One of the best hentai games on the market.
This review is about a game that contains sexual content. Do not read if you are under age 18, or easily offended.
The Good: Good selection of customizable girls; Multiple areas for sexual encounters with day/night variations; great visual design; multiple sex positions; user-made content.
The Bad: Swimsuits are not customizable; no ethnic girls; limited oral sex options; average visuals and sound; little replay value; cliché story; poorly designed "dates."
When I first heard about Sexy Beach 3, it was described by its fans as being "the game DOAX was supposed to be." That intrigued me since I liked some of the elements of the DOAX series, but thought it could have been better.
But there is a clear difference. DOAX is a video game that features busty babes in bikinis. PG-13 stuff. SB3 is a porno game that has some interesting elements, but falls well into the XXX category. It's more porn than game.
GAMEPLAY – 8 of 10
There's no story to speak of in SB3. You play as an anonymous, non-customizable male that arrives on a tropical island. The only other guests on the tropical get-away seem to be females in need of a good time. From there, you can choose what girl you want to date. You're given a brief, pre-set dialog session with your girl of choice, but can't choose what your character says.
With the introductions out of the way, you can choose a part of the island for your "date." Which consists of nothing more than a preset animation loop of the girl doing some beach-related activity. Do this a few times, and the girl will get friendlier and let you rub tanning oil on her. After a couple days, she'll really warm up and let you have sex with her. Continue doing this, and more sexual positions, swimsuits, and oral sex will be available.
The ultimate goal here is to get a 5-heart rating with a girl. At this point she can wear any swimsuit (including topless variations) and have sex with your character anywhere, and at any time. From there, you pick another girl and repeat the process.
SB3 is nothing revolutionary in terms of gameplay. Dating and having sex is the only gameplay element here. Everything is handled through the mouse for obvious reasons. Without an English patch, the GUI is confusing, and you wont have any idea how to perform certain actions.
But once you do unlock all the options for a girl, you'll find that there are a surprising number of sexual positions available. Including doggie style, blowjobs, cowgirl, and other variations. You can also control the speed of each position, and perform slight variations of each, like a rotating motion. There are even some "hidden" positions if you get the girl's pleasure meter to the right spot.
GRAPHICS – 7 of 10
SB3 is clearly focusing on realistic girls more than inviting environments. All the girls are modeled with a clear anime art style. Their breasts bounce, and move realistically, if a little exaggerated, with every motion. Makes me wonder if they were motion captured. They also have nice facial expressions, even if they are a little basic. You can easily tell if they're having a good time or not. Their bodies will also shine with sweat the longer the action goes on. If you apply enough tanning oil, they will develop tan lines. They can even get sunburn.
However, the backgrounds suffer at the expense of the girls. Although you won't be looking at them often, there are some painful looking textures. Water is flat, and un-life like. There are no lighting effects, and the camera will sometimes clip though the background at odd angles. Which forces you to alter the settings mid-scene.
The GUI is also hard to navigate, and can get in the way of the action sometimes. Unless you can read Japanese, you'll want to pick up the English patch. You can also turn off a lot of the on-screen GUI menus.
SOUND – 6 of 10
The sound is also sub-par. But what do you expect from a porno game? What little spoken dialog there is in the game is confined to the sex scenes, or the dating text. Even then, it's in Japanese. Maybe that's a good thing. I'd rather not be able to understand the language than to hear cheesy porno one-liners.
The sound effects are greatly exaggerated, and cartoonish. Maybe that's the style that the devs were looking for, but it just comes off as being out of place. There's also no music to speak of to set the mood or scene. You're probably just better off muting the sound.
VALUE – 7 of 10
The value that one gets out of Sexy Beach 3 will depend on how much the player likes pornography. Once you unlock all the costumes and sex positions for each girl, there really isn't much to do other than make your own sex scenes. But once you've seen them all, it tends to get stale.
Custom mods can improve the gameplay slightly, and give you new swimsuits and costumes to wear. But there are no ethnic girls. All of the girls are Japanese anime styled, and thus wont find any Black or Latina babes.
Sexy Beach 3 is without a doubt the best sex/dating game on the market right now. I wish the dating were more fleshed out, though. As it stands now, there's no way a girl can dump you, or otherwise fail a date. There are a surprising number of sex options and locations, but other options are somewhat limited. There are no female oral sex options, and no avatar customization. You also can't swap different swimsuit tops and bottoms.
It's nice to have a company like Illusion that's so committed to making adult games. With some improvements, more compelling gameplay features, and better English support, Sexy Beach 3 could have been a major hit. Here's hoping the next Sexy Beach will be even better.