Review on v0.2.1
This is a tough one for me to be objective about. As a pansexual guy who's into fantasy with a certain weakness for big cocks and muscle-chicks... This one just hit all the buttons for me. But seeing as all but one of the other reviewers seem to agree with a 5-star rating, I can't be too far off. So let's get into some of the details.
Pros
I love this setting here which you really don't see that much. The story is in some ways similar to other fantasy stories about power struggles in royal families but those are mostly set somewhere in a medieval-ish European setting.
Being placed in this Arab-ish setting is definitely something new and I think the dev used it to great effect.
I also like the general trajectory of the story, there definitely seem to be interesting developments in the future.
I'm not a huge fan of the framing structure that the dev went with here, the flash-forward at the beginning with the MC recounting how he got to that point, especially because that recounting takes so long here, but you forget about it after a while anyway, so it's fine.
This is a pretty straight-forward VN with no annoying free roams or grinds. The decisions mostly seem to be "fuck? yes, no" but maybe some decisions will have more of a story impact later on, it's hard to tell at this point.
But all in all, while not the most complex of structures, it's also the least likely to mess up as a dev; people are mostly fine with it, as am I, as long as the main story is good and intriguing. So yeah, no problem there.
All in all, this game is gorgeous. The renders are fantastic, both the environments and the characters all look very unique—probably also due to the different setting—and all romanceable characters are very hot.
My only issue I have here should be fairly easy to remedy: please give us an option to permanently hide the textbox. There are so many scenes where it just obscures all the good stuff, and especially during sex animations, you can't really manually hide it because it'll just reappear in the next frame.
I really don't get why the textbox is so prevalent in these games. I guess it's a default Ren'Py feature but I've seen games where you can disable it and I always think it's so much better. If you have a white font with a black border, you also really don't need the textbox for contrasting background, so just get rid of it please.
- Characters & love interests
Definitely a bunch of interesting characters. The main love interests of Kadijah, Tahir and Astrid are all fantastically hot (I can't wait to fuck Tahir's little asshole) but with also very unique and charming personalities.
Other characters like Darius and the younger of his elder brothers (can't remember his name) are also pretty complex and interesting.
I really like the pace of the sex scenes. You do have story and dialogue and some stretches without any sex which is good and realistic but you mostly don't have to go too long before another sex scene comes up.
And of course, one of my favourite things about this game, the variety in your sexual interests. Getting to choose among male, male but femme, female and trans (or possibly intersex, unclear, but I don't want to call her futa) characters but having to reject none is just like the pansexual harem of my dreams. The only thing I'm sad about is the MC rejecting the possibility of a cock up his own asshole, I mean we already have gay sex so why not? But the dev did pop in to say that that might be in the future if Patrons willed it so I'll remain hopeful.
Incorporating a literal harem into the game since it fits with the setting is also a pretty nice touch (even though actual historical harems were nothing like this and the portrayal of harems as only filled with concubines that solely exist to sexually please their master is a bastardization done by Western countries in order to make Islam, Arabic nations and its peoples seem more primitive and more disrespectful of women than they actually were in order to justify colonialism but anywaaaaaay) and all of the fuckable whores in there offer some nice fap material without having to wait for character exploration with the main LI's.
Big cocks, big tits and the occasional muscle-chick, all of which are fantastically rendered, add on to make this one of hottest games out there in terms of sexual content, at least in my opinion.
I mostly really liked the background music here except for that one track that seemed completely out of place (and that the dev apologized for in advance but that doesn't really make it better). But yeah, all in all, really setting-appropriate music that didn't feel too loopy so I'm glad the dev went to the trouble there, often an aspect that gets completely ignored.
Mehs
It was... okay. It did feel somewhat anachronistic to me at times but it's a fantasy story, not a historical one, so that didn't bother me too much.
I guess I'm also not a huge fan of the constant fourth-wall breaking and lampshading. You can do that occasionally and that can be funny but after a while I don't really need a running commentary by the dev, that just becomes distracting.
But still, most of the writing was pretty good so these issues aren't really big problems.
Cons
I have seen a lot of people in the reviews praising the humor in this game so I guess it's all subjective but... I didn't really care for it. I won't go so far as the one negative reviewer before me saying it was a boner-killer. But I did think it was somewhat annoying and made the MC look pretty stupid.
And on that topic, the MC is pretty fucken stupid. Also somewhat annoying. He just constantly puts himself in needless danger (which he'll survive only because he's the MC), playing the dumbass hero (that everyone, including himself, realizes is a dumbass but that doesn't make it much better) and constantly seems to only think with his dick. That last one I find particularly annoying because, even though it seems to be a staple of these adult VNs, this guy seems to be in his mid-twenties by the look of him and he shouldn't flip out, get a boner and act completely moronic just because he saw some cleavage. Get a grip, man. That also seems to play into the humor but yeah, just seems stupid to me.
That being said, it wasn't that bad and bothersome, it was just this niggling thing but not a complete moodkill.
Conclusion
Like I said in the intro, it's hard for me to be very objective here. You just don't get many of these games where female, male and non-binary characters all get the same amount of love and I just felt like a kid in a candy store.
I love the setting, I love the characters, I love the inclusiveness of it all and the story is pretty interesting as well.
So I can only highly recommend this game, everyone should really try this—yes, straight guys too, the gay stuff is all optional ;-)
