Sword of Ryonasis ~Kirsch in Lewd Labyrinth~ is a 2D Action title centered around a near-mythical cave where it is said that an evil god dwells. Many times throughout history, entire legions of elite soldiers dared to venture inside, and none have ever returned. Fast forward to the modern-day, where two lone female knights stand outside the cave, possibly believing its past to be a mere folktale. One goes in and has the other standby to call for reinforcements if she doesn’t return within the hour. Predictably, that doesn’t happen, and our character named Kirsch chooses to go rescue her friend by herself before letting more time pass.
Upon entering the cave, Kirsch finds that her friend has been captured by a group of orcs and swoops in to the rescue. Or at least she tries too. It wasn’t long after they detected her presence that they cast a spell on her, and she’s left defenseless due to the influence of the evil god’s power here. As they approached her to go in for the kill or worse, a mythical sword pops into existence and grants her the strength to resist. This is where the game starts properly as we slay a swathe of enemies on our journey to slay the evil god and free ourselves of this spell.
Kirsch is quite skilled with a sword and is possibly one of the most dangerous things in that cave. Her basic attack is a massive swing that has exceptional reach. It reaches well onto the top of the screen to deal with those pesky flying enemies overhead. She can take up to six hits in total. When she runs out of health, we can simply use one of the five continues to respawn right on the spot where we fell. It is definitely on the easy side, especially in comparison to their previous titles, such as Splatter School. On the flip side of that coin, it controls far better than those and has a ton more combat options.
We start off with a basic fireball spell that can destroy incoming projectiles if timed right and is your only way of fighting at a range. It takes a chunk of mana out of the magic meter each time you use it, so melee is still the forefront of combat here. Slowly but surely, your magic meter will refill on its own, however. Without a doubt, one of the most dangerous things you’ll face in this cave are the traps. When facing enemies, you are usually the one with the advantage due to the massive reach of your sword. Throw in traps that activate when standing near them, and you suddenly find yourself far more cautious when trying to kite an enemy.
Traps are arguably kind of overused, appearing for what feels like every five steps. Most of them only take a single heart off your life, so it is more of a slow death by attrition for those not keeping a close eye where they step. One thing you’ll want to be aware of is a cartwheel maneuver used for dodging. It is activated by crouching and then pressing the jump button. I never found a use for it during combat, but it is great for clearing traps as you have invincibility frames during the cartwheel animation. When you try it in battle, you’ll find the small amount of ground it covers, and the time it takes before you can attack again to heavily outweigh any good it may do.
While this game is 2D, it is not linear. It has the word labyrinth in its title for a reason. You have to explore in order to search for switches or simply take the correct route. The latter is entirely luck-based. If you don’t enter the correct door on that screen, you’ll be taken to a small combat arena and find yourself back at the entrance of where you entered. Having a bad sense of direction or plain bad luck is one of the few ways I can imagine a player burning through all their continues. Ultimately, I like this feature. It makes it all the more tense when you finally encounter the boss guarding each of the six stages.
After surviving the first level, you will be taken into an over-world that shows you just how deep this cave descends. You can select what stage you want to enter, and you’ll also find a merchant in the top left. There is no currency in this game. Instead, the merchant takes your experience points for his services. Said services include raising the maximum amount of continues, teaching you new spells, and increasing your magic recharge rate, among other things. I didn’t know any of this when entering. My experience was randomly giving the man 200 points and suddenly finding myself having a surprise colonoscopy with his penis.
Hilarious as I found that, this was due to Sword of Ryonasis being solely in Japanese. I used the Textractor to translate the dialogue on the fly, yet it doesn’t function in the store. You’ll want to whip out your phone and use a translation app to have some idea of what you’re doing in the store. I know I say this in near every review, but that is not a game flaw. It has never been translated, and I’m just recounting what someone that can’t read Japanese can expect. Aside from the store, there are no other hurdles. The story is very front-loaded too, and frankly, unimportant, so you can just skip the talking if you don’t want to bother setting up the Textractor either.
The character designs are really damn thicc. They have curves for days, son. Which brings me to the hentai aspect of this title. A large portion of it occurs when you are downed and have yet to use another continue. If an opponent reaches you while in this state, they will sexually violate you. Some of it is fairly vanilla stuff, such as a mating press, with others being significantly more extreme. There are a plethora of unique in-game animations to see, both during the act and the aftermath. Luckily for us, simply beating the campaign will unlock all of the hentai content, which we can then freely view from the main menu. I always appreciate when a title doesn’t make you scour the entire journey again just to see all that it has to offer.
There are 18 CGs, with only one of those being guro. A good portion of them come from the merchant, while the rest are received due to losing a boss fight. They are decent, though the main focus here is in the in-game animations. In its totality, I’d say most sex is of the inflation kind. For the ryona/guro fans out there, over half of the animations are dedicated to it. There are many intensely painful and over-the-top scenarios you can encounter when you meet your end. Because you have five continues each stage, you will see a lot of it occur naturally rather than wait to view them from the main menu. Also worth noting for those not into hardcore violence, there is a filter you can toggle if you don’t want to see this content.
Speaking of the art, the backgrounds for the stages look pretty good. You’ll find a lot of background objects to break up the repetitive textures of a wall. Being the cave of an evil god, it should come as no surprise that it is packed to the brim with victims. The lucky ones are already dead, while those that are not are being violated nonstop or just being kept alive during their pregnancy. It gets progressively more grim the further you delve into the cave until it is just mounds of flesh as far as the eye can see. The bosses are usually just as imposing. None are particularly challenging, yet their appearance and unique arena do make them memorable. It is just a really solid-looking title.
I’d say that the music is decent too, though it does suffer from a huge flaw. It will automatically replay from the beginning whenever you enter a door, which is something you’ll be doing a lot of all throughout. The worst offender is the music track of the first stage, funnily enough. That low-end bass it starts off with is incredibly noticeable. Overall, I wouldn’t say that this issue is annoying or very distracting. It is just something you’ll undoubtedly notice. While on the topic of flaws, you can’t enter fullscreen. The game will be displayed in a small window. This is due to the ancient engine they are using. Increasing the window size will just show a vast white border around that added space. You’ll need a program such as Lossless Scaling to simulate a fullscreen experience.
All in all, Sword of Ryonasis took me around two hours to complete. Other than for the fun of it, there isn’t much reason to replay it. With how easy it is, this title really could have used a hard mode to entice the player for another go. Simply decreasing the continues and health would have sufficed to create another mode. In any case, I thoroughly enjoyed the time I spent with Sword of Ryonasis. It was a blast both when either using a keyboard or an Xbox controller. While it is perfectly playable as-is for those unable to understand the Japanese language, I would love to see it translated one day. It is a fun title that will appeal to ryona fans and those with a taste for darker themes in their action games.
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