Stardust Amazoness -or Amazones of Seisou as it literally translates- can appear to be almost a heterosexual male version of Duel Love when viewing what is know as the ‘Factor Release Mode’ scenes where you touch the onscreen girl across both screens with your stylus with her making appropriate (well inappropriate if playing in public) sounds. But where-as Duel Love is an otome game, Stardust Amazoness is amazingly a first-person 3D dungeon crawling RPG with as well as its Duel Love moments and Senran Kagura boob bounces, very much involves Etrian Odyssey (actually Lost Heroes is a better example due to both being set in space) dungeon crawling.
Set on Prison Planet, your aim is to simply escape although escape itself involves traipsing through several dungeons and defeating each dungeon’s big breasted boss. Initially controlling the one protagonist (simply called Eyepatch) you later recruit (well defeat first) a full party of six with Newcomer, Queen, Kunoichi, Maria and Hime. Each have different ‘qualities’ as Hime is a selfish girl who thankfully dresses with modesty whilst Maria barely covers her exaggerated bouncing boobs with just a leather belt. All six characters have a ton of dedicated moves and all can be used in battle except that battles themselves are fought by using what is known as Action Points.
A number of Action Points (AP) are acquired each turn that can be used by any of the six girls although you can only use the amount of AP you’ve been given so they often total less than six (usually three, with most moves requiring just one AP with stronger moves two). All attacks (there is no physical and magical distinction like most RPG’s) and recovery are via these AP and only the player’s using an attack (or defence move) can in turn be attacked by their opponent(s). On top of these points is a battery meter attributed towards each girl with each turn using up a battery charge (three turns and you either need to use 1 AP for a recharge to risk using another player instead).
The battle system works easily enough and on one hand requires a different strategy than most similar games but on the other reduces the need for the player to stock up on potions etc for use within battle. Additional equipment is also unnecessary within Stardust Amazoness with the game’s shop just selling character upgrades (such as increases in ATK or DEF etc) and physical keys. The dungeon’s begin incredibly easy but later dungeons contain far more puzzles required for navigating. The goal is usually to find the exclamation mark on the map screen (the bottom screen) which then invokes a fully voiced scene (impressively the game does have a lot of voice content).
Enemies vary from girls (my favourites are an American Playboy bunny girl holding a burger and coke as a weapon and then trips when attacking, and a girl with a few feline features who jumps out of a box screaming “arrrr nya nya nya nya nya!”) to several mecha (DAIBO’s) and what you would expect to find in dungeons (rats, snakes, spiders and the like). The Factor Release Mode is far less prominent than first though but Arc System Works do try to go one step further than Konami with Duel Love with the X and B buttons used to move the camera higher or lower so every body part from the girl’s head to her toes can be, er, stimulated with your, er, stylus.
Perviness aside, Arc aim to both please the dungeon RPG lover as well as the girl lover with Stardust Amazoness but face the inevitable risk in trying to appeal to both crowds of failing to properly appeal to either, and whilst the game hasn’t really been particularly critically successful; the game at its core is a solid dungeon crawler promising fifty hours of gameplay. However for such an often elitist mentality within the genre; the stripped down battle system (which actually works well but somewhat simplifies proceedings) will possibly alienate the hardcores where Stardust Amazoness will appear as softcore in its dungeon crawling as it is in its actual porn content.
7/10
Review by Bri Bri. For more information on Stardust Amazoness go to http://www.arcsystemworks.jp/amazones/index.html
