Truly one of the most masterful games to ever grace the Monster Girl genre, and one of my "Golden Ten" best games I've found among the 1.5 Terrabytes of lewds I've gotten off this site in my years using it.
STORY 5/5
The story of this gem has a simple enough premise. Hero duo investigates ruins to find a sword. Girl transforms into monsters, sexes her partner. Other then being actually set in the world of Kenko Cross' Monster Girl Encyclopedia, among the first and still greatest modern monster girl works, the story itself doesn't really do anything spectacular. Which, it could be argued, is a strength. There is nothing extraneous about the plot, it does exactly what it needs and nothing more. After all, this is more then anything a story about its-
CHARACTERS 5/5
This game is a character piece if nothing else. And damn is it good. While I still think its sequel is even better, as it even made me tear up a bit, this one is still a great peice of work, and really gets into a lot of the smaller details of our hero duo, the nature of living in this world, their personal histories, backstories, motivations, hopes and dreams, and the like. For being a game that will, at best, take you a couple of hours to read through, the characters are phenomenally well done, and I genuinely cared about them.
GAMEPLAY -/5
Nil. This seems to be people's largest complaint about the game, for reasons I can't wrap my head around. This "game" isn't really a game, it never says it is, and never pretends its something its not. It is, for all intents and purposes, and Visual Novel, just made in RPG maker. As such, gameplay can not be scored, as 95% of the game is just reading text, and the other 5%, walking on a linear path to the next bit of dialogue.
ART 5/5
Art is downright gorgeous, especially for a game made in RPGMaker. Hardly a stock asset to be seen in a world that is stunningly full of life and character. The real artistic treat however lies within the-
LEWDS 4/5
Holy beans, muh pixel art. Apart from being an absolutely timeless medium, the work on display here is downright masterful. All the game's scenes are played out in animated pixel art that almost no other game can rival in its detail. If there is a single complaint to be leveled against the game, its that all the scene's are a tad samey. Textbook vanilla, lovey-dovey, light fem-dom, monster girl goodness.
CONCLUSION 10/10
If you are the odd folk that actually has the patience to read with your faps, or if you like monster girls at all, or you just like a slightly more romantic plot, you'll be hard pressed to find a game surpassing this one. It's a masterpiece, only superseded in its genre by its sequel.
