Welcome to our honest review of DLsite, where we delve deep into its offerings to give you the unvarnished truth about what to expect. DLSite is a Japanese gaming site that focuses on doujinshi games. Those are games that are made by independent developers instead of a studio. They have lots of games with brand new ones always on the way. Since it’s a Japanese site, the text is natively in Japanese. Users can select their preferred language when they visit, but the translation doesn’t always work on everything. That means it can be difficult to know what you’re looking at unless you can read the language. They have many different genres available, including mobile games and PC downloads.
History of DLSite
DLSite was founded in 1996 as a digital storefront that sold games, hentai, manga, anime, and ASMR content. While most of the content was in Japanese, they also had translated titles for their western markets. It started out as Soft Island and operated under the name until 2001. That’s when it was acquired by ASIS Co. It was then relaunched in 2004 with an English version of the site. DLSite was further optimized in 2009 and a mobile version was released. They reached over 10,000 registered circles in 2010 and were once again overhauled in 2011 and again in 2018.
Games Breakdown
The site has over 57,000 pieces of content available to users. That includes games, manga, ASMR, and videos. Of those, the largest collection is the games section. There’s a mix of English and Japanese games that can be downloaded and installed. They fit into many different niches with a genre page to help browse through them. Each term lets you know how many games that each have for the niche with larger sections for all ages content, adult content, otome, or female focused content, and BL. The adult games are then listed by featured items, types of characters, clothing, situations, sex acts, physical characteristics, and pain. For instance, in the pain section, the site has over 2,000 games with blood and over a thousand games that feature fisting. The sex acts include everything from anal sex to guided masturbation and incest. Sexual situations include things like age gaps, cheating, cuckolding, teen sex, urination, and vore. There’s also a section for the focus of the content. This includes games with female protagonists, hypnotic voices, successive orgasms, and fetish. There are also larger, generic genres to browse. These ones give you the game types like action, role-playing, adventure, and a few more.
Buying Games
There’s very little in the way of free games on the site. It’s a digital storefront, so users visit to buy new, independent games. Nothing streams on the site, either. Each game will have to be downloaded and installed on your computer. It’s the same with mobile games as well. Each game comes with a preview that you can watch to see what it’s all about. You’ll also be able to see the games’ pages with more information on what they have to offer you. Most have a cover image as well as a summary of what the game is and how it’s played. You can watch the trailer on the game page or get them in a pop up on the main site page. It’s also possible to get a sample of any ASMR content that you want to check out. Most of these will have a sample file that runs for five minutes. Once again, it can be played in a pop up or on the content’s page. It will stream on the site, so you don’t have to download it. If you decide that you want it, you’ll have to get it onto your hard drive.
Pricing
Since all of the content is independently created, the prices vary quite a lot. The costs ae listed in JPY, as well as USD. There’s no way to browse the games by ascending or descending price, but it’s possible to see them within a certain price range. These are all listed in JPY, so it can be tricky to figure it all out. The lowest price range is 0-300 JPY and the highest price range is over 5,000 JPY. Some of these games can cost over $150 USD, so it’s important to know the cost before you buy anything.
Installation
The installation of the games is pretty straightforward, but only up to a certain point. While it’s easy to download and install the games onto your computer, there’s a language barrier that you’ll have to figure out, almost every time. While the text on the site is in English, the games are largely in Japanese. That includes the text in the images. Most games require a language pack to change it and it can be very challenging to find it. Most simply have a disclaimer that the game won’t function properly without one, but don’t provide a pack that you can use.
Site Layout
With such a large site, organization is very important. DLSite has plenty of it, but it can still be tough to browse around and find something that you want to buy. Anytime you click into a new genre, the price range will be reset, and you’ll see games that cost $8 USD next to games that cost $35 USD. It can take a decent amount of time to find what you’re looking for, even when you refine your search results. The language can also be difficult to deal with since there’s lots of Japanese, no matter which one you set it to.
Conclusion: DLSite is a Large Adult Game Platform
If you’re looking for a site that has tens of thousands of adult games to buy, then DLSite can be a good choice. It’s difficult to navigate, though, and can be a challenge to figure out. Installation can also be a problem since most games require a Japanese language pack to play. That means you’ll have to change settings in your equipment if you’re not already set up to run them. Everything is also independent, so the prices vary a lot.
Pros:
- Tens of thousands of games
- Set price ranges
- Mobile games available
Cons:
- Every game has to be installed
- Games require language packs
- Poor translation