Now for something lewd. Cobra Mission is an erotic hentai JRPG. So, be warned. If you don't want to read about a game in which the main idea of eroticism is a pair of breasts now and then, mixed together with some textual descriptions of sex, it might be smart to stop right here. That way, you don't need to get upset about this review.
If this isn't an issue, then do continue.
JR Knight, a Florida private eye, hasn't been in his home town of Cobra for years. Then he's suddenly contacted by his old childhood friend Faythe Watson. (Both of these names can be customized, if you want.) She tells JR how many young girls have gone missing in the small island town, and as he's a PI, maybe he could help find her friend Donna.
The arrival of Cobra starts in a friendly way, when a gang attacks JR just as he's peeping at some naked chicks on a beach through a pier telescope. Armed with his trusty pistol, this first battle is easy enough, and JR continues to Faythe's home, where she gives him the lay of the land. Basically, the whole town is a mess after a criminal mastermind named Kaiser moved in. Now, even the cops have stopped patrolling. And people are going missing left and right.
There aren't any side quests as such. Most of the things you do are directly tied to the main mission. It's possible to earn some extra cash by doing delivery missions for a local delivery service, and this is, especially at the beginning, a quick way to make some much-needed money. The game isn't very hard, so most of the healing items you can buy are relatively unnecessary. Only at the end of the game do you need them. And by then, you have money to buy them. And you have a lot of items you've found by rummaging the world. The most important items to splurge on are weapons and armor, but there aren't too many of those, and explorers can find a good lot of them for free from houses. Overall, it's pretty rare to pop into a store beyond purchasing some missing armor.
As Cobra Mission is a hentai game, there are some sex scenes. On some points, you need to spend some time while Faythe is doing other things, and one way, or I guess the only way, of doing that is to spend quality time with a lady of the night. Then there's the local pervert, who collects women's lingerie, and each item you bring him nets you a dirty photo. Seekers can also find girly magazines, each containing a single naughty image. And finally, you can give a phone call to some of the women you and Faythe rescue, and they are more than willing to show their gratitude and play a rather boring date mini-game where you need to click properly on a proper location on their body to get it on.
And that's really the hentai portion of the Cobra Mission. Some topless pictures of women in daring poses and a rather lackluster dating game. And lewd text, obviously.
Despite the context of kidnapped women and gangs harassing the city, the story of the Cobra Mission isn't very serious. It's not quite The Naked Gun, but it's somewhere there. In general, though, the story and the humor lose quite a bit of steam towards the end, and especially the cemetery and Kaiser's castle are more tedious to grind to the end. This is visible on the enemies as well, as around the 4th section of the city, you start seeing more robots, then in the cemetery, some magical monsters, which feel out of place in the game and come across like they were meant for some entirely different game.
Around the 4th section of the game, you are also introduced to some light puzzles, which are more or less walking around a maze looking for the right button to press. This is mirrored in Kaiser's castle, when you need to power down four laser fields, which means endless walking around in a maze looking for crystal balls and pyramids before you get to kick Kaiser's ass.
Most of the game is played as a party of two. JR is the lead, and Faythe is a companion you can control in combat. Which equates to controlling her weapon cursors to decide in what place you hit the enemy. The combat itself is rather simplistic. It has an interesting turn-based system where you have more moves than the enemy. While the enemy's turn bar is loading, you can attack them as many times as you can. As there's usually just one enemy at a time attacking you, it's common to kill them before they can move at all. But there's some skill involved, as you need to move the attack cursor to the right spot before attacking. Usually, each enemy has a sweet spot to hit, like their head or a visible open spot in armor. It's not an overly complex system, but it's fun enough for the short duration of the game.
Graphically, Cobra Mission isn't particularly good. It does have some decent graphics, especially the opening cinematic, which is very well done, but overall, the in-game graphics could be described as crude. The pixel art is chunky, rather colorless, and bland. Even the hentai art is somewhat underwhelming. The music is at best passable; at worst, you just turn your sound off. It's not like you'd be missing anything else by doing so, as the audioscape is similarly unimpressive.
Cobra Mission is a rather simple, short, and easy JRPG. It does pad itself out at the end, and in many ways, it would be more enjoyable if the last part of the game, with its overly long mazes, were trimmed down considerably. That said, it's also a surprisingly fun little game, all its faults considered.
Would I recommend it? Depends. If you are looking for a simple JRPG and don't mind some nudity and coarse language, then I might, but if not, then the answer is more obvious. To my knowledge, it's not sold anywhere, so if you do want to play it, search engines are your friend.
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