Others - Abandoned - Deathblight Guilty Raid [v1 Demo] [Crescentia]

I really expected a lot from this game because it was in development for two years, but I can't believe that the only thing that looks better than the original game is the art of crescentia that improves over the years.

Pros:
Crescentia's art is without a doubt the best 2D CG Artwork of all hentai games.

Cons:
- All levels have the same theme, they could vary a bit.
- For a game that was delayed with the excuse of the balance of powers, the game is terribly unbalanced.
- In the original game the CG of each monster when they caught Ferania was different, here they are all the same, with variations.
- Recovering life is RNG to the extreme.
- The melee attack is practically useless.
- If you are caught by several werewolves it is impossible to break free.
- This game is a remake of The Last Demon Hunter, I want to know why they did not include Ferania ?, What would have happened if in Resident Evil 3 Remake instead of Jill Valentine they had created a new character without a story, how that would have affected sales of the game?.
- Wolfenstahl makes very bad decisions as project leader, the characters he chooses are not based on the character pool they perform each year but on their favorite characters, Safiya and Esmoda do not enter even among the 10 most voted characters by the public (Esmoda not even top 40), and then Wolfenstalhl does not understand when they do not add people in patreon, but designs the game specifically for it. For years they have been making the Webcomic and developing the story of its protagonists, why not put the characters of the webcomic instead of continuing to create new ones?.

If this game and its RPG had a better development, they would be the 2D h-game with the highest amount of profits in patreon because the art of Crescentia is at the highest level.

Good game, good mechanics, good visualisations, good transition from combat to the sheer panic of being grappled and overwhelmed with bodies. Forgiveable repetition of environment visuals as what's presented basically amounts to an alpha.

Looking forwards to seeing where this goes.

The game is only average atm, but it has too much potential to rate less than 4/5. I'm pretty sure the final game will be 4-5 based on this demo.

Pros:
- Art is great. A lot are variations of the same pictures but with reasonable differences
- Has at least 1 hour of content.
- Gameplay concept is original and interesting.
- Good writing for each GameOver sequence.

BIG ISSUES (please read this devs):
- Can't really appreciate the CG since you have to mash the buttons like crazy to not die. This should be changed. Eg let us mash automatically and give invincibility frames.
- Controls are terrible. Should add an option for infinite MP and automatic shooting so that the game doesn't require a mouse. At least let us push right click to shoot automatically instead of having to mash it.
- No save. Not too much of an issue for now, but we should be able to save or at least continue after game over.

The art and theme I like, but the gameplay has a few issues.

Positives:

• Multiple levels of 'grab' CG and potency with 3 different random poses for each enemy and then some. ('Ghost' grapple CG exists, but I couldn't find the enemy in game.
  • CG works on a 'first come, first served'bases though as there is no mixing between enemy types in regards to these 'grab' CGs. This can be both a positive or negative as it allows CG and game over hunting, but also means there is no combo CG or game overs.
• Each enemy type has a unique game over sequence with unique CG.
• Fairly effective 'get out of jail card', i.e. the first skill you start with. Defaults to 'Q' in controls. Gets notably better with upgrades.
• No enemy clones - all enemy types act distinctly.
• Strength buff is very helpful in reducing the shots to kill werewolves. Does need upgrading to the point of having another charge to really be useful.
• Upgrade system is easy to use and some abilities have upgrades that are not the same everytime.
• Basic ranged attack is always available and is good enough that it should be your main source of DPS.

Negatives:

• The biggest one - No real incentive to explore maps out. Only the rare full heal item is available to find and less than 1 per map spawns on average.
  • Only other thing to interact with is switches that unlock locked doors. You don't get info on which door is unlocked either.
  • No 'chests'.
  • Exploring has too much risk (high) for the amount of reward (basically none).
  • Some rooms seem to have lighting issues.
  • Dashing is impractical in most rooms due to terrain and size limitations.
• Second biggest one - Gameplay is challenging enough to make enjoying lewds hard. Scarcity of defense/healing options make death by chip damage inevitable. You only see lewds when taking damage or defeated. After you are defeated, you must start the game over and all progress is lost. Given that most CGs are not available in the first rooms, you must "choose where and who to die to". This isn't fun.
• Only way to get upgrade points are to kill enemies.
  • Floaty tentacle enemies don't give points as they come from a spawner enemy.
  • Harder enemies give similar amounts of points to the weakest enemies.
• Melee isn't very good even when upgraded considerably. I got it up to level 4 and there were no range increases or attack speed increases.
• Charged range attack can't be charged as of this review. Currently, it is not very good compared to the base range attack as it has twice the mana cost, slower projectile speed, lower fire rate, and does less DPS overall.
• The two abilities I got in my playthroughs were the 'card' throw and strength buff. I didn't find any other abilities outside of those given at the very beginning. Given that there was 3 ability slots, I'd thought I'd be able to find another ability, but I couldn't find one.
• Card throw ability isn't really helpful with the agile enemies . . . which are the enemies that ultimately matter.
• Werewolves will probably be responsible for most of your game overs as they do more damage and are the most agile enemy by far. Reducing their stickiness, lunge distance, or lung speed would make them much easier to deal with.
• Boss does a ton of damage compared to everything else and sort of becomes a DPS check given the difficulty of avoiding his chip damage from AoE attacks.
• No defensive upgrades.
• Game saves very frequently and can't reload from saves older than the most recent.
• Gallery button, but no way to unlock.
• Enemies become invisible and sometimes not vulnerable to damage when outside of your light zone.

Overall, I enjoyed this demo, but there is significant room for improvement. The h content is enjoyable, but the real time gameplay makes it really hard to enjoy. And if you focus on playing the game as you should play a game with perma-death, you will not want to get into situations where you'd see the h content. Until this fundamental problem is resolved, I won't be able to recommend this game outside of its art . . . which you could just open up without playing the game =/

If I could rate this at 2.5/5, I would as I feel this game, given it's numerous problems, deserves that rating. If either one of the major problems was resolved, my enjoyment of this game would improve considerably.

Since this is a first release, I will try to update this whenever a new release comes out as that is likely to introduce some notable changes.