Review by Craxton Ring-Out! Publisher: Otaku Publishing Cost: $29.95 US Technical: Requirements minimal. Windows 3.1 based, runs in Windows 95 Bugs: None that I encountered Graphics: Adequate Music/Sound: Gets monotonous quickly. Includes annoying Japanese voice-overs. NPCs: One-dimensional Writing: Boring. Plot: Good, but ends too quickly Interface: Ugh. Sex: Boring. Kinkyness: Oh boy. Heavy lesbianism, dildos, enemas, leather, one anal scene, humiliation, and practically every sex scene is non-consensual. In Short: Intriguing premise gets horrid execution and ends just as it should be picking up. It's called "Pro-Lesring," and it sounds like an urban legend: Somewhere in Tokyo is an underground club where important political and social figures gather to watch an unusual sport. Two women are put in a caged ring, in revealing clothes, and grope each other while wrestling. Whoever comes first, loses. No holds are barred, and the loser has to endure any humiliation the winner asks. Into this ring comes a young girl named Aya, forced into slavery by people to whom she is nothing. That's the premise behind Ring-Out, and at first glance, it piqued my interest. When I first read the summery it conjured up images of a dark and brooding game where sex is an act of cruelty, the protagonist is treated like an object, and pride and sanity are two mutually exclusive things. To be blunt, this isn't that game. At best, it's a demo for that game, marketed as a completed game. I seriously tried to find the value in Ring-Out, so that I could review it fairly. Unfortunately, all I found was an interesting premise littered with flaws. The game begins with Aya being taken from her parents by a nameless loan shark in a business suit. Soon after we learn that she is to be put to work in the ring until her parents' debt is paid. What debt? Well, there's flaw number one right away: The game drops hints that her parents borrowed money because her father needed an operation, but the blurb on the box clearly says they had gambling debts. Thankfully, this appears to be the only plot hole. Unfortunately, that seems to be because the plot is mostly cursory. If you're looking for an engaging story, look elsewhere. Ring-Out basically consists of a bunch of non-consensual sex scenes, (a polite way of saying rape scenes) with just enough characterization to keep you playing. Not even that much, sometimes. The characters are all bland cliches, and none of them has any depth. One minor character, a particularly cold man, hints that he may have a sensitive side about halfway through the game, but this development is quickly forgotten, and the character in question doesn't make another appearance. And of course Aya's character changes over the course of the game, but the logic behind the catharsis seems forced at best, and thoroughly illogical at worst. Which brings me to the writing. There's very little description in Ring-Out. What is there supplements the on-screen pictures, but doesn't add any flavor. You get a very stilted, impassive view of what's happening. In fairness, the game does do a good job of conveying Aya's thoughts to the player, but these thoughts don't seem to make any sense. Aya finds herself torn between her fear and disgust of the situation she has been caught in, and the alluring pleasures of sex. This is fairly common in erotic literature, and it always rubs me the wrong way. Does anyone know a woman who *enjoys* being raped? Then there's the dialogue, which is as spartan as the descriptions and even less interesting. Few of the lines had any effect on me, and those that did stick in my mind were laughably awful. (Example: during a lesring match, a ringside commantator yells enthusiastically: "Wildcat Homma goes for the squishy-squishy breast attack!") The game includes Japanese voice-overs to try and add some emotion to the lines, but unless you know spoken Japanese (I don't) these sound-bites are just annoying. Furthermore, there's no way to turn them off, and you can't advance to the next block of text until the voice-over is done. This slows the game down quite a bit. Enough about writing. On to the design. Ring-Out uses the menu-based command system common to Hentai games, but the implementation has two critical flaws. First, the engine can't add more menu options until you switch to another scene, so if you've got three options to begin with, you'll have three options until something significant happens. And the only way to make something significant happen is to use up every single option to the point where the game starts repeating itself. Most H-games have this problem once in a while, but Ring-Out has it in EVERY SINGLE SECTION! Added to the fact that your next action isn't always obvious, this is a real mimesis-killer. The second flaw is that you can only save your game at certain points, not whenever you wish. You can't stop the game anywhere either, short of Ctrl-Alt-Delete. Then there's the structure. Ring-Out is linear to the max. There's exactly one path from beginning to end, little variation in that path, and only two endings that I got to. (A rough text-dump revealed a third, but I haven't been able to get there.) Combine this with the fixed save locations, and replaying the game becomes a chore. I should say something about the erotic content in Ring-Out. As you might guess from the story, there are scenes involving sex toys and lesbianism. Aya also gets done by one of the spectators after her first match, and by the owner of the Lesring club later on. ALL of the scenes involve non-consensual sex, which will disgust some people right off the bat. Furthermore, as I said before, Ring-Out suffers from a lack of descriptive text. This applies to sensory descriptions as well as room descriptions. You're told what's happening, but there's no elaboration. Basically, you have two choices: dislike the sex scenes because they disgust you, or dislike the sex scenes because they bore you. Ring-Out's greatest flaw turns out to be a blessing in disguise: the game is too short. It plays from start to finish in under two hours. I don't have a problem with short games if they're done right, but Ring-Out, as you've probably guessed by now, isn't done right. It ends abruptly right after the appearance of the last major character, the point at which most games really get started. The endings are all universally unsatisfying, featuring Aya coming to enjoy her new lifestyle. (Again: what kind of woman enjoys being raped?) My head hurts from writing this review. Bottom line: Good premise, very, very bad everything else. In fact, let me be even more blunt: this game sucks. That may sound petty or inflammatory, but I'm sorry, there's just no other way to express my feelings toward Ring-Out. This game is bad storytelling, bad gaming, bad porn, and just plain bad. I want my money back. The only way anyone will ever enjoy this game is if someone comes up with an MST3K hack. (Any volunteers?) -Craxton