VN - Ren'Py - Ancient Times [v0.1.8] [Garus]

A bit of a mess.

Visuals are sort of decent, but body variety seems to be very limited -- most females seem to be with wide big hips and very large tits. While it might have been some idea of ancient ideals, there were people of all kinds of body templates at all times.

There are some okay H scenes. The animations are okayish. Everything is going on in interiors though, which are somewhat dimly lit. True to the time, but not very easy on the eye.

Interiors/Landscape is pretty OK for setting. Clothing is half there, half impossible. But these are limitations that shouldn't be judged too strongly, as models might be harder to come by. The attempt has definitely been made and is vaguely better than in many other games who try to do some historical bg.

There are multiple choices, which don't appear to affect much -- apart from choosing to spare or not some slaves who attacked you on the road, many of other choices lead to just a bit of change of dialogue at best. The walkthrough indicates the "right" ones, but it frequently seems to be arbitrary, or at least does not appear to lead to any longterm consequences even within the scene.

Plot is all over the place. You are a Roman legionnaire


For an Ancient Rome type of game there's a somewhat decent attempt at some historical context/background, but although master/slave relationships are introduced and stressed all throughout the game, they are very "unmastery" and pretty unlike what they have historically been.

Also, there appears to be very fragmented understanding of what was considered good/bad/shameful in those times -- and for whom(!) (yes, I know Ancient Rome was a long time period. Nevertheless).

Lots of small details that don't make sense for the setting. For example, MC's uncle "praises God" at some point, whereas a Roman would praise a specific god for a specific reason. Or at the very least he would praise Gods.

Finally, the English texts of the game are sadly with tons of grammatical, punctuation and word mistakes, and frequently quite simplistic, making it sound as if written by a not very well educated teen sometimes. Or badly translated. Also the Roman vibe is interrupted by some modern words/phrases every now and then.

The game sometimes feels a bit of Desert Stalker wannabe, which it most certainly isn't.


I would like to give game more due to the setting and attempt, but currently it doesn't warrant it. Maybe in future versions. As it is, it sits between 2/5 and 3/5, but I decided on 3 b/c there might be hope of improvement.

UPD: Oh, and the game feels very jumpy, because it has very many screen changes that you can't set to be on-click -- you can just adjust the speed. This is incredibly annoying and if not fixed by the next version, I'd downgrade review to 2/5 even if other things are fixed. Please have either fully fledged animation, or let me click at my own pace.

VERSION: 0.1.7
SUMMARY: OK, not great, not horrible but sure as shit not near 5 stars so...decent models and good amount of H content so far.

PROS:

1. Decent looking models, some better than other, but overall the female love interests are very good looking.
2. Choices that have significant effect, albeit immediate. Not sure about impact later though.
3. Ancient Rome setting, always nice...
4. Plenty of sex scenes and seems like decent amount of kinks.

CONS:

1. Renders are very basic and grainy, also lighting is not great, often hard to really see some scenes properly.
2. Animations are OK, but short and loops often throw the scene off. More effort, time and polish is needed here as with several other places.
3. MC looks kinda like a moron (no offense) but has a real cave man vibe to his face, not really a look and sure as hell wont pull so many beautiful woman
   
4. Story is a bit all over the place, nothing feels very cohesive, just when you think its a simple story and maybe just an "ancient time" sex fest, it throws some weird plot that really does nothing but make the game weird and nonsensical.
5. Writing needs some work, overall not bad, but proof read and check the dialogue, using words like "cool" in Ancient Rome setting doesn't work even less when used to describe intercourse in a particular scene.
6. Choices, they are there but sometimes there is literally only one choice so then why ask the player to choose?
7. Choices also have no apparent effect, at least many of them in terms of longevity, who knows if they have any effect e.g. if woman can get pregnant if the MC blows his load in the love interest?

FINAL THOUGHTS:

• Good start I guess, but messy, unpolished and lack the quality we have come to want and expect today.
• The game really has nothing much going for it, save the sex and pretty models, but the renders are poor so the only real plus the game has is overshadowed by the lack of decent quality renders...
• Here is something, but honestly there are better games out there with the same kind of setting, just done better.

It is very hard to find a VN with solid historical retrospect. Even though there were some godly business in the story, I enjoyed the whole Roman vibe. However, it felt like the renders lacked proper lighting but overall everything about graphics was great. Also, the file size felt too big for that much content.

It is very early to how the main plot will turn out but I am hopeful. Although there are some indications that the story will be very close to reality. lets see what happens. I am hoping for the best.

Very good historical sex game. The dialogue and story is intriguing and there is plenty of hot scenes. The MC has choices on how to approach different situations. Almost all the models used are very hot. The only complaint is that some of the scenes are way too dark.