VN - Ren'Py - Ancient Times [v0.2] [Garus]

Great game, anything set in the roman era always adds on a few extra points for me. The only real compliant I have is the free roam portions they seem kind of a forced addition and are a bit clunky. If that got removed this could honestly be one of the top games on this site if the dev keeps updating.

Despite some flaws this has promises of a very good game. This review is written after playing the 2.0 version of the game and the game is not finished and the dev is still learning and evolving as a dev.

Sure there are flaws, the freeroam is unecessary, the releases are usually quite buggy and the UI could be improved.

But the most imortant part, the core of a good game is there. The story is sound and interesting, the models and artwork are very good, the choices matter, the lewd is good and there are plenty of kinks (the latter two are essential to a good AVN).

This game will slowly get even better and it will be worth it!

I was kind of mid on the game, amazing story telling but the models and flow were okay. Then we made it to the villa! That niece model is 10/10, reminds me of Desert Stalker. Then even more beautiful models showed up. Now that Models and Story Telling are hitting hard, it's a definite recommend from me!

0.2.

I really want to like this more.

I like the Roman setting, and the initial premise of a former soldier returning to civilian life. I think the art is lovely. It has a very promising first few minutes, and hints at what might be a long, well-developed and coherent plot.

But then we get into alternate realities, gods in modern settings, a VN turned into an unnecessary sandbox, a lack of new content, dialogue deleted from past editions that would leave a new player of 0.2 confused, and sloppy grammar. (I play in English.)

The developer describes it as an early prologue, but the game has been on here for two years. Understandably, one can question how close the game will realistically get to the promised scope.

I do hope to play this again when it's more developed.

Rated 5* because people are ungrateful bellends and despite the poor sandbox the game hasn't miraculously stopped being decent and interesting overnight.

My main concern is that there isn't all that much content despite the game being out for a while.

I remember trying this out over a year ago now, and thinking it had potential: some clumsy writing, but good-looking LIs and the basics to develop on. Unfortunately, it doesn't seem much has changed in that time, and instead the developer seems to have put their time into a very poorly-made and unintuitive sandbox system. It doesn't tell you what you need to do, doesn't tell you where what is, and doesn't actually contribute anything that a sandbox should as far as I can tell. It either needs a massive overhaul, which given the development time thus far seems inconceivable, or should be dropped and returned to a more straightforward approach rather than what appears to be a padding attempt.

v0.2

Start of the game is kind of boring, but pretty soon good amount of spicy conversations and wacky main plot will make it interesting. It has nice balance of fantasy(?) and immersive Roman time interactions to make me wanna know what happens next.
The sandbox is shit. You need to push red button and then select the next yellow exclamation mark. Good thing is that this will instantly move you to next part of the story. I really hope this sandbox skeleton is removed in later updates.

Characters are one of the best thing in this game. They clearly have unique personalities and make the somewhat weird story so much better. Loved the cousin and cant wait to meet her mother. Other male characters also have meaning and effect on what MC should do. Optional poison protection buff does also make interactions more exciting, as you wonder if your actions will require it in future.

Visually game has few great pictures and situations. Visuals show power dynamics well between MC and girls. Not a masterpiece, but does its job well. Only thing I hated was too dark pictures at some parts of the game.

This review is based on version 0.2 .....

What started out as a very promising VN has unfortunately gone off the rails in version 0.2 sadly.

The Good:
- Interesting Plot
- Some Beautiful Female Characters

The Bad:
- Replaced the beautiful character ATI with a less attractive model.
- Writing leaves a lot to be desired.
- Characters are not engaging.
- Characters not really introduced well, just throw in with little info.

The Ugly:
- Introduced a confusing and error prone Sandbox in v0.2

The game seriously went downhill with the second update, the introduction of a confusing and error prone sandbox along with the remaking character looks for the worse have negatively affected this once promising VN. The writing also got worse with the update and felt rushed. This update was so bad I wont play future updates until the game is much farther along and the reviews/comments indicate the game improved and worthy of a second chance.

Version 0.1 was a promising 3 or 4 star worthy title.
Version 0.2 is sadly a 1 star effort.
So my rating is a 2

The game started off well, despite some annoying issues. Visuals were pretty solid, the characters interesting so far.
The main issues were fake and un-consequential choices leading to just a few dialogue variations , but it's a common issues in a lot of AVN.

Then recently, the game just ruined itself. Never-mind the bugs and atrocious UI, which yeah can be fixed eventually... the whole idea of going sandbox, when it already proposes very little content variations and choices is not good at all. It serves no purpose other than just being annoying, a timesink, even with proposed "shortcuts"/skipping buttons. Most of all, it will eventually cause problem to the plot and its structure.

Now the game that already heavily slowed down the progress of the story, will have to account for people going in the "wrong order" and triggered the proper sequences an scenes IF the sandbox becomes more than its current cosmetic lousy self.

EDIT : lowering one star down to match the retards and their little number fudging antics . Everyone can play silly worthless games. I will only update my rating further, and positively, if the game actually significantly improves."

It was a three star VN before the last update. (Technically, it was 4+ stars, but the rating was a bit too high IMO) Now, it is a very poorly implemented, and practically unplayable sandbox. The story had potential, and the renders were decent. It's still early in the development, so maybe a course correction could help, but as it stands now, I couldn't recommend a VN that likely won't be around much longer and wouldn't be worth your time even if it is.

PROS
+ Story seems to have some potential.
+ Visually style is decent.

CONS
- Sandbox is awful, with awful I mean unplayable, you can just wonder around with clicking stuff, and still find nothing, and get stuck, waste soo much time, etc, this game needs decent sandbox changes or visual novel mod ASAP especially if it's gonna be pointless like it's now, because right now it's not just awful, same time it has no point either, if developer wants anyone play his game he should get rid of sandbox ASAP.
- HUD/UI looks terrible, even basic Renpy HUD/UI is way better than this one, changing would be great idea.
- It's not bug-free either, cleaner releases could be good idea as well.
- Some of choices feels unneeded since there is only one, if there is only one why ask the player, and waste their time anyway?
- Visual quality needs improvements.
- MC's design can use some changes, especially his face.
- Animations could use some work on their physics, quality, etc.

VERDICT
With the current rate it's not worth playing nor even playable, I would suggest waiting at least couple monts and see if sandbox is gone or improved at least to give a try.

The game has great potential, the girls are beautiful and the scenes hot, but there is big navigation bugs in the current sandbox. Clicking the red dot does not always transition to the scene, and has to be done multiple times to transition to the scene. Story is quite interesting.

I love games set in ancient times, but this one falls short. The sandbox navigation is just terrible, and the UI is unintuitive with no clear guidance on how to advance the story, making the experience frustrating.

The story’s actually pretty decent, and the girls look great in the renders. The MC, on the other hand, could definitely use a better design.

The biggest downside for me is the sandbox mode—it’s clunky, slows everything down, and really breaks the flow of the story. A straight visual novel style would work way better.

Some of the renders also come out a bit grainy, which takes away from the overall look.

That said, it’s not a bad game at all. If the dev ditched the sandbox and polished things up a bit, this could be a really solid AVN.

Edit: Reduced rating due to a bunch of obvious errors and the sandbox is just really bad.

Rather nice story and very handsome ladies.

Got a bit annoyed by the lez scene and the dinner shenanigans because of the dark and blurry renders.
Of course they didn't have electric lighting in those days but for me I would have prerferred to be able to see some skin and naughty bits.
Coitus should maybe only occur at daytime like with Miriel.

A bit of proofreading wouldn't hurt either.
Too many gender mistakes: her instead of him and vice versa.

On the whole it's an all right pastime occupation to watch a few boobies bouncing around

To be honest, Ancient Times is a very good simulator of ancient Roman nobles. I feel like I have traveled through ancient times and successfully become a powerful tribune. The pornographic scenes, character modeling and story immersion of this work all give people a good experience. I want to give this good ancient pornographic simulator 5 points. I am looking forward to the next update.

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.