Joyful Stick: Maid Mansion Review
Welcome once again to Joyful Stick, our NSFW video game review series. Miss the last entry? You can read it here. Today, we’re going to be reviewing another release by Critical Bliss-Maid Mansion. Put on your fanciest dinner jacket and let’s begin.
Self Made Suffering
The idea of a “maid”, a “butler” or any kind of “household help” seems such an obtuse thing to me. It’s a concept wholly alien, the very utterance of such words more akin to unicorns and fantasy. Largely because growing up in poverty, “doing it yourself” isn’t just a fact of life. It becomes your entire identity. Your doctors are WebMD and that app that tells you analog medicines for prescriptions you can’t afford. Your mechanic, plumber and electrician are countless youtube videos that you watch while working on something. The service industry, you come to realize, is something you engage in simply for convenience or because what you need is beyond your skills.
“Jack of All” isn’t just a name, it’s me. It’s something I’ve spent the later years of my life having to gradually un-learn. Asking for help (much more receiving it out of the kindness of someone’s heart) used to make me grimace and protest. I’m happy to say I’m not quite so stubborn anymore.
I mention this not to bemoan my financial plight, but to illustrate the kind of mindset I took to Maid Mansion-a game that (much like Jack of All) lives it’s name. You are in a mansion filled to the brim with maids. They are willing to wait on your ever desire and more. Reading the description, I could feel the hackles raise on the back of my neck. Ugh, I thought, I’m absolutely not the target audience for this. Despite now being willing to accept the idea of help, I’m largely someone who prides themselves on doing things and doing them well. I most certainly would scoff at the idea of getting help from anyone, much less a digital hentai fetish.
Yet, in 2021-who would be? Stating that the last two years have been mental and emotional hell for everyone would be a gross understatement. There’s something to be said for self care, and finding time to be pampered. Even if it’s on the other side of the screen. If my commissions and requests over the last few months are any indication, we all deserve a little time to feel taken care of and loved.
With this driving my purchase, I hauled out my debit card and downloaded it right away. My initial skepticism quickly was swept under the rug in a whirlwind of sub-plots and character development.
Filthy Rich Flower Growers
Maid Mansion stars Yuu (or whatever you choose to name him), the grandson of a ridiculously famous and rich war hero turned saffron flower grower. The game opens with the death of your grandpa, who was kind of a total asshole anyways. The old coot opted to leave you his entire estate on the grounds you had to take it over and run his business. Something about his legacy being tarnished, or whatever. It’s a laughable plot point because absolutely nobody in their right mind would turn down the inheritance, and even if they did-who is going to force them? In the real world, the estate would have been divided among the next of kin. Any lawyer worth their salt would have very obviously talked to gramps about what a bad idea it was to leave everything to his “no good” grandson that he wasn’t close to. At worse, the estate would have gone up for auction and-
Okay, okay. I’m over thinking the hentai game, I know. But the point stands that the entire introduction of the game focuses on something that could not and would not happen. I can’t help but wonder if Yuu was an isekai protagonist.
It turns out Gramps had your position and that of your secretary-Umeko, typecast as a childhood love interest-terminated at your companies. Yay, holding people’s financial future and emotional states hostage! You move in the day of the funeral, and in a whirlwind of introductions meet the entire, ever expanding maid staff. There’s Tokako, head maid who has been with the family the longest. You’re made aware of this by the fact she’s serious enough about her duties that she could have been in the Synder cut. Narumi, the pink haired eighteen year old new recruit that the game spends a disproportionate amount of time reminding you of her body. Then there’s…
There’s uh…
Okay so there’s a shit ton of maids. Two red heads, one with blue hair, two with green hair, the blonde that showed up for an entire scene, and the queer-coded one that should have got way more screen time. I really honestly wish I had more to tell you. The game introduces them in brief with small, flavorful lines of dialogue and then it’s total happenstance if you see them again. I originally thought this was simply poor character development, but more on that in a moment.
After spending two in-game days hiring and introducing the staff, you’re faced right away with two major plot points: Carrying on grandpa’s business and an active investigation by the country’s secret police. No, really. Both of these are given to the player back-to-back, with Umeko more or less demanding the accounting records and the purple haired, yandere-styled inspector showing up by that afternoon. The game begins in full at this point, giving you an option to rule with an iron fist and let the inspector move into the mansion or not. There’s entire lines of plot that change thanks to dynamic decision trees.
Speaking of which, Maid Mansion very pleasantly surprised me with both the number of and range of choices Yuu gets to make. You can be the tyrant your grandfather was, take a more humanist approach or find a space in between. I opted for the last option. Between the maids arguing and realizing Grandpa had been exploiting farmers on his land I made “firm but caring” decisions. Save every single time you’re given a choice. The idea of “punishing” your staff may often lead you down a path that you individually may object to, including triggering content.
In the sense of full disclosure, the game has twenty-two possible endings. I completed a single play through, and while there was interest to go through it all again I opted to play through certain scenes thanks to my “save scumming”. Most of the scenes lead to sex, which varied between vanilla love making to any of the following:
Forcing a maid into a gynecologist chair (So uh, grandpa has a sex dungeon?)
Scenes that would constitute assault and battery
Voyeurism
Hard and Soft BDSM
That’s a small list of what I discovered. The game certainly isn’t without it’s bite, and it’s pretty obvious Gramps himself had some issues. Following in his footsteps or being an actual human being to others is ultimately left up to you. Likewise, following different decisions leads to much, much more character development-though I can’t say for certain if the individual maid you as a player takes to get the screen time she deserves. Your mileage absolutely will vary.
In the end, I ended up with Narumi. It absolutely wasn’t the ending I wanted (personally, I was aiming for Tokako), but I was pleased with how suitably soft and loving it was. I have absolutely zero doubt in my mind that far darker endings exist. For now however, that’s where my experience ends.
Technical Taffy
Maid Mansion is a several-hours long experience. Given the number of endings, it’s content rich and I easily could have spent an entire month playing the title. There’s absolutely no voice acting to speak of, which is fine. Hiring that many actresses and recording that much dialogue would have been a task unto itself.
The score is very simple, and while mastered cleanly rarely variates between 1-3 songs. I think I would have noticed this less had there been full voice-acting (or even partial), but as is? The tunes wear thin very, very quickly. If you’re planning on more than one playthrough, I’m absolutely certain you could queue better ambient tracks on SoundCloud, Audiomack, Youtube or Spotify.
Sound effects for sex scenes are pretty stock. Again, while I don’t fault the creators for not doing voice work? There’s something awkward about hearing what sounds like pasta being stirred without moaning or appropriate sexual ambience. Even the odd phoned-in moan would have been nice.
The artwork for Maid Mansion is clean and soft, save for Grandpas sex dungeon (and that’s entirely by design). Save for hair colors, I found the palette to be a bit muted. Nothing particularly draws your attention color or design wise. Even the girls themselves look kind of stale. Perhaps this is due to character arcs not truly being explored on my playthrough, but my sheer inability to name any of the other maids aside from two feels like it speaks volumes. Comparing this to our last review, I could at least name the girls.
Final Thoughts
I’m in a really weird place with Maid Mansion. The game certainly isn’t bad, but it’s painfully obvious more than one playthrough is required. Nothing about the title is especially awful-there’s no random typos, no odd glitches, no out of frame lines. Everything from a technical standpoint is sound, even if it’s something that I found personally lacking as a player. Unlike with Futa Dick, Dine and Dash or even the free titles I reviewed however, I’m not walking away with a solid opinion on it.
There’s a boatload of additional content and scenes I know I haven’t seen. Entire arcs I missed. While I personally felt compelled enough to finish my playthrough, I’m looking at the staggering number of endings and asking myself if I really want to do that. There absolutely was enough narrative-wise for me to enjoy running the mansion and the staff. Another one, though? Perhaps, just maybe, if I find the time.
At $14, Maid Mansion has arguably the most content of any game I have reviewed thus far. There’s enough sexual content to satisfy a wide group of people. I didn’t skip over a single line of dialogue the entire time, either. There wasn’t a single line that brought an eye-roll or a groan. Were I to sum the game up in a single word, it would be “time”. The price is low, but the time required to enjoy the game in full is massive, much more than I could manage in the space required to complete this review.
There may come a day I revise or completely re-write what I have here, but for now? I think it’s a worthy investment if you’re in for the long haul despite my gripes.
-j