VN - Ren'Py - Companion of Darkness [S2 Ch.12] [Berkili4]

s1 review only:
pro: one of the few avns that have balance of story and sex and story is not just a concident, have ploty reason and implications. Though quality of story ebbs and flows , but what is ghreat is that the theme is consistently interesting. Some chracter like jacky and that other guy who beat mc disappears and the background is often empty , but there are plot reasons for it.

Cons: sex scenes improve but they reamin janky
chgaracter design improves till introduction oif cia, I was surprised how the obvious milf doesn't went for milf route but the burden was shared by other fmcs.

Overall good experience let down by its viusuals and some annoying story line.

I will edit this review once I am done with s2

At the time of writing, this might be my favorite title. Seriously underrated, should be sitting at a 4.7/5. Some of the things I love about it are the characters, they're pretty complex, but not as far as to confuse you. The story is fairly simple but extremely well done, there's very competently written character arcs and a sense of growth within the MC. At some point when I'm able to, I will be supporting this. Keep doing what you're doing!

SPOILERS!
This game actively pisses me off. Got to chapter 6 and this is as much as I can take. Innocent people keep getting killed for no reason, characters that are friends of the MC keep ending up in shitty situations for the sake of drama like what happened to Emma with the order, and to top it all off the MC leaves everyone behind, even the girl he loves, after dealing with Az only to have Nael beg him to fix her fuck up and making Noel go feral. It’s like the dev just wants to piss off players. If you are a masochist that enjoys characters you like ending up in shitty situations you’ll love this.

Beyond that visuals are just ok, there are much better looking HS games out there. Animations are just ok, you’ve seen them all before and the transitions aren’t great. I guess the writing is good. That’s just about the only positive I can think of, but again what’s the point of good writing if the story pisses you off? Its a moot point.

I will give give this review truthfully. When I first started, I found the concept was good but didn't like the story so much but after chapter 5 or 6 it got more interesting. I would say I am not a very big fan of mc having doing it with many people without having any feelings(I know in an AVN it's weird but still not my cup of tea) but otherwise the story is truly very good and nothing can be said about noel except perfect.

Animations- Decent at first, but gets better on the later chapters.

Characters - Mid. there are some decent characters. there are some really bad ones.

Story - Great at the start to Mid, but really Bad especially on the later Chapters.



Overall - This game will frustrate you. I would've given this game atleast 4 stars if not for chapter 10-12. if you want to enjoy the story in this, you have to turn off your brain, especially on the mentioned chapters.

SPOILER!

This is my Biggest Criticism on this game.

The way the developer makes a character important to the story is to make them Special, and there is nothing wrong with this, but it's the way it was handled. I'm gonna talk about a character named Clara. she is a friend of the MC, gamer, shy, rich.
throughout the story, she doesn't really do much, sometimes she is there, most of the time not. but then suddenly she is the most powerful companion ever, she actually has the perfect body for a dark one, no build up, just a straight power up, and the explanation for this is because she loves games and "she is special, that is all that counts" that sentence came from the game itself.
from chapter 1-9, a lot of the characters even the MC trained and suffered to have their powers, and this character who is too lazy to even clean her room(makes her dark one do everything, essentially her slave), play games all day, and the dev just makes her have 110% compatability to any dark one or primordial. and btw she is actually not a spoiled brat, this girl, who lived most of her life in a Pent House, play games all day on her two PC's, have a maserati as a first car, gives money to a gambler like it's nothing, and she has the gall to say that she is not a spoiled brat? and the MC replies "oh i know". i don't know if i'm just paying too much attention to every dialogue or the opposite, but what is is this writing? this is my first review, and i only wrote because i'm confused. why are the recent reviews so high? this character is not even the only offender, the MC too! okay this it for the review, i said too much.

The scenes are among the hottest of any game I play, and if you removed all of them I'd still be following this game for the story and world building. It's been a roller coaster so far and I'm nowhere near ready to get off this ride.

It is one of those rare games where the story is breathtaking, the characters are unique and amazing, and everything is complemented by stunning animation. Overall, this is one of those experiences that stays with you after you finish it. If you’re looking for a game with a strong narrative, and top-tier animation, I can’t recommend it enough. I'm curiously waiting too see what happens next

This really should be so much higher, but as the game went on it just become too frustrating to enjoy. While the characters and world are well developed, the art is fine, and it has some good animations, the plot insists on the main character doing constantly stupid ratchet up the "drama".

Early on I thought this would be an easy 5/5 but the plot is way too driven by the MC being a moron to be enjoyable by the end of the current content.

I'm pretty lenient with this sort of thing and don't mind that MC isn't all powerful, but it just becomes frustrating to play when most of the problems are caused by the MC making stupid choices leading to side characters being killed, possessed, or tortured while the MC runs around doing nothing much.

This review is going to come from a slightly harsher lens than I would've liked. First let's start with the good though.
Animations - Great. Combat animations, spicy animations, etc. are all done extremely well. No complaints there whatsoever.
Characters - Pretty damn good. While there could be a bit more fluctuation in how the MC is allowed to develop which would've been nice, I don't have the same complaints that some other reviews do. Each character feels like they have their own distinctive personality and do speak and act accordingly.
World building - Great as well. You really do start to understand the world slowly, and it doesn't feel like it's just constrained to the plot, it does feel like you're slowly learning more and more.

Now for the suboptimal, I won't quite say bad. It's started feeling like the plot is just going in a lot of random different directions simultaneously. Like the number of current sub plots keeps growing, and we make very slow progress on each sub plot. Because of that each of the newer chapters is starting to feel less fulfilling than the prior ones. Imo there was a lot more depth in the relationships of the prior ones, detail, emotion, etc. Now we're just dealing with bouncing back and forth and barely making progress anywhere in a sense. It's still written well for sure so I'll ofc keep coming back to this, but especially in a game where there aren't that many choices it is getting a bit frustrating that it takes about a year to see any progress made on the overall plot. In all honesty I'd actually probably rather not have the intricate combat animations, and just have more effort into actually progressing the story.

Overall good and this is one of the times that I wish an author had a bigger budget bcs then pursuing all these sub plots in a reasonable manner might actually be possible, but I am hoping that we drop some of the unnecessary fluff so we can make more progress rn.

from the grafik and co its really good but dev writing and story choice for the mc let the player question what this is, so many times mc does something stupid only to carry on the story its something boring in the end.

Really engaging AVN. Totally like it. Story is captivating. You allways want to know how it continues. The characters, especially the LIs and most of the women you encouter are likeable. I'm happy to build my own "dark one" harem XD

I loved Companion of Darkness. I thought story is too good and exciting, I have not much cared for LIs Or sex scenes. But, gradually, along with story, LIs starting impressive, especially Noel (my best LI ever). The total episode of she gone missing and we get to reunion with her is fully emotional and the reunion sex scene is one of the best vanilla love scene ever. And the sex scenes also have improved quite well in quality, duration and also lewd writing too. One of the longest lewd animations I seen in AVNs after Badik.

easily in my top 5 avn of all time, especially if you like fantasy and supernatural themes you are in for a treat, one fo the few avn i cannot stop reading and the characters are unique and very human

While it feels kinda all over the place sometimes and has a bunch of plotholes, this still is one of the better fantasy VNs story-wise. This and some great looking LIs are definetely the best parts of this game.

The gameplay and character writing are pretty bad tbh. Apart from one LI there is no progression, tension or anything. Most girls just like the MC from the start without any reason, which is also reflected in the gameplay: in the entire first season, there is not one choice with real consequences. You are constantly on every girls path and can basically only choose if you want to see a certain scene or not, which is really unengaging.

The worst part is the MC, he is just so f*cking weird, why anyone of the characters would like him is beyond me. Literally completely soulless, not nice, not funny not any good character trait. This makes moments where other characters, some that I actually think are great (like Rule-B), sacrifice everything for him or proclaim their undying love just feel stupid.

10/10 one of the best AVNs, literally i was really sceptical with COD, because of earlier chapters, school etc. But after that my jaw flew away with how insanely good this game story-wise.
And it becomes even better with every new chapter.
Li - insanely good,
Story - as i said earlier is mind-blowing
Animations - meh at first chapters, but in later chapters they become much better. And H-scenes in season 2 is leagues ahead almost every other AVN.
World building - holly molly - its too good for AVN, hell, its on level of top Novels (not AVN).
Humor - extremely good.
10 out of 10. Masterpiece

Fantastic game!!, love the story even tho i have to carefully and slowly read it since my english isnt good at all. and the plot regarding the origin of the dark one, primordial etc can be confusing as hell.
Unfortunately the renders and animation isnt something special in current time and it can boost the popularity if it was, but still one of my favorite developer also didnt have a good renders and animation on his first game. so this game still deserved a 5 star ratings despite all the flaws imo.
Best of luck to the devs hope the game can get more support with how good the story is.

The first season, in particular chapters 1-7ish are brilliant, 4 to 4 1/2 stars, everything looks great, the story is fantastic and the sex scenes are fantastic, where you choose every time what you want, in a way that I hadn't seen before in another AVN. You can cut down some of the cast, so it's easy to get rid of Clara and Jacky to make things more manageable. There's also some bad ending options that are always great to see. However the end of the first season and the second season, chapters 8-11, everything starts to go downhill; being depressing, slow and a boring 2 stars. All the fun went out of this VN as soon as Arsa stopped being in it so much. It's become a turgid tale about a pointless war, discussing the morals of what's right and wrong. Who cares, this is an AVN, not a lecture, where's the fun, sex scenes gone. Added to this the MC is in love with Noel and only has eyes for her, to the point where they just stare at each other longingly. FFS, even when you get to a sex scene in season 2, it's short, declared pointless and meaningless, being stated "as it not with Noel" - urggh where's the sick bag. Why? As a reader I don't think it's pointless. As a reader I'm not in love with Noel. I don't mind her but she's one of my least favourite characters in this VN. I would have chosen Arsa as my companion, given the choice. At least she's fun and we can end this lovey dovey crap! The VN has lost it way from a gripping page turner, to I'm not sure I can stomach reading on. My advice, just read season 1 until the end of the fight with Az and close the book and you will get a 4 1/2 star VN.

I thoroughly enjoyed the story and world building. One of the better games that I've played on the forum.

The only negative that I will give it is that, I haven't played the update in about a year and half, so basically the end of season 1. Either I went through this too quickly or it felt really short. Besides that's I'm fine with it and I want MORE!!!

I'm just shocked by how well-written this VN is. This is what Fate Stay Night would have been if instead of a tropey anime, it was an engrossing, adult (in more ways than just "eroge"), hilarious, heartfelt exercise in world building and character development.

If you had told me even a couple years ago that the absolute best writing - by a light year - in escapist entertainment, could be found in the genre of Amateur Western Eroge, I'd think you were a gooner in denial. Today I know better.

Arsa is best girl!

ch.1-ch.11 review

+ Models and character design are great!
+ Interesting setting

- Animations are horrible
- You are not an MC, but rather a side character
- Story is obvious, because most of plot twists you may predict long before they will actually happen
- Sex scenes are soulless, it's like "lets fuck!" and this is it
- All characters are flat. No backstory, no emotions, nothing.

Conclusion: I leave 3/5 only because of original setting. If you're bored and want to play something just to kill time, try this novel