down timer before being able to be used once more.
With that amount of options at your disposal, Epico is on the more accessible side compared to others of the genre. It even features an auto-fire option, so you can just focus on dodging and using your abilities instead of hammering the attack button. On top of all that, you can also use the gold earned from defeating a level to upgrade your stats permanently. It really wants players from any skill range to be able to unlock most of the lewd content on offer. Once you defeat a boss, you earn a certain percentage of affection from her. Playing on the lowest one-star difficulty will earn you 20%, meaning you will then have to defeat her four more times to unlock everything if you want to keep using that lowest setting. A playthrough on five stars, on the other hand, immediately earns you 100% affection.
After you reach 50% in affection, you will unlock a sprite viewer for that girl, allowing you to gawk at her in various states of clothing without the fear of being shot with a projectile for taking the time to do so. Persevering all the way to 100% will net you an animated screen where you can choose a few sexual acts to perform on said girl. What you can do varies from girl to girl and include things from armpit licking to full-blown penetration. By default, genitals will be censored by a small cat sprite. It is still in no way family-friendly and can be removed simply by deleting a single file in the game’s folder called “cover.png”. If you remove it, you will then find that it is completely uncensored. There is no further blurring or anything else to leave anything to the imagination. I find this method far more preferable to downloading an uncensor patch from the dev’s website like so many other titles that include sexual content tend to do.
Each stage will take no more than a few minutes to complete, and most of that is spent fighting the boss. As previously stated, grunt enemies are mostly there to hand you power-ups and are gone as soon as they arrive. There are seven girls to contend with. They all feature similar attack patterns, yet do have a few gimmicks or projectile formations to differentiate them. As you battle them, more and more of their clothing will be ripped off, while at the same time being further filled with ecstasy from your cupid arrows. Don’t let that distract you however, the lower in health she is, the more desperate her attacks will be. You yourself also lose clothing when damaged, so don’t let anime tiddy be your downfall, lads.
Getting through all the seven girls will be quite a short affair indeed if you are skilled enough to complete levels on the highest difficulty. That is just the beginning though. This is where the real challenge begins. Defeating the base campaign will unlock the Arcade Mode. In it, you will then have to complete the entirety of the game again with a single life and preset stats on the highest difficulty. You can select which abilities you want to take and are still able to receive a fair amount of hits, as well as have a decent mana bar. With how short the game is, even failing multiple times will give you that ‘one more try’ mindset. It’s a fun addition that gives a ton more life to a game you could otherwise beat in under half an hour.
That arcade mode may be a bit much for those that don’t normally play these types of games, however. It will only unlock some lewd content involving our own character Miel and a new boss at its end. Nothing worth losing sleep over if you find it too much of a hassle. All told, for the low price of two dollars, you are getting quite a bit of bang for your buck. You get nice artwork, plenty of lewd content, and a decent game underneath it all. I will state that I despise the fourth boss due to her occasionally reversing the player’s controls, though. That is a major pet peeve of mine, and worse still considering this is a bullet hell. Other than that, I found little to complain about and thoroughly enjoyed my time with it. It does not reinvent the wheel, yet Epido will satisfy both bullet hell fans and hentai lovers alike, all for the price of some crisps.
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