Fanservice Everywhere! Welcome to Pirate Maidens
By Vincenthaoson, OnRPG Journalist
Okay, before I start, I would be honest with you guys that before I started playing Pirate Maidens, I expected the game to have a lot of scantily clad, pirate themed ladies flocking your screen in each passing second, with the hopes of trying to entice you to spend more time on the game.
While I was never really far off from my prediction. I would say that I just barely touched the tip of the iceberg when I eventually plunged into Aeria Mobile’s Pirate Maidens (pun intended).
Oh Hello Sir!
Pirate Maidens introduces you into the world where pirates are all made up of heavy-buxom ladies in pirate attire (some barely have anything on at all) where you are just a starting “captain” in this world. Based on the quest course you’d take in your starting quest, you would then embark on the usual RPG-esque adventure that’s filled with generic quests and hammy lines from your NPCs.
Three sides of the coin
As you begin your quest within Pirate Maidens you will eventually have to choose an affiliation among the three “groups” in-game. Aeria mobile boasts that the storyline these three nations provide is robust and you can as easily switch sides as easily as changing your outfit.
The three sides in fact have a Rock-Paper-Scissors kind of relationship where each class is weak and strong against one of the two making the game quite interesting for beginners.
Your Ladies
Aside from choosing which faction you’d be affiliated with, the game allows you to choose among the scantily clad pirates you have as your “primary lady” or in other words, your ace in the hole. The game’s primary gameplay mechanic is the acquisition (or in this case “rescuing”) the various lady pirates and adding them to your roster. Each pirate you rescue has her own stats, rarity level, affiliation and special skill which would serve as their coup de grace in quest and PvP battles.
Aside from your attack crew, you also have a defense crew that defends your backside since you are already open to player attacks from the get go.
Another feature in Pirate Maidens is the capacity to upgrade or “enhance” your current ladies by using other lesser pirates to increase their level. So there will be times that you’d be facing against the same crew setup, but you’d be eating the pavement since the crew you’re facing has a higher level set of pirates than yours.
Fanservice Galore
I haven’t really touched on the aspect of the game since I’d like to dedicate a section in my review for the fan service the game delivers. As the game’s title implies, Pirate Maidens is a game about Pirate Maidens. So any normal gamer out there already expects that you’d be seeing a lot of ladies in both provocative attire and poses. But here’s the thing. Pirate Maiden has it a lot. And when I say a lot, I do mean every.single.pirate! Think of animes that have harem themes (Mahou Sensei Negima or Love Hina for example) and put it within the context of pirates.
Some characters have the usual provocative poses but there are some that tether along the lines of NSFW. So if you’re more of the type of person who doesn’t want too much objectification of women, I suggest you STEER CLEAR of this game. Seriously.
Conclusion
As I played Pirate Maidens, it felt like I was transported back in time when I was still a kid and had this deck of playing cards with barely nude ladies (sometimes totally) in various provocative poses. It was enjoyable on a lot of ways, but it’s something you don’t want to be caught red-handed with by your lady friends (or your mom) unless, they’re into these kinds of things or that they’re already used to seeing you play with these kinds of games.
Gameplay is solid and I found no other comments to add to that, but it is often eclipsed by the sheer amount of fanservice the game provides. Not only does the game give a zoomed version of the pirates you “rescue” but adding the option to listen to the Japanese voice-overs is just too sweet a feature and totally unexpected. Of course the fear is there that the fan service can get quite repetitive and boring once you collected all the pirates the game has to offer. But as far as I’ve seen I don’t think one can say that he has collected every.single.pirate out there since the game has it in spades.
Replayability is quite high but grindy to a fault. The newer pirates that get added to the game require tons of “battles” against them before you can get them. PvP battles on the earlier levels can be quite interesting and requires you to add a little strategy in setting up your attack and defense crews. I liked that there is a clear distinction among the pirates allowing a skilled player to understand their value as either a defensive of offensive factor in your line-up.
The other thing that I’ve noticed is the uselessness of the nation system weaknesses in the late game. Since you have the capacity to enhance your pirates, the RPS system is deemed useless in the late game. The metagame is in fact totally different from the intended game system but you won’t really take notice of it since as I’ve mentioned it’s been eclipsed by the fan service.
If you’re looking for a competitive card-game styled game, Pirate Maidens is a decent choice. Though I’m already warning you that your progress will be severely hampered if you won’t invest money in the game- it’s not a totally deterring factor in giving you a very formidable crew.
But heck, I don’t even think that you’d really look into those things since you’d be staring mostly at the voluptuous ladies in front of you right?
Nuff said.
