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

This is basically a lengthy erotic novel of a group's everyday life. Don't expect any adversity or challenges. You become the side character and get no choices. There is plenty of sex with the same group, a lot of it without your character there. The sex scenes itself are not very good. The medieval setting doesn't matter since you barely ever leave the castle.
Developer updates pretty regularly but nothing impactful happens in the story. There is A LOT of text, get a comfy chair.

Version:A Knight's Tale [v0.30 SE]

Models:7/10
Scenes: 6/10
Interactivity: 0/10
Story: 2/10
Inmersion: -10/10

The Models
The models are nice, pretty and simple, the textures are good but low in detail, my only critic is the wife´s facial expresion, the eyes close too much when laughing , so she get a little creepy.

Scenes
Not bad, not good, it feels bland. To tell you the absolute true i just use a lot the skip botton in the sex scenes because they were boring.

Interactivity
At the current version the choises are irrelevant, maybe they are gonna get relevant in future version with all the new king plot.

Story
Oh boy... not gonna lie or butter it up, it SUCKS and not in the good way, maybe i am just a little pissed about all the "knight" thing, i know is just a game so historical knowledge is irrelevant and not even necesary, but when i read that a "squire" beggins is training at FUCKING 18 it was like be punched by Chuck Fucking Norris on steroids in the middle of the face!
<RANT TIME ON: even leaving aside all the sword meta bullshit of modern times (for a knight depending the historical period a sword was his side weapon, the last thing to grab before die for a pike or a mace), the time for training is something that you cannot simple throw away!!! A future knights begins HIS training at 4, become page 6-7 and the squire at 14 depending of the kingdom and the period!!! RANT TIME OFF.>

Inmersion:
No Just NO! There is not inmersion at all, some court lady from the medieval saying "Awesome!" its a fucking kick in the dick!, the real problem is not even the modern languague, its the logical flaw of asuming that the modern setting works in a past era, unless all this is happen in a renaissance festival full of drunkards defending the honor of king Bob and his starwars lightsaber.

Im not asking for a proper knight story, i dont even want that, too much corruption, rape and cuckoldry for a vanilla lover like me, i was just looking for a silly, baddas, hot and inacurated "Knight´s Tale", in some aspects even i wanted to be inacurated, i mean, its pretty funny to play like some baddass dragon-slayer riding a fucking velociraptor, wearing some heavy unobtenium armor and using dual war axes, while what i found was a "lord" story and a bad one. I know the rules of reviewing clearly says not mention another games, but in this case is imposible not mention the other game of same DEV <Triangle>, for me is one of my favorites games, its simple, straightforward, hot and funny, the relationship between charaters is cute and lovely idealized, its a good fantasy, cute and hot at the same time. In this game you feels some kind of broken marriage, i mean, when MC start dating his squire and the wife start the same with the maidservant, I, as the player, feels like they were not more a couple, they were now 2 new couples plus a broken one, at that moment i thinked "that marriage is over".

The Harem tag dont feels right, IMHO is better use "Swinging" tag, because the 2 new couples just hang arround for have some swinging sex or make a foursome, i KNOW the harem tag is technacally correct, but it just dont feels right, unless is "Reverse Harem", in that case is pretty accurate because its really clear who is the Alpha (the wife).

Is exactly the contrary that i feeled while playing <Triagle>, in that story, you see how the new girl mix perfectly with MC and his wife, making a perfect threesome, not broken a marriage but actually making it stronger, taking the "daughter" role of the couple.

Anyway, thank you DEV but im out.
Good luck with this game.
And sooo many thanks for Triangle.

Part of me wanted to like this game, enough so that I pushed through a good chunk of it. The render quality is decent, the writing...okay? And it puts a fairly positive spin on things, rather than making the MC a cheating douchebag. That was nice.

Unfortunately, all of its potential was killed by a single fact. Namely, that this isn't actually a game. While it is labeled a VN, the truth is that it's barely more than a kinetic novel, rather than a VN. There are no diverging paths, no choices that matter. At best, there are a couple of places with alternate camera angles or animations based on single in-scene choices. No lasting effects, no real gameplay mechanics of any sort. Just a very long, often agonizingly drawn own, kinetic story. If it weren't for the MC at least not being an asshole, I'd probably rate it even lower.

I think the story and overall world is pretty good, it is very repetitive though, a lot of the time it feels like you are playing the same day, I suggested on patreon a while back in DM that given the medieval theme and the status of the Lord that maybe he should add in something like bandit raids on villages and or small battles which the mc would have to respond to in some way, it would give the game a bit of life, like the new king is a green boy who reminds me Joffrey Lannister (not a lot of scenes with him or story but I think the game is leading to a open rebellion soon and the mc is going to side with Alice father against the king but I'm just speculating, I also haven't played since version 27

Anyway even with the stuff mentioned I still really like it but I'm all about romance and harem with some pregnancy and this game nails it and the Dev made one of my favourite games which I'll replay some day also as far as I know these games won't have NTR so bonus!

Last thing, I really did not like the strap on stuff (not used on mc but another girl) it was weird

Good work Dev

Edit
Triangle was the game! I loved it, the ending to that like wow it was awesome

Renders are okay.
Story : just an excuse to get to the next bit without anything to get invested or even mildly interested in

I bypassed all the update in 2021 before giving it another go. When I tried it again I used the skip unseen text and then 'played' all the updates from '21.
The times that I couldn't skip because there was a decision to be made were very rare and the decisions had no influence on the story that I could find.

In short, it's a visual novelle but then one without interesting characters or a story that is going anywhere.

A knight's Tale is a fun care free game, that is so far a signature of Neverlucky's productions. Triangle too is a fun game. I started as a patreon on Triangle and continue to be on board

Lord Snuggle spends his time taking turns on his 3 eager girls haha
Just like a comedy film from ages past everyone has a good time and our hero will figure out how to solve any obstacle

The cast is small but that means you get to know the girls instead of a new shallow character introduced with each chapter as some do

Good job Neverlucky

Overall, i quite enjoyed the game. I read several review to see why the low score on the game and i can understand where some of them are coming from.

Instead of a porn game, I agree that this feels like more like a 18+ romance visual novel.

Render looks and feels very clean to me albeit my standards are mediocre at best.

Plot wise i liked it as i am into romance. Its nice to play a game where i dont CONSTANTLY CHEATING ON MY LOVING PARTNER. Also liked how MC is fully honest with the things he did and not try to hide thing from his wife. Like i said, makes a great 18+ romance Visual Novel. Some say its dull, and to that i agree. Not a game you wanna play when youre ️horny
Also this bother me alot, WHAT KIND OF SERVANT WILL BE OK SLEEPING WITH THEIR LORD/LADY. She didnt act humble or anything like "oh my lady i could never, im a lowborn servant. I do not dare lay next to you my lady." She gave in so easy, theres no coercion. Feels like i adopted a daughter instead of a servant

The English could use a update though. Some choice of word and phrasing kinde broke the immersion.

Jnx gave a great example

ALSO! DON'T make up some medieval story and include the word "Yup." Are you kidding me? That and the word "nice" are the two most used words in this thing. And even during the sex scenes. "Are you enjoying yourself?" "Yup." That's not sexy dialog. That's asking someone about their day. This time around I'm noticing it feels so damn robotic. I just don't get it. On top of that the sex scenes are re-used a few times and the renders are odd. The eyes are all dull and lifeless it's a little scary. Or at least extra uncanny.

Click to expand...

Basically more of a Novel then a game. Linear story, bland plot, no peak, repetitive. Good for the occasional braindead gameplay

Well ladies and gentlmen, lets get this over with.

STORY
To start this review I must say upfront, that imo of a dude with years of practise in theatre, this is mediocre at best. The story begins with promise of a mystery behind kings death and his son taking over the throne, all the while your master, who thought you the ways of knighthood, wants you to teach his young ilegitimate daughter the same as he did ... just for it to be YEETed (yes, there is no other way to say it) out of the window a second later. The second that promise of actually interesting plot is gone, here comes oh so long story of sexual scenes with random filler thrown in between them... with really long pauses. This part of the story revolves actually mostly around your wife, who seems to be interested in having a sexual relationship with both the servant girl and your new squire (Don't get me wrong, there are some little sparks flying inbetween you and the squire, but that is all, but certainly nothing to be called love). Thanks to her needs she coerces you tostart a relationship with said squire, so she can actually fuck around with the servant, all the while she plots on how to get her hands on... your squire, you guessed it. She even talks about you as her "wingman" for her to start something with that squire, while not saying or hinting on helping you to get your hands on "her" maid.
Oh and don't forget, that she wants to know everything about "what you did with other girls", while she says basically fuck-all about what she did or what she plans to do... that is not a cock-tease territory anymore, but mild-cuckholding territory.
Summary of the story would be: "MCs wife half-cuckholds him under pretense of "helping" him to get together with his squire, so she can actually freely fuck with other girls."

GRAPHICS
Graphics are mediocre (again) at best. Models are fairly good, althought basic. Background is pure hell hole, with only main bedroom and dine-hall being decently designed. Sex scenes are almost always from fairly akward angles, so don't expect anything ground breaking.

GAMEPLAY
...this is joke, right? You expected some important choices to be made in this story? Yes? Well sorry to be the barer of bad news, but the game says "fuck you". This is not a visual novel, but a kinetic one and only choices you get are either "cum-in/cum-out" or "fuck-your-wife-in-position-A/uck-your-wife-in-position-B"

Well, this is all for now dear reader. It deserves 2 stars, maybe 2,5 at best and I already regret the hours I spent "playing" this game.

Great renders and decent English, that's the best I can say. The girls are way too innocent for a porn game. The sex scenes are few and far between, which might be forgiven if they were all animated really well, but they're not. I think the dev would be better off creating romance VNs and not adult VNs, since he seems to care a lot about the romance and not much about the sex or making it hot. The overall story would be better if it was the main focus, too.

I really don't understand the hate this game gets its amazing, the story is great, it tells the story of a couple expanding their sexual lives and bringing in people that they love and take care of, a good harem story with believable writing, and cute and loving characters.

Characters 5/5: love all the characters they are memorable and different, and they are not annoying or slutty as many LI's in VNs these days tend to be.

Story 4/5: simple story about a man and wife expanding their love life and has good writing and storytelling.

Sex scenes 5/5: good variety in kinks and ladies

Overall 4.75/5

Render: 9/10 Great renders and female LI's, they are all attractive
Story: 8/10, Simple Story about a medieval lord and his wife exploring there sexuality and increasing their co-harem of beautiful girls
Sex: 8/10There is a LOT of good sex scenes with a variety of fetishes, and a good developing harem.
Dialogue: 9/10, the dialogue is a little too modern for the setting but other than that suites the story well.

Overall Enjoyment: 9/10; Great story with good characters that tells a slice of life about a man and his wife enjoying a growing harem of women together! My kind of story!!!

The renders are decent but the writing - particularly the characters - is terrible. Nothing interesting about the heroines, there's zero tension or conflict with the MC - their eyes the he can do no wrong. If you're looking for brain dead characters who's only purpose is to worship in the altar of the MC's cock then this is for you, otherwise look elsewhere.

A good slow-burn that slowly builds up with romance and innocence amongst the intimate scenes. Cathy in particular is a rather rare and great type of character in adult games/VN with how she gets people comfortable and together. Great to see more titles that are more simple and honest, but yet, not short, such as this. Likewise with it being void of any sort of of rape/corruption/mind-break/coercion etc. Great change of pace of what is usually created and written about.

Only downside I can think of is there rare misspelling or typo. Other than that, I'd only warn against this for those who want masturbatory material to be immediate. This title slowly eases you in and then introduces quite a bit of teasing. Which I find very satisfying--others, frustrating.

Overall, great and hearty read. Good characters (male and female) and dialogue/scenes. Good attention to detail and small movements between characters, too.

Game had a promising start in the first few versions but with each release the story seems to drag on more and more with little to no substance. Renders are about average but sex scenes are pretty low quality and few and far in between.

Would only recommend this game if you are looking for something to play that with help you fall asleep after already jerking off.

PROS
- Renders are decent I guess? Not bad but nothing to wow at either. Kinda generic and stock looking models also badly needs an upgrade to 1080p but tbh I'm trying my best to find something positive to say about this game as nothing comes to mind so think of this as a cheat point.

CONS
- Lack of a coherent story. Its pretty much just MC and his partner Cathy looking for girls to add to his harem. No obstacles, no tension, no drama, no conflicts. Not much to look forward to honestly. You'll need to try really hard to find a shred of excitement in this VN as its very directionless and repetitive.
- There are no routes or branching storylines. You don't like this character? Doesn't matter, you'll bang her anyway.
- Empty lore. We don't hear or see anything about other lands, religions, factions, foreign kingdoms, royal families, or any sort of background information. No elaboration on the current political climate. Kinda feels like the dev just used this medieval/fantasy theme as a setting and then forgot about it.
- Every character talks like a 21st century American that's about to order Starbucks. Absolutely nothing in their manner of speech is akin to a lord or peasant from the feudal age.
- Weak MC who's just a Yes-man. You're kinda forced into this harem situation and have to accept whatever is thrown at you.

As a vanilla fan, I kinda detest that people are using the vanilla excuse as a reason for its dullness. There are many many vanilla games where the dev is successful in building excitement and immersing the player in the game. Vanilla merely alludes to the absence of the darker fetishes such as ntr, rape, corruption, scat etc. Its doesn't represent boredom. This VN is just soo extremely barebones to the extent that's it lacking in many fundamental features that we are so used to seeing in other titles.

Updated a few months later v0.29(Mostly because I forgot I even reviewed this and I have some new thoughts. Also lowered my rating.)

Its MEEE~ The guy who hates everything! I just finished though this and one thing I have to say is there is a tag that this game is missing KINETIC NOVEL. There are a total of TWO choices in this "game" that have nothing to do with the game as far as my small brain can see. (Aside from the multiple "inside or outside" choices if you get my drift) Another problem I have with this is THERE ARE SO MANY JUST VERBAL AND VISUAL NOTHINGS IT IS INFURIATING. By that I mean stuff like "Did you see that?" "Yes I saw that" Like in school you remember "repeat the question in the answer?" You don't talk like that. You don't go up to a friend and say
"do you want to hang out?" and they say
"I would love to hang out" then reply to that with
"I am so glad that we will hang out together like you said"

It's so stiff. The writing is all and I mean ALL like that. But its a little charming I guess. I don't know. I thought it was sweet. Although now thinking about it it's more a rich couple taking in two young ("18 y/o") impressionable girls and having deviant fun with them. But it's written in a way that like moms and the 50 shades of gray fans would like. So yes it comes off as sweet. I don't know.

Not terrible definitely not amazing. Also they don't use apostrophes its the backwards one on the tilde key "`" (It's called the back tick, but they also use the regular tick) so that's annoying. The only reason I don't go lower is I guess the best way to describe it is the story feels more organic than the shitty, shovelware "Bland MC somehow has all these girls start to like him." This one is more Lord and Wife take in a squire and maid and have fun, but there's also a more serious, semi dark overarching story about the king in the background that I kinda like in writing. But as it goes on, nothing is happening with that.

But if you're like me and like a bit of story give it a read its not bad and is longer than a 30 minute nothing.

HOWEVER If you're the opposite and want something like, a grindy repeatable scene game, or are into being cucked, which I will never understand, pass it up.

New Thoughts---------------------

There is no problem. As in actually NO conflict in this slow, boring story. And the time frame that the story takes place all the relationships happen very quickly. I think they should put "A few days later" more than a few times in this to feel like a longer story. And every time something happens that would be an event, the Dev decides, no I'll focus on the boring part. The wife goes to a wedding and you could do world building, or a conversation that's not:
"Hello. How is your day going? You look good today in the same thing you wear every day."
And the reply is "Oh, hello my lord.(Lord is never capitalized for some reason). My day is fine, what about you? You look good as well."

But no, you only get the actual boring bits all the time...

ALSO! DON'T make up some medieval story and include the word "Yup." Are you kidding me? That and the word "nice" are the two most used words in this thing. And even during the sex scenes. "Are you enjoying yourself?" "Yup." That's not sexy dialog. That's asking someone about their day. This time around I'm noticing it feels so damn robotic. I just don't get it. On top of that the sex scenes are re-used a few times and the renders are odd. The eyes are all dull and lifeless it's a little scary. Or at least extra uncanny.

Seeing a lot of the points I was going to make before realizing I already wrote most of them means the game isn't improving, sadly. And another criticism I've been giving lately is using the default RenPy menus. Makes it feel even more soulless. That's why, below, I'll include what I believe this story should actually be. An actual story and not the boring everyday of an old rich couple.

A knight’s tale 0.23

I look for games with a fantasy theme so I was excited to find this one. Seems like a lot of work has gone into it and the dev has a couple hundred patrons, which attests to its popularity. I’ve tried to play it several items, but I give up every time. So I thought about what I’d see as improvements to make it less frustrating.

The text could be improved in a couple of ways:

1. The dialogue is written in the style of a contemporary game, not an historical game. As such it feels out of context.

2. A lot of the text is just dull. There are several different ways to write the text of a game as it relates to the associated images.

• A few devs are gifted writers.
• Some devs allow the image to tell most or all of the story and the text is generally used as an enhancement.
• Then there are devs who write their text as if the image simply isn’t there. That seems to be the approach of this game and to me at least it ends up being as exciting as a book of cake recipes…..….Add the eggs to the flour, stir nipple until it is stiff then move to pussy. Rub pussy to ensure a smooth consistency. i.e. Much of the text in this game is saved only by the images of the ‘cakes’.

In this game the images don’t work for me either. Because of the way the dev sets up the mouths of his female characters it looks as if a lot of the otherwise appetising ‘cakes’ have a face like a clown or a child . Some people may find that appealing but I’d go into Daz Studio and work with the controls provided to change the mouth settings until they were more realistic, and that way they would be a better match to the realism in the rest of the image.

Lots of people are enjoying this game and that is great for them and the dev. Would it be more popular with a different approach to the text and the images? I’d like to think so.

Updated: 0.36SE (Completed)

I enjoyed the other game by this dev - Triangle - so I really wanted to give this a go, and have been playing it every update since the first. However, I have to say I am growing tired of it. In terms of tags, the game is "relevant to my interests" but it has the slowest burn to me.

Every update consists of 1 or 2 sex scenes, and if you play the "Special Version" of each update it usually extends whatever scenes come in the update. Generally, I enjoy the scenes, but a lot of the time it doesn't feel like the MC is in control of their own actions, and instead the focus seems more on the wife character as a bit of a "harem queen." Her having some power makes sense but a lot of the story (the lewd bits anyway) feel more driven by her desires rather than the MC which I don't really care for too much.

While there are relatively frequent sex scenes, the rest of the plot is just loads of minutiae: doing chores, paperwork, having a bath, walking around, having very irrelevant conversations with the other characters usually involving one of the aforementioned activities... It just feels like there is no progression happening and you're experiencing a slice of life at the minute by minute level. To that end: it's boring.
I don't mind continuous scenes with the same characters as long as there's advancement in the story (or the character's story).


Update: Now that I have played the completed version, I have to say that the ending felt like even the dev had enough. As previously mentioned, the game focuses on so much of the minutiae (the sliciest slice of life) that nothing really advanced. Yes, some of the ladies became pregnant and had a child (after a time skip) but that's really it. There is a massive time jump all of a sudden at the end that begins the epilogue, which is somewhat cute but mostly funny with how abrupt it was; very much a "everything is wrapped up now, THE END" feel.

Unfortunately, I don't feel this game is worth the time, even skipping through the absolutely insane amount of dialogue. I wish the dev luck on their future projects.

models: 8/10
h-scenes: 6/10
player choice: 0/10
story: 2/10

There are no meaningful choices, what choices there are mainly affect if you see half or all of the h-scene. Story is monotonous: wake up, eat, do paperwork, have sex, sleep .. almost every day. There is no strife or drama; conflict drive plot, this story has no plot.

The strength of this "visual novel" is the art/sex, it would be much improved by taking out all of the dialog and converting it to a slideshow of sex scenes.

(version rated: v0.23 SE)