[Ecchi]Caladrius Blaze

One of those rare lewd schmups, if you ignore all the porn ones nowadays. Calsdrius was originally an Xbox 360 title that has been ported up to the current gen. It features clothes destruction, lewd images for good play, and one of the easiest modes I’ve ever seen in a schmup.

Like most schmups, the story is kind of throwaway, though with its 8 characters I saw enough to piece together what it does have. The king of the land has obtained forbidden alchemy that draws power from the underworld and one of eight(or two) set out to stop his madness as he kills innocents to fuel his new weapons.

You have the ex knight seeking to understand what’s happening, the alchemist who’s village was slaughtered for the very power the king is using, the nun with power from the Goddess herself, a bird, an innocent civilian who was almost turned into another mook, the spirit of the student of the one who created the art being abused by the king, a mish-mash of souls who likes violence a lot, and another knight in a mask. Each one sets out in a ship they find(except the bird) to fight through the country and stop the mad king. Or eat him. Or save him. Or to talk reason into him. Or whatever.

Probably the most interesting thing is that with the 2 player modes you can pair up stories. So the man with a village destroyed is traveling with random innocent girl. These all lead to very different endings, some being very sweet. Like the soul girl being tamed by the power of liking masks. Or the guy being promised two women seeking his attention when they grow up. Honestly those were fun bits.

I do want to note that the game is very obviously setup for a sequel do the the secret boss, and the game never got one. Sad, really. Way to many pervy games have sequel hooks or series setups only never to do deliver do to politics or bad sales.

I don’t play enough schmups to really go all out about the gameplay. It has the usual top down schmup controls. Bomb, shoot, move. No slow down because one of your three special shots is a defense shot that deletes enemy shots. Each character has three special shots(Elemental shots) which once you clear the game with them once can be mix and matched with others whom you have cleared the game. Like the birds basic shot but want the water defense and the spear that rips through things? You can do that. Want three defenses? You can do that two. At the end of each level you use some kind of xp system to power up these shots a bit. Usually increasing projectile size or number.

A feature of the game I never used is the super shot or whatever name you want to call them. The game has three modes and each has a different name for this shot that does the same thing. It uses 50% of your special shot gauges to delete all bullets and do damage to the enemy, kind of like a bomb. How it does it is up to the character. I only learned how to use these when I looked at the manual after finishing the game.

The game is separated into three modes, but these are more three different releases packaged into one game. The first option is the first release of the game, with 5 main levels and a bonus sixth one for not game overing. Each mode has these levels. For the sake of clearing the game this mode is the fastest. Next up is evolution mode, which the the one with the most content. 2 extra missions levels and another main level thrown in, this is the most played mode for getting all the content as beating stage 6 here unlocks all the story conversations for replay in the gallery of who you beat it as. Finally there is arcade mode, which only has the two missions levels added. It replaces some art as well, though I’ll get into that in the lewd segment of this.

A lot of Caladrius’ unlocks are tied to not dying in levels, which anyone can do with the easiest mode this game offers. Practice mode turns off enemy bullets. You can still crash, and boss beams and some other projectiles can still kill you, but without bullets most stages can be beaten by just shooting and not moving until the boss shows up. Perfect for getting unlocks like the end level no dying images. Bad for getting the player characters shame breaks.

Shame breaks is the name of the clothes destruction system this game has. For the player, you have three stages. If you collect enough medals(dropped by enemies when they die) and then die, you will see your character’s outfit lose clothes and they take a new pose. The first two stages can happen at any life counter, but the final one only happens at game over. The player shame breaks are kind of amazing, probably the lewdest art in the game. Poses+ amount of clothes wrecked help sell the whole thing. Bosses also get shame breaks, though theirs is based on speed kills. Boss shame breaks are also notably less lewd them the player characters, looking more like they walked through a room with a lot of nails that scratched their clothing rather then had it blasted off of them. The only exception being the secret boss, who’s break is pretty graphic. Note that the no dying in a level images play up the lewd while giving the bosses more destroyed outfits as they stagger out of their ships. These are the real rewards from each stage, though arcade mode replaces these with cgs of the group of traveling the land. The arcade port is the SFW version in general really, as it also changes the boss shame breaks to even less revealing poses, though it doesn’t change the player ones which are by far the most NSFW parts of the game.

The only other lewd in the game is the bonus images you get for beating the game everyone and getting all there shame breaks. It’s some more clothes destroyed art of some of the player characters and some of the bosses. It’s a nice reward for playing to that point. Note that the game does have some male’s who get shame broken, though for them its more just changing pose. They don’t lose a lot of clothes.

I do wish the gallery was less wonky(though this is caused by most of the art just being character’s shame breaks and not full images), or that screenshotting the game worked normally. For some reason to screenshot I had to hit printscreen+windows, and then I could hit printscreen and it would take the game not what was underneath it. So weird.

I enjoyed it for the most part. It’s a decent schmup with some lewd on the side. Kind of wish there were unlocks that required good play, but really everything can be unlocked via practice mode or dying on purpose. Which is a very weird design choice.

Caladrius Blaze PC save

Has all cgs, all stages in stage select for each mode, and all conversations(cutscenes) playable from gallery.

Gameplay: 6/10 Eroticness: 4/10 Story: 3/10

Completion- What it took:

To get player shame breaks in the gallery, you need to see them three times each. So three gameovers with planned deaths so that you get enough medals to trigger the breaks. Do this while beating the game solo with each character for their endings

Then no die runs of evoltion mode and arcade mode for end level art, getting boss shame breaks as well.

The above will get you basically all the cgs. After that, to get all the replayable cut-scenes beat level 6 of evolution mode with every character and character combination So 8+8!. So 36 times. Do to practice mode a lot of this is more of a time sink then hard.

Also get to stage 6 in all three modes to unlock all stages for stage select.