Fantasy is a very broad genre, with the potential for an enormous spectrum of possibilities. Fantastical worlds rife with monsters, magic, fortresses, dragons, and occasionally rape, were always on my mind when I was but a mere sprite. Now that I’ve matured into a depressed, sex-crazed adult, stories of heroes scouring the lands for holy reliquaries are far too outlandish for my tastes. After all, such stories are obviously too juvenile for my enjoyment. Thus, we’ll be taking a look at a fantasy game that’s clearly more suited for mature tastes, in which the main theme is orcs fucking human women like the sows they are.

Ladies and gentlemen, I present you with Orc Castle.

Ganon: The Early Years.

Orc Castle is a 2016 puzzle/eroge developed by a Matures and published by MangaGamer. As both the MangaGamer page and the in-game intro state, there was once a mighty orc kingdom on its way to conquering much of Europe. By the time the conquest had reached a small, holy country by the name of Asgard, relationships between the two nations were boiling into something dangerous. Even worse than that, though, is that the mighty Orc King’s son had become the subject of concern and ridicule among the orc kingdom. In an effort to assuage these worries, the king sent his narcissistic son out to the titular Orc Castle, the first line of the orc kingdom’s defense against the humans in Asgard. The Orc King reasoned that his son would either somehow prove everybody wrong or die tragically in doing so.

While this may sound ripe for a gritty, uplifting story of redemption and self-discovery, that’s not the kind of fruit we’re dealing with today. The story never really tries to be anything more than a plate for the real meat of the game to sit on, resulting in a sort of “popcorn experience” where you can turn on the game, turn off your mind, and enjoy the ride. That is, of course, if the ride is even worth getting on.

Lemme tell you, I’d pay real good money  for this ride.

The actual gameplay in Orc Castle is split into two segments, the first of which being the visual novel segments. These usually preface and round out the main gameplay sequences, respectively setting up the next challenge and rewarding you for conquering it. You see, as Orc Castle (the locale, not the game) is the front line of defense for the orc kingdom, it’s natural to expect would-be champions to try infiltrating and conquering the castle. Fortunately for you, all of these challengers happen to be nubile young women, which the game refers to as “battle maidens.” Since the Orc Prince is incapable of fighting anything beyond a drunken broomstick, he can’t engage the maidens himself. Luckily, with the help of Mystia, the Orc King’s advisor, there’s a very roundabout way to stop the battle maidens from seizing the stronghold.

Is the choice in visuals due to stylistic preferences or a low budget? You be the judge!

The meat of Orc Castle is focused on watching the battle maidens raid the castle, effortlessly destroying to your loyal troops, the likes of which include orcs, slimes, sandworms, and other such fantastical creatures. If left to their own vices, each maiden will saunter around, killing the stationary enemies effortlessly. While the castle’s dismal defenses can’t put in work alone, you can tip the scale in your favor by placing down traps for the maiden to stumble across. There are several traps you can conjure up within the castle halls, but the end goal is to build up a damage multiplier by sending the maiden through multiple traps, which increases the amount of health she loses in an enemy encounter. If the damage multiplier is high enough, it will also trigger an armor break, shredding part of the maiden’s armor off in the following encounter.

There are several other factors to consider when setting traps for those delicious multipliers, such as the MP needed to cast a trap. Not only does it cost a varying amount of MP to lay down traps (or remove them, should you desire), but the actual process of a trap being set up costs actual real-world seconds. Despite the grid-based structure, it’s entirely possible for a maiden to ruin your plan by merely walking into an unfinished trap, thereby destroying it completely. You not only have to manage your MP to summon traps, but also the precious seconds it for them to set up. As a result, there’s a fair bit of premeditated work involved with the game, as you generally have to set traps a good two or twenty steps ahead of the maiden.

See all this? That’s just to shave off about 1/4th of her health.

There’re still a few variables to keep in mind when dealing with each of the game’s four battle maidens. Rooms tend to be equipped with their own unique traps, each with their own damage multipliers, letting you build off of them for even bigger combos. The castle also has loads of treasure chests, which can yield a number of goodies for the maidens to steal, including, cursed lingerie, holy armor, money, or even nothing at all. While the latter two are harmless, the cursed lingerie and holy armor are game-changing, either debilitating the maiden or allowing her to destroy two traps for free. Lastly, you’re briefed on each maiden’s individual characteristics before the actual attack commences, usually involving her preferences towards enemies versus chests or which direction she’s likely to travel down. It’s certainly a noticeable element, but not enough to be as influential as the aforementioned variables.

Perhaps the biggest factor in these sequences is how you actually defeat the maiden. Sure, you could combo her into an orc, after which you’re rewarded with a proper sex scene, in which the Orc Prince degrades the maiden into nothing more than his personal cock sleeve, that’s perfectly fine. You could also, say, send the maiden into a more uncommon enemy, such as a slime, which will yield a bonus sex scene you wouldn’t have seen otherwise. While beating Orc Castle isn’t a troublesome task, putting in the effort for those extra CGs at least makes up for the otherwise short running time.

I’ve looked at this 27 times and I still don’t know how the background here works.

Speaking of those CGs, there’re plenty to go around in Orc Castle. Even if you don’t seek out the bonus CGs each maiden has, you’ve still got a fair bit to ogle, as splash CGs of the battle maidens being violated appear in the dungeon sequences when they’ve lost all their armor. Generally speaking, the CGs are lovingly illustrated, a far cry from the rather cheap, 8-bit art style of the dungeon sequences. The art is a tad simple, but very clean and appealing to look at; so much so, that not one bit of the art is censored, letting you savor every inch of the action with no worries.

If I were to list any complaints with the CGs, however, it’d be that they’re just too static. Sure, I can look at a pair of large, supple breasts for 30 minutes with no problem, but the sex CGs are always the exact same image with slight modifications to insertions, facial expressions, or fluids. These are fairly hefty sex sequences, too, so much so that there’s a dissonance between how the sex scene evolves through the sound and text when compared to the visuals. I’m aware this practice isn’t unheard of, but it nonetheless leaves you wanting just a bit more in the end.

As I alluded to, visuals aren’t the only element at play, since there’s plenty of prose and sound effects to go with the action. The voice acting was a personal sticking point for me, likely due to the fact hearing Asian women squealing is one of my 12,000 turn-ons. Each lady has their own distinct voice and personality (however stereotyped they may be), though they start to blend together somewhat when the leading ladies are thrown into fits of ecstasy, forced to submit to the almighty orc cock. The text is inconsistent in tone, ranging from vivid descriptions of the women’s sexual escapades, to the usual brand of hokey dialogue generally associated with scanlated doujin.

And then you have dialogue like this.

Unfortunately, the text is host to one of Orc Castle’s shortcomings. Put simply, whoever was in charge of formatting all the text in the game had to have been either drunk or an extremely intelligent corgi. There’re a staggering amount of typos in the game wherever you look, from everyone’s name being surrounded by “y” and “z'”, up to the descriptions being written as though the maidens were describing the experience themselves. Hell, even “title screen” is misspelled as “tittle screen” in the save/load menu. While one could certainly try to make a case for that one being intentional, I feel that’s giving the translators too much credit. The save files don’t even have names, but a jumbled mess of characters in their place.

Orc Castle also suffers from an occasional audio overlap and an odd graphical flickering glitch, but neither is as prevalent as the numerous typos and typesetting follies. I can’t help but feel that, when taking those three factors into account, Orc Castle comes off as more of an amateurish production than a more professional product.

Boomgasm, verb: to achieve orgasm through one’s boobs.

That being said, the settings in Orc Castle are pretty sleek by modern standards. There’re options to adjust the text window transparency, raise or lower sound effects, music, and voice volumes, and even actual support for 1080p monitors! Considering the number of Japanese eroge titles that don’t take modern resolutions into account, it’s quite a surprise to sit back and savor a game’s artwork in its full glory. Doesn’t really do any favors for the 8-bit, pixelated art style of the dungeon segments, but the notion is welcome nonetheless.

What isn’t exactly glorious is the soundtrack to Orc Castle, which I can only describe as a weird hot-pot of about seven different musical genres. Unlike an actual hot-pot, the different songs don’t really mesh together or leave much of an impression on you. They also tend to suffer from the terrible sin of repetition, which is especially noticeable when you’re reading through sex scenes that can go on for about ten minutes a pop. Whether it’s ambiance, techno, or a grand “orchestral” piece, you’re not gonna miss out on much if you decide to lower that music down a few notches.

It saddens me to think about how this may be the closest we’ll ever get to a Princess Hilda doujin.

My biggest peeve with Orc Castle is how there seems to be a disconnect between the main pornographic segments and the actual dungeon segments of the game. It’s quite nice how simply playing the game steadily rewards you with appetizers to whet your sexual appetite, but these segments are either short-lived or sparse if you’re playing efficiently. On the other hand, the sex CGs are quite nice, but there isn’t a whole lot of visual stimulation to really hook you into the murky depths of sexual pleasure. It almost feels like the game is being held back by a budget, which may well be the case, what with the game’s $13 price tag.

All in all, Orc Castle is a fairly enjoyable puzzle game, but it’s something of a mixed bag when it comes to how the sum of its parts is balanced out. Odds are you’ll be spending much of your time watching the sex scenes, but they’re missing a little something to make them worth sitting through. There are also the copious amounts of typos and typesetting issues that simply can’t be ignored. On the whole, if you’re looking for a decent variety of voluptuous women being raped and knocked up, there are worse ways to spend your time than on the front lines of the orc kingdom.

If you’re interested in purchasing Orc Castle, you can pick up the game from MangaGamer here.