RPGM - Completed - Arenus [v1.1G] [Arvus Games]

This is probably their worst game so far. It's bad both in it's parts and at it's core.

Lots of time wasting between uninspiring training and dull combat. Also the three gladiators are basically reskins of each other, so if you take it into the account then the amount of content becomes rather sad.

Yet what is even this game trying to be? Some kind of romance story between the trainer and a gladiator? Well, it doesn't look like that when there are three (?) scenes between them and twice the amount of defeat scenes. So is it some kind of corruption/NTR game? Nope, these defeat scenes don't really happen because the game basically does a time loop in this case.

In the end the MC and gladiators being different entities adds nothing to the game.

A excruciating slow, somewhat immersive(only on graphics side, not gameplay) unoptimised game that will make your hair fall out and your clothes vaporize. An untested game, no playtesting was done for sure.

i remember this game, playing it 2-3 years ago. First impressions are everything and it wasn't good at all. The key there was that the second or third boss fight is hard on first timers. i gave it up.

Now in the present: i started the game with lot of money(save editor) so i can have all gear(according to the game's pace, not buying late game). Also buying items that can help in increasing gladiator's mood,reducing stress and work performance. With these items, the game is much more "bearable". But nothing can solve the atrocious game design loop of this "game".
Everything you do here has an animation that delays your whole existence.
Moving through levels? Here's 5 second wait time. Want to select your save file or buy an item or just use it? Here's the worst gaming sin of all: You must hold your Left click mouse. And you can't keep holding it if you want to buy multiple items, you have to let go and press it again.
Are you leaving your home? Here's 5 second elevator scene and also the map transition so 10 seconds.
Slow walking speed with very limited fast travel that makes it not be there.
i never thought there was an fast travel that is limited and the game never explains it plainly and even if it did, the amount of pain you go due to the game loop.
There is taxi travel that costs and is on the edges of the map that return to your home but as i said, it is like it isn't there.
i really don't think anyone playtested this game and nor the designers ever thought it was a good idea. Whoever thought this was a good idea, really should re-think everything and it doesn't matter if you do it first time or X time. That's why there is playtesting.
Yes, maybe due to my weak pc, everything looks slow but the UI, the gameplay loop is extremely slow regardless of hardware.
So here's the gameplay loop: You must train certain stats for your gladiator to prepare for the fight. You can focus specific or go all round. But the process of training your gladiator is so painful with the above mistakes of the designers. If you want to go to the gym, you must pass through 3 loading screens. Want to go to spa to reduce stress? It is 4 loading screens. And so on. Why THERE ISN"T AN MANAGEMENT SCREEN ON YOUR HOMEBASE?
For a trainer type of a game, this game makes you wonder what happened to all gaming years from 80s and beyond. It's like everything designed for you to waste time.
BEcause if you lose the fights, not only you get to see boring defeat sex scenes but also restart the week to prepare for the same fight. Thereby even wasting more time due you being needed to go to the training or work zones by yourself.
Want to do side quests? Hahaha. You know, there are details that even the designers forgot to account for. Like how your gladiator always drinks a beer to reduce stress at the end of the day but even if she has 0% stress, she still drinks the beer that you bought. Or how, there is a side quest where you deliver packages but if the recipient is someone, on the specific day that they are closed; the quest giver complains the next day that you're only words and no action. You can't interact with recipient if their store is closed.

Ah i forgot the worst of the worst: The end of day report. My God, who designed this? It follows the same principle as above, wasting your precious time and you can't skip it, just like the intro cutscene after a new game.

You might think, these gameplay mistakes aren't bad enough to justify the whole game. Maybe the scenes, the story are interesting despite all of that?
I assure you, this game, doesn't reward or have closure.
The only good things about this game are:
The artist and some of the scenes, especially the gangbang, anal and blowjob scenes. The artist knows how to make expressions attractive and juicy. But fails on certain aspects. But l blame the director not the artist for this.
Nari(Futa Spaceport lady), Geuna(human gladiator with a revenge theme story) and the female protagonist(the black one specifically).
Yes, the game does "change" a bit depending on your gender but that's only certain scenes and doesn't change in an immersive way either. Even Nari, recognizes you as a person and not a female, the whole game still thinks you as non-binary and only acknowledges your gender on certain scenes.

Non-binary as in "person", not a third "gender". Most games do that, for time saving reasons, i understand but the facade falls apart easily and consistency isn't being kept in this game.

The game lacks that reward feeling when bonding or interacting characters.
My favorite parts are Nari and Geuna as the female protagonist. Sadly, only 1-2 scenes are possible with the characters. Any possible dialogue choice you choose and implies future scenes, never really happen in the game. No anal from the Futa(Nari) lady from her, despite the taboo aspect; because the game didn't account for that. And other numerous examples with other characters.


The game feels "long" but in reality, it is short and shallow with few parts that show potential and worldbuilding.
Yes, the worldbuilding helps in immersion but if the gameplay, interaction with characters and your own personal don't do anything; what's the point? Thankfully your protagonist only speaks when the choices appear but your "behaviour" is not immersive I would say. It is all just flavour text or binary choices.
The only interesting parts i found are the (very limted )interactions and relationship "building" with your gladiator and the Futa Lady.

What a waste of potential. It tried something unique but the gameplay and the scenes say otherwise.
In essence, it is just the same game that Arvus games always makes. Just hentai scenes, with little to no relationship bonding and just pure hentai scenes for the sake of it. And pour also tedious combat encounters, spongy boss fights, that both require pre-existing knowledge.
Stay away, this game doesn't respect the player nor player's time. i wouldn't even advise you to look the scenes because you might be tempted to play it.

The only reason why I picked this game up these 3 days is just FOR THE FUTA LADY THAT ONLY HAS 1 SCENE. I gave up this game, can't afford to waste time and I already know and feel how it will end.
You get to have that intuitive feeling with experience, as most games are sadly, too alike to each other, to dangerous degrees.

Gone the days of unique games.

Arenus is a very slow game focused on tactical turn based combat and resource management. With a heavy inclination on the “tactical” aspect of the game. The rpgm engine goes well above the average coding to create the 2d pixelated experience of this young warden responsible for helping a gladiator to win in the sci-fi world of arena fights. The management mechanic is related to the well being of your gladiator, her training, her stress, her equipment, her points, and so on. Throughout the game you get to meet other girls that give you a couple of scenes more, with the game focused on your relationship with one of the three very different gladiators you can choose. The graphics are very pretty, pixel art is a personal favorite and Arenus presents a good ambience and overall layout. The sprites and scenes are a high quality western style art with plenty of detail but still limited to jpegs. That is all the praise this game deserves. Arenus is a bad game created with a very big roll of bad development decisions made by someone that either didn’t test the game, or has a deep love for repeating the same tasks. First, the save is limited to sleeping, meaning, you better not need to quit the game without ending your day properly or you will have to do it all over again. That is already a big red flag. Besides the obvious, Arenus is on my top five slowest games I have ever played. Everything is obnoxiously slow to do, even clicking becomes annoying when things require holding the button. You have to slowly walk around the same eight scenes hundreds of times doing the exact same selection of tasks while the week crawls until the fight day. That is the only proper way to earn money, a resource that you are in constant need of. And you better manage is correctly, because you have to pay rent every week. Bills in videogames are always a delightful surprise. But the combat is where Arenus truly shows its drudgenes. Battling soon feels like a chore. The enemies are boring bullet sponges that take too many turns and resources to deal with, especially if they have the invincible buff. And to twist the knife further, the combat is just normal combat, without any adult content inserted to get your attention, just shoot, use some skills, shoot again, over and over. If you want to avoid losing and having to repeat this slog, get every form of health regeneration early. The scenes are pretty jpegs that are very sparse throughout the immense game. You will spend hours grinding and moving around until you get to see something new. In conclusion, Arenus has pretty art but fails in all the other aspects expected from any game, being a slow torture software without any decent reward.

Everyone always asks for completed games, they don't want to have it develop over time they want the finished product now. This is one of the only games that has done that and unfortunately it's worse for it. It could be darn near perfect if it had enough playtesting and tweaks made. As it stands there are a lot of little imbalances that really take away from the experience.

Nice artwork, great concept, good polish, gameplay is okay.
The worst thing about this is probably how tedious it is. Everything takes ages. As an example: Every day you get to spend action points on leveling your companion, making them train, etc. These are recapped after every day and once you have sufficient of these action acquired, they will probably take 2-3 minutes to just present the same data every day. To spend these points, you will have to travel across the city every day, walking over several screens, loading inbetween. In the later game, even a "fast" day might take you five minutes to complete. In a game in which the pace of progression is on a weekly basis, you will have probably a hundred days of total time and in which there are events on random days you want to collect. If you don't play with the event guide open, this would mean that you have to walk the entire length of the city every day to spot such events naturally, which will probably take 15-20 minutes. Meaning the time between two story progressions (the fights) can be two hours or so, with the actual sex scenes not taking place for the first few weeks for the most part.

This makes it look like it is a horrible game, but it really isn't. Shorten the end of day animations to be a flat overview that appears instantly, tell us when there are events for certain characters (which they are already doing for your companion) and make a week take more like 30 minutes and this game would be leagues better.

Okay where to start with this disaster.

Cons:
1) Long, unskippable intro
2) You need to use a cheat code to enable manual saving on a game that gives game overs... Normally it only saves once at the start of each day. So if you get a game over, you have to repeat the whole day... not fun.
3) There's no sense of progression because your stats reset every week. A really questionable design choice.
4) Moving around the city is slow. There *is* a fast travel system in place, but for some unbeknownst reason, you can only use it a couple times per day. WHY?
5) No gallery. Though someone did mod one, which was nice.
6) Okay now this the real big one. The big dealbreaker, the thing that if it didn't exist I could probably overlook all the other issues.
The sex scene narration is TERRIBLE. I'm not talking about a subpar MTL translation or anything. It's just straight up bad. It's like they hired a guy to write them who charged by the word, so he blew up that word count like a kid trying to reach his essay word count by frantically using the thesaurus feature. It completely kills the eroticism of every single sex scene. I can't even recommend just using the gallery mod to appreciate the game that way, because the scene narration is pure boner killer.

Pros:
1) The art. This is the only pro. The only person in the entire development of this game who did a good job is the guy who made Elona so goddam sexy. That guy is the reason this review is 2 stars and not 1. The art is seriously good, its probably the only reason you're looking at these reviews right now are Elona's jugs on the Arenus banner.

A new try for this developer and I think its pretty good. The only notable problem is the pacing of the game which is quite slow(not story wise). And you lack the options to skip some parts. Other than that, good gameplay, solid characters and artwork.

The art is very good. All of it from the overworld pixel art to the sex scenes. The story is fine. The gameplay isn't bad, but the length of the game makes it a chore to do. Every in-game day you wake up you do mostly the same thing which takes about 5-10 minutes real time. This could be sped up if some screens/actions were sped up or skippable. The amount of scenes in this game are too little. Especially if you aren't interested in the game over scenes.

The gameplay loop is fine for the first 10 weeks or so. Then it becomes so tiresome walking to every NPC and building everyday just to see if they have anything to tell you or see something special going on. Most of the time they don't, but the fear of missing out on a scene or something else is too great that you are inclined to check. If there was a system in place to let you know when to show up at what location to unlock something it would make this game a lot more bearable.

For how long the game is, the scenes are few and far between. If you play these games with dick in hand you will go soft for hours in between scenes. Most fuckable NPCs only have 1 scene. There are some NPCs you hope you get to fuck but never can. These unfuckable NPCs even have a "flirty" option when you talk to them giving you the impression it actually matters. The massage lady and reporter lady are just 2 I can think of.

This has amazing art and really puts you into the world of this game but i cant help but hate it for alot of reasons for one this game crams in a bunch of time wasting bullsh in so many areas of the game you cant just go to a shop and buy x amount of items you have to hold down click to to buy just one of the item you want to buy 5 of you cant just open a door you have to hold down the right mouse button.

This has so many of of these time wasting bullshits like having to sit through the same slides at the end of the day but the most a egregious way it does this is how most of the scenes you get are through talking to and doing the quests of everyone which always has you running through every npc in the game.

Play it once and get a gallery it took me a week to play a porn game i didn't even fap too.

I really had alot of hopes for this game but unfortunately it fails as a game,sure the art is amazing but this is a GAME not a gallery nor are the reviews supposed to be for the art alone but how well the mechanics,art,music,story and so on integrate into a cohesive whole. This game has a bad combat system,very much grind and running around to get anywhere,stress builds up very fast and means skipping days,not much to do beyond fighting in arena then for 6 or so days running around to do jobs and then wait for stress to go down. Skills are underwhelming,cost alot and require points for traits/skills that are patheticly weak.

Music and the atmosphere are nice but arent memorable or unique by any stretch.
There are no side activities aside from some missions for a shadowy agent which are lack luster. Character development and relationships are shallow or non existent,there is practically nothing to do but grind.
Story is pretty good but anticlimatic and slow.
Scenes and art are why you see 3 and half stars,if not for it it would be a 2 to 3 max.

Ok, so Im going to rate thi game considering that I used the mod that Daffy made for this game in order to be fully playable and without big issues, so im going to tell my impresions.

Sex scenes (3/5): this could be one of the strongest points and the weakest at the same time but I will tell the bad things later, the sex scenes are pretty good in therms of art, text and narrative, having small variations of the art according to your chosed gladiator, for example if you compare the same scene with different gladiators, you can notice that Elona (blue gal) is the most THICC of all the gladiators while Geyna (human) its the most relative "slim" of the three, Armida (wolfgirl) is the most toned but many scenes dont portrate this often. The narrative of some scenes is actually good tbh, some dialogues cang change the end of the scene, with armida first sex scene, if you dont play your cards right, she will sleep on her room as if nothing happens, but if you do play good she will sleep with you. The major problem of the scenes is that the game contains so little of them, many fem characters doesnt have scenes with the male warden, and it has a lack of scenes with the fem warden (like with monsters or aliens), this game feels like the total of the scenes were cut by half, The warden has just a bit of the scenes with the gladiator and its supposed to be the main couple, the only girl that has an special scene is Elona what makes it bad for the other gladiators.

Story (3/5): The story is fun and interesting, each gladiator has it main purposes and goals and changes little the main story when you help them to accomplish their goals, I love the futuristic theme of the game, the only problem is that it isnt explored as it should and the final is kinda meh tbh. EDIT: I was informed that the "bad" endings arent even developed lmao

Gameplay (2/5): The ugly plant of the garden, this game has so many problems in the vanila game, the maps feels empty, the game doesnt tell yiu when characters need you so you have to walk randomly, it takes an eternity to reach each side of the maps, the enemies feels weak in the late game but really annoying in the early, the end of the day takes an eternity, and there are many but many bugs that thankfully were patched by daffy (love'ya daffy) I read that the developers want to make this game in steam a SFW game and that is straight up dumb and will only ruin the game for both sides SFW and NSFW, its clearly that this game its an NSFW by only looking at the main cast.

Characters (5/5): The strong part of this game without major flaws in my opinion, there is almost nothing wrong with this point, each character feels unique and special in they own way and that makes the game rich, it really should be more explored because each character need more quests and scenes.

Overall Rating 3/5
Skipping some dettails, the game needs more content ASAP and a patch that fix all of their bugs (without mods that are made by the fans) but if you play the game with the daffy mod you can encounter a good game that it has a lot of potential and rich lore (They could even make a side story with Raven tho) and overall it feels incomplete.

So, the issue with Arenus is a few things:

1. It was released waaaay too early. part of that is people really wanting it to be out, but it needed another 6-12 months to really get polished, iron out a bunch of issues, etc.
2. It seems to have gone from 3 distinct gladiators to essentially 1, with the only difference between all of them being...well...nothing. They do exactly the same things, for the most part. All H-scenes are pretty much exactly the same with all of them.
3. The devs appear to not be sure what kind of game they want. Lead dev has stated a few times that he wants it out on Steam as a SFW game, as he thinks it can be enjoyed that way. Here's the problem. The game is fundamentally a H-game. That's what sets it apart from other similar side-scrolling rpg games. This doesn't really have much roleplaying content in it as it is, so in an attempt to make it reach a wider audience in the near future with the impending steam release later this year, he tried to make it be something it's not. He should've just owned what kind of game he was making and built a vision around it. Instead, you get what's mostly a really watered down sidescroller with no content other than things that waste your time, which leads into...
4. There are way, way too many parts of the game/mechanics that are there for no reason other than inflating time played. It's disappointing, for sure, but that seems to have been the only real reason for the majority of how the game is structured.

All in all, a big step down from Roundscape. The only difference is that the artwork is consistent, and as such, better than RS. But as a game, this really isn't it and the dev 100% swung and missed with this one.

Note: I don't believe a complex opinion can be properly represented by a number but I do understand some people are impatient so I don't use the star system normally, my ratings are as follows. 1 don't recommend, 3 unsure please read review, 5 recommend.

I have a this idea, basically the genre of a game dictates the most important factor of that game, there are rhythm games where sound design is most important, action games where its gameplay, story driven experiences where it's obviously the story. Porn games are special because the most important factor is the graphics, and here you can see through screen shots alone that this game has some great graphics, The artist should be proud of there work, I'm not normally that into furry/alien shit but I think this artist could easily persuade me. However the least important part of porn games, in my opinion, is gameplay. I rank gameplay low because when I'm playing a porn game I want to masturbate, and that desire is located in an entirely different part of my brain than the desire to win a video game, its why I often cheat at these, just to remove the grind and that is where this falters, hard.

Before I go much father I need to be clear and tell you I basically only played 30 minutes of this, and if you don't think that's enough time to really judge it then please ignore this, I think it was enough time for me to realize the obvious problems with the game but I'm, not gonna judge you if you don't believe me.

Now I've already talked about the 10/10 art and unfortunately that is probably the only positive thing I can say about it, I mean I have to give the dev props for the atmosphere/presentation, and I think the characters have the potential to be compelling but I didn't play enough to really make that claim, so with the good firmly behind us let me actually tell you about the game, then we can go into the bad.

In this game you play as a "warden" which is basically just a pokemon trainer where your only pokemon is one of the busty bitches in the banner. It's the sort of weird premise that I don't really understand, I didn't get deep enough into the game, or read enough of the text walls to understand why exactly a "warden" needs to exist but whatever. You're managing your choice fighters life so they can win the big tournament, you can also be male or female so that's fun. Now then.

RPGM, I really hate RPGM a lot, I know why devs use it and there are RPGM games I like but Jesus is it restrictive, the game is very slow, meaning you move slow, I don't know if there is an "auto run" setting, I know there should never need to be one because no one in the fucking world wants to play a game where the characters speed can be measured in single digit pixels, but it wouldn't matter if there was because every door in the game requires you to hold down the action button for a second before it works. I could write a fucking thesis on why I despise this god awful fucking trend in real games and now it's in my porn?!?! every single fucking door, or action or conversation, why why why?!?!? You already need to walk through the entire fucking map as slowly as possible why would you add even more wasted fucking time!!

Now to the gameplay, I barely engaged with this, I did the tutorial fight a
and it took 10+ minutes just to get through the JRPG style fight which had very confusing rules and then after I won I was told the next fight was in 7 days and I just thought about how much time I would have to waste just to get to that fight and then I realized I haven't even made it into the real tournament yet and I gave up. I value my time and you should to, will I sit and play a porn game for 5 hour intervals? Absolutely because it usually doesn't feel like it takes that long because I will have made tons of progress viewed a few scenes and maybe even rubbed one out, here? I would barely scratch the surface of the game, I might see some scenes but that also might bite me in the ass since I should be training my fighter, I don't have any idea how long it will take to get her anywhere near where I'd like and even if it didn't take that long, the slow walk speed and hold the button gameplay would actually take up an hour out of the 5 and feel like it took up 4.

There is a gallery mod if you want to jack it to some high quality context void art but even that mod is finicky and dumb, I don't recommend this game despite its graphical fidelity, and despite my lack of playtime but, if someone remakes this in renpy with a cheat mod let me know. Peace.

I am making this "Review," but first, let me say that I've only gone through Elona's run of the game since I have a feeling that there are only a few variations between the Gladiators, though feel free to correct or add your thoughts cause this is not a FULL game.

Game Mechanics:
The basic premise of this game is that you train your chosen Gladiator to improve their Power, Agility, Endurance, and Mind, either done by working at the Construction, Bar, or Gym or later helping the resistance. Along with managing the stress and mood of your gladiators and building relations with each shop/place. So at first, it feels like you are doing a management sim of the game, but the bad part is that it resets at the END OF EVERY WEEK. That should not be the case since you want to FEEL progress and SEE that your Gladiator is getting stronger to face the challenges in the Arena and on missions, a way to LEVEL up your characters.

Managing your gladiators:
I firmly believe that the developers should have allowed us to train ALL THREE Gladiators as it is feasible to do (If you can do it by finishing all Three characters, please feel free to correct me) and assign them to each with a given specialty example; Elona could get more Points with working at the Construction site how she seems fit for that role, Armida (base on her background) could get more Points working at the Bar, and Geyna (base on her profile) could have more Points in either Gym or helping the Resistance-fighters or have all three of them get additional points working with the Resistance-fighters since it seems they all have gripes with the Empire (correct me if I'm wrong)

Shops relation:
It feels lacking, very lacking. You are trying to build better with each shop, which I assumed to get sponsorships, but that's not the case. It's just discounts and gifts, no additional points or such. Like in the Gym, a good story with the character Zalex are you help her develop her Gym thus, getting more Browny points from her for later H-scene and getting discounts like, say, being a sponsor and having her Gym name mentioned or placed on a shirt or mentioned in an interview. I saw this possibility with helping Amantha and her quest-line, but it is so few.

I had assumed that's how you would get sponsorships, additional income, discounts, H-scenes, or free stuff, but nope, that's not the case.

H-scenes:
Super lacking, and from what I've seen in the pictures little variety between the main focus of the game: Gladiators and the MC. It would be best to download the MOD to check the scene since the game wastes your time in BONDING with your Gladiators.

Story:
Boring, lacking, and predictable. The MC is overly generic with a little backstory that can stand out, it would be good of a story if there is a reason for the MC to want either to side with the Resistants or with the Empire like say him/her being related to the Queen. The dialago doesn't affect all much on how characts preceive the MC (correct me if I'm wrong or add to this) it would been nice to have more reasons to doing one over the other and that each Gladiator would respond better to certain combination of dialog choice. But it's all too simple.

Overall the game lacks quality that Below the Sunshade has and quanity-variarity of Roundscape. I had wanted this game to build up from the first two games that came before it but this feels like a first game project, I would have forgiven it for all those faults if it's the devloper's first time making this game but it is their thrid game.

I didn't mentione the art since it was the only positive aspects but it would been better to hack stuck with or have a choice of having pixle art animated scene which they had done a bit in Roundscape or have that in as well for the scenes.

finished the game without even seeing all cut scenes because the game is so bugged and half the cutscenes dont even play im not even doing a second playthrough not worth the headache‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎

Honestly, this review hurts to write. Roundscape is probably my favorite game by far, so when I saw this being developed I thought. "Wow, Roundscape in space." Which perhaps was an unfair bar to set but I really thought this was going to kick that bar into orbit, unfortunately that bar hit a satellite on the way up and fell through some poor farmers roof.

It feels like Roundscape lite, having hints of what made Roundscape so great without ever exploring any of them. If anything it just left me wanting more. So, I'll sum up the good, the bad and the ugly. I'll try not to talk too much about bugs since they will enevitably be patched and everyone has already covered it. I'll also try to limit my comparisons to Roundscape as I do believe this game should also be viewed in it's own form.

The good:

The art- The art in this game is beautiful. Every scene always looks appealing and it gets rid of that Roundscape issue of the varying art quality, depending on your tastes. Each arts styled the same way and I think hits more then it misses on most occasions.

The pixel art- Decided to split them as one is more erotic then the other. The pixel art and look of the world is as beautiful as the art. There's a real atmosphere that gets set but unfortunately never fully explored.

Story- Despite having issues progressing it. I thought the narrative did a good job. I didn't expect much and I think it delivered more then anticipated. I found myself interested enough to keep seeing what might happen, at the very least.

The bad (The average to eh stuff)-

The gameplay- The gameplay could be promising if it didn't have some flaws in it's design. Firstly navigating the town is horroundous. It takes soooo long to run back and forth down the street and you will have to do this everyday unless you want to risk missing events. So, every day you must slowly jog up and down the street talking to every person. Not to mention some conversations take action points so realistically you will need to save your decisions until you have spoken to everyone. This is just tedious busywork that does nothing but extend gametime.

The game really would have beniftted from a pop up that just said "X has a mission for you. Or X needs some help cleaning. That would have at the very least saved some time. This could have been done with a pop up like the ones you're gladiator gives you or even an email.

The email system- Not much to say other then it feels underused. I only recall maybe five emails that were unique over my playthrough. There were probably more but they don't have much sticking power. Other then that it's just a weekly bill alert. I know some people might not enjoy the addition of emails that don't lead to scenes but it just felt more could have been done with it.

Scene variety/numbers- The scene variety in this game feels kind of lacking. This will be a time when I do unfortuantely compare it to Roundscape but without even counting number of scenes, the variety in scenarios and kinks in Roundscape just feels a lot more creative then Arenus. I think this may be due to steam complaince as that probably did limit what content could be in the game. Which is perfectly fine. I'm not going to critiize someone for trying to reach a broader audience but it did feel a little noticble.

The number of scenes also felt a little small for how long the game was. I know the game has a lot of pictures inside but a lot of that is taken up by variations of art and gender. It probably would have helped to limit it to one male/ one female character like roundscape but I also feel there will be a lot of people that enjoy the variations which is a good thing. If the game were shorter I think this wouldn't even be that major of a thing but the game's pace is rather slow and most times I was only getting maybe 1-2 unique scenes a week. This could be due to bugginess with things not progressing but I did look at the gallery briefly and couldn't see too many scenes that it looked like I missed. Apart from ones that softlocked.

Most npc's have one or two scenes between them which is a little small since they each have three hearts to level up. I'm not saying every heart needs to be a full blown sex scene but even just a staring at ass picture or something could have made it feel more fulfilling . You need a carrot on a stick to dangle in front of players and unfortunately since its a porn game, weapon upgrades or training discounts aren't the sort of carrot that will push people. I did find it a little weird that some npc's don't even have scenes. I couldn't see one for the bug lady and I think there is a certain character that I won't name for spoiler reasons that didn't have one. Though they were only briefly in the plot so that can be overlooked. The gym woman has a female scene only which again is fine but it would have been nice to even just have a shower picture with her for the male character. It didn't have to be a sex scene but something would have been nice.

I will say having a defeat scene for every step of the arena is nice, but since it's a loss scene it always feels a little weird as you won't see until after the fact.

Combat- The combat is something I have mixed feelings on. When I was ontop of things and was able to keep up with the gameplay, I enjoyed it. But once enemies started getting harder I felt quickly overwhelmed unsure what to focus on each week to ensure I could even keep up with the game. I admit, I wasn't that skilled at the game which adds to my mixed feelings but there is also issues with the power scaling of characters. Elona is underpowered at the time of writing and hard to use. The wolf I found a little clunky to figure out. The only one I really felt comfortable using was the human. Since her skills are far more overpowered. At least earlier on. But I could see that being adjusted later.

The ugly

That cursed training point screen at the end of the day- I was using mtool on the game mainly so I could speed up the action point screen. Watching every little point skip across was maddening. It already takes a long time to get through a day in game and this adds even more time to that.

Bugs- Game softlocks and hardlocks you a fair bit. Will be patched later.

No manual save- This was painful. Again I had to use mtool to get around it. With the bug encounters, it was easy to lose a whole days progress becasue something messed up. A day can take you a long time in this game so there's nothing that makes you want to stop playing more then losing that progress.

Overall thoughts-

Arenus is a very ambitious game and you can see how broad of a game it wants to be. It has a lot of features like planet travelling, apartment customization, cars to drive and other aspects but it just feels like unncessary stuff when the core of the game needs work. It feels like a case of trying to do too much and hurting everything in the process. I don't want to deter trying to do a lot because it's nice to see. I commend them for trying to really make a game out of this, but I feel trying to really make it more of a game game hindered the porn game side of it. A porn game can be a game, of course, but getting that harmony is hard and I just don't think this game quite gets that harmony, even if you took out the bugs.

For me, the game and porn side step over eachothers shoes and slow eachtother down. With it just taking too long in a week to hit unique scenes. Even if the art is good, seeing the same scene over and over is tiring. I will eventually give this game another playthrough when it's gone through it's bug fumigation and I'll update my review if I find any of my thoughts change. For now, I think 3/5 is fair.

The game has the potential to be great but misses the bar by a few margins, the training time is far too short and things are so random when trying to navigate. I found myself running around like a chicken with its head cut off trying to never find events with no real guidance. The combat needs to be entirely reworked and made plausible to win fights rather than getting a game over and having to restart the entire week.

Very buggy, a lot of the annoying glitches/issues from the demo 2 years ago still in the game, the grind and getting through the day is painful and slow with loading scenes, having to train/work her every single day then sleeping to an unskipable little pixel work of her before the game saves, at least give the different trainings some illustrated, illustrate random posters around the world, illustrate the spa etc, so much missed content for little erotic stuff instead its in the grind that you do with your fighter and some other npcs, the skill system and other one I forget the name is kind of big but kind of pointless as the combat isn't that interesting even though I like turn based combat. The art is good and the story is ok for what it is, everything else about the mechanics and world isn't a big change from the 2-3 year old demo, I feel they only put a few months of work into this game since.

This might be the most frustrating game I've ever played. Not just because of the gameplay, but because of the wasted potential. The art is absolutely top-notch, the scenes are great, the core gameplay loop has legitimate potential, and at a glance there seems to be a ton going on. But man, what an unbelievably hollow-feeling slog this game is. Even worse in this regard than it was as a demo. There were just so many user-unfriendly design decisions that went into this. The core gameplay loop is effectively "walk around for 10 minutes and hope that somebody gives you a quest so that you can make it 15 minutes." Same thing, every day. Actual work is more fun and less tedious than this. Scenes are few and far between, which makes this slog even more demoralizing. The minigames are awful. Character progression seems to be largely nonexistent. No matter how much I help the various girls, I get no more than one scene (and for some none). I've been stuck at the same point in progression with the main girl for probably three weeks now. The fights are the only source of consistent scenes but it takes hours to get through a week.

If you're looking at this initial release and seeing the art, or maybe thinking that you'd like it because you liked Roundscape, don't you dare do it. This game is not in a playable state yet. Beyond bugfixing, it needs reworks of core mechanics to make the game less of a chore. And notably, if you're just in it for the scenes, I haven't seen any gallery yet in my 10 or so hours. Stay away.

The art's good, though the game's tedious, unbalanced, the intended strategy relies heavily on chance to not have your shit pushed in on the second fight, just not that fun. But the art's good...

They've been diligent with bugs, at least.