Queen Beast

Stop holding out and give more of Switch please and thank you!

Didn't know what to expect from this one. Great art, fairly interesting story, FREE, Worth a try.

I have no memory of how [i]Queen Beast[/i] got into my library, but I’m grateful it’s there. Studio Envelope’s debut game is a nostalgia-driven kinetic novel that celebrates the Japanese pulp sword & sorcery genre of the 1980s & 1990s, with heavier emphasis on ‘90s OVA. If you think fondly of Go Nagai’s [i]Devilman Lady[/i], you’ll like [i]Queen Beast[/i]. The plot is so familiar you can sing along: a lil miller boy goes on a big adventure, joins up with a woman warrior in bikini armor, saves the princess, and decides what kind of adult he wants to be. There’s high adventure, fantastical fantasy, gruesome horror, and bright, bright hope. While there is an attempt to overcome the patriarchal pitfalls of the genre, especially with the sister, villainess, and kidnapped women characters, the overall feminism does a face plant. There are [spoiler] multiple rapes of female characters (one on screen) [/spoiler] and an “ironic” dismissal of hentai (which I found especially ludicrous with how entwined the erotic and fantasy pulp genres are). There is also an inequality in which gendered bodies are put on display for the audience. With an exception of children and elders, female characters…

昔のアニメスタイルが大好きだし、しかも無料なんて最高！

An experience far and away carried by the atmosphere created by the sum of its music, characters, dialogue, and (most especially) gorgeous CGs. Some of the songs in the OST, like Switch, Prey, etc. really make Queen Beast come to life, not just as a game, but an experience, and the aesthetic style is - in my mind - one of the strongest reasons one might enjoy this Kinetic Novel. The story proper is a bit lackluster, with a fun but modestly silly plot that barely skirts the edge of immersion shattering now and again. Thankfully, it does keep up with the tone needed to pull of such a plot, particularly in the latter half of the story, i.e. it can feel serious when it needs to. It is serviceable for the type of work that Queen Beast wishes to be, and was even somewhat interesting at times. I saw a review before playing emphasizing the one-sided nature of what body types are presented in nude CGs, and uhh... no yeah. The nude/nude-adjacent CGs are all of various women in the game, with the handful of times it might actually make sense to depict a man in the nude being instead used to preserve his artistic dignity (aka politely use shadows/perspective to avoid showing anything)...…

this is a very realistic take on fantasy world, with all the dirt and grittiness, its not your average isekai, where your protag is some sort of op god, pretending he's not you live and die by naiveness, and the only "safe" place is a backwards town where nothing happens until some random king start a war, pillages and kills everyone. that's the reality of medieval times, that's the reality of dark fantasy // and omg the art is soooo good, like i want this as my wallpaper good // [spoiler] dark fantasy with a happy ending, woah! [/spoiler]