Review for the 0.733 Alpha Public version
Actually it’s a nice game. I played it for hours to see where its limits were. And I found some, for example, it lacks a little bit of logic. Of course it does, it’s a game. But in the same time, it is a game that tends to make you think the output will be logical, with all the fuss around stats and traits and request for each one, etc. etc. But, it’s definitely not logical.
The breeding system doesn’t make any sense. I explored it for a long time and made many experiments:
There are species that can’t stand incest, even with the trait “20%luck of not being malformed”. For example, demon/demon that goes sterile after the 3rd or 4th generation.
And, on the other hand, other species that don’t seem to be affected: I bred Elves and Lykos with the same father for 13 generations without any problem of sterility.
The other main problem is the stats creation of the offspring. The traits are only added or replaced without any logic: actually if a trait is dominant it should stay, whenever you reproduce it. And it becomes more and more difficult to program a game as it tends to be at least logical.
With my breeding-elves-experiment, I saw that the daughter kept all of her mother’s and father’s traits (as if they were all dominant), but would lose none, even if the father (who was the same at each generation) had far less traits than the mother.
It applies also to her visual aspect: the daughter would not resemble more her father (when she should, because her genome was nearer and nearer to her father’s at each generation).
In the end, and maybe it’s the worst, when you breed Nephelym, their stats will totally be random. As a result, you are forced to level their stats up in the homestead, so you can later on, sell them for a ridiculous price when you have the specific request… By the way, the requests are totally insane, you must give out Nephelym you trained hard (sometimes up to LVL 12, when you find them at LVL 3) or Nehpelym hard to come by, such as hybrids (I noticed that the ratio of hybrids was more like 25% than 40%, as stated in guides). So, it means, breeding is of no use to get Nephelym with better stats for these stats are generated randomly. Marvellous …
So to train them, you must breed them, but when they are pregnant, you cannot train them anymore… So you must train them with a sterile partner, that you must create after 4 generations of incest breeding (it’s 16 in-game days, so a lot). Logical…
Another point that troubles me is that you can’t get NPC’s pregnant. Within the homestead, you can cross whatever Nephelym you want with another one (incest or not) or with the breeder. There is a barn for hybrids, so where the problem? Actually, there is one NPC that gets pregnant: the alraune. And she ends up pregnant with blowjobs… 100 blowjobs… that’s a total waste of in-game energy and time. (Dude, what the hell went through your head that day, to have such an idea…)
Also, maybe a 4-in-game-days pregnancy is a little too fast. You can barely manage your barns without losing time: you must walk in all directions all the time to define if one can stay or must leave.
Portals are a great idea, but they are all misplaced (except maybe the sylvan one). You actually lose a lot of time, because they are never in the centre of activities. You could point out it’s intentional (and it may be so), but then it’s nonsense, the game is already too difficult and you already lose enough time, not to spend more trying to reach the next portal.
At last, I’d say the game is incredibly difficult. All the hard work is rewarded with peanuts (hard requests for barely 1000 Org). And rewards are limited in the in-game time and resources (Camilla and Mae sell for not more than 4000 Org, in the best days). So you can definitely not make a stack of money, even if you work yourself to the bone.
No wonder there is a cheat mod. The challenges are so hard or long to achieve, you may lose patience. Cheat mod is a sign challenges are far too great for players not to be bored within a few hours. Maybe the dev will understand it one day…
So it’s a funny game, with incredible visual effects. But the visual aspect is not enough. If you want to make people dream, you must give them what you promised, and if your game tends to seem logical, when it is less than other less funded breeding games, you’ll only satisfy the desires of few.
Actually I like it very much. It is one of the best breeding game I know (if not THE best), but it could definitely be better. So I find it’s a shame not to try to improve its breeding logic and scenario.
(Maybe it’s the free version that makes my judgement wrong, but with that version as advertising, I definitely don’t want to buy the game. Sorry for such a long review.)
