Oh dear, the most pathetic videogame in the history of optical media

[Mondain]

http://www.mobygames.com/game/windows/x-change

In this game, you are Takuya Aihara, just an average guy. You live with your father and your stepmother, go to school, and nobody really notices you - until one fine day you accidently spill on yourself a mysterious liquid in a chemistry lab. The liquid turns you into... a girl! Now everybody notice you and everybody want you. The question is, will you rather stay like this or return to your normal male self?..

This is what you'll have to decide in this game. Become an uncontrolled nymphomaniac or try to do everything in order to get your original gender back. Like most other hentai games, "XChange" is based on choices you make during the game. There are two main endings and many smaller, unsatisfying ones, which you'd want to avoid at all costs.

Now here's an user review to make you realize how dreadful this "game" is...

Bishojo/hentai games are heavily stereotyped. Just for a second, think about the term ‘hentai'. Hm? Got a good opinion formed on the subject? Most likely, I would be correct when you associate the term ‘hentai' with ‘porn' or ‘sex' or something along those lines altogether. Myself, an avid bishojo/hentai game player, has been negatively labeled dozens of times by the widest range of people, just because I play games of a particular genre. The truth is, the bishojo/hentai game market is very wide and holds some wonderful games that are not designed to fulfill our neanderthal sexual desire. Games like Kana Little Sister, Crescendo, or Divi-Dead have proved that hentai and sex CAN be used as literary devises to invoke emotion, whether it be sadness (Kana), pity (Crescendo, Yuka's path), or raw fear (Divi-Dead). Bishojo games are really one-of-a-kind games that can really make you feel very close to the characters and general events.

This is not one of those games.

X-Change, translated by Peach Princess, has made its way into the view of many bishojo game players. The great popularity brought me to finally purchase the game. This was back when I had already played much of the classic bishojo games (3 Sister's Story, Seasons of the Sakura, Nocturnal Illusions, May Club, etc…), but not the newer ones (Chain, Tokimeki Check in!, etc…). I installed with an open mind and very little information about the game.

The game started out typically enough. You play as Takuya Aihara, who came straight from the template of ‘typical main character'. He's a teenager, normal, unimpressive, and weak. However, his life is changed when he accidentally spills several innocuous chemicals on his body, transforming him into a big-breasted woman overnight! Shock!

He awakes and ends up feeling himself up to cope with the change, which I can't say I would blame him for. As he's enjoying himself, his sister walks in and sees that he's a girl. Rather than try and help, it turns out that she's conveniently bisexual and forcefully molests our hero of the story. It was at this point that I learned that the game would have an unhealthy habit of introducing a character and then have that character partake in the action of rape with our hero, Takuya. My hopes for the game plummeted.

Takuya, unfazed by the fact this his loving sister just partook in LESBIAN SEX with him, commences to head downstairs, where the game once again has another opportunity to show some ecchi by Takuya showing his new chest to his parents to prove that he has indeed become a woman (No, dad, I'm kidding. Those G-sized cups on my chest are just various things I stuffed down my shirt. Oh, and by the way, we need to talk about sis…). The funny thing is, I don't recall any of Takuya's parents asking to see his gigantic boobs.

Alright, I'm getting off track here. From the moment he gets to school to the time he goes to bed Takuya is raped every…. Oh… 2.5 seconds. Give or take a few milliseconds. This list includes his sister, his sister's boyfriend, his peers, his nurse and her slave/s, his admirer, and the good old dirty gym teacher. And let's not forget the sex bus. Takuya manages to walk onto a bus, thinking it's the school bus he must have rode hundreds of times to school. It turns out to be a bus where everyone is having sex with someone else (He seemed to have missed the moaning and screaming and full nudity when he boarded). He complains to the driver, and wants to get off. Now, considering the course of the game so far, I figured he was about to be raped once more. Well, send me down to the dog tracks, because I guessed right.

Needless to say, I'm sure girls at Takuya's school must either A: Walk around with an easy to use pepper-spray to ward off lechers, or B: Wear one of those metal chastity belts that shoot lasers when you try and unlock it. But then, Takuya's ‘misfortunate' (He constantly seems to enjoy it, I won't go into further detail) could be the result of C: He's simply a huge idiot. Which is entirely possible and probable, now that I look at it. Especially after considering the whole ‘sex bus' episode.

Gameplay is your standard bishojo/hentai fare. A background picture shows the place, anime-drawn pictures of characters appear in front of it to signify who you're communicating with, a bar at the bottom displays the text with several option bottoms above and below it. At some points in the game, you manage to have a choice on a particular action, which is the only way you can drive towards a certain ending (Not that I'm nagging about it. Like I said, it is standard bishojo fare). The options, off the top of my head, are save, load, voice on/off, music on/off, title, and exit. Thankfully, the ‘skip' option is the most welcome thing the game has to offer. It makes the text flash by at blazing, unreadable speeds, thus converting the very short (I kid you not) half-hour of game time to get the best ending to a even shorter game time of four minutes. I'm sure the developers put this in there for the people who already beat it and want just skip the old scenes to view the new, but I used it on my second run through to lessen the suffering.

Another one of X-Change's big draws is the endings. There are a total of seven endings, most of which are the exact same thing. So, considering that X-Change takes that massive half-hour (And I'm being generous) to complete, with very little branching paths that don't lead to an ending, you can get all X-Change has to offer in a few short hours. Hours better spent knitting a sweater or lamenting your newest physic ability (Or, if the latter isn't possible for you, pretending to lament your newest physic ability). Realistically, the two ‘good' endings are the same, but with different girls. The last two are all the same, but the reasoning behind your action (Or rather, the people behind the reasoning of your action) is different. Lest to say, it just isn't worth it to obtain them all.

There are two other options besides ‘new game' ‘load game' ‘options' and ‘exit' in the main menu. It is the ‘music view' and ‘cg view' menus. The music views lets you listen to the campy, mediocre tunes and the cg view lets you view the pictures that contain hentai or ecchi. It really puts into perspective how many people ‘tap dat ass'. That ass being Takuya's. Both aren't detracting from the game experience, but both are standard fare in bishojo/hentai games.

I will say that X-Change is probably the worst game I have ever played, but it does have some redeeming qualities. First, the character designs aren't half-bad. Anime-styled, full of color, and not oddly-proportioned (*Cough*Crescendo*Cough*). And if you play just to release your hormonal instincts, you'll probably be confused, but I'm sure you would manage it. But still, why settle for this when Tokimeki Check in! is right next to it, with at least triple the game play, more endings, and more girls? Those comments, and the fact that I think that no game deserves a 1 out of 10, make up my final review score.

That said, X-Change is a suitable purchase or download if you've already beaten every ending of 3 Sister's Story, Seasons of the Sakura, May Club, Nocturnal Illusions, Fatal Relations, Runaway City, True Love 95, Tokimeki Check in!, Chain, Private Nurse, Kana Little Sister, Crescendo, and Divi-Dead. Yes, I just ran off the names of the bishojo/hentai games I've played off the top of my head. But for my opinion, X-Change is worse. Crap like this is a big reason why the bishojo/hentai game market is heavily stereotyped. Avoid, not for your own sake, but for the sake of the bishojo/hentai genre as a whole.

Reviewer's Score: 2/10, Originally Posted: 07/09/04

This genre is really shameful, and nearly everything in it is mediocre. How could anyone be aroused by this? Why would anyone waste his time to bear boring dialogue with the same poorly-drawn frames of animation used over and over again, only to do the same process multiple times over to get the different endings?

Not to mention that these horrors aren't games. All that a user is mandated to do while playing is to click on a dialogue tree's option boxes about ten times. All the rest is passivity.

[Van Cruncheon]

why would anyone search for information on hentai games, i ask

[Vizzys]

lol

xchange

lol

why indeed did you look this up

[Mondain]

duh, i looked up such reviews to laugh at the patheticness of the people who were really into these sorts of games, and tried it to witness how gross the game was

it was so unbelivably awful, it gave me the creeps to see a transvestite getting raped by any person that he/she encounters at every two minutes

[Ichirou]

duh, i looked up such reviews to laugh at the patheticness of the people who were really into these sorts of games, and tried it to witness how gross the game was

it was so unbelivably awful, it gave me the creeps to see a transvestite getting raped by any person that he/she encounters at every two minutes

So...you read the reviews and actually played the game.  Just to see how awful it was.

I totally believe you, dude.