X-Change

Reviewed by Craxton (craxton@erols.com)

Publisher: Peach Princess Japanese Publisher: Crowd Cost: $34.95 Graphics: Very Good. Music/Sound: Passable. NPCs: One-note (usually, the note is "lust") Writing: So-so Plot: Not what it could have been Interface: Amateurish Sex: Pretty good. Kinkyness: Male-to-Female transformation, several non-consent scenes and outright rapes, gangbangs, lesbianism, incest (sister-sister(?))

There's a distinct difference between "pornography" and "erotica". While the latter places emphasis on storytelling elements -- personality, atmosphere, taste, and so on -- the former is all about sex. From Peach Princess, the bold newcomer into the ring of Hentai Gaming, comes X-Change, a game with an interesting and thought-provoking concept, but no will to lift itself outside the realm of simple pornography.

So here's the deal: You're Takuya Aihara, junior college student ("junior college" being the renowned legal dodge that lets stateside companies present teenaged characters without having people dog them about pushing teen porn, but never mind that) you're a very shy, quiet, restrained type, not like your strong-willed best friend Asuka, or Asao, president of your chemistry club. You lead a fairly boring life, going to school, sleeping through class, doing Asao's grunt work afterwards, and so on. This we know because we have to do it all before getting to the meat of the story... which means a greater amount of time then I'd like is spent exhausting menu options. Now, in fairness, this is possibly meant to convey the utter tedium of Takuya's life, and in that it works. But it's badly implemented... the story doesn't move on until you've done EVERYTHING to it's complete extent, which usually means trying every option until you get repetitious dialogue. It serves no other purpose but to delay the story, and wasn't a wise design decision

Anyway, one day at Chem. Club, you accidentally get a large canister of unidentified liquid spilled on you -- all over you. You don't make much of it, but later on at home, you step out of the shower and notice you now have breasts. A quick check down below reveals you're going to find out firsthand how the other half lives.

I'm not a big fan of transgender stories, but I have read, and enjoyed a fair number of them. Most of the better ones take a good, hard look at the differences between male and female lifestyles, and bring to light the dreams, both good dreams and nightmares, that we have about living on the other side. X-Change has hints of shooting for such high concepts, but it doesn't seem to be able to get out of it's own way. At one point Asuka points out to the newly feminized Takuya, "Well, there are some bad things... Like chills, diets, perverts on trains, menstruation... Things like that, but... There are also good things, like shopping, and putting on make-up to make yourself pretty, window shopping, and talking with friends." Except for the perverts, none of that is ever expanded on. As the game progresses, you become more and more aware that the gender-swap is just a gimmick, and not meant to have any greater significance. True, there is a fair degree of plot branching, so that Takuya can wind up choosing to remain a woman, but the paths leading there are more or less arbitrary, and there's no way for the player to consciously choose one of them. Furthermore, if Takuya *does* decide to remain a woman, the primary motivation for it is sex, which is rather silly, considering how many other factors are involved in this kind of a life decision.

You know what really shoots down any intellectual meat X-Change may have, though? The Magic Bus. See, on his first day as a woman, Takuya, late for school, hops on a bus to get there, instead of walking as he usually does. Crowded into rush-hour public transportation, packed in like a sardine in a can, Takuya gets molested by a groping pervert. This is not inherently ridiculous, in fact, it's all too realistic, considering the behaviors of some morons on Tokyo's crowded subways. What's NOT realistic is that the nameless perv not only gropes her, but lifts her shirt, gropes her breasts, sticks his hand down her pants, and fingers her to orgasm, all without anyone else on the bus noticing. No problem, though, the next day provides an explanation. This is a *special* bus which all the pervs ride on their morning commute. Yes, you read that right. This is a *special* bus which all the pervs ride on their morning commute. Takuya gets on the same bus, to find, all around her, a rich tableu of women being fucked in various ways by young students and salarymen, and gets herself bound into the handhold straps on the bus, and raped several times. Then she exits the bus near her school... and calmly goes about her day as if nothing had happened.

What are we supposed to make of this bizarre phenomenon? Well, it never affects the plot in any way, so the answer is actually quite simple... filler. No point or reason, just... adding some more sex to the game. This is what makes it so painfully clear that X-Change has no interest in storytelling of substance. A bizarre and improbable scene, thrown in without consideration of the larger work, can throw the story's essential underpinnings seriously out of whack, and any writer of good erotica thinks twice before inserting something in such a blaze' fashion.

This is not the only narrative problem with X-Change... there's also the matter of how his classmates accept Takuya as a woman so readily. The excuse given is that he's "messed himself up with chemicals before", but... there's a bit of a leap from your hair falling out to spontaneously switching genders, isn't there? The fact that she turns out to be more popular then she was as a man suggests they always half-expected him to come in as a woman someday, and that could very well be it: her personality may "click" with people in a way that doesn't happen if you put the same personality traits in a man.

Still, though... the reaction of anyone, man or woman, to Takuya's transformation is first shock, and then lust. Okay, men are often stereotyped as thinking of nothing but sex when presented with a female form, but somehow I don't think so many people would be so quick to jump in the pants of someone who they had played football with in gym class just days ago. And the women in the story have even less excuse. What, is Tokyo full of raging lesbians? Gimme a break.

Worse still is the persistent use of "NC-but-not-really-rape" scenes, or "cop-out rapes" as I like to call them. This is where a woman being raped starts to enjoy the sensation and go along with it. Now, I don't know how this got started, but it's unequivocally the STUPIDEST porno cliché I've ever seen. Is this supposed to excuse the rapist's actions somehow? Emphasize the woman's internal sluttiness or restraint somehow? Please... all it winds up doing is making the author look like a coward. If you want to do a rape scene, then by golly, do a rape scene! None of this half-assed "well-not-really" garbage.

But I'm taking X-Change too seriously now. At it's heart, this isn't a deep story, nor a musing on the nature of man and woman, or a call for understanding and tolerance between the two. As I said, it's simply a porno with a gimmick. A thin story used as an excuse to show a lot of sex. And damn it, it could have been *so* much more.

Still, I have to admit, it's pretty good as a porno. Though finding all the sex scenes is a trivially easy proposition, the scenes themselves show a reasonable amount of variance, both in the writing and the action. Though the translation is somewhat suspect, (the word "erotic" is overused, and typos abound) the writer has a distinct knack, weaving sentences back and forth between the realms of the poetic and the banal. Likewise, graphics are workable, with Takuya being quite easy on the eyes, and a distinct tension is drawn into her erotic scenes, though the male cast doesn't fare as well.

When it gets it's mind off sex, however, is when X-Change is most appealing. One of the cuter scenes is when Takuya, finding a bunch of love letters in his locker, goes through them trying to decide which to keep and which to throw out. This leads to the game's best sex scene, where Takuya first teases and then winds up seducing a smitten boy on the school roof. Also amusing are the reactions of Takuya's parents when he breaks the news, and the modeling session with some overly horny art students.

But there we have it again -- everything about this game directs the mind towards it's central flaw: the complete lack of desire to be anything but straightforward pornography. If there is any stab at serious ideas here, it's hidden far too deep to be apparent. And I simply can't help being very, very disappointed at X-Change for it's lack of depth.

Conclusion: Turn your brain off, don't expect anything real deep, and prepare for a decent porno story with an odd gimmick.

Lord Craxton gives this game 3 out of 5 stars.