Ren'Py - Divine Dawn [v0.30] [Cryswar]

I wish with this to state that it the game is absolutely worth your momentary revision and perhaps, should it then captivate you, the several hours of your time it would take to currently view most of its content.

My rating is granted cumulatively; the game itself warrants an approximate 4.4 Stars. It is not without its faults, but they are overshadowed by its successes- this would usually however, warrant the rounding down of the score to match general perceptions.
Not in this instance, for the simple reason that I possess a nearly unfathomable respect and admiration for the developer; for many reasons. This results in me granting it an additional star of score by itself.

It is here however that I falter. The score must be given, the review must be posted- because the game and developer deserve it.
In due time, whence my mind finds all the words it wishes to speak, is able to articulate and organize them; this review will either be edited or deleted and reposted in its entirety, with all the things I wish to, and should, say.

For now, as always, I ask that you trust an internet stranger in his judgement and give the game a try if nothing else, that what is here is truly special and worth experiencing- though I also apologize for not being able to detail my thoughts.

[0.30 review]

This is a decent game with some pretty good art, but there it doesn't have all that many H-CGs. The characters are pretty nice well defined, although the game dumps a lot of them on you pretty quickly. The combat is fun and the build-your-own class system is always appreciated in any game. The story is decent, but the exposition dumps are tedious. I also didn't encounter any bugs whatsoever, which is quite impressive for a game like this.

Sadly, the gameplay gets a bit lackluster after the intro. It's all just menu-ing, grinding, and stat-checks to see if you have enough relationship points with a character to view a scene (of which there are multiple types relationship stats to grind...). The worst part about this game would have to be it's overly verbose nature. On it's own, it's not all that bad, but it does a whole lotta telling after showing. It loves using 2-5 flowery sentences to explain something that can be done in one, and at one point, goes so far as to explain that a joke isn't funny when it's explained. This makes the MC feel much more obnoxious than he may actually be since all of this overexposition is coming directly from his own thoughts. Add on top of this abrupt modern-day lingo used in a high fantasy setting and it's a tough one to read through. I found the game to be much more tolerable when I skip over all monologue and only read dialogue, but that only does so much for the game.

TL;DR: A decent adventure RPG game marred by constant overly verbose and kind of cringe MC monologue.

Story 9/10 reminds me of another game I will
Not mention
There is interactivity in story

Art 10/10 that Megatron first time art was chefs kiss




Content 10/10 a lot of content I think 4 0 to 50hrs
As of 0.31

Humor 10/10 funny jokes always land sams intelligence
Lol


Writing 9/10 great writing but lots of text may
Not please some pple


In short great game can't wait till completion

☮

This is not a bad game, but what it is, is another example of hopeful idiots review inflating it to near perfection here on F95zone.

Divine Dawn tries to rewrite the Japanese "Monster Girl" formula by westernising it with tropes and elements that would cater more to the western audience. This happens by the overlay of literally a Dungeons and Dragons like atmosphere to both the story and gameplay. Surprisingly this is done to a sufficient extent. I say only sufficient though because it is unfortunately not perfect at all.

The first quarter of the game starts off really nice. The writing here is actually excellent. However it loses momentum rather quickly as it becomes apparent the dev for some reason tries really hard to make the game more into a book than a hentai/porn interactive novel. Thanks to this the players are greeted with walls of text describing the ongoing story which after the first quarter is no longer trying to follow to the original premise and turns into your average, off the shelf fantasy novel. While I like that there is no strict insistence on the hentai/porn portion it is also a bit of an identity crisis since the first bits of the story were nothing like the later parts. The characters however are all backed by their respective storylines, they never feel like your average generic monster girl. Which is nice for a change.

What this game also suffers from however like all "Monster Girl" type games do for some odd reason is that they use like twenty different artists for their artwork. The problem with this is that you get huge mismatches between different illustrations in both quality and style. I do not understand why can't none of you devs pay a SINGLE artist to draw all your characters, why this has to be the case every time. The "support as many artists as possible" argument here is pure garbage. Game development isn't charity but product delivery. Using 20 different art styles for your assets does not help improving your product quality. On the contrary, it makes it worse.

While the game is not that old it has been around for at least 2 or 3 years now and considering how much content you will find in the current version which would be 0.30 as of writing this it is also apparent we are looking at a really slow pace of development. Meaning the project is most likely a part time activity for the dev. While this is not something that take away from the value of the game it is something to keep in mind for those considering to support the development.

Now, what I can definitely praise in the game would be the combat. Clearly a lot of though went into it and it has surprising depth with near infinite specialization options. While there is a learning curve to it, once you get the hang of it it is nice. Also something new for a change considering the other turn based alternatives in this genre.

TLDR.: In conclusion, Divine Dawn is a decent little game with good combat, memorable characters but inconsistent artwork and a bit of an identity crisis on the side too.

Ashley is an insanely good character, genuienly funny interactions and well written dialog.
The diversity of girls is really refreshing and most of them seem interesting, unlike many other games.
Amazing game

The game is super fun. The combat is acceptable, but that isn't why I play the game personally.

The writing is genuinely good. It can occasionally be a little wordy, but after the intro I stopped noticing this because I enjoyed the characters so much.

Metatron

I think one of the best parts about the game is how active the dev is in talking with fans and responding to feedback. While I really enjoy the game currently, half the reason I am giving it 5 stars rather than a lower rating is because of how promising things look. Just scrolling through the thread any concerns I had about the future of the game have been assuaged because of just how active and transparent the dev is.

I can't wait to come back in a few months and see the progress.

Good game. Good enough to force me to leave a review.

Good story, Good characters.

Gameplay and balance is fun.

Cheats easily available if not interested in grinding.

I really want to see more sex scenes with Sam.

Story- Amazing

Gameplay- Balanced and fun

Characters-Must protect- Must fuck the sass out of Ash.

Overall. Stop reading reviews. go support this dude on patreon/ steam and treat yourself to one of the best H- Visual Novels i've played in a long long time

(shoulder racist buff for maya when?)

v0.26b

Been a bit more than a year and a half from when I first came across this. Coming back to it now that it's a bit more fleshed out, it's time to review.

The largest strength this game has is the writing, especially in the erotica. I used to write some well-received unaccredited smut for a popular game a long time ago. It's not easy to write something with the intention of turning someone on. It's usually either "he put his dick in her pussy. PLAP PLAP PLAP", stupid shit like cervix penetration, or worst of all, writing the scene like its a staged porn scene "Aw yeah baby you like my cock all the way down your throat?!" It's refreshing to see it done right.

The girls each come off as unique characters. Good, but if there's one that stands out it's Aspasia. In the fact that even after not touching the game for over ~1.5 years, she's basically the same. At this point she's there as a running joke I feel lol.

Combat is okay. It's hard to balance out something when you're given 3 stats points per level but have 8 different stats. There's going to be some clear winners in terms of effectiveness and you can especially see this when picking your combat partner. Some stats/traits/equipment/partners are clearly better than others. Fortunately however you can entirely respec yourself if your build sucks. It's great for people who like to optimize.

Now here's my biggest criticism of the game. Once you find your optimization, things can get stale as you repeat your best moves in a cycle with hardly any regard to what your opponent is doing or is capable of. When it came to the bosses, I just did the exact things I do in normal encounters. This will only become more grating as the game gets longer. With how the game is set up currently though, I don't see this changing easily. I'll provide my 2 cents on this anyhow. Several games have spiced up turn-based combat into something that engages players more. Which is mainly the player having to react to enemies. They have different ways of going about this. Sometimes it involves keeping buffs up against certain enemies. Sometimes it involves a direct reaction to impending attacks. Sometimes it involves keeping an eye on enemy status. Sometimes it's the ol' elemental rules of rock-paper-scissors. Sometimes it's knowing enemy weakness. Sometimes it's a mix of a bunch of these things. This player engagement is something Divine Dawn lacks. I don't even have to look at what I'm fighting to know what I'm going to do. Using the same moves over and over again is even somewhat encouraged with Mastery. Food for thought, but I can't imagine being particularly thrilled about the combat anymore if the game was any longer than it currently is.

Despite my criticism of a major part of the game, I think this is top tier as it stands right now. It does what many others fail to do, write good characters and smut. That alone puts it above the rest.

0.25 Review. 5/8/2023

TL/DR:

An enjoyably complex home-brewed combat system scaffolded cleanly into the ren'py engine, a potpourri of personalities and types of very huminoid "monster-girls", complex dialogues, and light femdom bias make this a very accessible title for vanilla fans. However, if you aren't much of a reader you might not like it- the exposition is both verbose and frequent. If you like reading, you're in for a treat!

Pros:
+ Intelligent MC who thinks about the needs of others.
+ Good characterizations across the board. They are exaggerated like in an anime- but it works.
+ The scene writing is quite good. Lots of creative ideas / focuses on some of the monstrous qualities of the gals.
+ Great mix of different talents so you can build a character that feels personally tailored and suits your play style.
+ The way the MC internally monologues and speaks reminds me of my own communication style. Usually, MCs are simple AF. Asta is not.
+ Strong world-building re: magical systems, races, religion, ect.

Neutral/Give and Take:
~ Those hoping for monstrous monstergirls may be disappointed. The general appearance of the monstergirls is veryyyy mildly monstrous. That said- the author does make up for this a bit in their narrations, world-views, and sexual content. Most of the racial diversity is encapsulated in those descriptions rather than how they look.
~The use of modern vernacular and sayings hurts the serious tone of parts of the game. The trade-off is sometimes it is pretty funny.
~Lots of different UI screens. Some have a couple annoying redundancies and the filters need an overhaul- but overall they are utilitarian and suit their functions.
~I'd say the bulk of the content feels like light femdom. It is very suitable if you have a shy personality IRL and want to RP a character that most of the women actively pursue / lightly dominate. It isn't my favorite type of sexual progression- but its vanilla enough to still be hot. Hopefully the vibes become more balanced over time.
~ The art is a mixed bag. It is all slightly anime style and ranges from decent to very amateur. The silver lining is it is improving significantly over time and I presume is mostly limited by the developer's funding over time.

Cons:
- MC is occasionally annoyingly childish. Its suits the character in the narrative; I'm just not not overly fond of YA protagonists.
- It is hard to take the story seriously sometimes b/c of the language choices. It is simultaneously trying to be SOL anime with lots of silly modern moments, but also an epic fantasy. It succeeds at both in different moments, which feels like a vibe whiplash.

Hopes for the game.
* It follows through with the "coming-of-age" narratives present. I hope the MC develops past his youthful bumbling self and develops into a more confident young adult with better maledom content and more sexual / physical power. (Lil' Hommie is already OP AF from a combat POV).

Not a great fan of visual novels. Nevertheless I've been enjoying this one. Art is good, writing is good (if occasionally a little too self-consciously clever - but we can put that down to the narrator being a bit of a clever clogs). Also, I find I'm actually interested in the story which, forgive me, is something that all too rarely happens. It has been a little light on the smut so far, but that hasn't really bother me.

Criticism: I've just met Metatron so I've got a ways to go yet (hopefully quite a long way to go) so I can't speak about the whole game. The one thing to strike me so far is that it could use some background art in the temple. There are all these glowing descriptions of amber crystals and glowing magic circles, but all we ever see is the initial area. It's distracting.

Needn't cost the earth, either. Detailed as those descriptions are, I expect you could enter them into one of the AI art packages going around around and get something reasonable. (And since we're only talking background art, you don't need to worry too much about missing limbs or additional fingers.

Version 0.30

This is an update to my review on the version 0.22d I did a year ago. While not much content has been added since, I felt the need to reevaluate my judgment towards this game, as there were many qualities and flaws I glossed over and I wish to give a less biased verdict.

For starters, the gameplay is really pushed foward in this VN, even by Japanese VN standards. In the vein of Dungeons and Dragons, there are many character classes to choose from, each with their own gear, stat changes, abilities and upgrades for you to experiment with. It looks pretty vast, but unfortunately, only a few of those are actually useful; most of them are just slight variants of the same set of abilities, or just plain worse versions of some others.

It's not possible to reassign your stats once you've leveled them up either, so if you went for a particular build (melee for example) and wish to switch to a more magical build just to see what it does, you will need to grind a lot to be even remotely completent, or just restart the game all over and pich a different starting background.

The status effects are complicated. They are numerous and varied, and the sheer number makes them difficult to learn. The game helps you by letting you hover the cursor on their icons to see what they do, but most are vague and offer no description available outside combat, forcing the player to go into battle to test each build and see what they do.

For most of them, their effects in a fight are so minor they are easy to neglect and just focus on hitting fast and hard. The only ones that will be somewhat relevant to you are the Stun status that some builds can spam, and Initiative to indicate the attack order of characters.

So yeah, the gameplay has many good ideas, and it feels pretty alright once you get the hand of things. But the developer prbably should have cut back on some of those mechanics and opt for a more straightforward combat system. Plus, it wouldn't have crippled the already glacial development pace of the main story for so long.

Presentation-wise, this is your typical anime style, nothing that sticks out of the crowd. The character sprites during dialogues are pretty alright, and some character designs (like Metatron's) are pretty cute and pretty. The adult illustrations, however, look very amateurish and can vary in quality pretty often, most of that quality flying pretty low, to be honest. That, on top of being the most vanilla shit you could find in that kind of game, which always struck me as odd in MG games, being focused on "freakish" monsters and all that.

But the real problem with the presentation comes from the variety of sprites you can see in combat, where the artstyle of the enemies clashes jarringly with the rest of the game. Divine Dawn is not the only game to have differents artstyles of varying degrees of quality, but it is certainly one of the most egregious examples, and not in a good way.

I've never understood why hentai developers took the habit of hiring different artists with different artstyles for their adult scenes and whatnot, instead of having a single artist, with a consistent artstyle and vision throughout the entire game. Because as it is, the quality for some of those sprites are either nowhere near the standard I'd expect from an adult game nowadays, or so outlandish that it often takes you out of the experience completely. On of the most striking examples of this is you can go fight an disgusting eldritch abomination in a forest late into this version of the game, with serious stakes to the fight and all, and then suddenly a horny fairy girl with huge boobs joins the fight, and you're like "Oh yeah, right, I'm playing a porn game, I forgot."

The developer really should have taken his time to create or commission enough sprites from a single artist to form a more coherent aesthetic with the rest of the game. It would have been at the expense of content, sure, but at least what would be there would be good and wouldn't detract from what the game is going for and doesn't break the immersion.

Now, there's only the story to talk about, and I think this is where Divine Dawn really drops the ball. Specifically, with how the characters talk and interect with each other, and the dialogues.

The first quarter of the game is, honestly, really good, and it really hooks you for what's to come in the future. You get thrown into a weird dimension, you have no idea where you are, why the place is abandoned by its creators, nor why there are monsters running around. You free two succubi from what seems to be a prison, and then an angel who you help fight against an eldritch space monster that threatens to kill you all. You go back to the normal world, and you learn that apparently, the gods and angels have dissapeared, and so you go on a quest to find out what happened.

This part of the game is really good. It successfully instigates mystery and raises many questions about the world the MC lives in. The introductions for every character there is pretty well done; each one of them has a distinct personality and an additional aura of mystery surrounding them, being from the weirs dimension you just escaped. Who are they? why were they locked up there? It's also a good thing the story brings us to the first adult content fairly quickly, content which become very frequent and easy to access past that point in the story, so that's a big plus.

Unfortunately, the game drops the act pretty quickly and gives you the answers to most of those questions fairly early later on. In this case it's excusable because it props up the motivation to go on an adventure, but it's still not very well handled. It breaks a lot of the tension and undermines the aura of importance some of those characters have.

But then, those characters tag along with you on your journey, and that's where the problems really start: The dialogues.

The characters themselves are all pretty nice, distinct in their personalities, qualities and flaws, troubles and development. Some are more developed than others, and I doubt the usefulness of some of them in the plot, like Aspasia or Maya, but on the whole, all are relatively likeable, even the MC. The game gets rid of the femdom and rape clichés that have plagued MG games for a very long time, and opts instead for a more wholesome, consensual approach, which takes longer to establish a relationship between the characters before going through with the deed, which creates a bond with the player and makes these characters more likeable.

The problem comes with the way their traits are presented to the player: Via bland, extremely long and winded dialogues and monologues that tell more than they show.

The dialogues and monologues are long. For one line of dialogue, there can be 2, 3, 4 or 5 blocks of text of a monologue from the MC describing the characters' facial expressions, elements of the setting, useless lore that only serves to justify a meager stat change or new ability, what they might be thinking or just to tell jokes that aren't funny. All this text could easily have been replaced by more succinct descriptions, or replaced outright by illustrations or better use of sprite changes to indicate a change of mood or whatever.

What's more, many of these dialogues and monologues serve only to repeat over and over again things already said in other characters' dialogues, or even in previous dialogues with the same character. I understand that this is because the dev couldn't predict which characters the player would want to interact with, or in which order, and so he was forced to fit it into all the routes to make sure the player didn't miss these events, but he overdid it. Seriously, take a shot every time the MC say “Goddess”, or that “they're still just teens”, and that they “will figure it out as time goes on”. It's unbearable.

This is particularly annoying for scenes building up the romantic tension between characters. Since these dialogues are designed to promote consensual relationships, there are plenty of moments where the MC aggressively insists on making sure the girls want to sleep with him, like “You're sure about that? I don't want to ruin our relationship. I'll only do it if you want to do it, are you absolutely sure? Send me the confirmation by email and enter your password so I'm sure it's what you want”.

My fucking god, is the MC flirting with her or defusing a bomb? The developer goes to great lengths to make PP as non-offensive as possible, to the point of being annoying at times. It completely nukes the erotic tension of these scenes by having the MC attempting to cockblock himself every two seconds.

Please stop. In understand you want to establish wholesome, consensual sex scenes, but this is taking it way too far.

Worst of all, these dialogues have a negative impact on story progression, as all these useless dialogues could have been converted into plot-advancing text, with new places to explore and new characters to meet and recruit. There is progression, but it's slow, the developer preferring to add new dialogues for characters already present rather than advance the story, and I don't understand why, as you already know pretty much everything there is to know about these characters, so what's even the point ? There isn't even any adult scene at the end to compensate, either.

Another problem stemming from piling dialogues on some characters and the lack of story content: The characters talk as if they'd lived through the Vietnam war. They're constantly talking about trauma, war and that sort of thing, but apart from the succubi's pasts and the angel, none of that happened in the story. Sure, there was the episode in the temple and in the forest, but that's still too early in the plot to talk about that sort of thing.

From the player's POV, not much has happened to merit this development. These extra dialogues seem to exist as if the player had progressed at least 5 chapters from where we are at the moment. It's a really bizarre decision coming from the dev.

There's also the story with Sam and Celica, a friendship that the player apparently ruined, but the game never explains what happened, and never makes the MC, Sam or Celica confront each other about it. At best, the game says the two girls don't get along, and makes some unfunny jokes about it, but that's it. The girls quickly say they don't hold a grudge against the MC, then adult scene. It's really bad in this instance.

In the end, I started skipping most of these dialogues and monologues, since most of them are just inconsequential lore that doesn't advance the plot or develop the characters, or nonsense and uninteresting jokes and descriptions. There are cool ideas and character arcs here, but very little of those is executed properly.

Overall Divine Dawn is still a very nice package, albeit a pretty bland one past its first quarter. The combat is fun and some plot points are pretty interesting. The first quarter is really good and worth playing the game just for that. But after that, it seems the dev lost track of the story he wanted to tell. The dialogues became more and more bloated, and the artstyle more inconsistent. The dev really needs to focus on progressing the story and hire a singular artist to to the work for him. Then it would need to fix the dialogues that are already there, and it would become something pretty cool.

I think this is my first review on the site, but after playing it a bit, I figured why not?

Despite being pretty much a .PNG-fest, which is usually a turnaway for me, the characters are genuinely well-written for the most part-- which is odd since most of the games focus more on fetish material than actual gameplay. I'd focus on enjoying the script of the characters, and-- instead of rushing to the ending as one usually does-- I just enjoyed the time.
The combat does feel a bit... Unpolished, and how your teammates level up does feel overwhelming to understand-- but it does show potential to entertain later on, for sure.
The lewd scenes are, for the most part, very well written. The characters feel homely, the aptitutes feel legimitate-- I think the only bugging thing I noticed was how unpolished a couple of scenes appeared, but that's mostly due to a change in art format-- IE Sarah's titjob scene has a completely different looking character as their portrait.
Overall a very solid story-based RPG, 8/10 with tons of potential. I definitely plan on pitching in funds in the future.

+ Generally well written text adventure ( somewhat verbose at times )
+ Design your own playstyle ( via stats/traits/abilities )
+ Respec your build at anytime after the first mission
+ Fun and engaging characters
+ Dialogue that adapts to the choices you make
+ Good world building despite common cliches/tropes
+ Good Art ( though rather limited, most scenes wont get anything )

= Decent Combat
= More keybindings would be appreciated, mostly for combat
ex: It would be nice to be able to use a1 2 3 4 5 keybinding for targets of abilities forthe 3 enemies and the last 2 being your two person party, or abilities that target everything just firing when you click it ( flare and taunt for example )


- Modern slang in a fantasy settings with swords and magic . These moments pop up from time to time and can be rather immersion breaking. ( Get Swole is the best way to level up I suppose )

- No maces/clubs/halberds T_T ( I guess the spear kinda fills the halbred niche at least )

- Not sure how branching the paths will be, so far it just seems to be limited to if you want to romance that particular character or not

- Somewhat grindy as you have to farm affection/trust through events avaliable only at certain parts of the day ( you need 10 in these for some characters and its only +1 per event ) Not sure if this is temp filler until it is fleshed out more

v.21

Good combat
Good writing
Good soundtrack
Good vanilla fetishes (no NTR, futa, furry, yes tomboys, gentle switching femdom, sort of harem, future ara ara and pregnancy)
Good art
Lovable characters (Metatron being super lovable)

The equipment system is a bit of a head-scratcher because in RPGs I tend to hunt artifacts and hoard gold, with crafting as much as possible if the game allows but DD apparently was not designed with that philosophy which honestly is not bad, just different.
I really don't have any constructive criticism, the best I could do is go turbo-anal over minor issues.

I will pay for the game when it is finished. I know you would prefer money now and then invest it in art or something but I am allergic to paying for an unfinished product, sorry.
Great game, looking forward to the future patches. I will recommend it when someone asks me about good h-games.

Seriously an amazing piece of work. All of the characters I've met have been wonderfully developed, the world feels full and alive, and the writing manages to be genuinely funny without reverting to gags and memes (though there are a couple of them.

Also, I mean, the sex scenes are well written and the lewd art is fantastic. I'm looking forward to sex battles being developed a bit more. Though it will take you a bit to get to the scenes and longer to get to replay most of them, the slow burn is well worth it if you're willing to put in the time.

I like the fact that theres actual gameplay, but the writing is seriously cringe in a forced kind of way(especially the humour), like a kid trying to seem like an adult so they pick up the words but not the situational awareness for using those words effectively.
I dont know if it gets better past the beginning with Sam, but if it does then ill edit the rating, cause the gameplay seems cool

Edit:tried it out and its a bit better but the insane verbosity of text is makimg it hard to focus on anything in fact it removes all fun from 90% of optional choices

Really good! I'll be honest, I wasn't expecting much but this is great! I really advise anyone who likes Monster Girl Dreams to try this game because it's in a similar vein and you'll probably like it.

The writing for this really sticks out for me. The closest style I can relate to is it gives a sense of the four elements style which I really really like. The characters are all really interesting and complex and thats rare in these kinds of games. The sex stuff takes almost a backseat but its not really a bad thing because the world and the story clearly have a lot of thought and a lot of heart and it shows. I highly recommend this to anyone who enjoys getting to know the characters and the narrative. If you're just looking for some quick nude scenes however I'd look elsewhere. The combat system is pretty cool too.

What time is it? Its time to die by the sweet walls of a succubus pussy.

Time to start of with Divine Dawn's genre

Divine Dawn is a renpy game so expect VN style reading.
Its mixed together with combat that is more thought out than most renpy games with abilties going further than most do, and it has an romance aspect and is mostly Story focused where some choices have an Impact on the overall story, the rest is flavor text for your personality.

Thats just a small summary tho.

But now im going to dive deeper into more specific bits.

The Story Dialogue and seggs scenes

Its world is set in a fantasy setting where most mythologies and religions from our history are adapted and made real with their own spin on them, and is set in a rather peaceful time(as far as the MC knows) after the aftermath of a battle between angelic and demonic forces, so there isnt any big bad that plagues the world so far.

Divine Dawn is rich in worldbuilding and dialogue and already starts with an extensive amount of good lore.
The Angels so far are the most thought out thing we can read up on currently in game and we get to know a lot about them, and their extensive history, how their powers somewhat function, and about most individuals and the disconnect between angels and humans in current times and what part of their believes got twisted or lost and actually meet one of the archangels as a party member.

The game tries to make a big effort of how its world functions and actually tries to explain it, in ways that make you understand how these things work, instead of keeping it simple and avoiding the topic of actually setting rules in your universe on how something functions, going to a different magic tree of abilities makes you go trough lessons with the corresponding character, where they teach and explain to you how this power functions and what you need to know to use it in combat, and it prob has the best explanations I have seen so far in a renpy game, the author def put a lot of work into it.

The only problem this might bring to some people, is that the explanations are too indepth for them( i dont understand how you expect to play a game based on reading but complain about too much text but ok) and skipping would be a reasonable solution for them, but apparently thats not enough, so I would suggest implenting a dialogue option where you are treated as an ass for interrupting them or telling them that you arent interested in their lecture, would make it even funnier if that made you lose trust points.

Im excited to see how the story will develope since I havent seen anything like it so far.

To go further on the dialogue, Im happy that the Choices have been remembered most of the time, , some Issues i had tho was when , there are some inconsistencies, but they have been minor so far.
The choices that serve as flavor text are also diverse enough if you want to be rather upfront or act timid or less sex craved, im pretty happy with that aspect.

Lets come to the cringe check,

So far i can confirm, that Divine Dawn actually isnt infested with a cringe fest of unneccesary references or shitty memes, but manages to balance out when its funny or when it should shift to the mood that fits, since for me personally its a huge turn-off, when i get bombarded with 2010 memes or pop culture reference, that make me want to commit not alive, since that has been common for me in most renpy games, but Divine Dawn executes the balance pretty good.

Its also important to note that the english of the writing is on the rather high end and you get the sense that the author mastered the english language, that also shows itself on the ability of them, to describe scenes on a rather rich level of details and descriptions during scenes, which makes it easy for you to follow along and imagine how things play out.

Now lets go to the topic that should be most important part of the game for this Website

SEGGS

The game has normal sex scenes and sex battles.
In Sex battles you engage in a battle that features 3 different positions so far, titsjobs, blowjobs and SEGGS, each of them is accompanied by either doing it gently, rough or trying to defend your dick with the crumbles of honor you have left, while doing it you get fancy descriptions on the scenes happening with dialogue by the opposing seggsiator, which can easily make you rock hard if you are into dirty talk, with the personality everyone expresses in their lines, you battle by fucking your partner unconscious, and try to deplete their hp bar by rough fucking and making them cum, beware tho mages can only ask nicely to switch positon and cant change them on their own, so hope that your seggsiator feels up to listening to your feeble pleas.

The game is still on a early side of development and so far there are 2 characters that I know of that you can rail every night, sarah and ashley( the beatiful creature on the thumbnail of the thread).
I mostly experienced Ashley since she got me hooked on her instantly and I didnt try Sarah's scenes yet,but


AHHHHHHH BY JUNO-SETO AND THE FUCKING ARCHANGELS, ASHLEY IS THE DEFINITON OF SEGGS,
EVERY FUCKING TIME I GET TO SEGGS HER AT NIGHT OR IN A NEW SCENE YOU CAN HEAR ME BREAKING THE SOUND BARRIER WITH THE LOUDEST LETS FUCKING GOOOOOO THAT HAS BEEN EVER SPOKEN, WORDS CANT DESCRIBE HOW ERECT ASHLEY MY DICK MAKES WHEN THE SEGGS HAPPENS, SHE IS THE MOST UNHOLY(BLESSED) THING TO HAPPEN IM JUMPING OUT OF MY FUCKING CHAIR WITH ETHUSIASM EVERYTIME I GET TO HAVE DIALOGUE WITH HER.

But to make my point clear, the sex scenes with the characters are filled with dialogue that make your dick rock hard, and are rich in personality that goes beyond just making the character into a one fetish show, most of the other chars in 16.b dont really have sex scenes, there are still enough tho for me to keep my dick throbbing through the whole playthrough i had, until i reached the end of the content, the quality of the sex scenes sate you enough, since they are doing a good job at making you cum, at least for me, and im hard to please as far as i know.

Overall the Story and dialogue are the strongest feature of Divine Dawn for me and both do a stellar job, even in the seggs scenes.

Characters

The game has a rich cast of characters that joined your party up until the current patch and teases a lot of interesting future characters, im talking to you dialogue option woman i had when i wanted to rest, all of them are well written and have their own struggles and strong personalties, that make you want to be invested in them and see where the story leads them, I've mostly interacted with UUUUUUUGGGGGGGGGGHHHHHHOOOO SEEEEEGGGGGSSSSSS Ashley, Metatron and Celica and all of them had their own struggles and were pretty 3 dimensional, ashley hold on
UUUUUUUGGGGGGGGGGHHHHHHOOOO SEEEEEGGGGGSSSSSS
for example is a succubus that is pretty sex driven and snarky, but she has her own trouble , the game so far is pretty consistent with that way of writing chars, which makes me more invested in them.

I really dont have any complaint about the chars written so far, that I interacted with, im really invested in them and in UUUUUUUGGGGGGGGGGHHHHHHOOOO SEEEEEGGGGGSSSSSS
and in Ashley the most.





Romance stuff

The game allows you to earn trust and affection points with each char, that allows you to have more dialogue with them on the rather long side, to give you the opportunity to get to know them deeper and get into their thoughts.
Seperate from dialogue they give you teaching lessons 1 on 1, where they teach you abilties as explained earlier in great detail, with the touch of the characters own struggle or thoughts of said abilities and also serve to know more about them.
Otherwise you get to fuck Sarah and UUUUUUUGGGGGGGGGGHHHHHHOOOO SEEEEEGGGGGSSSSSS
Ashley every night, she has 4 different sex scenes with the ability of a randomizer button, which is neat.

The romance is cool so far, but since the game hasnt been that long out yet, i cant critize it for the lack of more scenes, since that complaint is only fair when it got more time, before i complain about smth unreasonable.

The Combat
The game for me honestly wouldnt even need combat, but combat is text based and turn based.
It functions with generated encounters and events in the stages you visit, there isnt any game over, you only lose 30% of the exp to the next lvl, and it doesnt go into minus so its neat, that game overs arent a problem to binge me into save scumming.
You have 2 characters you control in combat, yourself and a Partner chosen from your party, the characters so far have diverse enough classes to mix playstyles with them up.
The abilties go beyond do x dmg with x element and include, a variety off debuffs or buffs, that you can try to pair with your partner to make playstyles that correspond with each other.
It lies on a good foundation, but some abilties overlapp and are just a changed up version, with a different element applied to them, fire for example didnt really have much personality to it and leaves more to be desired, since other elements feature more secondary things that make them distinct enough to find some differences. Maybe making fire more reliable to burn than the other elements, maybe playing around with the concept and adding smoke that gives the enemy a disadvantage on hitting, would make things more interesting, or actually including more buffs that the other elements dont have, since fire was about dmg and buffing in the initial description, but doesnt really feature that many.

Another Issue i also had is that some characters lack the feature of providing enough utility, if you are already in a class that doesnt fit them when u play on normal, for example i struggled hard with the last few spikes on diff, with sry excuse me i have to hold it in this time, Ashley i had huge problems as a fire mage even when i branched my skill tree over to other things to support or deal enough dmg, but healing was later on not enough and reliable, neither could we dps enough to get through it, I would suggest on giving the characters more utility, making the ability to be a reliable support easier with the MC or to dps stronger, when you go in all dmg, or to simply give people the ability to differentiate between partners in events during stages and your combat partner, since switching to someone else made it easier for me, but took the oppurtunity from me to see deep breathes Ashley's reactions.

Finale words

As long as im not forgetting anything thats pretty much it for my review.
Im very excited to see more of this game and of
UUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUGGGGGGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHHHHHHHSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS SEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS
Ashley, and have high hopes for it, that are reasonably waiting with the appropriate amount of time needed, for the dev to continue with this game.

Divine dawn is def now one of my personal fav renpy games, I have played so far and would def recommend to anyone else, as long as they dont mind things, tending more to the vanilla side of things.

If i missed anything, I'll add it in horror when waking up.

I'll proof read this later.

Otherwise A-a-a-shley is best girl.