Artwork
The artwork of Dohna Dohna is unique and style-heavy, and I am really fond of the vibrant and colourful schemes that they have presented.
+Some of the best looking artstyle and meticulously designed characters.
+Consistent and accurate character proportions throughout the game.
+Many different versions of character portraits to convey the emotion and reaction of the characters.
+Each character has 2 outfits, and it is reflected in the H-Scenes.
+/-Vibrant and colorful theme.
Literary
It is worth noting that Dohna Dohna does not utilize font size or coloring to emphasize intonation, because there is no need to do so when every character is voice acted.
+Professionally translated with no minimal to no errors.
+Proper formatting with no instances of texts going outside of the text box.
+Translation is faithful to the spoken Japanese lines.
Music / Voice Acting
+Great soundtracks that fit the situation and carries the atmosphere perfectly.
+Professionally voice acted. Aside from the main character every single character is voice acted, down to the last background character.
Story
Dohna Dohna tells the story of a ragtag group of misfits running a gang. While simple in concept, the story is anything but. It is a story about fighting a corrupt, evil corporate organization with any means necessary, even if it means resorting to violence and committing crimes. You follow the group's adventure through their conflicts with the enforcers as well as competing gangs, and as your group grows in notoriety and become more of a threat, so does the organization's effort in taking you down.
Overall, the story in Dohna Dohna is very engaging, and it fully explores each character's past and motivations to take down the organization. There are several plot twists included, and this is also one of the few games that manages to make all of the main characters genuinely likeable in their own way.
However, one of the common complaint for Dohna Dohna is that the endings seemed rushed, and it is not hard to see why. After completing all the different endings, I can say that all 8 epilogues are rather brief, and does not fully wrap up the story. Some character's plight are not mentioned, and this is especially true for the supporting characters.
Gameplay
The gameplay section of Dohna Dohna is separated into 2 main parts:
Hustling
+This is the part where you whore out the girls you have captured to prospective clients to gain income. While it seems straightforward at a glance, there is actually quite a bit of strategizing in order to be efficient at hustling.
To elaborate, between managing the coverage of your girl's traits, avoiding bad traits as well as completing the quests of the 13 unique heroines, you will need to be careful with your planning. Aside from that, you will also need to manage the items for the upkeep of the girls, choosing which of the girls to sacrifice and let go in exchange of progress and revenue.
-Having said that, the system and strategy of the hustling mechanic isn't well explained, and will likely result in frustration if you are new and don't fully understand the correct way to manage your girls.
Hunting
+This is the part where the combat takes place, and it is up to you how you build your team. Each of the 10 playable characters have different strengths and weaknesses, it influences how you tackle the combat in the game. Besides the standard level and stat upgrades, there is an affection system where the more you fight alongside the characters, the more they like the main character, and thus unlocking new abilities and equipment slots. There are also different weapon upgrades to go for, and overall the turn-based combat is simple yet engaging.
-Unfortunately, the gameplay of Dohna Dohna is not perfect, especially on the weapon upgrade system. Weapon upgrades in Dohna Dohna is paramount for progression as the power level of each weapon tier differs greatly. However, obtaining the weapon material is chucked up to RNG, and this results in having to grind the same dungeons over and over in order to upgrade the weapons. Otherwise, it is very possible to find yourself facing the end boss with tier 3 weapons and you deal next to no damage.
+/-Similar to previous Alicesoft titles, the difficulty in Dohna Dohna also ramps up quite significantly towards the end game, and it requires proper gearing, team building and strategy to take on the end game.
H-Scenes
+The scenes in Dohna Dohna covers a big variety of kinks, from vanilla to toys and bondage to niche kinks like sleep-sex, hypnosis, incest, ntr, rape, urination, and even an *arguably* snuff scene. Though, given the range that it covers, most of the kinks are on a touch-and-go basis, and does not specialize in any of them. For the most part the scenes are rather mild, but even then they have made an effort to flesh out most of the vanilla scene with different circumstances and scenarios.
+Compared to the older Alicesoft titles, there are more variations in the CGs. The older titles averages 3 to 5 variations per scene, Dohna Dohna averages around 8 to 10.
Common Complaints
- The game is too easy - As with any Alicesoft titles, the gameplay usually starts off fairly easy with a steep difficulty curve towards the end. There is literally a boss in game with close to 5 million HP (more than 4x the final boss's) and one shots a character with 70k HP, while having its Power debuffed by 60%. Anyone who says the game is too easy hasn't played the game enough.
- The hustling system is bad - I feel that this is an often misunderstood system. You are never meant to be holding on to a set of girls. Effectively in order to make bread you are kidnapping and using the girls, and when they are mentally broken you would have to throw them out. You are also supposed to pay attention to the bad traits of clients and strategically avoid them, and not simply take on every client because they can and will ruin a good talent.
- There are no CGs from hustling - Yes and no. Dohna Dohna supports custom girls and clients, and expecting a cg for every variation is quite frankly ridiculous. It is meant as a strategy and money-making element, and there are actually 26 different scenes from hustling unique talents.
- It is not animated - Dohna Dohna is a VN with turn based combat, animating a 2D artwork while definitely possible, is way more work than animating a 3D model and taking snapshots or clips, hence it is very uncommon to have animated 2D artworks in eroge, especially one where the CGs are at this quality.
- The characters all act happy but they are doing bad things - Yes the characters are jolly with each other, but no it isn't as if they aren't aware that they are doing bad things. There is a character who went into self-harm because of the things they do, and there is also a scene discussing the main character being too empathetic to be in this line of work. Just because the whole crew isn't an edgy emo bunch doesn't mean that they are oblivious.
Miscellaneous
Playtime: About a week or so across multiple runs.
Completion: 100%
Version: Final
- Some of the scenes are run-specific, which is to say if you missed it you'll need to reload or start a new run to get it.
- While playing a single run is likely fine, trying to fully complete the game can be tedious due to how the ending is set-up. Going for multiple runs and having to re-grind everything is rather time consuming.
Closing
Dohna Dohna definitely has room for improvement, particularly in terms of the RNG progression as well as the epilogue closure, but with the engaging story, brilliant artwork and strategizing in gameplay, I would honestly say that it is worth checking out.