VN - Ren'Py - Abandoned - Esteria [Ch. 5] [Royal Games]

Sadly the game was abandoned and its too short to rate it highly.
The story and the plot is great, a lot of depth is added, but sadly it ends before it reaches any climax or any satisfaction.
The renders and characters are great (not amazing), but there is lack of them. There is multiple choices and the game puts you on certain paths, which is great, sadly all paths are quite short and some decisions can be forgotten.
Overall game had a lot of potential, but was abandoned, hence it left as a poor mess without any proper endings or satisfaction playing this game.

Just finished the game, I enjoyed it for its good music and it has many choices to choose, for one, you can choose be a dutiful or cocky son like those noblemen in the medieval time, however, despite all the interesting choices one could choose, the beginning is a bit of a rush as we can't really shape the MC childhood development.
All in all, it has enough contents keep me interested, hope to see more if he continues this game development, hopefully this game will have nunsploitation.

Version Played: Ch.5
Time played: About 1.5 hours, reached end of content

Medieval fantasy always causes me to take a second look and while I don't like too much lore and story in my adult entertainment (see my review of My New Family for more on that), having lore for flavor and a solid plot to keep things interesting beyond the adult content is a major plus in my book. Thankfully, Esteria has both and I really started to get into it as I played. Sadly, right when things start to get interesting, you get a TBC....

Positives
+ Basic, but interesting lore and story that moves things forward without forgetting the main purpose of the game
+ Super hot girls and dalliances to be had beyond just the main love interests
+ High level of polish

Negatives
- Slightly unfocused and fast in terms of how content moves
- No clear indication of how tied down you are to given characters (is this a harem game or do I need to commit? are there penalties for pursuing multiple women?)
- No erotic content with any of the love interests yet
- No bush. In a game set in medieval times. C'mon.

Overall, in terms of the medieval fantasy games I've played (maybe 5 or 6), this is poised to sit among the top, but right now, I would wait a few updates before diving in as there isn't enough story here to sink your teeth into and most of the sexual content is with randos.

Note to devs: Thanks for the fun game. Please try to give your content updates a bit more meat in the future.

very cool game, I especially want to see NTR content with Lady Elicia and werewolves in it))) it would still be nice if we added the passage of the game, in the text itself for the hint, so that it would be easier to find the content of interest, but if desired, the built-in passage could be turned off)))

A great game with lots of choices and possibilities, an intriguing fantasy setting, and a varied cast of nice girls, the game can be sweet and romantic, but also let you be a rapist and/or an asshole.
The only negative point are the QTE. They can be disabled, but the game warn you that this can lead to missing content. Those QTE are particularly painfull when you don't have a QWERTY keyboard.
Despite this, the game still has a huge potential and I can't wait to see what's coming next.
The dev abondoned his previous game and is now simultaneously working on a second game. He seems to have difficulties to focus and I'm not sure if we will see the end of this, especially seeing how ambitious it is, with a large number of characters.

Edit, the game is on hold, like the previous that ended up abandoned. I can't say I didn't see that coming, it was way too ambitious for this dev.

A game with a lot of potential which I enjoyed playing and will look for future updates. I love the setting, renders, and choices given to the player. Please note that if playing this at time of writing (Chapter 5), this game's chapters are very short when compared to other games. That's not to say it's not worth playing in any sense of the word, just don't want anyone to be disappointed.

Incredibly deep world with lots going on. Choices clearly matter and there's a lot of setup for complexity in the story. Not a ton of scenes as of yet, but the characters are engaging and renders are quite good. Pay attention to this project.

This game makes you think is gonna be big and complex, but actually you go from one castle to another and explore the options for lewd content inside that specific setting. What is actually happening in the story right now? NOTHING. You get to have sex with random disposable characters. Sex scenes are bad, pretty basic "storytelling" and render quality.

I like the idea, but after 9 months the game is still small. The sinopsis is way bigger than the actual game. Maybe in 2 or 3 years

As of Chapter 4, the game is not really exciting. There is not so much of eroticism, intrigue, or drive in the story line, and the ratio of sexual content to the length of the chapter/playing time is too low.
The renders are good, though, so I wish the author really focused on the erotic side...

• Worldbuilding - Having the codex entries for those of us that are interested is really nice. There's some standard fare political drama happening that's not really that interesting, but I do like the hints of magic existing without explicitly showing it. I'm a big fan of the idea that magic is pretty rare, and most people are actually scared of it.
• Characters - I actually like the main character so far. I appreciate that we don't have to play him like a cocky asshole like a lot of other games on this site. I like that each of the different proficiency choices actually lead to totally different paths for the beginning of the game, although we haven't seen how they each pay off yet.
  As for the other characters, most of them are pretty obviously inspired by well-known characters we've all heard of (Tyrion, Brienne, Podrick, etc.). Most of them are one-note so far, and I would really like to see them (especially the ladies) develop some more personality, and maybe turn their tropes on their heads.
• Choices - The branching paths are pretty good up until Chapter 4. Usually, when you're given a choice of things to do, you know that you may not get to do all of them (which leads to replay-ability), that sort of goes away in Chapter 4. In Chapter 4, there are several spots where the game goes, "Do you want to do X? Y/N" and choosing no just takes you to the next scene, meaning that your character did literally nothing in the time he could have been participating in the other event. I don't know if the dev plans to add other events that happen in "No" branches, but I was really underwhelmed in Chapter 4.

For whatever reason, fantasy (particularly dark/low fantasy) is my genre of choice when it comes to smut, and I like where this game is going. It started off strong, but I wonder if the dev tried to add too many characters too quickly. There was a distinct drop in branching paths in Chapter 4, and I wonder if that has to do with allowing the player to pick too many different combinations of characters to take back to their home with them.

Review for Ch 4

I look for games with a fantasy theme and I’m enjoying this one.

• Story – Still in early stages but looking good, with gradual development of the main characters and plenty hints of things to come. More power to games with gradual development!
• Essentially a visual novel but with plenty of easy player choices as you progress through it. Great for players that don’t want to fight for every morsel and lose the storyline in the process.
• Production values – pretty good, with images in the upper half of the quality spectrum.
• Dialogue – appropriate for the game.
• Characters – Still being developed but seem to offer the diversity needed to keep the game interesting as it develops. Lorcan is important and useful to add grit and “earthiness”. Would be nice to see some depth added to Lea or Elicia as the girls are all a bit superficial so far.
• The sex – Good to see it has arrived in V0.4. The dev is not really building any serious love interest (or if he is I missed it), so it seems unlikely the sex will be more than an add-on to the game, but if the story stays interesting that is fine. Nice to have games that buck the traditional approaches to MC and LI

Quibbles?

• Some of the bridging text is dull and matter of fact. It might be better to let the image do more of the work and use the text to build on that rather than repeatedly stating the obvious.
• Some continuity glitches, such as Elicia calling the MC a dear friend after he doesn’t even recognise her earlier in the game.
• The Quicktime events add nothing for me and I suggest that the dev’s time could be better spent on other work.

Overall, I’m enjoying it a lot and looking forward to future releases.

Review based on Ch.4:

This game has got the potential to become something rather great in the adult game scene, where story and world building is the focus but without sacrificing the lewd scenes. So far its great with amazing looking renders and character models in the top league, a promising start for the story and interesting twist on an overused setting. If I have to give it a negative so has it got to be the quick time events but they are few and far between so didn't bother me anyways, just feels kind of pointless. Other then that so is it worth mentioning that the updates are not that long in length and the overall game is not long at all so far, maybe 30 minutes tops. But whats there is quality content!

NTR got introduced with Ch.4 but is avoidable through choices, and you have to almost want it to actually get the scene. So for those not into that have nothing to worry about.

5/5 for now.

With the mod it's a fairly decent game(4/5) without it however, it's pretty insufferable(1/5), given that the mod is on the front page I'll give it credit for that, since it remedies the fact that the effects of your choices are pretty arbitrary, and most of the other characters are a bit too annoying to want to pay close attention to at all times, on the off chance that they'll randomly ask you a multiple choice question with only one right answer, not necessarily the one that they're shown as happy to hear.

Regarding the quick time events, yeah they're completely useless, not that much of a hassle if you have experience typing blindly, but completely pointless. They're there for flavor but they add basically nothing to the experience, that shouldn't just be there without the QTEs.

Unfortunately it's super short, at the current mark chapter 4, it only feels like it has enough content for maybe half a chapter, a full chapter if your being really generous and are willing to consider what is basically just the prologue a full chapter. (The end of chapter four felt like a good transition point for switching from a prologue to the beginning of a chapter 1 not like the end of a fourth chapter)

As of Ch.3
I mean, it's not bad. Actually, what is there is good. Problem is, there isn't that much in there.
I have two big problems with the game currently and I dearly hope that it's just me being a cynical dick and not a prophet.
First and most glaring problem is pacing. Meet character, say hi, get introduced, do nothing with them. It's not as bad as the sentence might make it look... but not by much.
You have a family. Great, you get something like 10 lines of dialogue (stern father, religious mom, rebellious sister) before being shoved in another location. Here are more characters... that you will meet for 10 min and forget they exist. Now go do a critical task for the Kingdom to prove yourself. Great, now forget about all those characters (barring 1 or 2) you'll get to go yet another place! Ain't this fun?
No.
Second problem I had is the QTEs. They seemed completely pointless. Also, if you roll-back, they tend to bug out.

There are good sides, tho. The writing is decent, the world seems a little bit more interesting then your bog-standard fantasy setting, lot's of options... Some nice things done with the engine. Decent graphics.

I will follow the game, but atm I can't universally recommend it.

My Ratings for Ch.3 is:

Pros:
-Fantastic renders
-Story is starting off good
- Nice fantasy Setting
- Dungeon & Dragons Style

Cons:
-None

Info:
Beautiful Setting and also a Beautiful Game,very mystical that makes you feel like your in the past.
The ladies are beautiful and the setting also makes you want more.
The Game is very forward with no bullshit blocking you from going forward in the story.

Conclusion:
A beautiful Mystical game with some Sex, and a Beautiful story to go with it.
Worth the download in my book.

Great start to a game! The dev built a great world with a lot of promise. You get a bit of a GoT feeling (complete with whores) and a little traditional role-playing (dwarves and elves).

However, the game is pretty short so far and seriously lacks h-scenes. I wish you could play a bit more as a debauched noble and get away with it, but I'm not going to complain too much. Good luck to the dev!

So far so good! I am having a problem this says ch.3 but after ch. 2 it rolls the credits and goes back to the main screen. What am I doing wrong? Other than that this is promising as I do like past work from Royal Games. Hopefully it keeps developing and doesn't get abandoned like the previous game.

As it stands, it looks to be a heavily plot driven game and a rather slow burn game, very big emphasis on heavily. Outside of the brothel scene, there's a few others that hint at future sexual content but not much else as of Chapter 3. Understandably people are going to be a bit upset by that but as long as it comes to fruition in the near future and is satisfactory, I'll be fine with it.

Writing and dialogue is pretty well done with a multitude of choices to choose from that clearly have an effect on the MC's relations with others and what will happen later on as the game progresses. While we don't see it explicitly, choices do matter

Renders are details are very solid for each character presented. No unproportionable body types or exaggerations

I do expect the amount of content to increase from here as the MC begins to establish his place in Esteria and form a close group of friends. Seems promising

Not a horrible VN game but a really bad porn game. Above average renders but seriously lacking in content. For some reason the author thinks he's Tolkien reborn and spends 90% of time "regaling" us with tales of a noble court of blah blah before having us washed by a pretty servant the game won't allow us to touch, followed by a hollow conversation with our pretty childhood lady friend we of course are not allowed to touch either and having us escorted by our shield-maiden bodyguard - who as you've guessed - we're not allowed to touch.
In the newest update - Chapter 3 there is not a single sex-scene. So if you get baited by the pretty renders like I did - set your expectations accordingly or you'll be wasting your time.
I'm giving it +1 star for the seriously high-quality renders - but the author is so up his own ass in his "super-deep-and-complex never-before seen fantasy world" that it will make your eyes glaze over before you even get to the end of Chapter 1 and it's certainly not getting a 4th star from me.

EDIT: As of Chapter 4 had to take away another star. Author refuses to acknowledge any of the game's problems and the characters are becoming too much of a copy-pastes of Game of Thrones characters.