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Title : Game 271: Knights of Xentar (1991)
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Game 271: Knights of Xentar (1991)

Knights of Xentar

Japan

Elf Co. (developer); MegaTech Software (publisher)

Released 1991 for PC-98, 1992 for FM Towns and Sharp X68000, 1994 for DOS

Date Started: 22 November 2017

     
If there's some subset of readers chortling in anticipation about what the Puritan CRPG Addict is going to say about an erotic role-playing game, I suppose I'm going to have to disappoint you. Context is everything. Yes, it's a bit weird for nudity to appear in a mainstream RPG, and so I've commented on it when it happens. Commented--not expressed outrage or demanded apologies or indicated that I was somehow scarred by the experience. Then I get a dozen comments misinterpreting what I said, and I spend so much time responding to them that it seems like I care more about the issue than I do.

Rance was an exception. That game actively bothered me. It wasn't about sex or nudity; it was about rape. In a genre where the driving game mechanic is murder--mass-murder if we're being honest--why should we care so much about rape? That's a legitimate question--one that I wrestled with and perhaps did not satisfactorily answer. Perhaps it's that sexual violence is always gratuitous in a way that regular violence is not. Perhaps it's that enjoying scenes of rape has implications that enjoying scenes of regular violence does not. Perhaps it's that there's a good chance that rape has occurred to someone you know--perhaps you yourself--whereas comparatively few of us have been stabbed with swords. All I know is that if there was a version of The Punisher in which Frank Castle systematically sodomized everyone who had wronged him instead of killing them, it would feel messed up--unwatchable and unenjoyable as entertainment--in a way that the regular Punisher does not.

Knights of Xentar doesn't quite have these problems. While there is still something vaguely creepy and exploitative about the number of nude women depicted in the opening stages of an assault, the game at least depicts such situations as wrong, and the hero (at least so far) intervenes to save the women. His own sexual adventures are consensual. As for the nudity, anyone buying the game knew what he was getting. It's not gratuitous; it's half the point of the game. I won't be showing uncensored images in this entry, not because I care but because I don't want Google to flag my blog as containing adult content. Such images are easily searchable.

      

A typical Xentar scene. At least in this game, the protagonist rescues women in this situation instead of putting them there.

                   
Knights of Xentar is part of the Dragon Knight series from Japanese developer Elf. It was known as Dragon Knight III in Japan, and it's the only game in the series to receive a western release. That release wasn't until 1994, so some of the shots below are a bit more advanced graphically than we typically see for a 1991 game, although they reflect their original PC-98 counterparts. A lot of the text was apparently changed to incorporate more North American references, and the graphics were at least slightly censored, although this is reversible with a patch. To confuse things even more, in 1995 the North American publisher released a second version on CD-ROM with recorded dialogue. I'm pretty sure I'm playing the patched version but without voiced dialogue; I listened to a bit in a YouTube video, and it's pretty bad.

The original Dragon Knight series comprises five titles between 1989 and 1995, all with adult themes. The hero is named Takeru in the Japanese originals, but the default name is "Desmond" here. Dragon Knight was a first-person game in the style of Wizardry in which Takeru saved the all-female kingdom of Strawberry Fields from the titular Dragon Knight. Dragon Knight II is also first-person and concerns Takeru's liberation of the town of Phoenix from a witch queen.
      

The title screen in the Japanese release.

       

This third edition changes the interface completely to a third-person oblique-angle perspective. It's the uniquely Japanese style, favored by console games of the era, in which a childlike protagonist bustles about on squat little legs and interacts with people and objects mostly by running headlong into them. The style goes back to the proto-RPG Tower of Druaga (1984) and was made famous in RPGs like Dragon Slayer (1984), Hydlide (1984), and The Ancient Land of Ys (1987) as well as non-RPGs like The Legend of Zelda.

The protagonist in this game is named Desmond (unless you change it), and there's no creation system (which is also common to this type of Japanese RPG). He starts at Level 25 with 255 hit points, 49 dexterity and speed, 56 strength, 25 intelligence, an attack score of 56, and a defensive score of 6.

The back story isn't very inspiring: Desmond wanders drunk into the city of Squalor Hollow (that name's got to be tough on property values) and is immediately set upon by a gang of thugs who steal his weapons, clothing, and jewels. He awakens in the home of an old man named Larrouse and immediately sets out in his birthday suit, determined to recover his gear.
       

Already, I can identify with the lead character.

       

The NPCs and shopkeepers in town have various comments on Desmond's state of undress. The town is small, consisting only of a couple of residences, an inn, a tavern, and a weapon shop/pharmacy.
    

Your clothes. Give them to me.

    

Desmond's first ribald adventure comes as he enters the tavern, where a gang of bandits is assaulting the tavernkeeper's daughter, Mona. Dialogue is mostly on the main interface screen, but for longer encounters it transitions to full-screen graphics, lightly animated (e.g., the speaker's mouth), with the dialogue text below.
     

At Level 25, Desmond doesn't need a weapon or clothes.

     

This encounter resolves automatically, with no player input, as the unclothed Desmond somehow manages to brawl the gang to submission. Before he can reclaim any of his property, they run off, but Mona tells Desmond that they live nearby on Mount Litmus. There, a great demon protects them, and in return for the favor, the bandits "impregnate women with his evil seed," creating half-demons who "do not reveal their true nature until their 19th birthday, when they take a knife to their parents." The town's baron--Don Frump--is offering a bounty to anyone who can end the raids. This being the kind of game it is, Mona conveys all of this while barely concealing her exposed chest with one hand.
    

Desmond makes a resolution.

     

Desmond can get 50 sovereigns from the tavernkeeper and then see Don Frump for a leather suit and a knife as an advance on killing the bandits. Frump promises to reclaim Desmond's weapon and armor from the pawn shop if he succeeds in the mission.

For commands, the interface uses menus that can be activated with either the mouse or the SPACE bar. I wish there were keyboard shortcuts for the sub-menu commands, but I have to live with such omissions in most titles. I have no idea what the bar to the right of my name is showing, but everything else is relatively straightforward.
     

Desmond checks out a menu while wandering the wilderness.

    

A child NPC told me that the mountain was to the west, so I left the city to try to find it. Leaving brought me to a smaller-scale map, and the mountain wasn't very far. On the way, I fought my first combat--or, more accurately, watched my first combat. Particularly at the beginning of the game, there really isn't anything to do in combat, as the character automatically attacks using the default settings. "Tactics" are found within those settings. The first is an "attack gauge" that, if I understand it correctly, balances speed (lower settings) with power (higher settings). The second sets the balance between offense and defense, and the third determines how you prioritize multiple enemies: weakest first, strongest first, or mix it up to "scatter" everyone.

      

Doing battle with some giant clams, which seem tougher than they ought to be given the lack of appendages.

     
For now, I've left the settings at the defaults until I have time to experiment more. It appears that later there will be more in-combat options as I acquire magical capabilities; I assume that's what the grayed-out options like "Earth," "Fire," "Blizzard," and "Thunder" are along the bottom. Right now, the only thing I can do in-combat, other than watch, is use an item like a healing potion.
      

This enemy, on the other hand, would terrify me in real life.

      
The mountain led to a windy corridor in which I fought numerous "giant clams" and picked up experience, gold, and the occasional healing potion to keep me going. I leveled up during this process and got boosts to my maximum hit points and attributes. Treasure chests supplied items like smoke grenades and healing potions. I soon ran out of the latter, though, and towards the end of the maze, I had to flee from combats to avoid dying.
      

Entering my first dungeon.

      
Eventually, I met the "bandit leader," who revealed himself as a demon and intimated that he had known my mother. He suggested he knew the purpose of the jewels I had been carrying (and lost to the bandits) and mocked me for my own ignorance. I'd assume that he's my father except that he calls me "heavenspawn" at one point. "Why am I so important?" Desmond asks, and he replies, "Why? You truly do not know? That explains why your few thoughts are always nestled between your legs." Ouch. One for you, demon.
    

Is it just me, or does this demon have a really small head?

   

Promising that his pillaging was done for now, the demon banished me from the mountain. I returned to Squalor Hollow to learn that Don Frump had gone to some other village to sell jewels--my jewels? Either way, I stayed at the inn to restore hit points, then went to the shop and bought a shield.
      

The shop menu.

    
I wasn't sure what to do next, but an NPC told me about a village called "..." to the North. (She acknowledged that an ellipsis was a stupid name.) Heading north, fighting easy battles with slimes, battle bees, and "daos" along the way, I found a passage through the mountains. Don Frump had set up guards to block me, but Larrouse was there and gave me a magic medal that, if I kissed it, would stop time long enough to run past the guards.
      

That turned out to be a bad idea.

     
On the other side of the mountain, my health (both current and maximum) depleted rapidly as I entered the nameless city. Checking Desmond's character sheet, I found him busted back down to Level 1, with 0 experience and single digits for all his attributes. As Desmond reacted with despair to the situation, I entered the village and found Frump in what looked like an inn. He said that he had my sword and asked me to follow him into a basement. There were numerous levels of stairs, passing skeletons, before I caught up with him. He called me a fool and revealed his true form as "Byrt, master of hatred." He said that the medal I had kissed was "poisonous to the spawn of Light," accounting for my level loss.
       

I guess this is the same as the last demon? There's no way to be sure.

     
The demon prepared to kill me, but some blinding light appeared and drove him away. A woman's voice explained that a group of demons had orchestrated the theft of my equipment and the reduction of my skill, and that I should continue on my quest to find my jewels, sword, and armor. She disappeared, and on the way out of the dungeon, I found Frump restored to his own body, promising to give me a reward for the bandits if I returned to his mansion in Squalor Hollow.

NPC dialogue is clearly a major part of the game, which I admire, but sometimes it goes on a bit too long. Having to take it in one line at a time is a little annoying. Humor is, of course, a key part of the dialogue. Mostly, it pokes fun at Desmond's characterization or RPG and fantasy tropes in general. None of the jokes have been gut-bustingly funny so far, but neither have they been groanworthy. I smirked a few times.
       

An NPC from the town of ...

      
On the way back to the city, the same enemies that I'd blown through before gave me much more trouble now that I'm starting over from Level 1. I spent some time hanging around the city--where I can rest to restore hit points--and grinding before heading out to explore more. It didn't take more than 30 minutes to get to Level 6.
    

After a couple of kills. I acquired a leather helmet at some point, too.

     
I was just beginning to think that the game's reputation as an eroge was overblown; then I wandered into a random building and found a sentient wolf assaulting an unclad girl on a bed. He killed me in the ensuing combat. Guess I'll have to grind some more.
      

Did it have to be to the groin?

     
After the first session, I'm on the fence as to how well Knights of Xentar plays as an RPG. It has some decent elements but no truly outstanding ones. The NPC interaction is nice, but all of the conversations are scripted. Because of that and minimal character creation, there's a strong sense of simply watching the plot rather than participating in it. While I don't care for the graphical style, I admit that in both graphics and sound it feels more like a 1990s game than most of the titles we've seen so far. I hope it doesn't last into the dozens of hours, but I'll be glad to see where it goes for at least 10-12.

Time so far: 3 hours

*****

I had to skip Quarterstaff temporarily while I work out some issues with Mac emulation so I can play the earlier version alongside the later version. It'll probably be the next game.

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