In short - If you're into bad ends and general brutal doom and despair, this game should serve you well; The scenes and overall tone really fit the theme well, and are a little longer than I'm usually used to. However, the game may be a bit more of a hassle than it's worth to find those scenes, depending on your level of patience. I recommend going at it with a guide at-the-ready to avoid frustration, if you're into the overall theme, but do try giving it a go solo first.
(Note: Guro isn't a turn-on for me, so I'm avoiding praising or damning those effects or scenes specifically; I do like that it sets a theme of the game being extremely perilous and emphasizing that bad things happen when you lose, but otherwise, I get nothing from it.)
In long - Again, this was a bit of a tough review for me, as I feel like this game has some big positives but also some significant strikes against it. It also really depends on the perspective taken; Compared to the dev's previous games, it's a dramatic improvement in many technical aspects. Compared to other more general adventure games, it still lacks. Compared to other games in this theme... well, honestly, there's so few that there's not much to compare against.
Gameplay-wise, I think the game does struggle a bit. Controls are a bit floaty and precise movement and actions can be a bit hard to achieve sometimes. However, this is a dramatic step up from the dev's previous games, and also not too much of an issue - there's nowhere near as many sections that require precision platforming as in previous games. Combat with the magic staff is... not great, but serviceable - The controls get way more restrictive here and it's awkward to use, but not impossible.
Spiritually, the game reminds me of an old-school Sierra adventure game, with all the sudden deaths, occasionally tricky puzzles, and sometimes obtuse reasoning they come with. This wasn't helped by my first playthrough being with the rather crap auto-generated translations, so all the books with hints strewn around the place were effectively useless. The updated translation (currently just a link in the thread) feels a lot better, but it's hard to tell if it's as dramatic an improvement as I'd hope, or just easy to link to once you already know the solution. That said, there are often hints within the level as to things you should or shouldn't do, if you're paying attention - something that does seem to have carried over from previous games. A sharp eye and some common sense should be able to spot false walls, traps, and routes that should not be taken.
That said, the trickiness of the puzzles seems to extend to unlocking some scenes. Some are pretty straight-forward, if you've played any sort of heroine-gets-in-trouble type of game - of course the big ugly monster will fuck you if it catches you. That some modifiers lead to different scenes is also interesting - of course the big ugly monster is going to be rough with you if it catches you after you broke its eggs. That said, some other conditions are a bit esoteric. There's one which seems to just be to catch people out if they modify the character's clothing. Another scene just wouldn't reliably trigger for me, but did eventually work after a few retries without doing anything noticeably different. I don't want to go into too much detail for fear of spoiling anything for you, as some of these are fun when you find them, but it does seem to straddle the line between "The Dev has thought this out well to catch players out" and "The dev's just fucking with me now" or "This is bugged".
Graphically, I think the game's OK. I think the main character's cute without coming off as a loli, and there's a couple of costume elements she can wear. The game world can come off a bit bare or buggy sometimes though, and enemies do generally feel like less effort went into them. Some of this does come off as a stylistic difference akin to the random gropers in a manga being little more than silhouettes, but I don't find it ruins any scenes. Gore effects are mostly fairly simplistic though - sometimes a limb detaches and there's a squirt of red, and there's a few scenes which get a bit more gorey but are fairly low-poly and not expanded upon much. It'll get you for shock value if that shocks you is about as much as I can say about it.
Scenes and their animations though, I actually quite like. It hits quite a few of the things I look for in a game where the heroine is supposed to be in a lot of peril and disempowered. She does tend to get manhandled quite a bit, with scenes often manipulating her, repositioning her, and sometimes getting her to do actions on her own. There's also a couple of consensual or at least not outright-murder-rape scenes, if you're into that. Scenes also tend to go on for a decent length, with a number of repositionings and small changes. The animations themselves could sometimes be a bit better, but they're more than passable. The biggest issue is probably some occasional clipping or weird movements, but nothing that took me too out of the action.
Sound... is present. The VA is just in Japanese (as expected) and the girl doesn't sound too irritating or anything. There's some decent sound effects and the animations come with vocalisations and most of the expected sounds. Some of the monsters/men are a bit weird but nothing off-putting.
Overall, I'm maybe rating this a bit higher than I should. Maybe I'm just starved for good ryona-themed games with a scary-feeling story to be in. But after playing the dev's previous offerings and getting some better translations, I do feel like the mind behind it is decent - some thought does go into the level design and environmental storytelling, and the game does try to offer you logically different outcomes if you do certain actions that warrant it (usually to punish/reward you more). The quality of game has also shot up from previous offerings, although it is still closer to the janky side. But hey, the scenes that are there are fairly decent, and some degree of frustration does heighten that a little. I feel like it's pretty solid if you're into the sudden-death-and-bad-end game style, and aren't just here to peek at the scenes. If not... honestly I wouldn't have expected you to read down this far.
