Octurbo: Lady Sword

New From Remington: Lady Sword

Welcome to Lady Sword! Is this the Lady Sword? Who knows!Sucks about your name, dude. Weintein is the first friendly NPC you bump into, but definitely not the last. Oh no.Big McLargehuge here is the first enemy I happened to meet, but it's all random. There's a list of enemies you can encounter for each floor and the game just throws any one of them at you whenever it feels like.Oddly, the game never tells you how much damage you do, just vague descriptions of how hard the attacks hit. I can only imagine that it's some weird attempt at maintaining some sort of immersion by taking the numbers away, though I still have a whole bunch of other numbers displayed on the right.Anyway, the Elemental was a weakling. It barely made a dent in my HP. Fair enough for a low-level monster, right?I have no idea how to pronounce that. I'm just going to call you Bert.He says that, but then immediately vanishes. I continue to have no idea what I'm doing or where I'm going.I figured this guy was dying or something, but no. He's just old and likes to talk. Out of all the NPCs I've met so far, this guy pops up the most by a wide margin.Wasn't the last guy an Earth elemental? I guess they have boy ones and girl ones.So this is a screen I saw a lot. Half the enemies in the dungeon will kill you in one or two hits, and the rest can barely scratch you. The trick, or at least what I've been doing, is to run away from the "one or two hits" ones.AGH WHAT THE oh her name is Tanya. Hey Tanya! Does the terrible secret of the tower have anything to do with enormous disembodied heads floating around?This caveman with farming equipment, as you might have already guessed, is one of the deadliest creatures on this floor. Really not worth contending with.Well, I mean I tried contending with it, but let me tell you how that turned out...A whole lot of these lumber-based enemies. They're really quite strange, like something out of a horror game set in a sawmill.I'd be less afraid of you if you stopped jumping out of nowhere to talk to me. It's not like you or anyone else down here has anything useful to say.I came across this Faun Fresco, which are a couple of words that sound dumber the more you say them. As you might expect from a mural painting of a satyr, it's a device used for mapping.See? Of course, this is a map that always reorients itself so that up is always in the direction you're facing, which really doesn't help a whole lot. At least I can tell which pointlessly serpentine corridors I've been down.The game throws you a bone by letting you rest anywhere to recoup all your health. There's no food requirement either, so you can do this after every battle.Though you do occasionally meet this guy. Oddly, he's not even all that tough, but considering he always attacks when you're down to a few HP and sorely need to heal, he doesn't really need to be.I'm treated to a full body shot of Sophie here completely apropos of nothing. Oh man, is this one of "those games"? Is it Knights of Xentar? This feature's going to end up giving ZombiePie conniptions, isn't it?Just in case you thought boners were the intent of this game, here's the headless girl again. I'd drop a "ask for a little head and this is what I get?" joke here, but I feel like I'm already regretting everything about this playthrough without adding more to the shame pile.What the hell? Am I getting attacked by a 19th century industrial loom? What's it going to drop when I kill it, textiles?So here's the first Earth Spirit. These things are like mini-bosses, complete with portentous music changes and everything.Rhea wasn't all that tough, but I am called an asshole by the game for killing what appeared to be a harmless floating priestess. Hey, she started it.Tanya's clearly a got a self-esteem problem. Hey, look at it this way, you've lost a lot more weight recently than they have.I'll take your word for it, old man. It's certainly not a magnificent game.The Beelzeboule (damn amateur translators) allows me to walk through hidden walls. How hidden are they?Well, the map helpfully points them all out with a red line. So... pretty hidden.Is it the one in Phil Fish's skull? *badum-tish* Haha, no seriously, what the hell is even going on in this game any more.I can tell this is an Earth Spirit because she's knee-deep in what I hope is mud. Like the last glowy lass, she's kind of a pushover.I'm beating up women because you told me to? I'm not sure this game's a good influence.And I really don't care for these bizarre lumberbeasts. What the Packard Saw Mill am I even looking at here?This thing's straight out of horror town. What is it? What's a "bol"? Uwe Boll? It murdered me almost instantly, but then that's nothing surprising.The Tachyo-Stone, presumably not its original name, allows me to create a waypoint anywhere I'd like. I can only have one, as far as I'm aware, but they're good for setting in front of bosses.Like this guy. Like most things on this floor, it kills me pretty quickly, but unfortunately unlike other monsters I absolutely must beat this guy to move to the next area.Instead I spend a bit of time exploring the rest of the dungeon after setting a waypoint before the boss. Nothing worth capping, since this isn't a game with treasure or shops or fun, but at least I appease my own sense of OCD completionism by filling in all the remaining gaps. Polytron!!After save-spamming the floor boss a few times (there's a risky attack that either hits five times or not at all, and always gives the opponent two attacks) I finally beat him and am made to feel even more guilty about some sinful something or other. Like what, exactly?Really shouldn't have asked. So, yeah, the game's true nature reveals itself. Good thing I had a Jeff head handy to censor it.I'm turning this off is what I'm doing.

So uh, this was actually a porn game? But with whole stretches of uninspired dungeon crawling to break up the girly pics? This has to be the oddest game I've covered for this system so far, and I recently played one where a magical blue donkey regularly flies in to save your bacon. I really can't recommend Lady Sword: The game just seems to throw random enemy after random enemy at you with no rhyme or reason or any attempt to balance the game's difficulty. Shining in the Darkness, which I last played a few months ago and came out a year before this game, is a much better example of what they're trying to do here.