DR² Night Janki is a mahjong game with adult scenes. The game has two modes: "Story" and "Regular". The story mode is set in a medieval castle, which is said to be ancient grounds for sorcery, but is currently controlled by the mysterious Rumira, who runs a mahjong club. The hero, a man named Ryuuji, decides to investigate the castle, and therefore has to defeat its inhabitants in mahjong matches.
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I'm continuing to dive into the obscure world of PC-98 mahjong games with this DR2 (dora dora, I guess?) Night Janki.
This is a honestly a game more interesting for its history than for what it actually is. It's the first game created by Leaf, eroge branch of game publisher Aquaplus. This company was originally established as U-Office in 1994 by former TGL composer Naoya Shimokawa, with the help of another TGL colleague, Shinji Orito. Their goal was focused on music, but they quickly shifted to making games.
Well, turns out making games is hard, and DR2 Night Janki was forgotten for a reason.
This is your standard 1-on-1 strip mahjong soft. At the start, you're presented with two modes: AVG (adventure game) mode, which is the standard story mode, and practice mode, where you can play against the various girls as much as you want (if you want to train your mahjong skills against a cheating AI, here's your chance).
The story of the game is paper-thin, even for the genre. You play as a detective named Ryuuji known for his psychic abilities and outrageous riichi mahjong skills (what a resume). He receives one day an invitation to an ancient mansion. He's not the first one to get one, but everyone before him who went there never came back (not a good sign, I'd say). Obviously our protagonist is made of different stuff and is up and ready to solve the mansion's mystery. To get to the heart of things, he'll have to fend off a number of demon girls inhabiting the place by defeating them in a deadly match of strip mahjong. Yeah, really.
The game is divided in two phases: adventure and mahjong. In the adventure part you move in the mansion by selecting each room on a map. You can also search a room and,... That's it. Your goal is to find and fight every girl to get to the end. Since there are only 7 girls for 6 mahjong battles (the devil girls Ivil and Evil are staying together), it feels pretty short. There's also a shop where you can buy healing and cheat items.
The mahjong part is competent. There's no popup to indicate if you can riichi or steal tiles (you need to open the menu), but otherwise it's not different from your modern mahjong video game interpretation. It's when you win that you'll see the true weirdness (and deviousness) of DR2NJ. You're presented with a simple choice: taking heath from your opponent, or turning points into money. Winning three hands is enough to defeat most girls (except for the much tougher final boss), but if you neglect to get money, you'll quickly regret it since it's the only way you can get items or even heal! You have a health bar, and it will decrease depending on how much "damage" (points) you get hit with. It means that small hands will remove half a heart, but a yakuman can outright one-shot you (just great). You don't get any health back between battles so you will absolutely want that money, but on the other hand trying to "milk" the enemy can be a recipe for disaster. My advice is to keep the money when you win really big hands, and deal damage with small one. It's a neat risk/reward system on paper, but it can be infuriating in practice and up the difficulty significantly.
DR2NJ is full of that kind of strange game design making the game feel amateurish. You can get super special skills to help you, but to learn them, you've got to check empty rooms several times without any hint. Those skills are not even that helpful considering they take a whole heart to use (your default health is only three hearts)!
There are three endings to the game, and every time you need to defeat the very difficult final boss. Since they all kinda suck, just go for the true end... Except, here come the twist, the true end is gated behind a number puzzle. Why? Why would you do this? Is this a mahjong game or fucking Layton? Just baffling stuff.
DR2 Night Janki is a late-era PC-98, and it looks as good as expected. I always felt than the cute character art in Leaf games didn't fit the erotic and sometimes violent content very well, but beyond that I've got no real issue. The highlight would be the music. You can even choose between a FM, MIDI, or CD soundtrack depending on your setup.
This is competent enough to not be considered kusoge, but it's clearly not a game worth playing even if you're a mahjong or Leaf fan.
This is a honestly a game more interesting for its history than for what it actually is. It's the first game created by Leaf, eroge branch of game publisher Aquaplus. This company was originally established as U-Office in 1994 by former TGL composer Naoya Shimokawa, with the help of another TGL colleague, Shinji Orito. Their goal was focused on music, but they quickly shifted to making games.
Well, turns out making games is hard, and DR2 Night Janki was forgotten for a reason.
This is your standard 1-on-1 strip mahjong soft. At the start, you're presented with two modes: AVG (adventure game) mode, which is the standard story mode, and practice mode, where you can play against the various girls as much as you want (if you want to train your mahjong skills against a cheating AI, here's your chance).
The story of the game is paper-thin, even for the genre. You play as a detective named Ryuuji known for his psychic abilities and outrageous riichi mahjong skills (what a resume). He receives one day an invitation to an ancient mansion. He's not the first one to get one, but everyone before him who went there never came back (not a good sign, I'd say). Obviously our protagonist is made of different stuff and is up and ready to solve the mansion's mystery. To get to the heart of things, he'll have to fend off a number of demon girls inhabiting the place by defeating them in a deadly match of strip mahjong. Yeah, really.
The game is divided in two phases: adventure and mahjong. In the adventure part you move in the mansion by selecting each room on a map. You can also search a room and,... That's it. Your goal is to find and fight every girl to get to the end. Since there are only 7 girls for 6 mahjong battles (the devil girls Ivil and Evil are staying together), it feels pretty short. There's also a shop where you can buy healing and cheat items.
The mahjong part is competent. There's no popup to indicate if you can riichi or steal tiles (you need to open the menu), but otherwise it's not different from your modern mahjong video game interpretation. It's when you win that you'll see the true weirdness (and deviousness) of DR2NJ. You're presented with a simple choice: taking heath from your opponent, or turning points into money. Winning three hands is enough to defeat most girls (except for the much tougher final boss), but if you neglect to get money, you'll quickly regret it since it's the only way you can get items or even heal! You have a health bar, and it will decrease depending on how much "damage" (points) you get hit with. It means that small hands will remove half a heart, but a yakuman can outright one-shot you (just great). You don't get any health back between battles so you will absolutely want that money, but on the other hand trying to "milk" the enemy can be a recipe for disaster. My advice is to keep the money when you win really big hands, and deal damage with small one. It's a neat risk/reward system on paper, but it can be infuriating in practice and up the difficulty significantly.
DR2NJ is full of that kind of strange game design making the game feel amateurish. You can get super special skills to help you, but to learn them, you've got to check empty rooms several times without any hint. Those skills are not even that helpful considering they take a whole heart to use (your default health is only three hearts)!
There are three endings to the game, and every time you need to defeat the very difficult final boss. Since they all kinda suck, just go for the true end... Except, here come the twist, the true end is gated behind a number puzzle. Why? Why would you do this? Is this a mahjong game or fucking Layton? Just baffling stuff.
DR2 Night Janki is a late-era PC-98, and it looks as good as expected. I always felt than the cute character art in Leaf games didn't fit the erotic and sometimes violent content very well, but beyond that I've got no real issue. The highlight would be the music. You can even choose between a FM, MIDI, or CD soundtrack depending on your setup.
This is competent enough to not be considered kusoge, but it's clearly not a game worth playing even if you're a mahjong or Leaf fan.