This review is for Release 51 (although I have been playing since R22c)
TLDR: Insane learning curve, but great community and a cheat mode that makes the game possible for casuals or people who just don't want to think too hard for a bit, but needs better pleasure center pressers (art, varied flavor scenes, etc.) to increase/maintain appeal.
The game itself is incredibly hardcore with a learning curve that is only beaten by 3.5e DnD in that you need to dedicate a lot of time to learning how the game works and even then, you need to also understand even more that you cannot learn from what comes from the game.
On the plus side, once you lose your first run (unless it has been changed to just always be available) you gain access to cheat mode which grants infinite evil energy, so even if you are a scrub like me who can't clear any run on their own, you wind up getting what you need to be able to play through the game on what should be called casual mode.
The biggest thing that helps this game is definitely the community.
I have never met a community of players on
ANY forum that has been as helpful, patient, and insightful as this community.
If you ever need help learning how the game works, you can always post a comment in the discussion section and someone
WILL help you to the point that the next time you will need their help is when you reach the loops that have elite enemies because those ones are very difficult to deal with.
Aside from the difficulty of the game, the mechanics are fairly sound, I have only rarely encountered situations where bugs arise, to the point that the only bugs I can note at this time are:
- Surround levels dropping for seemingly no reason as soon as a chosen gets un-captured (sometimes going from 7 levels to 4 even though nothing has changed aside from them no longer being surrounded)
- Damage from basic attacks in the late game of loops doing almost no damage even though there are no negative modifiers in play and nothing has been done to reduce damage yet.
ie: when an attack that should be doing damage in the realm of 50.4p points only does 23 points of damage for literally no reason.
And that's literally the only bugs I have ever encountered.
The character creation is nice, which is good because a text based game that is 90% math really should be spectacular in the writing department, especially since anything that isn't tied to the mechanics of the game is considered flavor text that you don't have to read unless you can decipher the chosen's strengths and weaknesses from their personality entry (which you can do, but you can also get psychic reading at the beginning of the loops, so not a needed skill).
The fact that the chosen can now have wildly varied body types and those can actually impact the game is awesome, but they need to have more of an impact in the flavor scenes since those have remained basically the same ever since I started playing, so I almost never even read flavor scenes anymore, I just scroll to the end to see if I gained any EE or breaks from the scene, then move on.
A problem that I do have with the game though that has nothing to do with the gameplay itself, is the use of AI art assets.
They used to be an optional pack that you could install yourself, but now they are built in to the base game.
With a game this immense in mechanics, getting professionally made art to use for the game should be a priority rather than using AI assets, especially since an artist could not only make better art, but they could take each of the flavor text scenes and turn those into whole ass dynamic images that turns the game from an exercise in programming into true fap material.
Seriously, playing this game always makes me want to go watch magical girls getting gang banged in public, to the point that I literally stop playing the game to jack off to something else, and when it comes to porn games, that is NOT something you want.
If there were professionally made images and art assets made for the game by a real artist, even if they just started out as colorless sketch images, it would massively improve the appeal of this game for many people, and for the hardcore gamers only interested in winning, you could just have a toggle button to turn off the flavor text images to cut down on scrolling.
All-in-all, it's a good game at its core, but it is so complex that it turns many people away, and the lack of decent art assets and no difficulty options aside from standard, custom made loop, and cheat mode turns even more people away.
Personally, I keep playing because it scratches all the right kink/fetish itches, and winning without cheating gives such a dopamine rush that it makes it all feel worth it.
So if you are hesitant about checking this game out, or are even considering leaving a bad review, I really recommend interacting with the community for this game, because they can turn a frustrating headache into something that is actually really enjoyable.