RPGM - Completed - Demonherd [Final] [Axl Crow]

I'm leaving this review to tank the overall score even lower. This game has a lot of interesting ideas, could have easily been 4 maybe even 5 out of 5. Unfortunately the few bad ideas completely ruin the game.

Every bad thing said in other reviews is true and I know it too well, I spent 7 hours playing legit, got all companions beat some tough enemies, explored almost everything that the game allows to explore, upgraded to the second adventure rank. Tried playing a little more with cheated max level and infinite money and consumables and realised how annoying the game is even when I'm overpowered and how much time it still wastes.

It was progressively horrible the more that I played. I'm not going to be original and say the same things as other reviewers:

• No map.
• No gallery.
• Extremely grindy.
• Everything is random: loot, your and enemy damage, heals, status effect chances.
• Combat is poorly balanced. Not hard, saying it's hard implies you can turn things in your favour with skill and knowledge. Even exploiting every enemy's weakness and minmaxing armour doesn't guarantee anything it just makes the game feel bad instead of abysmal. The most important role play your level that unlocks powerful skills and gives "more" stats, after that comes stockpiling consumables, after that luck because everything is random, and lastly gear that matters but not that much that you feel like it's actually carrying you. Only 1 character can fight in your party of 4. You can switch between them once per turn and that's it. You'll be mostly choosing between a character who knows a high damage skill or a tanky character with okayish damage. Having matchup when your character is both strong and tanky against an enemy is strictly prohibited by the game. It only happens on low level enemies and doesn't matter at all.
• Exploration is constantly interrupted by random encounters that happen too often. The balance of combat and time needed to grind heal and mana restoration consumables kills all wishing to explore even small open spaces. Most quests and cool loot are in caves that are super long and have the strongest enemies, also you can't see anything.
• The game has lots of obstacles: rocks, different magic walls and teleportation circles, sometimes locked doors. For each obstacle you need the spell. I found spell to break rocks at 5 hours into the game probably. It was in a big dark cave... I could have gotten it earlier, it's possible, but the problems listed above just stacked upon each other and drove me away from the caves for a long time.
• Speaking about time aside from grinding a lot of time goes to reloading saves, constant healing and not knowing where to go in any situation when you were brave and walked away from the road. The demon inside you always yaps when loading the game which is super annoying and half of the time is actually long.

There's more bad to say but I've already made a huge text wall. The game has some good stuff about which I didn't talked and I don't feel like I want to. Because you'll probably drop the game before discovering even a fraction of it or spend 10 hours playing blindly before making some progress.

game ruined entirely by the constant random encounters and combat system
should have just used the normal rpgm combat
story and dialogue is ok, art is very nice, but it cant save the wreck that is the gameplay which ruins the whole experience

Really decent, good art kinda sandbox feel, good scenes but... combat is not great and random for no reason, also game has a lot of heroines but it bearly uses them with basicly no scenes side heroines just striping them naked and ocasionaly implied sex, but its rare. Plot also hurts this game as its not really a coruption game not possesion game and not really a full sandbox where you decide what mc does (you need to play to see why but sex is kinda a mechanic)

Overly difficult for no real reason. Enemies can random crit you or high roll and take you out instantly. Everything is a dice roll and even saving often leaves you reloading every few minutes. Demon is annoying and will yap away at all times including yapping at the start of every reload. Corruption is tied to resting which makes the demon more prominent which as previously mentioned is horribly annoying. There seems to be no way early game at least to undo corruption so if you want to avoid her taking over you have to save scum like crazy. Art is good and if the game wasn't so brutally difficult the characters might be likable but this was not an enjoyable experience and one I can not reccomend in its current state.

This is not a usual porn/hentai game but a real classic big RPG with sex and depravity. This is classic RPG with main quest, sub-quest and companion quests. Some of your decisions have real consequences. There is some corruption of MC and companions but from very high starting point. The game is great!

PS: There is no quest log and global map and for the game with so many quests this is ridiculous and rage inducing! Will not reduce rating for this just to boost overal rating of such a great game.

I like the idea and the style of the OG arts. The style reminds me of Crimson Keep, which I love. I think it has a lot of potential, but sadly, the demo doesn't show it. It's poor and unpolished, but I will give it a second spin once 1.0 is released

Review as of {Demo}

This game has the potential to be something fun, and interesting using ideals from games like DnD and Pathfinder. However, this game is hindered by it being what it is- a demo. The game hasn't been tested and played enough for the Dev to get feedback on what works and what doesn't.

What does work and are PROS
The artwork is really nice to look at
The Sex scenes were all well-written and left me wanting to see more
The potential for a great H-Game is there
The Premise is pretty engaging, despite the opening dialogue being a bit cringe.
The characters themselves are interesting to follow. I didn't find myself in the Demo never wanting to see this Vampire with a fat ass get fucked, or this light skin Catgirl strip for me. Or watch a demon take over the MC's body and force her to feel the pleasure of sex while being a prisoner in her own body. The scenes I found and watched before I stopped playing all gave me the same feeling as Town of Magic; which is good.
The Maps are places you can get lost in, and that's cool af. Only downside to traversing the map is the combat and reliance on going back to heal.

The CONS
Immediately the combat.
- I love DnD, been playing and DMing it for 7 years now. Dev if you're reading this. You're not WoTC, do your own thing. I understand the combat, you did a fine job at bringing that feeling of the tabletop game to the turn-based RPGMaker, but damn is it just not fun.
It feels like a slog to fight the early-game Mobs, and then when you out-level them you just one-shot them. It's just a combat system that feels more like a chore to do than to play. You don't feel rewarded for grinding, you feel relieved that you don't have to grind anymore. There were too many times where RNG just decided I was going to miss the 60% hit chance, then watched the enemy slap me with a max damage roll, causing me to wipe and reload a save.
The Combat is very heavy and focused on going all out and then resting to get your HP, Slots, and Mana back. However, the only rest location is the Tent with the Lizard (the only one I found in 2 hours) making most of the caves you have to explore a nightmare.

I also got soft-locked in the cave with the catgirl. Ended up going too far deep into the cave, running out of mana to use the Rock Smash HM, and couldn't get back out of the cave because I had no mana regen items. Even if there was a second exit at the end of the cave, I wouldn't been able to get there with all the mobs and or boss in between when I had no mana.

- Trying to escape is painstaking because if you fail the escape (because your agility is too low I presume) You have to get slapped with 2 attacks. After all, you're too slow. Most enemies also have ailment attacks so even if you run after being hit by one, you still take damage in the overworld.

-The damn camera in those caves
Bro, I was fucking LOST, you couldn't see anything in those caves, and with the constant combat encounters you couldn't remember left from right, up and down, and with all the floors your throw in there, you get turned around so fast. Like props on making an actual fucking cave diving experience, but damn bro, when you're advertising a game with PLOT, we better be able to progress to it.

- You got ass and tits on display the entire game, but there isn't much at all to it. Scenes in this game are, not obvious to find. The 2 pictures in the preview images I never ended up finding. My Catgirl strip scene did not look like that. I assume there was something I had to do to trigger a 2nd stage to the Demon x Lizard Man scene, but I couldn't subject myself to playing that combat any longer to maybe find a scene after the next cave.

The biggest CON of all
Despite playing a game where you get to see all of the main party's ass and tits on display the entire time, I didn't feel like I was playing an H-game. Now this is a Demo, so the Dev can easily fix the problems in later updates, but I felt like I was doing a chore. I didn't feel like I was playing a game where my reward was porn, it felt like I was playing a game designed around its combat being the main focus because that's most of the game, it's just fighting shit.
If that is what the Dev was going for, then all be it, but I didn't find it fun.

I can see the potential this game has to be a 4 or 5-star. But I also see that if the Dev keeps the level design, combat, and core of the demo the same, than it might end up a 2 or stay a 3. I liked the game as a whole, I will keep it bookmarked and hope and pray it doesn't die, because I really want to see more lizardfolk representation in the Shmentai games.