v1.0 completed
I can't bring myself to call this game "good". It feels incomplete, lacking, empty and forgettable.
But definitely not the worst you could find for sure, and others seem to borderline revere it.
Let's get some stuff quickly out of the way:
There's NO NTR (unless you feel jealous of bit of lesbian fun, then maybe a little NTR).
No MM gay content either.
Futa/trans content (chicks with dicks) is avoidable.
Also, as this is an "adult game", I should mention that the "adult" part plays no role in the story whatsoever. It's more of a bonus.
The rest of story is mostly PG13 stuff.
You also cannot (re)visit girls and just trigger sex scenes for your amusement, and you don't have a built-in gallery either, so if you're interested in rewatching the adult content,
save at the start of the scenes or download a gallery mod.
(I've been made aware that there is, in fact, a gallery within the Codex menu within the main menu that I managed to not find)
Gameplay is your basic Ren'Py game where you click on locations and choices to advance the story.
That's all the "game" part offers, all the fighting happens automatically, don't expect to influence that with your mad skillz, or your wise decisions in battle (you don't have those).
Speaking of choices, we have some, yes. But it's actually kind of insulting.
The following are the types of choices the game has to offer:
--You can ask for information, but the information isn't substatial, topics don't change often (if at all), and it has no impact on the story whatsoever.
--You can decide to spend time with / have sex with a character or not, which seems to have no impact on story, you only deprive yourself of a scene.
--You can decide between spending time with / have sex with "A" or "B" (etc) character, even though usually there's no reason to only choose one. This serves to artificially increase the "replayability" as you do not get all content in 1 run, unless you save/load, which you CAN do, because this type of choice also do not seem to affect the story, nor the characters.
--You can decide to pick a good/bad choice, which does impact the story and characters. Again, your choice is GOOD or BAD, not "good/evil" in terms of morality.
Good/evil would mean you could win by being evil, or at least by being kind of an ass.
You can't.
You can either pick the obvious morally good choice, care for and support your allies so that they may grow,
or you can pick the obvious bad choice, you don't give a shit about them, insult them, hold them back, and so they don't grow, they fail, you get less or no sex scenes with them, they may disappear or die, and you are pushed towards the bad end, that is, failure.
But no worries, the good/bad choices are obvious, they might as well be colour coded for convenience. You don't have to think about it, it's never a trap, if it sounds "nice" (even if it's naive or straight-up stupid) it's the good choice that'll win you the game.
This essentially turns this type of choice into pseudochoices, where you have two options technically, but one option is just dumb because of the shitty consequences, so you're practically left with only one "choice".
Unless you're a masochist, I suppose. But I won't kink-shame.
The game is also tagged with sandbox! Yay! You get to manage your mercenary company! You get to pick contracts! Devise tactics! Upgrade your equipment! Train your men!
NOT. You don't get any of that shit.
This isn't sandbox.
You have a map (of the city, with 1-5 places to visit), but ONLY 1 or 2 places will have options that advance either character/main story, the rest are empty and pointless to visit, or revisit.
Both are simple triggers. You interact with the relevant "object", and you trigger a scene that advances character/main story, which may or may not contain choices and/or sex scenes.
That's it.
This pretends to be a sandbox by giving you a map but your choices are extremely limited to the point the whole map is redundant in the first place.
Let's move on to story, characters, setting and such, the meat of the game that's underseasoned, undercooked and kinda spoiled too.
Setting: The story's set in a generic fantasy world with various funny things like evles and dragons and titans and wizards and other magical shit...
...and we get to see exactly 1 image of a dragon, no titan, some fire bending that's only really relevant once, a bit of content with 2 elves and like 2 quick side trips to a mine with some creatures that are merely there to be killed off with no choices, challenge or consequences involved.
And that almost entirely sums up the "fantasy" you'll find in the game, except for the ending I won't speak about much if at all, because I'm not the kind of ass to spoil the ending.
So! If you think you'll walk into a world with a balanced mix of strange, mythic (and maybe even sexy) creatures wherever you go, then no, that's not happening here. 99% of it is very vanilla, very human content, flavoured with 1% everything else.
This includes the futa/trans content and interracial content, both of which feel like they were just added to the game so that it could be tagged as such rather than being an integral, or at least meaningful part of it.
Removing them would have no impact on the story or characters at all. In fact, aside from the ending, you could even remove magic and the story'd only make more sense rather than less.
Speaking of which, yes, magic does play a significant role in the resolution, but short of the ending, it's never particularly interesting, grand, fleshed out, and/or alien, not something to explore and immerse yourself in. I was curious about the Mage College and waiting for more mage related content, much to my disappointment it was never explored to a any meaningful degree.
Magic is just there to make stuff happen. Literally, I mean, that's the reason it's there: To be a plot device that comes out of nowhere and advances the plot. 4 times, if I counted it right.
So the setting isn't winning any awards, and the story certainly doesn't make up for it either. While the setting was reasonable (albeit flat), the story seems to be allergic to reason. It isn't terrible, just kinda unoriginal, flawed and certainly isn't fleshed out enough to make up for its own shortcomings. So let's cut it open and see what's inside:
A mercenary band of maybe ~30-40 heads in total (never specified) are paid to protect one (ONE!) city against an invading empire.
Yes, valiantly defending one city is somehow a big problem for an entire empire that's been steamrolling kingdom after kingdom, until the game started anyway.
And the merry band defends the town, empire stopped, The End, happily ever after and whatnot.
Okay, sure, it is a little more complaicated than that, for one you can get a bad end, for another, you do leave that one city a couple of times, however it never really feels like you're someplace else, or doing something else, it never feels like an adventure, there's no sense of traveling around the world visiting new, different, interesting places,
instead it felt quite claustrophobic for the most part as you're mostly confined to a small part of a big world that is never really shown, much less explored But the gist of it is that. You're hired to protect the city and you protect the city.
So you, the Player Character (PC), the young, maybe 20-25 years old, great leader of an undefeated mercenary band which is considered to be "the best", are asked to defend a city for a decent sum of 10'000 gold pieces.
Evil, unstoppable empire has much larger armies, much better equipment, and much better training than you, your merry band, and the millitary of the city you're protecting (separately OR combined).
Evil, unstoppable empire is the absolute favourite of this war, you don't stand a chance...so they come to you to make a counter offer:
Join them instead, and they pay you 5'000 gold pieces FOR EACH mercenary. Because that makes sense.
PC ponders about what to do, whether to accept it or not, and decides not to.
No, YOU don't decide, it's a choice made for you. Not because of honour, or consequences, but because "there a pussy in city I wanna protecc!", as if there would be no alternatives to that honourable objective.
Furthermore, you, the player, have exactly 0 connection to that character as of now, so it makes no sense from the player's perspective to make such serious decisions because of a character you've never heard of or seen (yet).
More serious problem: Nobody, not even PC stops to think that this is a pretty damn ridiculous and needless offer that absolutely smells like bullshit.
PC, being the great and kind leader, thinks about asking the others about the offer, like he usually does apparently, but again, it's not a choice for the player, a decision to refuse to share the empire's offer is made by the developer for us.
So why have the lengthy bullshit internal monologue that looks like I, the player, am about to be presented with meaningful choice, when in reality it's already made for me?
This recurring theme of presenting the possibility of "choices" to the player, allowing them to think about it, and then shattering that illusion shortly afterwards by forcing the player into one particular "choice" is absolutely NOT fun, it's nothing but frustration and disappointment ESPECIALLY if the choice the player is forced into is just dumb as f.
Anyway, offer refused because of pussy, empire casually doubles it, 10'000 for each mercenary willing to side with them.
At this point it's painfully obviously just a pile of steaming bullshit. Again, ignored by everyone, not even mentioned how ridiculous it is.
Let me remind you, this is a mercenary company of great renown, considered to be THE BEST around, who pile victory after victory despite impossible odds, so one would think they're not fucking idiots, and yet evidently NOBODY can see a trap not even when it fucking introduces itself as a trap.
And also this time around nobody is really okay with the impossible odds for some reason. They were, plenty of times, but not this time. Because reasons.
Anyway, most mercs take the offer, while PC doesn't even attempt to convince them to stay, in fact he's encouraging them to leave with nonsense like "yeah well I'm not blaming you it's kind of a suicidal situation so ya you go ahead and leave, no hard feelings, love ya, 'kay bye".
And this is where the fantasy of the game peaks, because nobody would follow such a weak willed doormat in the first place. This is not the leader type who earns and demands respect and trust due, and commands authority. This is the sheepish follower type.
So yeah, plot twist, it's a trap...
That means the empire wins? No, because between the prologue and the start of the game they turned into utter fucking incompetent idiots who disregard battle plans and tactics entirely (for the first time in their history, apparently) and just throw their soldiers away until they lose.
Of characters:
That above gives clear insight to the general behaviour of the Player Character but here's a short recap: You're the goodest of boys who's kind of a pussy/dormat because of all that respect, kindness and empathy you have for everyone including traitors, liars, manipulators and deserters, who advocates forgiveness and peace and trust and friendship is magic, often making ridiculous choices and giving horrible advice to people that should get you and/or them killed (but doesn't) because you're just the goodest of boys. That is, if you play the game 'right'.
But that's the player's role in the story, to be a moral compass and a support beam for everyone, and the story was written this way so it all works out of course. Considering how many times it should've been a disaster, it is indeed a "fantasy" game.
The rest of the characters also seem to have been made with a single purpose, or at least with a single tone/theme in mind:
There's the "pussy" we're trying so hard to save to the point of happily dying. She is in a state of constant anxiety, fear and shame, she has such a terrible life it's just ridiculous to the point any pity I could feel was replaced with annoyance, but I digress, her role is to make you sad through empathy.
And even when you try to help and things start to get better for her, nope, things immediately get worse via plot devices.
The player could (and should) be MUCH more pushy (if only that was an option) and the problems could be solved much faster without creating new ones, but instead the player gives her space and time and needlessly prolongs the suffering, and drags out her "story".
Your job is to save and support her over and over again until something changes. And then you bone her, of course.
Another girl's purpose is to be weak-willed and indecisive with little to no self-worth. Your job is to give terrible advice that will somehow work for the best instead of getting her killed, and turn her into a confident leader like you are (not).
And then you bone her.
Yet another girl is the polar opposite of that: Strong-willed, confident, professional, and cold. Your job is to make her work less, get her to relax and enjoy her life (during a WAR), get her to be friendlier and more trusting (which was shown to be stupid) and a whole lot less cold.
Yes, how dare she efficiently kill her enemies hell-bent on killing and enslaving everyone! Sob, sob. -Player.
And yes, you get to bone her too...
This is the pattern with most characters.
They are there mostly for you to help them in some way or form, by playing though their own little self-contained stories (and choosing right), that's mostly separate from the events of the main story instead of being connected to it.
And then you bone them.
On a side note: You can skip character stories but you'll skip over half the game, you'll be pushed towards the bad end, and you'll get characters dying or disappearing.
In case you're wondering, you don't have to choose but there's basically no "harem" or "sharing" happening, and while there are threesomes (2 to be exact, same 2 characters), it's not up to you to choose the characters.
You just bang chicks (like ~7 maybe) and basically nobody cares, nobody gets jealous, nobody is angry or happy about it, nobody even acknowledges this fact.
It's just...ignored.
This goes beyond sex: NPC-NPC interactions are somewhere between bare-bones and nonexistence. The story follows you, so characters interact with you in their own self-contained stories, but they rarely if ever interact with each other and never in any meaningful way.
Oh, and remember it's war between an empire and some kingdom? Well, nobody else is involved as far as the game is concerned, because we need more nonsense. No diplomacy, you get no outside help, not even from other towns, castles, villages or cities within the kingdom you're fighting for, no other kingdoms still standing lifts a finger for, or against you, the city you're protecting is a lonely existence in an empty world,
and oh, you never, EVER see or hear from any king or queen or baron or other "noble" characters, not even their names are mentioned, not even the fact they exist. Except for "nobles" I guess, that word itself is uttered maybe twice throughout the entire game.
So who leads? Governs? Makes laws? Gives the orders? Makes plans? Engages in diplomacy? haha just joking, that doesn't happen anyway.
So who's the top dog?
The highest ranking millitary girl in town of course, who else?
And then there are unfinished storylines involving a cult, some prophecy, another mecenary group and who knows what else.
Now, I've been shitting on the game plenty but it's not ALL bad.
So let me speak of the few positives also.
The intro was surpisingly good. I mean, fucking voiced cinematics? Damn, I certainly did not expect that one coming. It actually started out like an AAA game, one which did a great job painting a picture of the situation and got me up to speed. It was gracefully done.
Also every once in a while, another voiced cinematic. I loved that idea, as it usually gave a little boost of immersion and realism and helped spice things up.
And while I'm not particularly fond of the voice acting of some characters (PC in particular), I definitely appreciate the effort. It's a great attempt, especially if the VAs are amateurs.
That said I kinda wish the option to mute voices was there.
Sounds come in 3 categories:
Music is fitting, and though it isn't present all the time, it manages to become repetitive by the end.
There are sound effects for certain things, but not everything, everywhere. It's still a nice touch.
Aforementioned voiced lines, the most relevant characters have them (for better or for worse) scattered throughout the game, mostly during the more notable scenes, and including sex scenes (just moaning tho, unless my memory betrays me). To make it clearer: Do NOT expect every line to be voiced.
Visuals (outside of animations) are decent, albeit somewhat lacking in number, most notably during conversations, which gives a stale feeling.
Animations themselves are also fairly good in general, that said, the beginning of sex animation is just hilarious: Ram it in quick and hard like it's a race, with a quick zoom in for extra emphasis.
Other than that bit of unintended, out of place comedy, the only real problem I can see with animations is the lack of it rather than its quality. I know, animations take more time, but more animations could've been substituted by a number of still images. That didn't happen either.
Sex scenes use 1 animation usually, of medium/medium-high quality with a couple of different angles to enjoy, nothing jaw dropping but it can get the job done.
But it's short, too short I think. Well, technically you can let it loop as long as you want but with no dialogues involved, I'd still call animated parts "short".
And with the inability to trigger such scenes on demand, or rewatch them in a gallery, the "adult" aspect of the game feels a little lacking.
Overall it feels small, incomplete, claustrophobic.
Like it was supposed to be so much more than what it actually ended up being.
Like there are giant gaps for more content, but it was bridged over instead of filled up.
There's a city with plenty of buildings, yet you can interact with ~5 only and even that is just lacking.
No world map. No notable changes. No pressure. "Final confrontation" feels like it comes out of the blue and it definitely doesn't feel like the "final" confrontation, it feels like it's not even halfway through the story when you're notified you're about to play the endgame.
And the only way through that is via a Deus Ex Machina?
A girl with basically 0 content.
A guy who's basically just an irrelevant infodump.
Second guy who's a walking plot device.
Where's the king, and the queen, the emperor or empress, the nobles?
Where is the rival mercenary group?
Where is the mystery and the fantastic creatures?
Where's the rest of the world?
It feels like it is merely the first chapter of a grand story, that is still very much in development, and if that was the case, it could become pretty good, even 4/5 if certain flaws were "explained away".
But that isn't the case. It is done.
...And it is not for me.
But if you like superhero movies and the like, because you can just ignore the story or the lack of it, the plot and its holes, the characters, and all the nonsense and contradictions for the sake of "cool", if you can just go with the flow and enjoy the ride,
then you may just end up loving this game.
If so, have at it!
However, if you think you're anything like me and like to immerse yourself in a fictional world, and think about what you're doing, think about the story, the characters, the possibilities,
then it's not really for you,
because the longer you think about it, the more holes and mistakes you'll find, and the emptier it becomes.
