VN - Ren'Py - Abandoned - Elvensang [Ep. 5] [Worlaix]

Really enjoyed this one. Didn't think I would like the graphics that much but the game actually looks very nice and I ended up liking the renders, so if you're worried about the 2D graphics, just give it a chance and play it anyway, you may end up appreciating it.

I think the game's very well written, has some great characters that you end up caring about and the story's good as well with quite a lot of choices that influence it. Overall, I definitely recommend this one.

This is about the latest update, Ep.4, released August 2022.

The background artwork is very good other than too much use of blurring the edges of most every detail which can get old on occasion since there aren't too many different scenes.

The characters are absolutely beautiful! They could use some help with their lips, but otherwise are great.
There are a couple scenes with what looks like older artwork and the characters look a bit strange.

The background music/soundtrack is very nice and fits well with the story.

The background sounds, such as crickets or a dog barking, might be nice but gets extremely annoying after awhile.

It would be very helpful if we were allowed to choose a different font as well because since there is so much text to get through it can be a little bit tiring.

Game performance is very with no delays, lagging, or issues with saving. There aren't really any animations to speak of. Scenes are very static other than an occasional movement of the lips or eyebrows.

There aren't too many choices in Elvensang, just enough to not feel like a kinetic novel. Some of the results won't really make any differences no matter what you choose. Also, many choices start off with 'you'. You chose to ignore, or You chose to answer, or You chose.... etc. Those are just examples, not direct quotes.

The writing needs a lot of help. For example:
You wake up
You are tired
You don't know...
You made your way....
Starting every sentence with You gets very boring very quickly. That being said, it's also good in some other areas.

Elvensang is made up of custom artwork and characters along with extremely long drawn out conversations. As others have mentioned, most conversations seem to be
bloated and long-winded not really adding to the progression of the story. Since the images don't change any during these conversations, that too gets old eventually.

Finally, if you are out for a fap or looking for sex scenes then this isn't for you as I think I only saw 1 sex scene so far? Somewhere in the forum the dev states, I think, that there won't be any until Ep6. So don't jump into this with those kinds of expectations. Honestly it's more of a teen fantasy than an adult game at this point.

It's a very very slow paced VN which certainly isn't the worst out there, but I fell asleep a few times trying to get through it.

The story is so good!! It's one of the best stories I have read in this type of game. I don't even need the porn tbh, when the story is so captivating. It doesn't hurt though! I definitely want to see more of the mother.
I'm very excited to see what happens next.

Was hooked by nice individually made art and elves, but found myself captivated by the story and character behind the pretty visuals.

Fair warning though, if you simply want to masturbate, this won't be the game for you; it takes a long time to reach erotic material, which as of this review is often not directly sexual for the protagonist.

However, can say I particularly enjoyed the setting and themes, which still provided a feeling of personal interaction and character development in the choices available. The characters have been the strongest point for me, both main and side characters, which interact and build off each other in the greater story in an active and interesting way. For example, the competition between choosing to support the Briarstead community, elvenkind, or one's own family only, and by extension choosing whether to aid the local duke, , or the up and coming 'nouveau riche' merchant(& his daughter), all of whom have their own aims and beliefs of which you may or may not know of and must consider, and perhaps even plan to use to your advantage.

Also, particularly enjoyed teases of potential future erotic content; very loving/affectionate with the mother, adopted girl, and barmaid, while maybe some femdom from or merchant daughter. Also happy to see muscular but feminine women are not shyed from, with the smith, , and perhaps even
I don't know how large the complete version is planned to be, nor how frequent updates will be, but so far looks like a very interesting and promising read.
-A thorough thanks to Worlaix for his work

TLDR at bottom.

Elvensang as of this moment is quite overrated. Yes, it does have a fairly interesting world that is built up by the massive amounts of exposition; however, it is too much exposition. There is an overabundance of long-winded conversations and thoughts that don't forward the plot much at all.

Which wouldn't be too bad to me if as the player character you had more dialogue choices when it came to interacting with the characters you encounter. It doesn't have that so a lot of the conversations are quite mundane to say the least. The characters acting more as vessels to talk about the world outside of the village that you don't get to see rather than get you to enjoy their presence.

It's a visual novel, you want to see more than you get told.

When there are choices to be made I can't attest to any that questioned my morality or gave me second-thoughts. Helping whoever you want always and not being rude to them always is the better choice.

About the art, it has moments where it's pretty good and some where it is pretty lackluster. I would say only about 10% of it consists of nudity or intercourse.

The soundtrack is passable, relaxing, and forgettable so not much to say about that.

TL;DR, If you got a lot of time to read all the fluff text knock yourself out but the best way to enjoy it is to skip the majority of the unseen text and rollback before you make choices.

Was excited to try this game given some of the reviews and recommendations about the writing. Sorry to say I can't agree. The writing is not "bad" in the usual way of being puerile and dumb, but it's not great.

It takes hours for the main story to gather momentum -- far too much of what's here is painstakingly detailed backstory. IMO the author falls into a common writer's trap of falling in love with the backstory he crafted, and wanting to put it all on the page rather than getting on with the main plot.

There is an avalanche of exposition, of questionable necessity for a simple fantasy setting and an uncomplicated cast of familiar stock characters.

Also the prose tends to be somewhat padded and uneconomical. Almost every sentence of dialogue runs longer than it needs to, almost every conversation runs twice as long as it should. Some sharp-eyed editing would be helpful here.

It's easy to tell the author is passionate about the project -- but a good author shouldn't be so frivolous with his readers' time and attention. Three stars for making an effort but can't go higher.

keep em coming, this is a quite uniquely interesting storyline imo, hopefully the creator keeps this going till the end, would love to see this kinda a storyline with a futa protagonist aswell but guess those are not as popular or lots of people not into it

Well, amazing art, amazing story so far and I can't emphasize enough on how this story impacted me in a good way, I've been searching for a in-depth story-driven novel and so far, this far exceed my expectations. Can't wait for future updates, but I'm already pleased with what I've seen and experienced so far. Thank you.

Written as of version: Episode 4

For tldr: Read colored text. Additionally reading bold words gives an overall view of review.

Some justifications of my stance and examples from the game are put in spoilers.

Imo, at the moment of writing, game is missing some additional tags like: dystopian setting, exhibitionism, graphic violence, monster, prostitution, religion, sexual harassment, teasing.
Short overall sum up of the game: great fantasy romance story

Strongpoints: story, characters’ wisdoms, moral dilemmas and gray choices, MC’s mother, music and sounds, branching, uniqueness, amount of content
Neutral: lack of voice acting, slow paced in field of romance,
Weak points: uneven quality of art (overall passable), some scenes lack art, low amount of porn content, lack of animations

Uniqueness
Things that are unique: Art, moral dilemmas and gray choices, characters’ wisdoms, MC’s mother.

Art
I haven't seen similar art in different games. It is an excellent thing for people that mostly play VNs with pre-prepared assets (like Dias assets) and good thing for everybody else.

Drawings are in a few styles, but it is rather not breaking the immersion, as styles are close to each other. My concern is a difference in quality of art during gameplay. Some drawings are good, most are decent, some are bad. The main problem is that lots of them look like artist’s omitted a few polishing steps, giving unfinished products as finished. Even in some overall good drawings one fragment can look like done in a great hurry with little care. What is more, few scenes don’t have any drawings, only black screens (it’s not always justified by anything, like MC’s closing his eyes). Also, during some scenes, characters’ expressions are often the same for prolonged time, despite changes in discussed topics.

Moral dilemmas
Dev is good at showing distortions in morality, which are based on giving the highest importance to given values with disregard to other values. It’s shown in interesting, plausible and easy to digest ways.
Gray choices
Almost all possible choices are not “white” and “black” and even apparently “white” and “black” choices turn out to bring plausible, but rather unexpected, additional adverse effects.

Dev is even going as far as showing a discussion between characters’ about moral relativism in an interesting, concentrating on current MC’s decisions, and easy to digest way.

Both dev’s forced and player chosen “mistakes” looks like something that could have happened. Dev’s forced “mistakes” have a solid base in characters’ personalities, built world and are always explained. Usually by MC’s thoughts post factum. I would love to see that kind of diligence in other games.

This makes forced MC's choices generally not annoying. The only visible irritating choice of MC for me was:
Which is almost nothing compared to what devs’ force MC to do in other games. And it was explained a lot why he acted that way.

Characters’ wisdoms
One of the most interesting parts for me. Characters are talking about lots of topics and casually give remarks that can be seen as wise. It’s quite diverse like things about common sense, praise of effort, pessimistic view on mistakes etc.

Story
Most elements are also used in some others games
What is unique are good implementations of them and masterfully combining these elements.

Overall it looks like in addition to fantasy romance it’s an “epic story from nobody to somebody”. Quite likely it's a “story from zero to hero/villain”, but it’s too hard to guarantee it at current development.
MC’s growth isn't too fast, which is a good thing, because “stories from zero to hero/villain” are usually plagued by overfast development of MC. In this story you can witness his everyday struggles, unexpected struggles and plans to improve himself.

There are lurking mysteries, almost from the beginning of the game and for some reasons MC is a mystery himself.

Story also contains lots of topics presented in an easy to digest way.

Love interests
Most important, developed and interesting characters are: MC’s mother and Sunny.

MC’s mother - the best and most interesting character
Imo Dev achieved in her case a very rare feat of showing a believable personality of the being that lived longer than the oldest human. It’s hard to fit her in stiff frames, but if I would be forced to do it, she would be described as:
Her character negatively affects her advice in regard to morality. Advice appears to be given after being formulated by careful analysis of the most effective and safe ways to achieve the goal, modified by the wishes of her son.
She would be a great MC material imo.

Sunny
Overall good girlfriend material for MC, that is changing a little
Performance
Should not be an issue even in case of very old devices, because of lack of animations. It’s mostly text with drawings.

PS. I.Suggestion: Despite my lack of interest in incest overall, I suggest to consider to play this game with incest patch, because MC’s mother is the most interesting character.
II.Predictions/wishful thinking: MC’s mother won in the poll, so the next update may contain more content with her and elevate the quality of the experience when playing the game.

The art in this game is fantastic and so is the story telling. The characters are also written well. I really enjoy the relationship between Sunny and the main character as it's pretty wholesome. There's limited NSFW content in this game but it's not necessary as far as I'm concerned because I'll play all of the updates regardless.

Renders -

Original draw art.
Fresh thank god!

Dialogue -

Really this game is immersive.
Lost completely my CTRL key.

If this game is finished one day probably will be one of the best from the genre. Better yet this game is good without Lewds.

Dev could make this game into a comic or smthg
I'm back into the 90s playing my full based text novels from japan. But into D&D setting and western tropes.

Satisfaction -

Perfect. Love or leave it.

Fetishes -

No.

Good mixture of some top notch storytelling with a light touch of lewdness where appropriate. Breath of fresh air really from all the normal smut I play, shocking to see something on here with pretty decent writing as well. Haven't finished it yet but I'm a few hours in and nothing but satisfied so far which is more than I can say of about 80% of the games I download. Could be my lack of taste but take my 2 cents as you will.

Got baited by a sexy elven ass on the preview into a pleasant evening read c:

Seriously though - writing is great, not much to add here. I was only able to stop reading at the "To be continued" screen.
A lot of wonderful art along the way, which at the times had me thinking: "It's too much - somebody had to draw all of this after all". H-scenes are almost non-existant though, but for some reason I'm fine with that. I guess I respect the production value too much to complain about blue balls.
Music is very nice as well, a fine detail not to be overlooked.

While the VN already has a lot of hours of playtime (I'd estimate around 6-8), the story is still at its build-up. Being traumatized by F95 WIPs I can't help but worry because of it. It's either gonna be a huge and beautiful game, or, well, you know how it goes otherwise.

I can only wish the dev and his team to keep up the quality and avoid cutting the edges. I'll make sure to revisit this game in a few years. Or a few hundred years, if it turns out that the dev is an actual elf

First things first: H content practically doesn't exist but I'm not one to be bothered by that much actually, so that didn't factor into my rating. Here's the why for the 3 stars: It's solid writing but the story itself is just... meh.

Characters are built well, the world is built well and the pacing is good. The issue is, as skillfully delivered as it is, the story is just bland to me; the dark fantasy moral greyness is there and it informs so much of the world that I was able to predict some events five scenes in advance.

The elf-perspective seemed promising at first but at the moment there is no unique elf element to the story at all - you're just a member of the minority group humans hate because of hostilities. Elf culture is mentioned here and there and what's told is just that they are super traditional with traditions that would not be out-of-place for almost any culture in the past.

In short: great delivery of the characters, story and the world, but the characters, story and the world themselves are too bland for me. There is the possibility of the introduced sinister forces to turn out to be more interesting than cliched demonic figures but I haven't seen anything to suggest that so far.

Usually I need to pay $60 for a game that builds up characters , establishes background lore and history and really puts in work with world building but here we are.

Elvensang is truly in a league of its own on this website, the writer for this should be praised for the strength of his words. The game is tremendous and beautiful. I'm already engaged in the plight of the MC.

This game's story is by far one of the best in F95zone. As explained by the author, the focus is on the narration and you only find a few erotic scenes for the moment.
But boy how captivating it is, the characters are well-developped and story doesn't fall in a simple manichaeism with good vs bad. This elvensang'sworld is a realistic and grey one and you just try to survive in it.
My only regret is the long wait between each updates but it's the first work of the creator so let's be understanding

Game goes at a snail pace and streched as far as it goes, story is painfully cliche, uninteresting at best and is all over the place. Grammar is quite good and models are somewhat professional. But drawn poorly and don't resemble their former portrails a scene before. As of now, there are simply not enough "hot scenes" for an adult game (Ep.4). Unless you got a lot of time to burn on a boring adult game that has little to no sex scenes, leave this game alone at all costs.

It's a fantastic story and the images/art style are pleasant. Nothing spectacular about them but they go along well enough for the story. I'll definitely keep my eye out for updates on this one and will happily read 'em when they come BUT, just being honest, I'm not entirely sure at this point why this is even on F95. It teases and eludes to more fitting content for this site but as it stands, with what story is present (and it's quite a bit of story already), there's really just nothing there for what I would say 99% of people are here on this website for.

Great game.

Pros:

Non-human straight ELF MALE hero. Finally not another male human or muscular non-human orc/monster.

Hero actually grow up and realistic, not perfect and have weaknesses as flaws.

Nice elf milf-mother>nice redhead elf girlfriend.

Creative story and brutal dark fantasy world.

Nice arts.

Cons:

Too long to wait updates with story and scenes. Yeah hero and his family are elves, they could live long and be happy, but not everyone can live that long.

This game is very well written. I'm going to rank it among the best writing on this site, and though you might think that's not a high bar, I say no sir (or madam), that bar is very high. We've been treated to some sneaky good writers here. And Worlaix is among the best of them.

Now you might quibble with how much porn you get, and if that's all you wanted, fair enough. This is a very slow burn.

But I am here for it. All the way.