RPGM - Cogito Line [v0.1] [Velminth]

2.5 stars if I could, but I'll round it up to 3 to be generous. Admittedly it's in its' infancy (0.1) but I doubt the dev's artstyle is going to change overnight. Speaking of artstyle:

- 5 stars for the art. Velminth's art never disappoints, especially if you're into toned/muscle girls with a bit of a cocky personality. Also refreshing how the dev keeps his girls 'realistic' in terms of ass and breast size - a welcome change from the sea of JP games where they have humongous breasts or no breasts at all.
- 1 star for the gameplay. I get it, it's only at version 0.1. But calling this a technical demo is a stretch. The game lags the longer you have it running. The controls are completely unintuitive (and confusing) with quite literally zero explanation on how the game's systems work. I did not know that I had to go defeat an enemy, get his loot, then press 'camp' over 'the guts' to get my first sex scene with Stalrose until the twenty-minute mark.

TLDR: Wait for 0.2 before downloading if you care about gameplay, or download it now if you love the dev's artstyle. I came from Saria and loved the art hence why I'm here.

V0.1

TL;DR: Great art (Though there is only one BJ scene I could find)

+ Art is nice

- Buggy as all fuck, game will get stuck if you ask the only available NPC for 'missions', my game got stuck when I clicked on attack buttons too quickly, then got stuck when I tried to enter town too quickly. Generally, it feels unplayable due to the overabundance of bugs.

- Game runs at an abysmal framerate, I think there might be an issue with the game's states or something since it gradually slows down to unbearable levels of choppy.

- Minimal content at the moment (Only seen one enemy type, one drawn NPC, and one scene)

2/5 if only for the art, this feels more akin to a tech demo than a V0.1, really not much to do here, better off waiting for a year or so and let the dev work on the game till then... (Doubt)

Story: Set in a *Blame!-inspired world (Metal city, literal Silicon Life enemies), albeit filled with conventionally attractive people and a bit less fleshed out. You get the usual The 'Great war' happened, what's left of society is a suffering chaotic mess of cyberpunking proportion. Male protag is Stoic? Emo? Kuudere?. Can't figure it out because the game crashed or bugged out 3 times before the first H-scene.

Renders/Art: It's made by a good artist who set out to fulfill the rock solid abs waifu niche. Personally not my fetish but I like the artstyle.

Gameplay:
- In general, "I bet it'll be cool if I make *Neo Scavenger set in the world of *Blame!" but both of those aspect fell short hard as of v0.1. A Survival Roguelike where you wonder the biome for a -handful- of scavenging events, none of the survival stats are explained and the only one that functions right now is your HP during combat -only- (you can be -1 and walk around in overworld). Feels like it could have been made as a VN or Html game and you would't miss out on much, in fact, that's exactly what it realistically should have been.
- The UI is ...stylized fluff, it's terrible right now with no tutorials or any form of explaination for mechanics whatsoever, you will wonder where the save button is for at least a few seconds. Menu interface is reused assets but it's fair.
- The "COMBAT" (if one can call it that) is why it should have been a VN, it's just there, you click one single available skill - choose enemy - number pops up between 0-2 - repeat until you suddenly win after killing 2/3 enemies, what happens if you lose? uh nothing, not even a gameover screen. One good thing I can say about the combat is that it's a nice wallpaper.

Bugs: Again, it's a v0.1. Combat screen and enemy art flickers in and out everywhere, as if it's because there's only 1 type of enemy planned for the game so the combat screen is tucked somewhere to pull out. Paying the inn if you don't have enough currency messes up the game, repeated saving can crash the game.

Writing: Fairly wordy, as if trying too hard to sound like a writer or attempting to fill up the screen a bit more. Although, at certain points the writing feels like a certain AI model. Many parts can be more concised and it'll already be enough to present the scene.
i.e: "A single doorway is set into the middle of the wall, framed by a pair of barely noticable metal doors" => An inconspicuous pair of metal doors lays on the wall.

Amount of content: Abyssmal, more akin to an -unfinished- tech/concept demo. "All style no substance" as they say.

Recommended? You can download it and play, but the game has not proven itself to be something deserving of support until further developments. So it's a no from me, dawg!