Review of VideoGame/BlueGuardianMargaret: Video Game.Blue Guardian Margaret

The flag here for BlueGuardianMargaret was sent with the rationale

Cut, it's Ryona, and doesn't pretend to be anything but. The game over images on NightmareFuel.Blue Guardian Margaret are obviously meant to appeal to those with Ryona fetishes, and the main trope pages's Bestiality Is Depraved entry is just there to shoehorn in graphic descriptions of animal sex scenes.

While this isn't the scope of this thread, Fox Eye's works should be combed through completely, at least Holdover and Sacrifice Girl, as they all seem to be Ryona games focused strongly on drowning without much plot to them.

Pretty much all of them seem to be the work of one troper as well, which may imply a common theme?

Edited by Tonwen on Jul 26th 2022 at 7:52:05 AM

I'm so sorry if those pages were causing trouble here after several years of editing them.

To my admittance, it all started from me encountering one of those games' pages on here already (Holdover) before I even had any prior knowledge of them. Sometime after I did, I just took off with including, editing, and writing about more of them as I learned of them. A couple other games' pages were also started by other people, but I basically gave most of the contributions into them afterwards.

I've had some prior experience writing for other pages of NSFW game material (such as Senran Kagura), so I didn't think all the way that this group of games were too much to write about on this site.

Again, I'm so sorry if I should not have done any of this.

Edited by Carls493 on Jul 27th 2022 at 5:59:15 AM

Don't worry, you were editing in good faith and it seems like most of the Fox Eye games are legit. If you have more information on whether you think this game violates our standards, please weigh in - the word of someone who's played it carries a lot of weight here.

Anyway, hm. It seems to be an edge case just by looking at it. On the one hand, legitimate gameplay and Metroidvania. On the other hand, drowning fetish Ryona. Leaning toward a devilhead but not completely sure.

EDIT: While I'm open to changing my mind if someone's played it (for research), I think that the combination of drowning ryona and bestiality gets my thumbs down.

I would, however, caution against a "let's go through all of the Fox Eye games" attitude, though. It seems many of them have more gameplay and less sex than this one. If you think a specific game is a problem, I'd recommend bringing it up individually instead of swinging a broad hatchet (the point of starting this process was to avoid randomly swinging the axe).

Edited by Ramidel on Jul 27th 2022 at 6:15:23 AM

To be honest, the Blue Guardian Margaret game is by far the most explicit of all of Fox Eye's games, and I have at least seen as many of those games and played some of them at this point from that developer to confirm this. Everything else is "tamer" by comparison to that game (relatively speaking, of course, as they're all just NSFW to lesser extents).

If you just have to cut a page from that developer's games from this site, I would have to believe it would be the pages for that game, first, even as I tried very much to also write about more than just its sexual and fetishy content (such as how it plays figuratively and literally like Metroid).

Is there a plot to the game, and is the plot more than an Excuse Plot that simply exists to set up the drowning, bestiality, etc. fetish scenes? That's the crucial question that will determine my vote, personally.

Thanks for your help by the way.

The plot is that a girl must venture through a tower of a god to eliminate it of a monster infestation after she was too lazy to guard the tower sooner. She is guided by a young god to help her with the quest.

There is also a group of knights that also want to defend the holy tower, but a majority of the game’s spoilers and plot twists involve how their leader may be a double agent that has contributed to some of the holy tower’s problems, and what the real truth of his role in the game’s plot is.

I have tried to cover those details on the main page, as well.

I don't think there's a degree of plot that makes up for the fetishized scenes of drowning and rat rape.

Sounds like it does.

The first principle, as it was articulated back when we were beginning this policy, is that porn has nothing to talk about trope-wise. This game has, apparently, plenty to talk about in terms of plot and spoilers.

My vote is now keep.

I wanted to write about different aspects of these games. Not just the spicy stuff.

To me, they've been serviceable games enough for more than just pandering to certain kinks. I couldn't not include such details, but I also couldn't just ignore everything else I've seen and experienced out of them.

For example, the drowning is definitely the developer's main fetish with these games, but it's also balanced out by providing legitimate challenges that involve handling the Oxygen Meter correctly in order to complete the games, to the point where I considered the developer a Most Triumphant Example of that trope and the different ways they utilized it.

I didn't mean any harm with writing these pages. I was writing them out from my soul and support towards the company that made them.

I don't mean any negative to Carls 493 when I made my post, and I believe him when he says he meant nothing negative with the pages.

I still maintain, however, that the game is cuttable, at least this specific one. The mechanics are built heavily around fetishized drowning, and has an arousal meter as a major gameplay function.

If anything, this could be an important game to talk about where to draw the line between "porn but with enough external elements to keep" and "too porn focused to keep".

Carls has a playthrough up on Youtube, but I'm not sure if it's censored or not, and whether someone who would be less experienced with the game would be able to avoid some of the more questionable aspects. (I, for the record, think the "are the sex elements avoidable" aspect should count if avoiding it would require near perfect gameplay, as that's not a reasonable expectation for most people, but that's just an addon.)

My playthrough of the game was carefully played to at least avoid the rat moments. It was the one thing I wanted to make sure I could avoid with recording this game the most versus everything else.

It's not impossible nor even difficult to do, and both it, and arousal mechanic related to it, aren't required to beat the game. The game even allows you to restart from a checkpoint by pausing if you mess something up.

I still raise an eyebrow at the sex scenes having to be deliberately avoided rather than completely optional, but thank you for the clarification on that.

So, this is one of those games. Those where the H-scenes are entirely in game over scenes, and if you attempt to play the game "normally" porn will be only am minor part of your experience. I am not sure what the general approach should be.

Tonwen brought up something that seems interesting- they figure that if avoiding sex scenes requires "near perfect gameplay" they should not be treated as optional. I get that argument, but I think it raises the question: how hard CAN avoiding sex scenes be before we treat them as mandatory? I've played some games where generally being good at the game even if far from perfect is enough to reliably avoid a game over.

Normally we'd consider gameplay/porn ratio, but when the amount of porn you see is a decreasing function of how much you engage with the gameplay, it's hard to analyze.

This game felt to me like it restrained itself in some ways from really being as H-Game as it comes off for itself, while proving that right in other ways. For example, although there are sex scenes, there's never any drawn or uncensored genitalia. The developer seems to avoid ever doing that.

The game also has an adjustable difficulty setting. So anyone that wants an easier run through it can do so and have a better time not triggering these kind of scenes though so much as "normal" or "amateur" play.

i saw that this thread was open, so i felt like i needed to toss in my two cents on this game, going from my post in the original P5 thread:

I got the game recently (partially bc of reading the trope page for it >.>) and I can confirm that the game is, at the very least, softcore ryona (if “softcore ryona” is even a thing). Margaret asphyxiating is… “lovingly” rendered, to put it lightly.

On the other hand, the game thankfully doesn’t get heavier than it’s usual fanservice (aside from Margaret getting violated by certain enemies). Margaret very much averts Nipple and Dimed but her downstairs bits aren’t drawn, even in the nakey variants of all of the game over CGs. Then again, I haven’t gotten very far in the game yet so some of that may change.

I can reconfirm with you that her “downstairs” bits are never drawn in this game. The developer has never done that with their girls, despite the nature of everything else in the game implying otherwise.

The game is naughty some ways, but it still feels like it somewhat restraints itself in other ways.

Given it's one of those "h-scenes happen when you lose" games, in theory a fair question to ask is: If you play the game conventionally trying to win and try to avoid deaths (whether or not you succeed), is it still FUN to play? Of course I suppose this is waaaaay too subjective a criterion to be much use in practice.

Edited by paradisedj32 on Aug 13th 2022 at 10:59:36 AM

Also, it gets into the quality of the game, which we definitely don't want to be using as a criterion.

It's... It's ryona. Water-themed ryona. It might not be "porn" in the traditional sense, but it was still primarily made to cater to people who get their rocks off to this stuff. In practice, it's kind of porn.

The argument that "it's not porn if you play perfectly" is kind of dodgy, IMO. I'd say it's rather questionable to keep a work if it takes more effort to not stumble upon the murder-cheesecake than to find it.

Cut.

Edited by WackyPancake on Aug 29th 2022 at 9:16:24 PM

If you were to remove all the fetishistic/pornographic game over screens, does the game still have a functional plot? If yes, then my vote is a pretty easy keep on the grounds that the game, at worst, qualifies as "porn with plot", since from what others have said the sex/fetish scenes are kept entirely to (at least ostensibly) optional game-over screens (and thus are not integrated into the gameplay itself).

Edited by 4maskwolf on Aug 30th 2022 at 8:50:59 AM

What exactly is ryona? I don't dare look that up myself.

Basically fetishization of violence

To respond to 4maskwolf, yes. Even without the game over screens, the game's plot remains the same. Those screens are just there for show, but the plot does not absolutely require them to be shown for the plot to make sense.

I vote keep, then.