I have acquired 7.5 through illegal pirate proxy channels on the deep weeb (this is a joke for the dense), and as a jaded misanthrope, I will now give my review for those who do not have it but want it.
First and foremost, the feature breakdown:
- Finished all skill trees and reworked existing ones
True, though most changes are very minimal.
- Reworked (and buffed) crafting to make it more worth it
Very true, there are a lot of busted potions you can craft now, I expect there'll be items later as well. Crafting seems to be the new meta. Going for a crit build with potions that increase crit and give double actions is insane, probably better than Arcanist.
- New "Easy" difficulty option when you start a new game for people who don't want to bother with combat that much
Didn't check it out since I'm not interested, but it is in the game.
- New personality creation system for the MC
You get to pick between a few options for your personality, which then gives you stress depending on the situation. Stress is EXTREMELY hard to fill up.
- New stress and mental breakdown system as you push yourself too far (tied to personality system)
Again, almost isn't even there. I picked a Caring MC and pulled every single one of Narcissa's levers, dooming my whole world and got about half the stress gauge filled. Turns out genocide isn't really that stressful, even if you give a damn. Also you lose stress when you cum. Yeah, so in my few hours of normal playing I couldn't get it maxed. Also you now get buffs when you lose all your Shards.
- You no longer need to defeat the Domina to get enslaved by her ~ just allow her to mentally break you
Good luck with that.
- Reworked most dialogue options (tied to personality system)
90% of the dialogue is completely the same. Every Domina has 2-3 lines that actually use the Personality system.
- Added a massive amount of (optional) dialogue to every Domina (tied to personality system) ~ get to know your favorite Domina(s)!
Well, considering that Domina's had about 3 dialogue options, adding 2 more is massive in comparison.
- New affection system for each Domina depending on your actions, responses and how much chemistry there is with the MC's personality
Amounts to, for example, Madeline saying you were a really good boy while you were at her domain if you picked Madeline-Esque dialogue options
- Max Soul Shards are now 3 instead of 7
All stakes lost. When you lose your 3 shards you get sent to the Graveyard where Reaper will let you chose one of your stats to buff and bring you back to the Fields. You literally grind stats by losing. Stress is reset upon reviving, so you have to fill it up during those 3 Soul Shards to lose. It's a good system and a good loop, but Stress needs to be amped you A LOT more.
- Each Domina received a new CG sequence of them playing with your last Soul Shard after you lose it to them
This is extremely good. This is the type of content we need more of.
- New worldspace - Graveyward; you will be sent here after losing all your Soul Shards now and it has a hidden story aspect to it that will be revealed in the next Dark Domme
So far it's just a single small map.
- Ability to romance Madeline!
Again, very good. More content like this instead of skeleton and stat grinding would be amazing.
- New combat scripting to hopefully make repeated fights less tedious (again)
Expecting to see (again) (again) in a future update, because it's still repetitive. We need more moves not more randomizer scripts.
- All Dominas received many new triggers for different responses depending on your actions to make them feel more organic and real
Very minimal effect.
- Added "Offer Soul Shard" Katrina and Madeline scenes to their enslavement rooms
Katrina's, Madeline's and Narcissa's Offer Soul Shard scenes are the best content in the update.
- Several bug fixes
Still some bugs here and there, most of the reported grammatical errors were not fixed.
Basically, content-wise, the Soul Shard scenes are where you'd get your money's worth.
Dekarous really hyped up the whole conversation thing, but it's extremely shallow.
If you want to see Dialogue done EXTREMELY well, check out Virtual Succubus
https://f95zone.to/threads/virtual-succubus-v0-19-succudev.54086/
Example of how it works there
View attachment 1320050
But I don't expect something like this for Domina because honestly it isn't needed. What we had was fine.
All in all, new scenes are extremely great, dialogue is BETTER but overhyped, combat is the same with more broken craftables now, and gameplay still requires you to farm hordes of skeletons, in a porn game.
Game will not be good again until the random encounters with skeletons are removed. It's blatant unapologetic padding.
For crying out loud at least just remove the whole "they're dead champions" shit and make them into mischievous demonic imp girls or lesser demon girls or goblin girls or whatever with a few dommy attacks, then farming might actually be fun. With how powerful 1 v 1 you can get now, killing Dominas is easier than a pack of 3 skeletons with a tank archer and assassin, and these types of battles are starting to become 50% of the gameplay experience, which is tragic.
