Lightning Warrior Raidy is a hentai dungeon crawler that was originally released back in 1994, and was stored on five floppy disks. As this site’s arch nemesis HCBailly would say, this was high tech stuff back in the day. If this game’s Jast USA store page is correct, this is also the first “all-female yuri fantasy dungeon crawler RPG.” I don’t know why they say that though, since there are not only male characters in this game, but there are sex scenes involving men. From what I could gather, Lightning Warrior Raidy is considered a yuri title because of the amount of lesbian sexual content, and I guess back in the 90s that is something that is noteworthy.

Unfortunately, there is something quite insidious about advertising a game as a yuri title, when said title includes male on female RAPE SCENES!!! I suppose that is to be expected since, as far as I know, queer women weren’t as profitable of a Demographic in the 90s as they are now, and thus they needed to include some het content so that players weren’t too alienated by the scary concept of women engaging in sexual activity in a way that doesn’t get a man’s dick hard (in-game at least), but it really is something that shows this game’s age.

I felt the need to mention this right at the start because this is something that will likely be alienating to a lot of lesbians going into this game. That’s not to say that the game is un-enjoyable because of it. A lot of lesbians, like myself for instance, have likely seen cishet porn at some point in their lives, compulsory heterosexuality and all, but there are also other options available assuming that this is a major turn off. I personally didn’t like it, but I’ve been exposed to so much fucked up shit in hentai games that this one didn’t really phase me all that much.

Anyway, the version of Lightning Warrior Raidy that I’m reviewing, and the one on Jast USA’s store page, is actually a remake of the 1994 original, that was released in 2005 in Japan and localized for its first release outside Japan in 2008. From what I could find online, the key difference is in the art style and presentation, as well as a few quality of life updates that made the gameplay more accessible to newer audiences. There’s no new added content and even the music and voice acting are the same as the original. This results in the music packing far less of a punch than it could have. Just listen to the main theme of the original, and compare it to the third game’s arrangement. One can’t fault the MIDI arrangement too much for the original release, but the music should have had a similar update as the visuals.

The MIDI arrangement of the music is actually only a problem in tracks that are supposed to be upbeat or powerful, as the ambient tracks do their job quite nicely. The standout tracks include the main dungeon theme, the final floor theme, the prison cell theme, and the boss punishment theme. I’d include the main theme as well, but after having heard the Raidy III arrangement, I just can’t go back to it.

The visuals, however, are a major upgrade from the original 1994 game. The original art style seemed more fitting for a normal RPG where monsters are supposed to look intimidating, rather than a hentai game. Also Raidy’s boobs in the original… ouch. The remake’s art-style looks a lot sexier and there’s a greater variety in body types.

Lighting Warrior Raidy’s story is pretty much an excuse plot about our main character Raidy exploring a six story tower to rescue captured women. Each floor involves rescuing the captured women and fighting your way through monsters until you reach the boss, all of which take the form of sexy women by the way. Defeating regular enemies will just remove their clothes and allow you to see their nude body, but the boss fights are a completely different story.

When you encounter the boss battles, you will usually see them having their way with the female prisoners, which leads to an exchange between Raidy and the boss, and then they fight. If you lose to the boss, you get a special scene that involves said boss making Raidy their sex slave and having their way with her. If you win, you get a scene of Raidy using the bosses preferred form of torture against them to show them the error of their ways. Yes, Raidy is supposed to be your virtuous hero, yet she’s not above raping her opponents to get back at them.

Sex scenes in Lightning Warrior Raidy are much more tame than later entries, and despite the fact that just about every scene in this game is a rape scene, they come across as surprisingly soft. The dialogue is also so damn cheesy that it’s hard to take any of these scenes seriously enough for it to feel uncomfortable. Even the previously mentioned male on female rape scene was pretty tame, and I only really take issue with it because it’s in what is advertised as a yuri title.

As for whether or not the sex scenes serve their purpose, I’d say that it depends on which scene. The illustrations are sexy as hell, but the scenes are often brief and only have one illustration. They are also one note because each boss has one solitary fetish that is also their sole character trait. That being said, there is a special ending that you get if you lose once to each boss, then surrender to the final boss, and it was by far the hottest scene in the game.

So in short, the sex scenes are nice, but not enough to carry the game as a whole. So it all comes down to if you find the base gameplay fun. Gameplay wise, Lightning Warrior Raidy is pretty much an average dungeon crawler. Battle mechanics are about as bare bones as you can get. Battles are done Dragon Quest I style; one player character and one enemy. Raidy’s only two options of attack are either her standard attack, or her lightning slash, the latter of which consumes half her current MP and does more damage the more MP is spent.

Enemies on the other hand, have varying types of attacks and some can inflict status ailments and drain your MP. Despite the simplicity of the mechanics, you will often need to keep on your toes due to there being no free healing. The only way of restoring HP is through potions, and since there are no shops in this game, you can’t afford to be wasteful. The battles start out simplistic on the first few floors, but you will latter need to start deciding whether it is better to use a lightning slash to get rid of a dangerous enemy quickly, or to try and stick it out and using more healing potions.

This unfortunately means that there will be some necessary level grinding in order to keep up with enemies, and you can’t even fight the strongest enemies because you will burn through potions faster. On one hand, this does require a more typical level of player engagement in that they need to plan out their grinding in the most efficient way, which is ultimately the goal of most RPGs, and makes each level up feel rewarding. On the other hand… it’s fucking level grinding.

The level design of Raidy lends itself well to this approach to battles, as making your way through dungeons to find treasure chests that will either give you a weapon that will boost your stats, or a bunch of potions that will no doubt take off a load of stress so that you don’t need to worry about running out, becomes much more vital to your overall strategy than in most RPGs. This in turn, makes it feel all the more rewarding each time you find a chest.

Early on, the floor designs are simply a matter of walking straight to the room you need to go. This is made challenging by the fact that there is no in game map until you find it in the dungeon, not even the type that fills in the parts that you’ve already explored. Considering how mazey these floors are, it pretty much guarantees that most players will just look up a map online and use that, which is what I did.

At first, this makes the game feel simplistic and repetitive, but later dungeons start incorporating puzzles elements that require you to use your brain even when you have a map right in front of you. Some of these will include teleportation puzzles, other will involve turning your character around and making you use the in game compass to tell which direction you are facing. These dungeons were the high point of this game in terms of gameplay.

Unfortunately, there were also some bad puzzles. Oftentimes, the game simply expects you to find secret paths through fake walls, with no way for the player to know other than to check every wall to see if it’s real. Another puzzle literally had the solution mistranslated out of Japanese, so the only way to figure it out is to be using a guide that tells you. But the worst one requires the player walk down one of four hallways then backtrack to the starting point, while dealing with random encounters the entire way, until they pick the right hallway to proceed with the game. Thankfully you can bypass these just by using a guide, but that reminds me…

You have a female main character associated with lightning, long, narrow hallways, no towns, and a three game trilogy… damn Square Enix, you get your inspiration from weird places. Yes, I know, this joke would be so much more funny if I made it when Final Fantasy XIII was still relevant. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again; time moves so slow yet so fast.

As for Lightning Warrior Raidy, I had fun with it, but I wouldn’t say it’s a must play. I was actually leaning towards a more negative review, but I realized that the game was better than I was giving it credit for. The gameplay may not be on the same level as something like Etrian Odyssey, but I don’t have much experience with dungeon crawlers, and being on the more simplistic side made this game a decent entry point for me.

The biggest problem with the game is that it felt kinda repetitive at points, and was kind of slow at the beginning. But I got more enjoyment out of this game than I expected considering I first tried to get into this series with the third game, only to rage quit because there were no maps available. I’m also looking forward to playing the second game, and giving Raidy 3 another go simply because I know that they make a fair amount of improvements to the first game.

You can get somewhere around 15 to 20 hours out of this game, and considering that this game often goes on sale of Jast USA’s site, it is likely worth the money for those interested. Anyway, that wraps up another review. Happy Holiday season everyone!

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