Petspective: Escalation

Hello my loyal fans and welcome to yet another Petspective, where I look at whatever interests me and I happen to pass it along to all of you. In this third installment, we'll be talking about the Japanese visual novel...Escalation Yukkuri Panic! I know I normally do movies here, but...shut up!

What is a visual novel?

Suppose I should explain this since I can see the hovering question marks above your heads from here. A visual novel is pretty much a picture book you can read on your computer. Sometimes there are little games involved and sometimes there aren't. Got it? No? Too bad.

Premise

It's very simple. Young girl comes into a Catholic school as an exchange student and runs into two chicks making out in a church, because what the hell else are those places good for? Anyway, she gets all panicky but over time, and with constant intervention by the two she sees, she undergoes a very sexual change herself.

Characters

(From Left to Right: Naomi, Rie, Midori. Not Shown: Sister)

Rie: Sort of the main character. Like you get a good glimpse of the story through her eyes, or a fair deal of it, she's also the one who's thoughts you often hear whenever something's going on. However, you tend to play as others (technically) in the little arcade games that I'll get to in a bit. In short, Rie's a virgin and doesn't feel it's natural for women to have sex. Bitch. But she's just naive, not like she's there casting out sin on everyone for fucking. She's shy, energetic when she needs to be, and an incredible liar to herself.

Naomi: The boss lady, so to speak. She's only a year or so older than Rie and Midori but she's definitely the one in charge of her and Midori. She's beautiful, sexual, but still a fair lover. She doesn't force anything on anyone but she definitely likes helping cute girls explore their own sexual desires.

Midori: Naomi's clinger-on. She's like a little puppy dog when she's around her “Big sister” often taking the background. But when she's alone, she becomes a true vixen. Someone who probably understands that Naomi won't be there forever so she needs to get ready to take said position when she does leave. She first helps Rie discover herself and it's hinted that the two are bound to become lovers.

Sister: Because it's a Catholic school there's bound to be these chicks, right? Women of clothe, but this one just so happens to like taking her clothes off and fuck herself. She's just as big a slut as the previous two and really makes that point known as she takes advantage of a sleeping Rie.

Playstyles

Novel: Pretty basic, just read the text. Unless you understand Japanese, because that's what the girls speak. The only parts that aren't spoken are Rie's thoughts as even the slurping and licking noises are made audible. There's no moving action, just pictures of the characters either staring at you or in some random/erotic position.

Arcade: Okay, so...here's where explaining things will get tricky. First off, these moments come in anytime something sexual is taking place. Like kissing, pussy licking, breast rubbing, anything like that. The object of the game is to leave the frame area and connect yourself to another wall thus unlocking a section of the next image, and therefore the next part of the story. You do this until the health of the boss gets low enough (as indicated by the bar at the top of the screen) empties out for that particular round, which there are always three. There are dangers, obviously. Enemies that seek you out or ones that just cut or bounce across the field. The boss goes everywhere and, following a warning, fires out in random directions. You get six lives that carry over between the three rounds and once they're all gone it's game over.

As I mentioned above, and you better had been paying attention, this is really where it seems like you take control of another person. They don't say so directly, but these games tend to happen when so and so is set to do something to Rie. So it just makes sense, I figure.

Kinks Explored

-Breast play

-Exhibitionism

-Face sitting

-Fingering

-Masturbation

-Strap on

The Skinny Bitty Bikini

So if you're just reading through the text, as you have the options of shutting off the voices, the game can roughly take you around three hours or so to get through. Otherwise, somewhere around four.

Some of the special features include both a scenario mode and CG mode. The scenario mode allows you to replay scenes with their dialogue. However, when it comes time for the arcade game to normally kick in the scene just kinda does a white fade to the next image. CG mode is about the same, just with no text. So you're going through all the pictures shown during a scenario. That of course means that you don't have to worry about saving at each scenario because you basically have them saved once you unlock them anyway!

That said, there's around 25 save files for the game. 25! Or 20. I'm not gonna double check. Thing is, you don't even need that many because aside from a progress save, the only other time you might want to save is before each arcade game that you get a warning is coming. If you listen to the music and hear it fade out as a new dialogue box opens up...chances are once you click the button again you're in an arcade game. So since you can save whenever, you can just save, play the game, then come back to it whenever.

The music itself isn't too bad. There's about two normal tracks that play through reading and such and two tracks that play for the arcade game. Though the second track doesn't come in until the last arcade game, which is OH MY GOD difficult. Everything is everywhere and the boss has a steadily increasing rapid fire mode that further you get.

Final Thoughts

Already? Well, I'm not gonna sit here and explain every scene when there's not much to explain. They have sex, every one of them. The whole reason for the game is for Naomi, Midori, and even Sister to see if they can turn Rie into a nympho. Do they? Of course they do! It's a happy ending game, after all. She goes from being concerned over what they're doing to her to just flat out begging or even craving more, more, MORE!

Rie's End of Game Mental State: Total nympho slut. Though just to the three girls...for the moment.

Overall Opinion

I like it. That's...that's it. I go back every now and then and play through the arcade games. I don't need the disc as after it installs, that's it. So go out and buy it. Now. Nooooooooooow-ah.