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

There's a lot you can say about this game.

First, the bad:

The game spent way too long in development for what was released. I've seen figures like 5-6 years tossed around for total dev time. Granted, the dev does work on multiple projects at once and they are a small team, but even considering those points it's still hard to justify such a lengthy wait.

The game boasts something along the lines of 150 scenes, I think? This is inflated as hell. A grand majority of all the scenes are just palette swaps between the wardens and gladiators. Choose the hot alien chick or the furry lady and the first arena defeat scene is the exact same except for the character being shown and some dialogue. Or with a blowjob scene early on with a female mc the only change between the characters is skin and hair color. This is really only just one scene but for the sake of inflation, the dev will count it as 3. One for each skin tone available for the player.

Currently, the bugs are unable to be ignored. Granted the dev has been pretty quick with getting patches out so this honestly isn't a huge deterrence to me.

Lack of a gallery or a manual save option.

The meh:

The story is there. Pretty standard sci-fi corrupt government yadda yadda. It's not a super lazy nonsensical story by any means, it appears the dev has put actual thought behind it all and it does all make sense. It's just nothing particularly new or exciting.

The gameplay itself. It's just normal turn based with status effects and elemental resistances and all the like. Either you love it or you hate it.

The good:

The scenes themselves. The artwork is phenomenal and the writing during the scenes is honestly pretty damn good. This is where I put the most weight when it comes to my ratings, because what good is a H-game if the H itself is bad. My only gripes with the actual scenes are so minor that they truly aren't even worth mentioning.

The characters themselves are not badly written cardboard cutouts like we've come to expect with a lot of H-games. Each character has their own motives for existing and doing what they do and their own reactions to different events. Learning about them is genuinely interesting I believe.

So overall I'm giving it a 5/5 because I believe the pros to heavily outweigh the cons currently. Play it for the scenes with decent characters and an okay story tacked on. Don't play it if you're expecting deep and exciting gameplay or anything like that.

Five and a half years for a OK game. A OK game.

The art itself is fine, the story is eh, the gameplay is also eh, with a really boring hub and loop. Its decent, but thats all it is. Its not what you would expect from a seasoned studio at all, as the game is plauged with scope that was never going to work at all. However the game could have been so more if the had just learned lessions from their previous titles; ney, if they had just not exacerbated them.

You can choose 2 genders, 3 essentially skin colors, as well as 3 starting characters. You would think "Oh wow, there must be so much replayability," wrong. All scenes are just color changes or actor changes in case of the Gladiators, the only expection is the gender option. However there are so little scenes with the actual MC thats almost irrelavent.

Oh what you wanted some romance with your gladiator? Well heres like 3 sex scenes with each gender that are exactly the same for all three gladiators, and a handful of lewd moments. And unlike Roundsacpe where you get most of your action on the side, theres almost none of that in the game. Not only do you get a half of the sex scenes that the gladiators do in the arena, but they almost get more of you outside of the arena as well. Arena scenes are only 2 CG's as well. Im not asking for some harem game or anything, but compared to its counterparts the MC is almost nonexistant. And its not like anything would be forced either, theres so many oppritunites in the game that it would make sense, and also make the world that was worked so hard on not so utterly boring.

If you didnt have 3 tempaltes to choose from, 2 genders, or 3 paladins to choose from, and insead using the art to flesh out some of other parts of the game instead of trying to please everyone the game could have been so much more. At the very least more fucking sex scenes between fights, its so bad. But instead its just OK. Honestly wished this game never released, the lolcow of a thread was 4 stars at least

TL: DR Often times pleasing everyone, leads to no one. Its good for a single run through, but unless you really got time on your hands, and are intrested in the other gender its not worth a second.

great game much better like summertime saga like summer time saga 2 but with better woman i love it very high quality wow and graphics are like nothing else i cannot believe it this game play right now

Another case of wanting to please a wider audience to the detriment of the game.

What do I mean by that? There are too many options for each playthrough, simple as that.

3 different gladiator to train.
Male or female MC with each 3 templates so 6 options.

That's 18 different variations for every single scene. With each scene around 4 images each that's 72 pictures downloaded for every single interaction between the MC and the chosen gladiator... You know why the game is so huge now.

Naturally that's a pain in the ass to implement so most of the scene in the game are between the MC and npcs (6 variations) or the gladiator losing and getting monster fucked (3 variations).

Leading to a feeling of watching 2 separate stories.

So yeah... that's a bummer. But the game is good and the cg are high quality.

3/5

Very intrigued in the progress of this game, I love the coach style games and the art/writing is very well made.
Quality takes time so I understand it may take a while, but I'm still excited for the future of this game

Although the game is in beta, I still want to appreciate it. I think this is the first game that was created not only to satisfy the feeling of lust in players, but also to give them an interesting gameplay. The sсi-fi story is very well thought out. The combat mechanics are at their best! I have never seen such action in games for adults. Great art, interesting side quests with even more art. I think that for casuals the game may seem too difficult and therefore the game may be rated low because of this, so it is necessary to add a easyer difficulty. Also, there is a lack of re-collection of the room, and also only 1 file to save is not enough. Summing up, I want to say that I expect a lot from this game. It looks very high quality and promising. Of course, I give the rating 5/5, as this is one of the best and most interesting adult games that I have played.

This game is exceptionally well made. The artstyle is great, the actual CG art is all really high quality, and of course its writing is solid too. They give the player the option to turn off the more hardcore kinks (NTR and beast sex that occur when your gladiator loses). I definitely wish more games did that. Very solid RPG, and I'm really excited to see how the story and future content unfold. It's easily one of the best games I've played from this site.

I usually don't bother leaving reviews but this is one of the best porn games I've ever played, the gameplay is simple and addicting, it can get repetitive, but it's very fun, all the characters are gorgeus, not only the characters, but the art style of the entire game is beautiful.
The game can be intimidating at first, but once you get the hang of it it becomes pretty easy, I played through the entire thing and I've only lost to the first 2 enemies, once you learn how to train and evolve your character you'll only lose if you want to.
The only "con" is that the monster enemies you fight in the Arena will fuck your girl way before you do, which admitetly can be very frustrating, but I don't think it's worth taking a star away from this given how easily you progress and become almost unbeatable if you put effort into it, and besides, if you don't like this kind of stuff the game gives you the option to turn those scenes off, but you'll be losing a good portion of the game by doing so.
Overall this is a fantastic game and I'm really looking foward for the future.

Underwhelming Fun?! v1.0.6C
I'm basing my review on a Playthrough as A Dude on Hardcore and looking through the image files.
Pros:
Art-Listen art in porn games is always subjective but in a sea of Meh 3D and 2D games this one shines in having not only a great pixel art where each character has their distinct look but you always have a solid 2D drawn art style for portraits and Sex scenes. Great all around.

Good Trainer-esque game: Not Sure why the tag isn't posted but the basic premise is you being the "master" to your girl aka "slave/warrior" you get to level and train your girl on a weekly timer so that they can be as strong and well armed for a Fight every Sunday. It made planning day to day pretty fun on what to train for.

Cons
Terrible First Boss: Now I'm not saying it's the DarkSouls of Porn Games but does fighting your first enemy who has double your health and have barely been told how to fight sound fun? It's the hardest part by far because you're starting at 0 and everything else is easy to fair in comparison.

Sex is for Losers: So even in hardcore where losing means the girls get fucked for losing it was an incentive to keep winning. While I won't say no to NTR/Rape scenes it a damn shame that as of now the majority of Sex happens between your girl and the opponent if you lose. Winning gets you nothing in terms of Sex. After beating the demo the most i got from your blue girl was a BJ while having lost would have gotten to see her Double teamed/Impregnated and Birthed eggs/Just fucked in general. Only Losers Fuck. And Winning has never felt so lame.

Lacking MC: Again going off a Male MC I'm not sure why he exists. Like I already said in terms of Sex he doesn't do much with your warrior. He also has a dialogue options but as of now being anything but friendly means everyone generally disliking you and blocking any option for sex from others. Also you can play and fight as your mc during raid missions aka the infiltration missions but they don't level up and aren't playable anywhere after so he's just kinda there. Wish The MC could do more like sell himself or fight in the arena because as of now Nothing would really change if I was just playing as the warrior I picked in the beginning.

Nitpicks:
Missing tags: Like I said Trainer/NTR/Rape should be in the included tags trainer more over since it basically is a fundamental part of the game. NTR/Rape you could argue aren't in the game since they've "technically" signed up for it but when Dogs/Beast/Tentacles/ and Bees make your girl cum harder than you can while you train and earn her affection everyday well I mean if that's not being a Cuck then I don't know what is. Plus I'm sure adding the tags would help more people get interested.

Same Body Type: This one is my most biased but i kinda am worried that everyone has the same body type. All three girls/the bartender and the Arms dealer have a Big ass/Bigger Tits/and a little Waist. I'm all for Big Ol Titties but the fact that all three Main Girls have the same build kinda sucks you're basically gonna decide on whether you want a Blue Devil a Human or a Furry. Kinda hope we get some Abs on Some people. Some amazons. Maybe even a fat Chick or Dare I say someone with Little Tittles and a Gigantic ass Blasphemy I Know.

Story: I'm kinda worried at the scope of this game's story. It has a Sci-Fi World/Setting. We live in the slums. There's an arena for honor & glory. A mystery man who wants to change the world with you. Some evil lady who's part in a great war going on. Your main girl wants to help her planet. And finally you wanna be the best like no one ever was. I'm all for great stories but at the end of the day this is still a porn game. Most of what i just wrote doesn't have to do with anything you getting your dick licked and I'm worried what could be a simple but fun game is gonna write boring nonsense for a story that could just be about training hot chicks to be great fighters and making some money along the way.

Overall What's here is good and bad. The art style alone makes it stand out from everything on this site. It has likeable characters if not enough ways to interact with them. While I found this game to have some moment of fun I liked everyone I met the day to day had me planning on what to do. The Ultimate payoff however was almost nothing. Winning got me nothing which meant I was just allowed to play another week. I can't imagine playing this game two other times to see the same big titted lady not get fucked by me. Honestly I still think the game needs to focus on the small area around you instead of trying to be some big war drama but if the previews looked good to you I say try to play on week of the game and see how you feel

Boring! (Old Review, look below for new one)

Cons:
-Very slow paced gameplay.
-The location gets boring in about 10minutes.
-Nothing is happening. In this game, things just happen. Infiltration guy appears out of nowhere bam. Infiltrations. Underground League. Just fucking walk to it. Very underground. Nothing feels earned in this game. Stuff just happens around you and its not even interesting.
-Running around to get something is BOOOORING and way to slow. I activated "always dashing" and came speeding out of my room just to crawl outisde again. I dont even want to explore the town anymore.
-I dont' know why they cared so much about worldbuilding. Why not keep it simple. Motivation is enough. All this talk about some queen somewhere has no real relevance to the game.
-Dialogue system is just again the illusion of choice or consequences.

Pros:
+Good Pixel art and art in Genereal.
+The gladiator has an intereseting enough character.


Right now I can't play this game. Its boring me to death. Nothing catches me. No gameplay, no music, no sex scenes, nothing interesting to do or to explore.
Here is my suggestion to make it more playable for me:
<Implement some sort of hub or menu to jump to certain locations. Games with a time feature have all the important things in a Menu. Gym? Click bam. Infiltration? Click bam. It FELT like I did more walking than anything. Its mostly not true but that is the feeling I have when closing the game.


My Review above was from a time where this game was still in Development. Now I come back to look what the finished version looks like.

New Cons:
-I said that a teleportation option would be needed because of the mindless running. They implemented a taxi function. This Taxi should have been a basic option but it isn't. It costs money and can only transport you back home when you reach the edges of the map. Why?
-This game makes it hard for you to get sex scenes. You need to choose the hardcore mode and then lose intentionally which is obviously not a good choice in an Arena game.
-You only get pictures and text. This is okay for other games but this game forces you to play the game equivalent of a snail. The progression is too slow. The movement is to slow. The fighting is to slow. Everything is slowing you down that I can only think that it is made on purpose.
-The end day Screen. After going to bed you see your spend actions points resolve. And it resolve in a few pixel animations and an unskippable slow screen. And this is for EVERY DAY.
-Music is dying sometimes showing you that here is no enviromental sound or ambience showing you the true face of this hollow world.


New Pros:
+The intro was nice and well done.
+I liked the Underground joke. The guard said its an underground league because its underground. Thats new and I complained about that. But they must have forgotten to change the chat later, because they say again that its an underground league and it does not want to be found easily. But you just walk to it again.....
+The walking and daily changing NPCs made the world look more alive.


All in all this game is a disaster. You force your way through a bad management game, with standard turnbased fights in hopes of getting sex scenes, but before you even reach them (not losing on your first fight) you are bored to death. I gave this game 2 stars before and now I will lower it to 1 star. You could argue its well programmed (working) and the art is good, but all this can't outweight the fact that I don't want to play this.

I love games like these. The Art is great, the one Gladiator you are able to choose is likeable and the story seems to get better.
For a simple demo version this gets 5 stars from me and im excited for the rest

great game, very beautiful arts, need more content, the game can become a masterpiece only it should have the most. The developers are great fellows.

just another level of RPG games, you just need to invest time and energy into the game and you will get a great game.

Arenus has been in production for 2 years and has very little to show for it.

The first thing you notice when playing the game is that only one of three characters have content available, even though the game is supposed to be finished by the end of this year. Once in the game you're thrown into a world that consists of only maybe 10 different screens. The only two things you can do are arena fights (of which there are apparently only 4 by looking at the game's files) and select how you want your character to spend their time working that day.

The combat and item system isn't good. There's not much to say about it, it's exactly what every other RPGM game has.

The art is amazing, but the amount of scenes is disappointingly small. Most of it requires you to lose in combat in order to get it, which means you end up wasting time losing to get the scene and returning again (by walking slowly through each area to return to the arena) in order to win instead.

This game is not worth your time or money.

Quick disclaimer: I'm not taking anything else other than the game's quality itself into consideration while writing this. How I feel about the developer and their business practices is completely irrelevant to the enjoyment you can get from the game.

Now that this is settled, how does the game fare? The answer is pretty simple, really. You'll absolutely love it If you enjoy pixel art, futuristic landscapes, light RPG elements and turn-based combat. It'll be a chore to slog through and find the actual lewd scenes if you don't.

Whether the art style is pleasing or not is always subjective, I personally love it and this time it's finally consistent throughout the scenes (looking at you, Roundscape). Could be better with some animations added but the lack of them is not something that takes away from the overall enjoyment nor was I expecting to have them after playing the previous games from Kaliyo*.

The personality of the only currently available gladiator will be off-putting to some but with all three unlocked in the full version there'll hopefully be something for everyone. For now, expect to be scolded or outright rejected if you're coming on to her aggressively because this blue beauty only likes the nice guys. *sigh*

One last thing has to be said, though. If you're looking for a game that frontloads its lewd content and just want to have a quick fap, don't bother with Arenus until someone makes a Gallery mod. The gameplay is an integral part of the experience and I can't imagine they would change this significantly for the final release, either.

That's it. I'm off to starting a second playthrough with a female MC.

*Uprising did have some animations, I just remembered. My bad.

Beside the few bugs still around, the demo is incredibly fun and I look forward to the full game. Some features will be fine tuned and others changed, but overall, it is a satisfying game with great art and characters

The NSFW side is good too, in the future the fights will apparently be more challenging as to not need to cheese to potentially get the defeat scene on Hardcore difficulty

Don't waste your time, minimal if any sex scenes

When the game started I thought it was going to be awesome. The music, the feeling everything about it just made me think it was going to be amazing. Great intro.

Unfortunately, the great intro was the only positive aspect of the game. I was playing it for about an hour before I got frustrated and quit. An hour, and not so much as a nip slip, I kid you not. It doesn't even bother teasing you. Sexual content was completely non-existent in my playthrough. I think you have to lose fights in order to get the sexy scenes but then I have to ask: What's even the point of playing?

Also, I am not a fan of auto-saving. This game doesn't have a manual save feature, it automatically saves every time you sleep.

Finding the right balance between sex and gameplay is important for adult games. and it seems this game forgets the main reason people will want to play it in the first place: TO FAP!

In conclusion: Only 1 girl for the demo, haven't run into any lewdness of any sort after an hour playing. If you are looking to fap, this game isn't for you.

My overall impression was very good. I'll be honest, the grind and the VERY annoying (sometimes save-breaking) bugs can be really awful. There is a decent amount of content, including a few different fetishes for those who like a little monster sex to spice up their game play.

The fact that I'm giving a game that was so slow-paced and crashed so often a 4/5 is a true testament to the quality of the story/art/writing. This has huge potential, and it was already a great time.

I'm extremely excited to see where this goes, and just hope they clean up the bugs xD

No idea how this game has such a bad rating here, this is one of the best RPGM games we have gotten in a long time.

The tech demo is already stocked full of content which is very promising for the future that means as the dev has already put a lot of work into the tech demo before releasing it, this makes it a lot more likely that the dev will also see this game through to completion.

The story is also really impressive and it really has a cool cyberpunk/sci-fi vibe and the story is not silly or cheesy so far. Hopefully it stays that way and remains a quality story.

The art style is amazing and this is a game that definitely makes sense to be in RPGM, all too often devs use the wrong engine and make a Visual Novel but in RPGM. This is not the case here, this is definitely the right engine. This is a full fledged RPG and exploration game.

What is impressive though is rather than being top-down RPG it is a 2D sidescroller with unique art that I have never seen before. Meaning the dev had to make everything from scratch (as far as I can tell).

All the characters are made from scatch using pixel animations and the animation quality is great both while exploring as well as during combat.

The combat and interface in this game is top quality and among the best combat of any RPGM game I have ever played. The only thing missing is h-animations during combat using the fantastic pixel animation (hopefully dev will add this in!)

The h-scenes are great and you have two sets of content depending on if you are female or male protagonist which you pick at the start of the game.

The training/grind management can be bypassed by using the cheat plugin from ULMF (MV cheat hooker). On a side note about the training grind hopefully in future some random events will be added here as well. This would help break up the grind in the game and make it more enjoyable.

For a first release the amount of content is quite impressive. Just hope the bugs are fixed next release. Had a few game breaking bugs and sadly you can't save when you want so you have to play from the last save point (it saves every morning).

The combat is fun, the art is great, the training mechanics are very repetitive and annoying ( This has been improved! ), the game is similar to "Punch Club" I recommend waiting for the full version for a better experience (I hope it's not a 3 year wait for a full version).

*This is a DEMO review so this review will be edited when the full game releases.
(I am not going to say anything about bugs cause this is a demo and that would be unfair)

This game with this potential as a demo has some amazing artwork and an interesting concept of combat arena fighting, but on the other hand makes a bad path for it.

It grinds like a mobile game.

In most RPG fighting games the grind is fighting enemies to become stronger. In this game, you grind your fighter with odd jobs and training to get to the fighting. Not only that, the grind takes another step by giving a luck based system so the chance of getting points to level up your fighter is more difficult.

The economy, level points, and chance system in the game needs to be worked on. You get more money from working odd jobs (if you are lucky) compared to the arena pay out. Also the things you can buy at stores prices seemed skewed, its cheaper to buy armor and weapons to help in the arena compared to buying items that will increase your chances of success in getting points to level up your fighter (for a day). Or just buying items that will give your fighter points anyway.

Grinding in a game (better in a porn one) can be good, but don't make it so much of a challenge or people will not play it or cheat to enjoy it.

Personal issue I will admit, make this a point and click game or at least make it with a fast travel map. After the fourth day, the world walking mechanic gets really boring with just a keyboard.

Okay beta is out and its all I can say is... this is not worth it.
I went from two stars down to one. Why? Cause everything that was wrong before is still there (that is including the bugs now). The game drags itself to the finish line and what worse is that you realize that this game is a replay game. You have to do this three times with different fighters and with bugs that make you have to reload the game again. I wanted to like this cause I am a fan of management games, but the management is so tedious. "New day, walk to areas to pick training for fighter, walk to other area for other training, maybe fight, go back home to end day." Repeat that for months in-game and you will get tired of it in-game week. Now the in-game pixel background and setting is great, beautiful, you'll get sick of it . If you like the CG, save time by going to the image folder for the game and make it easy for yourself.

PS, Before I forget, if they add a "Quick Travel" or "Management Interface" I will take back most of what I said. Cause that will improve the game tedious problem. The slow elevator, walking everywhere, slow loading screens.