Yin-Yang! Another X-Change

"Generally better than XChange 1-3, but still lots of potential for improvement"

Warning: This game is a h-game and is strictly for adult. If you're under 18 or the legal age of your respective countries, then please read no further.

For those who are wondering, I played the Jap version of this game so my review is of course based on that. I doubt there would be any difference between the Jap and the coming English version other than the voice acting and the censorships, so this review should be useful for those who wants to look at an opinion about this game before deciding whether to get it or not.

You play as Kaoru, a male highschool student who strangely, has feminine facial features. One day, you accidently drank an experimental formulae that had the effect of stimulating growth in the human body and due to a certain reason (which will become known as you play on), it eventually had the effect of turning Kaoru into a girl. So the bizarre adventure of playing as a girl begins once again...

Music/Audio: 9/10

Nothing to complain about. Very well done voice acting and fitting music with a theme song as well. You can download the theme song from the Official site for free for those who want to hear it.

Graphics: 9/10

Very good, typical Japanese game graphics. In fact, I found the graphics in this game better than XChange 3's. The girls' figures were realistically drawn, unlike those unrealistic super sized breasts that Jap games and anime tend to have nowadays.

Gameplay: 0/10

Click, read, click, read, choose, click, read....that's what this game is all about. Usually, I wouldn't complain too much about gameplay in h-games because most of them tend to be the same. But I must complain about the gameplay in this game because this is already the fourth game in this series. The first problem is that there were very limited choice where you get to make. Basically, it might take you half an hour of gameplay before you get to our first choice and on average, the game would after about 5-6 choices. That's pathetic, really. You feel very restricted in freedom when you play this game due to the very limited choices and the click, read, click gameplay certainly made it even more frustrating. This is one of the only few places that Yin-Yang is worse than the other original XChanges.

Secondly, the choices were SO easy that you would know what to choose if you are going for a specific ending. Bottomline...there is no challenge at all.

Lastly, I couldn't believe that after 3 XChanges, they couldn't come up with better improvements to the gameplay. Wouldn't it be nice if you can choose which clothes to buy and which clothes to wear? Wouldn't it be nice if you can choose which places to go at a specific time? Wouldn't it be nice if there are more places you can choose to go to? But no...the developers at Crowd just had to be so hard headed and kept preferring the click, read, click method. There are reasons why h-games like Nanpa 1-2, Syuusaku, Kisaku, Isaku and the Itazura/Chikan series were so popular and long remembered. They were classics because those games have good plot, very free gameplay and the game themselves were very challenging. So why Crowd chose to stick with this boring click, read, click method I do not know.

Plot: 7/10

If you look at the score alone you might become disappointed. But please...don't be! The reason why it is only 7/10 isn't because the plot were crap. It was because of the potential that were wasted by this game that caused it to be a 7/10. Basically, the plot is mich better than XChange 1-3, IMO. To start with, Kaoru's character was definitely better than Takuya from XChange. Takuya was such a crybaby and loser, whereas Kaoru was exactly the opposite of Takuya with strong, active personality. So for those who're sick of Takuya's personality you're going to find Kaoru so much better.

Secondly, for those who're tired of unnecessary rape scenes from XChange 1-3 (especially the imfamous rape bus), you're going to love this game. There are hardly any rape scenes at all and no more rape buses. Even those very few rape scenes you can avoid with ease.

Thirdly, for those who're expecting the endings and h-scenes to work similiar to XChange1-3, you're going to be suprised. Suprisingly, over 50% of the H-scenes were girl-girl. (I bet you didn't expect that!) The rest is a bit of everything like boy-girl, little bit of rape and even shemale! So for those who expect mostly traditional boy-girl h-scenes, you're going to be disappointed. But for those who loves a mixture of everything, you're going to find youself happy with the h-scenes of this game.

Lastly, the storylines of the respective characters were generally deeper than those in XChange 1-3. I particularly liked the one where you end up as a girl with one of your best friend becoming your boyfriend in the end. That was particularly well done and definitely much better than Kouji from XChange. However, there were so many potentials to improve the storylines in this game that I have to say that the developers just didn't tried hard enough to make them better. An example of an area of improvement is the romance part of both as a girl and as a boy. It was hardly touched on if you end up back as a boy. However, it was touched in some depths if you play as a girl, but still there're lots of possible improvements.

Replayability: 2/10

The reason why you would want to replay this game will be because you want to obtain 100% CG, but you'll find that your motivations will very quickly disintergrate and you'll also find yourself lose patience fairly quickly. That is because of the lack of choices/freedom/challenges (ie. very linear plot and linear gameplay) while you'll be doing lots of reading at the same time. In fact, I lost interest in playing after I finished 4-5 of the endings and not to mention that 2 of those endings were achieved after a loading from a save game close to the end of the game.

Overall, this game is definitely better than XChange 1-3 in almost every aspect. The only bad thing about it is the lack of freedom/choice and the same old boring click, read, click gameplay that is really getting boring. Not to mention the other possible potentials where this game could have improved...

Reviewer's Score: 7/10, Originally Posted: 11/27/06