Ren'Py - Dungeons & Essence [v0.3.1b] [Frost Games]

I want to like this one, and I think I might be able to get there. But damn, the combat so far is a grab-bag of unpredictable difficulty spikes, a system where your characters miss a TON and a glass-cannon aspect to everything that just makes many of the fights "who hits first".

Changing my review to a one star. Why? The first dungeon you enter has a boss battle that is very much just a dice roll to beat. Then no opportunity to save, then a massive battle where you are hugely outnumbered. And what the hell is the point of having a summoner class with six places to put people when you are limited to two summons?

Combat is well balanced sex scenes are bad.

1. Art 2/5 (static with a square box of poor grammar format for text)
2. Story 2/5 (no real story background and that is it)
3. Game Play 3/5
4. Battle Balance 3/5

Except for bless buff most buffs are a joke they only last 1 round which is ridiculous. If you cast a shield or defense it should last at least 2 rounds minimum and a bless should have a 3 round. Looks like Dev never played D&D or AD&D as you would know buffs have to last several turns to make them useful in battle otherwise you are wasting a turn.

What can improve this game is get rid of the awful square text box and put the grammar at bottom. Even for static images in scenes they typically often show 2 pictures at least but this only has 1 picture)

I found myself just hitting X and not even reading the H Scene text as it is just a giant wall of text with no proper formatting like paragraphs.

This game is garbage with no balance.

+ Fun Concept

= Generic plot/setting, but it's functional and could be fun

= Characters seem alright, but didn't get to interact much with them

- Annoying Smut, and by that I mean the way it's given to you. Why make a scrollable mini window with a manual click required to end them for smut scenes in Renpy of all things? It's just tedious? The default Renpy experience is considerably better than this.

- Grind / Repetitive / Balance.

To progress you must grind essence, which is just tedious.

It's literally a pointless time sink as the combat isn't engaging. Its just grind or abuse combos. Magic is op if you abuse spells that hit/cc everything. Physical builds are sad in comparison.

Sometimes you will get rng of an entire team of enemies that can aoe stunlock you and your summons ( ex: 3 slimes )

It could have potential down the road, but as of v.02d its a slog.

Cool game that has a lot of potential. I don't mind the ai art at all and I hope it means more updates can come at a fast pace. The futa content is good for the start and I hope it gets more of it. The gameplay is cool as you feel like a weak adventurer that has an op talent and can get stronger fast.

v0.1

The concept is ok, but the execution is rather poor:

The game is exceedingly grindy - we're talking about playing the same fight dozens of times just to gain enough gold and experience to unlock stronger gear, skills, or followers and be able to do the next fight. Rinse and repeat.

Maybe this is done to artificially increase the game's length, since it is v0.1, but I'd much rather play it for 15 minutes and see whatever little content there is than grind for an hour only to get to a WIP textbox.

Sex scenes are very rare and they are text-based, or at least they were up to where I got before dropping it due to how tedious the grind got with nothing to show for it.

Having an RPG combat system, keyboard shortcuts are necessary - in a game where you spend 99% of the time fighting, having to click the attack time every single time gets tiresome.

By adding sex scenes and removing the grind the game would be enjoyable, but right now it feels like a proof of concept where what you see in the first 10 minutes is the same as what you'll see an hour later.