RPGM - Echoes of the town [v3.2.7] [Taizei]

As a HUGE Persona fan, I love the vibe and really wanna give this a 5 star off the bat. But as someone looking for H content I kinda wanna give it a 2...

This game has amazing amounts of potential for what it is, but the problem is the H content... The thing I kinda came here for. It's there, but it's bland, and so is the main heroine. You gain lewdness but I never get a sense that she's slowly becoming corrupted.

It's a decent game, but I can't in good faith recommend it to someone looking for a decent fap.

This game is way better than I expected, it is not perfect but it definitely hits the spot for what it's trying to achieve and captured me through the gameplay, story and H-scenes.

Gameplay: 4/5
In the game you play in 2.5D perspective and your goal is to pay off the debt from the mayor for the house every week. You can make money by working, whoring yourself out, doing quests and killing enemies essentially. While the work cycle may become repetetive after a while, usually there is stuff/quests to do on the map each day that passes, leaving some side options. Combat is nothing out of the ordinary, standard RPGM with battlefuck mechanic but I do like the animations there. Main drawback when it comes to gameplay for me would be unnecessary gameovers, repetetive tasks/grinding other than that it's pretty fun.
Another thing that I don't like is the repetetive combat/H-Scene dialgoue when fucking strangers. Would be nice to have some variety in dialogue because it gets kinda tiring seeing the same lines for alot of the encounters.

H-Scenes: 5/5
Maybe I'm biased on this but the artstyle really caught me. Animations are well done and the sex situations of the MC are very hot. You can sell urself, get fucked in battle or have actual romance options with male sidecharacters like her brother etc., the latter I rarely ever see in a femprotag game which is a bit of a gamechanger for me personally. The sex scenes when selling urself do get repetetive after a while but that is really impossible to prevent in that type of game so not a huge deal to me.

Story: 5/5
Ur broke, back in ur hometown and now have to pay off a corrupt mayor, but overtime u uncover the actual corruption in the city. A very nice touch imo. The characters are not super deep but essentially all have something that makes them stand out in one way or another I really like that. Giving important story characters their own sprites and portraits also helped make the game-world feel more alive. I really like this type of modern day corruption story where you can also choose whether u walk the path of innocence or end up being as deprived as everyone.

I'd urge you to try it out, it may not be for everyone but for me it was definitely a little gem. It may be rough around the edges in some points (some battle sprites are standard assets while others are custom, would've preferred full custom but it's not a huge drawback) but I see a developer really giving it his all to make the game enjoyable so I'll leave a more generous review.

As far as JRPG/RPGM games go, this is EASILY one of the better ones i've tried.

Story is pretty decent, you come back home to find your family is in debt to the town and you have to help pay it off with your brother by a certain date or fail.
The games karma system masked as Akemis' reputation does cut off/opens up possibilities in terms of content and items which is always a great thing to see to encourage replayability.
Animations for H-Scenes are great and genuinely have a great art style/easy on the eyes.
Combat is basic and easy to understand but is pretty harsh in the beginning if all you're trying to do is get a nut off without ACTUALLY playing through the game.
Once you hit the late game and have paid off your debt is when the story truly kicks in and becomes better/more creative, combat and the items you gain to upgrade Akemi the MC are significantly more fun as you snowball into a DPS monster.
My biggest complaint i'd say is that their isn't too much variety in terms of the animations for H-Scenes with street characters/shop owners etc. Going down the 'hooker' route isn't as rewarding for the gooners as actually hitting the 9 to 5 shifts in terms of money making early on since Akemi isn't as 'experienced'

Overall I REALLY LIKE THIS GAME, can't wait for future updates and games from this dev.

I'm sorry, but this game wastes way too much time and the scenes are too short and dry.

As a game with a story I would rate it 6/10 and as a porn game it's even worse.
- The scenes are literally 2-3 screens and finish, often reused without even changing the text.
-The amount of grind to progress jobs is stupid.
-Distances between places is good to make maps look nice, but the character would need to move 2-3 times faster for it to not be tedious.
- Absolute lack of any sidequest hints makes checking the maps for new events a chore.

I could add a few more, but I will stop here.

Very well-made Persona-like game that pushes the visual limits of RPGMaker, with pleasant, fully custom-made artwork for every part of the game.

Core fetishes of defeat, exhibitionism, corruption, and battlefuck have a LOT of CGs and scenes, and even outside of H-content, there is a high level of attention to detail and great polish after many updates that added necessary Quality of Life features like Mini-Map, City Map, new questlines that grant good rewards, etc..

There are only a few visual bugs and none which are game-breaking or frustrating to progress against.

Story isn't wholly original and may feel slightly rushed at times, but characters are consistently fun when interacting with each other. Past the first week, the plot picks up and becomes interesting enough to entertain on its own merits. I stopped bothering with sexual content near the late-game just so I could see the somewhat predictable mystery unfold and find out what happens to the characters.

First run's pacing and difficulty is challenging but fair, but quickly becomes easier as the MC levels up and obtains equipment. Combat is of fair quality, and currently the implemented mechanics do work together somewhat well to create fun and unpredictable fights. Lots of potential to expand the combat system with its TP meter, boost mechanic, and wide variety of skills and equipment. However, outside of boss fights, combat can seem wide-but-shallow and tedious like many JRPGs. On a positive note, the game never made me grind a lot to properly scale the MC's strength to new enemies. Grinding 1 or 2 extra levels goes a long way, especially if players save up money and purchase higher level weapons early on rather than buying and trading in each weapon.

New Game Plus opens a lot more opportunities and CGs for players to engage in, and the Innocence mechanic sets proper limits so that players must commit to a High or Low innocence run, incentivizing multiple playthroughs and adding a large amount of replayability.

Soundtrack is great and varied in battle themes, location music, and properly mixed to a pleasant and convenient volume.

Overall, a worthwhile, highly polished and content complete game worth purchasing for the 8+ hours for a first playthrough and 20-25+ hours of content for completionists. A memorable experience that never felt like it overstayed its welcome; any further updates will be sure to enhance this game to an incredible content density.

This game has changed a lot, I played 1.8 back in around april or so, the game has gone from around 28 Scenes to 51 (In the newest version)

One of the best improvements was the minimap, it helped the game a lot since the map is a bit big, and you could easily get lost.

The developer is really active and will reply anything you ask him, And seems like he will work on this for a while longer, but idk If he will keep updating pass Steam release.

The animations are really good, specially the newest ones, it really shows how the artists has been getting progressively better.

The Story is decent/good, probably a drag sometimes, but overall decent.

Combat... You probably will hate it if you are not into JRPGs tbh, but knowing where to find stuff, goes a long way in this game.

The grid/walking might be a problem sometimes but if you get used to it you will not mind it.

This one is definitely one of the best RPG maker games out there, everything (Except for enemies) are worked from the ground up.

And the game was developed fairly quickly, from what I know the game is about a bit over a year since development

Review is for v2.1.9
Really hard to get into.
I have a hard time giving this a bad rating because there's a lot good here when it comes to being a game, but the game is so open and there is very little to do right now, so going back and forth between areas takes way too long. For a game that's about exploring and finding events, it takes too long to move about the map. As a personal opinion, I don't like the angled map, it makes finding entrances and exits for areas a lot harder.
Over all it's a good rpgmaker game, but a poor hentai game right now. There may be content farther along that I just haven't seen, but I don't want to run around a map for an hour, that has random encounters, just to start the corruption.

A great amount of effort was put into this game. You'll recognise it in the first 30 seconds. The quality is exceptional from the design to the art style. Each environment has a crazy amount of detail. The MC's design in particular is great. The sex scenes are great too. If you enjoy good games, then give this one a try. The reason this has a low rating as of right now is the same reason that Summertime Saga has a high rating.

Firs issue the Gameplay WTH is this, its just work and wait to get an event that will only occur in a expecific day in that side its just anoying and tedius to play. But i will hope it gets a mor update to ficx these problems. the desing are meh the animations are good tought. Butsitill it fell uncomplete so i will wait , but for now it gets an 4/10 meh game meh wank (Sorry for my bad english)

The art is really good, but i find the scenes to be kinda meh. The gameplay is really annoying since new events only occur when a certain day is reached rather than events being completed. This makes it so that exploring the town is a waste of your time and you just go to work twice then end the day and do the same again until a day threshold is met. The story is a little out there but its okay.

still in progress. but the art is amazing, the the sex scene show up fairly early on compared to some other games i played. my only grip is that interacting it hard to get into the sweet spot to properly interact with some objects and people.

version 1.5.3
I had expected much more from the post release version

art is good
story is meh
writing overall is good
gameloop is kinda boring
quests are buggy

Story
The developer is trying to implement 2 paths of walkthrough: “pure” and “devilish”. Currently it seems that the devil path is not complete because at some point you will be softlocked.
Its currently not possible to switch from one path to another and over time you will notice that some quests and other content are not available for you.

Writing
Got pleasure from reading quest dialogues and town NPC dialogues, but the quality of the writing overall ranges from good to terrible.

Gameloop
Each game day is divided into 4 parts: morning, afternoon, evening and night.
At the beginning of the day you go from point “A” to point “B” (or “C”, “D”, etc.), and at the end of the day you return to point “A”.
There's no random events, there's no point in exploring the city except for times then you have a quest, so the game quickly becomes boring.
The quests is damn buggy, I think only half of them work fine,

I really love the way Echoes of the Town looks, but that's just about the only thing worth liking. Other than the appearance, the game is basically typical RPGM fare. Get money to pay a debt, fight stuff in stylish looking but boring combat, there's something like a story in the background that's barely worth reading, you get it. Art that looks this good really deserves a better game to go with it.

Oh, like half the scenes are rape by the way. Game kinda needs that tag.

As 14/11/23 game is just grindy as hell and confusing.

We have a girl that progresses from 100 innosence to like 0 in a week, there is no feeling of corruption at all. Im pretty sure you can get to 0 (not like it means much anyway) in 4 days if you go out for it.

Scenes are good if we compare them to standart quality on this site, but execution is beyond boring. It mostly goes "wanna suck" "yes" and thats it. Also lets add the fact that there is no guide or anything of sort. You just pass days by working and fighting enemies that could as well not be in the game.

There are some side quests that are mostly pointless? Feels unfinished. Could be 4 stars if corruption had more sence and game being less confusing and grindy.

Also message of "I cant hold any longer" when she hits her lust is just why? To find you can have sex with randos on the street you need to press down arrow and Z. Also it appears quite suddenly I guess unlocked with innosence.

Incredibly well done so far. Some game design pointers: on night 3 or 4 there is an unavoidable boss fight without any warning or chance to save. I died at that point and lost a little bit of process, but it was because I just happened to save beforehand. It would be good to warn the player. Additionally there could be more pointers at what the player is supposed to be doing, and even a choice to disable random encounters. I don't want to explore the city in case there's a new NPC or something when that means i'd have to go through 5 random encounters, you know? Overall however these are small things that annoy me in an otherwise amazing game, so I recommend people to give it a shot