VN - Ren'Py - Devil's Academy DxD [v0.72] [Naitoh]

PROS
+ Visually, the game fails at face designs, but unlike the awful-looking face designs, at least the body designs look good, and sex scenes are animated, even tho they look ''meh'' at best.

CONS
- Personality of the MC is the biggest CON of this game, Issei which is the MC's actual name from the original source is quite poorly-written, and unlikeable character, he is not suitable to this kind of game at all, and worst Harem Protaganist ever exist, he is type of guy who can't even touch his own ''harem'' without them forcing him, he is utter failure as a harem protagonist, and despite some small changes player can make here we still have quite faithful MC here that makes the playing as a him not enjoyable at all. Being faithful is not always a good idea; sometimes taking risks and fixing the actual source that the CONS has is a better idea, too bad it's not the case here.
- Connected to the first CON, the game's story/progress is kinda faithful to the original source as well, so it has all the bad parts of the source as well, like characters like Riser, and their annoying scenes or tons of blueballing scenes with main heroines with almost no progress, and only some side girls getting real sex scenes. This game being 3-4 years old makes this CON even worse than it is...
- The game uses a very old & bad art style centered around characters having very big foreheads, and upperheads with very small chins, which looks awful, and quite unattractive. Some characters suffer from this a lot, and look straight up bad, like Kiba. Some suffer slightly like Akeno, and look way worse than their original version, and feel like a cheap version of their original beautiful design, or a different character, especially in Akeno's case, her eyes make her look really bad. And some suffer not so much that they look fine, as much as it could look like Rias.
- A lot of frames are used as frame-to-frame animation, and they progress without you clicking them, which makes it annoying, especially when you miss one frame and have to go back, because it goes back to the first frame, and since you can't stop or progress them, you are forced to abide by this.
- One of the worst things this game does is how grindy it is, and how minigames are just there to steal your time and annoy you. The whole Hidden Clue & Sacred Flame thing is big example for this, they are not visible enough, and easy to miss, and even if they were it still wouldn't change the fact remembering those numbers/clues are not easy, you probably need to write down somewhere, etc, since it's 100% guaranteed you will forget them, if you don't miss some of them in the process, considering especially you actually need them to progress the story makes this thing even worse. There are some unnecessary minigames that exist as well, like Strip Chess, which you play to open clothes for the heroines.
- Another thing is photo albums having sex going on for no reason, but it's not a real game; it makes no sense, and it's an awful design choice.

VERDICT
I knew this game existed for years, but I chose to wait for 3-4 years for it to get somewhere, and after playing today, I can clearly say this game has not progressed well at all, and is quite poor at everything it does, definitely not recommended.

Hmmm... I was conflicted about playing this. DxD has some good material for porn parody, the girls in DxD are very cool on the other hand we are forced to play as Issei...

For God's sake, I can't stand Issei as a protagonist, a low quality original character. Unfortunately, I got to the point in the Novel that I no longer liked Issei, despite his dragon powers being awesome, he was still the worst ecchi anime character I've ever seen. I don't even need to talk about the guy who can't even touch the body of so-called harem girls without them forcing themselves on him like a loser. This is why Issei is not the harem king, unlike Basara or Arata.

At least Dev was kind enough to let the player change the MC's name, it's possible to disguise it so the player doesn't see that he's playing as Issei. but it's still flawed, in some episodes even changing the MC's name, you are called issei. There is still an option to choose the answer and question that the MC asks, this helps the player to build an issei less Simp, get it!

But in any case and far from that, this game is yet another re-told of the anime/novel itself, even though the quality of the characters is at an incredibly stratospheric level similar to the anime, it still failed in some aspects mentioned above and also by forcing that grind in these minigames, for you to continue the story you would have to repeat the same chapter until you complete all the "Sacred Flames" and release the next chapter. Even playing chess, a silly game that I don't like, was annoying.

Man, if it weren't for the dear comrades from the game's Thread who posted the cheat codes, so I could advance in the story, I would have abandoned this game, repetition is no fun. I recommend that you add a vn mode, so that players can ignore the "Sacred flames and Xadrex" minigames and just enjoy the story.

In short, it's not a bad game. Just like many porn parodies are re-tellings, with top-of-the-line graphic design and good sound design, this game has some potential.

Decent Fan made VN that follows the original story while also adding okay Adult content in a way that doesn't interfere with said story.
some of the Adult content can be a bit of a chore to 100% but isn't actually too difficult to get unless you're shit at chess.
4/5 not anything truly exceptional but otherwise solid fan work

Interesting combination of mini games and story, also minigaems being on theme with a story is a nice touch. Also a player can appreciate non-duality of demon vs demon fights and not so holy side of the holy side.

Still basically a demo, but so far it is good. It takes the high school DXD story and includes what everyone actually wanted to see from the show. It is well animated and even includes the stupid alarm clock!

I'm fine with the story, outdated engine and the translated style conversation. But it's really annoying to play a game that's mixed with tons of unskippable cut scenes(slide show). This dialogue, cut scene style is very distracting.
You play this kind of game with your own pace by watching CG, reading dialogue then proceed by clicking your mouse/pressing a button/tapping on the screen. You can play on your own pace. In this game however, the spamming of cut scenes is on another level. You are foced to watch the slide show which you have no control, sometime follow with a single dialogue which you have to press to proceed then followed by even more slide shows! It just way too many.
It would be great if we can skip during the slide show play. Not to mention it's mixed with the fantacy of the main protagonist. The pace of the game is...bad... I'm also not a big fan of this on-screen puzzle, it mess up your pace even more.
I first played the Android version and I thought it only happens on the phone. Then I quickly tried the windows version and they are the same.