VN - Ren'Py - Completed - A Knight's Tale [v0.36 SE] [Neverlucky]

The previous game felt better because it was less long, and the story was easier to follow.

Here the story is not as interesting, very much slower, and feel a bit frustrating with lots of short sentences dialog boxes that could have been concatenated especially when the CG are not changing between conversation lines.

A lot of wholesome which is nice (but not everyone's cup of tea), but not only the CG but the daily events feel repetitive even if they are all distinct settings. We get that it is the novel is about a trivial life with no issues (there is "some" drama, that barely affects the story as it feels external to the characters' daily life), but with low character development (personality stays the same, not much character evolution, etc...) it seems kinda stale.

EDIT: The game is nice in its own way, which is why I gave it three stars. But maybe it should have been cut into chapters, since choices have no consequences. You could select the chapter like bookmarks, and unlock the next chapter after reading the previous ones. Players would then read chapter per chapter when they feel like it, and the story would feel less... like one monolithic block.

This story is about consent. Every time, and i mean EVERY TIME someone want to do something sexual, they will ask if it's ok at least 3 or 4 times.
It's the most vanilla game of history.
The "Mc" is not even the protagonist of the story, he is just a part of his wife harem. He is the mythological representation of a beta male. He has zero masculine behavior.

It would be MUCH better if there are just females in the story.

Don't go into this thinking you are getting a high-octane, edge of your seat thriller. This VN is, in a word, comfy . No worries about some sort of murderer, someone coming to try and steal your women, no annoying "male best friend" character you want to throw out a window. The whole thing is one big happily ever after. And if your down for a low-stakes medival slice of life with over 90 different sexual encounters, I think you will enjoy it.

Content: Sizable game, definitely at least a good 5-7 hours depending on your reading speed, not frustrating, flows well. As I said, there is around 93 adult scenes in total. Pacing is good, not a crazy slow burn, but a good place in the development of the relationships. The charachters have good chemistry, and everything develops believably. If you're looking for a VN like that then, I think you will greatly enjoy this. My only complaint is that the dev isn't working on it anymore, because I there were still a whole lot of different scenes I would love to have seen.

Performance/Playability: Never experienced any bugs. English is good, doesn't read like someone using google translate, can't remeber any egregious spelling or grammatical issues either.

Renders: Solid 8/10 here. Not mindblowing in raw render quality, but good scene composition, never something that I felt limited the story. Wasn't something that damaged the experience. No animations, but enough renders to where they aren't really missed.

Overall: 8.5/10
Definitely a slice of life VN. Not overly dramatic. As I said, very comfy. The VN equivalent of your favorite comfort takeout, it's not a 3 Michelin star restaurant, might be a little plain, but you order the same thing every time, you know what your going to get, and thats exactly what you recieve. The predictability can be either a strength or a weakness, depending on what the reader is going in expecting/wanting. If this sounds like the kind of VN you're looking for, you can definitely expect an enjoyable experience.

Ok actual review done. Below is stuff I personally think about the game, that didn't affect the score. But that I still think is worth highlighting. I think if I'm attempting to be objective in my review, my subjective thoughts should also be included, if only so the reader is able to evaluate for themselves any potential biases I may have.


Subjective Stuff: I don't think that this dev got enough credit during the development of this VN for their consistent update schedule either. When a developer is able to put out consistent good sized updates without any excuses or delays, I think that this is something that should be noted and applauded. This game had updates like clockwork, very refreshing to see. This is an element of games that I know is important to my enjoyment and should be at least highlighted and appreciated when a dev is able to achieve it.


To the Dev: I think you deserve more credit for your update cadence with this game and just want you to know I've really enjoyed the world and characters you made in this VN. Thanks.

v0.36 SE - Completed

1 word describes this VN, boring.

Its done in slice of life format, so naturally the main story is pretty dull. Wake up, eat, work, sleep. Not much in terms of plot. Goes the same for the relationships, romance, interactions and also characters, they're very uninspired and literally just going through the motions. In the end, everything feels repetitive.

Models and renders are nothing to taut about, its average which is still good in my books. The lewd scenes however is vanilla oriented and tame. If you're in it for the sex, this will bore you to death.

All in all, its boring and monotonous but the biggest offender is it overstayed its welcome. Dev should have cut it short and sweet.

It seems that everything is fine, but it is a very boring story. Everything is here: wife, other girl, teenage girl. But all this lacks fire, intensity. In my opinion, if this story was 20% smaller, I would not be so critical. But still such work of the author is to be appreciated.

How does that cross not burn a hole in her chest?

MC's wife is up here setting up her own personal harem--only including MC so she can have as much lesbian action as she can get--in the midst of ye olden times whilst corrupting a servant girl and a squire in the process.

Kidding of course.

The story is pretty fun, even if there are a few too many neologisms; I'm okay with the fact that they aren't speaking Norman French, Old Saxon, Middle Low German, or Middle High German; but we can still use a Modern English dictionary while avoiding some of the phrasiology that has clearly come out of the late 20th century. It doesn't have to sound ancient, it just has to sound old.

Graphics are good and it seems like the developer went out of their way to create multiple scenes without regularly reusing them. Towns and inns don't appear to be reused even though they stay at multiple inns (halfway expected a "medieval Holiday Inn" where all of the inns are the same design in every town to save time on developing new locations). Castle rooms each seem to have similar but different designs. If we see many more locations, seeing the various hallways leading to those rooms, we could almost build a map of MC's regional castle in the borderlands.

There are very few animations in the beginning, but we do start to see them about 10-20% of the way into the game. Also, speaking of length of game, this VN has a relatively long story. The script is available in .rpy format without expansion and decryption, so a quick gander reveals this game is around just a hair above 80k lines of code (the file has just north of 160k lines, but the code is double-spaced), which is impressive for a game where the choices have minimal importance--meaning sex scenes may change a bit--and does not set the game onto a completely different path which requires multiple, large alternate story arcs built into the code.

All told, I like this VN. I'm about 30% into it though, so I guess there's still time for me to change my mind of course; if I don't come back about it, it must mean I liked it enough to leave the review as is. I knock a star off for being a little too modern, but I guess it's a case of the developer knowing the audience at-large is okay with a few neologisms so long as they didn't include anachronisms (eg. modern speech is okay, but modern technology isn't). I can live with that.

Update: I previously mentioned the length of the script (160k lines, mostly double-spaced), but I did not entirely know what I was getting into when I wrote about it. Normally, a script that long includes a lot of forks in the road that can send characters in wildly different directions. This game has none of that. There are no routes to backtrack providing multiple playthroughs. There is the one path with an occasional illusion of choice scattered about the novel. I say illusion because these choices are more flavor text than truth path choices; it is the difference between three mildly different commentaries rewarding you with three mildly varied responses before returning to the one path. So what accounts for all of this script?

Well now that I'm closer to 75% through, I can say for sure that this game is very repetitive. A lot of the same events will happen multiple times. The MC will have multiple training sessions with his squire no matter whether that be swordsmanship, archery, or horseback riding. There will be multiple occasions where the MC or his wife take on the task of signing responses for requests of the lord (the lord or lady of the region makes the decisions for the region and has to sign off on them) or archiving legal notifications in the register. People will stop to play chess with each other, people will read books to each other. Some nights will be spent just enjoying the fireplace. There will always be breakfast. There will always be dinner. There will be many baths, there will be occasional massages for stress or pleasure.

Point is, while there will be some variation in all of the above events, those variations won't be particularly dramatic. Consider, how much variation is there in your every day routine. Pretty rote, right? This is pretty much the every day story of a noble house, following both the lord and the lady of the house, his squire, and her handmaiden as they do everyday things; though yes, things that gets a bit more exciting behind closed chamber doors. The key words here are: every day. We aren't hitting the highlights with this story, we're hitting the lowlights too; we're getting all of the story, even the less interesting parts, the parts we think we've already seen but wait something was slightly different this time from the last six times. We're getting everything.

Make a note: This game is long. Long. I've been experiencing this novel for going on three weeks now and I'm still not finished.

Now that I've explained how repetitive the general story is, I'll also go ahead and say that a lot of the intimate scenes are also too repetitive with only minor variation between them. While the scenes are good, none of them are particularly great... but they are numerous. I never foresaw myself suggesting I might be tired of sex scenes, but here we are.

In case anyone reading does not believe me about any of this, about how repetitive this games events are, I searched the script for this little gem: next morning. I got 49 results. That's a lot of get up, eat, train, eat, read a book, sleep, get up, bathe, eat, study, train, eat, play chess, sleep, get up, eat, do some paperwork, train, eat, read a book, foreplay, sex, sleep.

I originally gave this game 4-stars. If I had more time, I'd find all of the events and compile them just like that; it would be fun to see how much a script of this length could be pared down to its base events... but alas, I don't have more time, this novel has taken all of it and as payback I'm taking back one of my stars.

Story took too long to get where it was going, kind of like how I did with this review.

F95 has a lack of a polyamory tag and I feel that it's done this game's ratings a considerable disservice. This is not a harem game. MC is not surrounded by an unlikely number of unusually attractive women who all for some reason are willing to forsake all other relationships for the thinnest slice of his affection. Instead, the characters develop into a full quad with occasional group scenes and more typically coupling off for the night. As a polyamorous person, I love that aspect of the game. As amusing as the concept of a harem is, I can say from experience that trying to meet the emotional needs of multiple partners by yourself is difficult and eventually unsustainable.

Renders: the women, their facial expressions, bodies, positioning and camera angles are excellent. Clothing, backgrounds and interaction with objects is poor occasionally to the point of being distracting. Any attempt to render anything but conversation and sex tends to be halfhearted at best. Especially the combat training.

Story: The story is completely drama free. Completely. Firstly, the relationship is the entire story. Occasionally things happen in the world and you think they'll bring friction or hardship to the group but it's only purpose is to separate the 4 into 2 couples for a period of time as 1 couple needs to travel for a while. The medieval setting seems pointless and many have described it so in previous reviews, however, I'd strongly disagree. Alice being illegitimate and Lydia being a lowborn orphan servant are a huge part of the reason that this polyamorous quad is stable making Alice something akin to an incest game daughter and Lydia into someone with no agency at all and completely happy about it. The medieval setting is utterly imaginary as the characters feel no need to hide their polyamory or the women their bisexuality.

Characters: The characters are all likeable and unique from one another. They don't meaningfully change over the course of the game nor do we learn anything shocking and unexpected in their history. They are who they appear. As I said above, this game has no drama.

Dialog: It's clearly written and fairly believable for the characters if not the setting. The character's personalities match the way they speak and express themselves and are remarkably consistent. Unfortunately, it's immersion is frequently mangled when the characters so often say their intention to dress/undress because the game maker didn't wish to render undressing and felt like he needed to manage the lack of transition between clothing states.

I think the game deserves a far higher score than it has and will give it 5 stars to bring it closer to where it should be and because it's screwed by the fact that "harem" is such a wrong tag and yet the closest tag to fit.

Renders -
Nothing Groundbreaking, still cute enough

Dialogue -
A little too much, this game could been shorter, i mean a lot shorter the story was already done when the harem was solid.

Satisfaction -
The game is finished, and is something that need to be taken in account, having played another game from the same dev (triangle) maybe he did drop the ball in this one. mostly by making it bloated.

Fetishes -
Yes, The dev has a fetish with the word Comfy (rip immersion in medieval place)

renders are pretty good, animations were there but only a few could be more especially bc i could see that they weren't bad.

i wasn't expecting that the wife is kinda the protag in this game but seriously, i think it's hot i don't mind her being some kind of the secret harem leader^^ but the biggest weakness is the story, i hope that you will get better in your next game "couples" and learn from some of the criticism.

Why didn't the DEV just make this a female Protag instead cause the wife got more puzzy than the MC did. It felt like it was the wife's harem and she was sharing it with MC instead. Also it is tagged animated and i hardly seen any animations at all. Also didn't really have much of a story. Unless you just really love lesbian sex your not going to have much to fap about.

i drained playing this game.. so much text content so little story. Its predictable, boring, same environment, etc. I would request the creator of this game to actually do some story telling with more characters, much more choices and its consequences.. It failed to keep me hooked in first 10mins and next i was rushing through the game skipping dialogs thinking if game has some potential or not and few minutes from there i started feeling sleepy..

At first I really liked the game. But instead of offering you much choice on what happens, the nearly linear story goes on and seems to take the choice and fun away from you, the MC. Once a certain toy is introduced in the story, it angered me enough that I stopped playing.

Hoooo boy. First off, full disclosure, I A) played the build just before the completed build, and B) didn't finish it.

Why?, you ask

Well, let's start with what's good/ok. Renders are decent, but nothing special. The general idea of the game and it's characters is a good one, and sex scenes abound.

So, what's wrong? Well, notice how I said "general idea" instead of plot? Well....that's cause there really isn't any. Most of this game is repetitive sex scenes duct taped together with some transition scenes, but nothing moves forward. There's hints of a conflict with the new king, but every opportunity to make something happen with that idea, or really ANY idea, is wasted. Scene where the ladies get lost in the woods? Home safe 2 panels later. MC and wife walk unescorted to the next castle over? They proceed to and fro unbothered. The whole medieval setting is waste.d and unnecessary. There's nothing in the plot that would prevent this game from being set in say, 1990's Malta. That's how little depth the world has.

To paraphrase John Carmak, "Plot isn't important to porn, but it's expected to be there." I really feel sorry for folks who shelled out money to just have uncreative scenes lobbed at you build after build. The sad part is, the devs don't seem untalented, so why did this end up here? I didn't have to be this way.

well game for sure isn't masterpiece, some time after start choices vanish and game becomes very repetitive since daily actions vary just a bit and and after that game can be played with skip since player won't be missing anything important (since even sexscenes become dull after some time since those are mostly same).

game has nice graphics and isn't set to modern time like many other games but actual gameplay lacks many things.

Well that was a very uninspired and joyous ride/slog. The main character felt like an afterthought, he was just their. It felt like the wife was the driving force behind the whole relationship progression, the MC was just like OK, sounds good. The plot just kind of stops half way through, and it never really pics up again, it just becomes this meandering and empty routine, I was honestly pressing the skip button way more that I ever have in any other game, it was really sad. The women/Love interests for this game wear also very lacking. none of them will stick with you after you're done. They all feel very bland and uninspired, I've already forgotten there names and faces. That's not a good sign for your adult game. Overall the game just falls by the waste side, and that's a shame, because I do believe that the dev has some good writing abilities. his/her other game was pretty good, I'm hoping they take that skill and make something really great.

Review for version 0.36 SE:

Despite what I read before downloading this title, I wanted to give it a fair chance before writing it off. While I liked the premise of the plot, the pacing is glacial, at its best.

The story revolves around the MC, a lord and knight who takes his master's daughter, Alice, on as his squire. He lives in his castle with his wife, Cathy, and a young servant girl named Lydia. Sadly, I became extremely bored with the story as it is, quite literally, a day-to-day telling of their time that usually ends with sex each day.

It is well written, grammatically, but too little happens to really draw the reader in. Most days start with a bath, followed by breakfast, then either training Alice or spending time with Lydia or Cathy in town or the forest. It then ends with dinner, followed by sexy-times with one or more of the three women. I read the story for about four hours, up to Alice getting her own horse, then decided to see how much more was left by skipping to the end. It took about twenty minutes of constant skipping before reaching the end and it seemed to be more of the same. If I had to guess, I'd say 40-50% of that is sex scenes. That is a bit much for me, even when the story is engaging. This VN doesn't have that going for it so, yeah... that was the nail in the coffin for me to give up on it.

Visually, the renders are nice. Characters look nice but backgrounds are pretty limited. I can't speak for audio as I play games muted. So, it gets 3* for looks and grammar, but fails to grab a fourth star due to pacing and its tendancy to be long winded and boring.

If you just want H-scenes, this title has plenty for you to get your fix. Don't expect more than that unless you want to experience the mundane daily life of a knight as if you were reading a diary or captain's log.

This game had a decent amount of potential at the beginning. Seemed like we would get involved with running a realm, a conspiracy at the capital, and hints at other things. Unfortunately the game takes a turn about a third of the way into it and just becomes a "by the numbers" VN where everyone likes the MC and shit just works itself out around you. I think the game is still worth a play if you enjoy a Medieval setting and if you enjoy the character models. The most prominant fetishes are breeding and multiple partners, but if you are looking for anything beyond vanilla situations then probably not for you. Hope the dev's next game turns out better.

Someone forgot to put in the tag - Pregnancy's !!

Maybe with *forced* in front of that tag.
You get to have a choice to cum outside, but then later in game, you dont get anything to say. lol

So let me sum up the game for you 10 X speed.

Sleep, wake up, bath, eat, a tiny bit of story, eat, sex...
Sleep, wake up, bath, eat, a tiny bit of story, eat, sex...
Sleep, wake up, bath, eat, a tiny bit of story, eat, sex...
Sleep, wake up, bath, eat, a tiny bit of story, eat, sex...
Sleep, wake up, bath, eat, a tiny bit of story, eat, sex...
Sleep, wake up, bath, eat, a tiny bit of story, eat, sex...

Imagine this a few hours..
Figured i begin just to skip, hoping for something fun, you know, he being called to go to war with his "toy" but no...

I dont want to repeat what i just did up there, you get the picture, only now, they all begin spitting baby's out.

God.. was a waste of my time, and by writing this, i hope you can skip this nonsense. Wish I did so i could read something else.

I have given a chance to this game over several updates. The games is continuously boring, repetitive, with little to engage apart from the sex scenes. It may be the perfect game for those who only seek for that.
There aren't many choices either and it's a continuous slideshow, more a virtual novel and less of a game in the sense of choices and challenge.
I have to rate this one as poor.

Id like to give this a better score because this game tries something different to the majority of games here, but it doesn't pull it off unfortunately and isn't half as good as the devs previous game, Triangle.

There are many issues with it but the major one is that its a plot free zone. Being a slice of life story does not mean nothing happens. No-one is looking for the Red Wedding here (at least I hope not), but there is a world outside that bedroom with things happening in it. We see none of this.

Also, the creator has no sense of scale. A castle, especially one big & prosperous enough to have fancy baths like this one, will have more servants living in it than a cook, a chambermaid and one man at arms . Even a fortified manor will have more. Even if the characters dont interact with them, show or mention them. A town will have more in it than an orphanage, a blacksmith and an all purpose steamstress/tailor/cobbler (which would have been separate jobs. Where's the market square? Again, they don't have to be part of the story, but show and mention them. And the distances are painfully wrong. One castle within 1 and a half days slow walk. At least 2 other within 2 days ride. All of them close to the capital. No explanation as to why this country has such a dense concentration of fortifications.

I get the feeling that the creator realised he'd set up the storyline for a bloody civil war and then had no idea how he would tell a sweet slice of life story in that setting so decided to ignore it. A way to at least handwave this would have been to have Alice's father explaining that he's leaving her with you because if things do go to hell the war is unlikely to get to his remote side of the kingdom, order him not to take sides and make the MC's holdings several weeks away from the capital, not a couple days.

Personally I think the MC running about trying to prevent a civil war and trying to maintain a loving relationship with 3 woman would be an interesting story.

Theres also absolutely no character development, which to be fair is unfortunately common for AVN's

The graphics are OK and the wife's model has a lot of character, but the younger women are almost boringly pretty. The sex scenes are incredibly repetitive.

EDIT Also I think a better way to handle the squire thing would have been to have had Alice already having been the MC's page since 14 or so, so she already knows how to ride & use a sword. The plan would have been originally for MC to hand her over to become her fathers squire, maybe later to be acknowledged as his heir. But the discovery of the kings murder puts a spanner in the works & dad asks MC to make her his squire & keep her safe. And presents her with the sword & horse she would have gotten on becoming his squire. So you've already got a UST thing going on with the other characters so everything doesn't feel quite as rushed and you have a establishing character moment between Alice and her father that the present game lacks.

You could keep most of the scenes in the armoury, except he would be honing her skills. I'd move several of them to the courtyard though, especially the bow training. Doesn't make sense doing that indoors.

Also missed a chance for to explore the quandry for the MC as he tries to reconcile his attraction to Alice conflicting with his sworn oaths.

To conclude, this game would benefit greatly from the early game being reworked, and the occasional mention of the passage of a day or so between sex scenes even if nothing else changes.