RPGM - Completed - Explorers of the Abyss [v1.01] [Flying Panjandrum / Kagura Games]

[v1.01]

Fairly polished aspects in a decent enough RPG, that makes enough weird choices to make it tedious.

The game takes a lot of control away for narrative purposes, so it takes a while for the story to be told through STAR WARS scrolling text, then as character interactions in various locations, then after all that it still interrupts you at times to 'demonstrate' skills along the way and in the middle of exploring.

For a game about resource management in the form of money, consumables and limited skill usage, clothing damage magically bound to health seems like a gimmick, rather than feature, not to mention it's not visible in-combat.

Random encounters clash with the narrative, which describes rooms filled with monsters, that in exchange for challenge offer treasure chests. Well since you can't see monsters, only unexpected battle encounters, paired with rooms you have to walk through makes it completely random instead of choice based.

The Abyss is a floor based maze, the aforementioned random invisible encounters and limited (mapping, healing) skills as well as (visibility, restorative) consumables it's wandering around while being grinded down by endless, random battles for materials with no immediate use. It feels like the game is against you and not even in a challenging or rewarding way.

The H scenes are bad and seem like an afterthought- you get H scene quests at a special billboard or from random unexpected half-forced map interactions.

Feels like an incomplete RPG with a half-assed decision to be an ero-game. It's just slightly above complete trash, even 2/5 is generous

The RPG part is really good. You can feel a lot of effort has been put into the game. Without the hentai part, this game is still worth playing.

Regarding the hentai, the quality is very good but I spent hours without any new event. I wouldn't recommend it for a fapping session.

i simply cannot recommend it.

story is trash, generic and forgettable. I played this maybe a year ago and honestly can't remember much about it.

rpg elements is typical for rpgm. one notable thing is looking at the minimap is limited which I find dumb, because you can simply just use printscreen for yourself. would you call that cheating or just using the right tools for the right time? who gets to say its cheating and how valid it is? that's how dumb the limited minimap use is.

I do remember a couple h-scenes here that is better written than others. they are pretty sexy and not generic written h-scenes. sadly it has nothing to do with the main story. they're sexy sure but that's it.

too much standard grinding that you probably have done countless times is the sole reason I can't recommend this. apart from that frau's scenes (the blonde girl) will make you dry.

I played only a couple of hours but i can already tell you everything u need to know about this game.
The art is great, combat is alright for rpgm, decent ui, u dont have to wander around a big city with filler buildings and all that crap when u just port in the important buildings with npc and vendors, menu has alot of useful stuff like bestiary, quest journal(alot of games dont even have that), storage for stuff u dont want to sell(so it does not clutter your inventory), alot of loot and decent exploration for a dungeon crawler, seems good so far, right?
The plot and writing ruin it tho, garbage writing, flat characters, terrible situations concerning all that 18+ stuff, my group stumble on the room with an obvious trap and rogue ask to check it to get the magic crystal at the end, u say "no" and she says "ok, i guess we can wait and i will do it later", bitch, we wont wait, we will go together cos it safer, wrong, u cant, u try again and u agree, cos u dont have a fucking choice, surpise, she does one move and instantly get raped while your party just stand still and watch cos idk, reasons, and after the monster finishes with her, u magically save her, u dont even have to fight, then she cries and sad and all that crap, why the fuck cant i just do it my way, why do they have to fall for those obvious traps and be prevented to help, all sex scenes are like that, one of the characters leave the party and goes to do a "solo" mission and u have no choice, they get tricked and fucked or humiliated, and u have no choice, fucking kingdom princess get stripped in arena and almost raped while everyone cheers for no reason, then announcer appologise and lies like they could not help and she just accept like a stupid cow she is(thanks alot author), outside of H scenes everyone nice, its like u playing a different game, some people obviously were taking the development seriously and u can see the effort in all those systems and general quests, but then some horny lazy dude decided to slap those weak scenes last minute or something, very dissapointing.

+Good game play (grinding is content) perfect for killing time , cg is great, music is okay, story is decent. okay character development, very easy to understand everything . safe to play while working(yes), crossover from other games, worth buying( I've bought this game on steam after finished the game),feel rewarded after defeating new enemies, haven't found any bug or error occurs, they are hints for players,.

-not good for casual, due to its grinding game play this might not be suited for someone who just wants to be quick and finish the game

PS. I will buy every games if i feel like it deserves my money, this is one of them

Well, it's the game that I thought, what could go wrong despite looking interesting at first? Well, many things that have gone way, way too wrong than I thought- and I'll tell you why you shouldn't waste time on this "game".

So let's start with the story, which...I would call meshup of various ideas and settings, but no logic or let alone a proper explanation to them - you and your friends go on a adventure to cure your sick king, see a bunch of misfortune(s) both on your companions and others, fight many things ranging from dungeon slimes to mechanical cyborgs from another dimension, find out your king is basically a power catalyst and other secrets, the end - for main story that is. Basically average to bad, because overall it is you save the world vibe with no real lessons or you know, proper afterthoughts outside of...boring. Well, expect the post-game story, which while optional, is...just more nonsense, like creatures from another dimension, that can hijack minds to heal their entire army in a instant, girls led by a man and cuckoldry judging from dialogue, and other crap that makes it forgettable.

As for setting, its...again, inconsistent meshup from medieval era underground, to underwater world, to underground castle that for no reason houses a town, research facility and yuri laboratory, then post-game space dimension with no logic, proper explanation or sense to why we are here. It all feels made with no care to worldbuilding.

But that's only the world - the writing on non-main story, including post-game elements is...well, I would say more nonsense - one of a 2 man party gets turned into a female, and one of characters refers to this situation as "being a normie over this", yaoi/yuri fanatism from 2 other tavern folk, then you get communist bunny which is referred as "venom", then a German looking girl with Russian name that says "na zdoroviye", not helped by fact on how offensive the portrayal of stereotyped supposedly Soviet elements is to Russians, especially because of "social democracy" line that gets spoken later, after her battle I think, and also referred as MAN by other characters until you defeat her, despite obviously female face, neither of which make sense, let alone logic of a tank in a medieval fantasy, that quickly becomes something else, and during the post-game segment, one of girls telling about isekai - basically real world tropes in a supposedly fantasy product...Kills off any serious respect for any writing you have.

The gameplay, which is supposedly that should save from game's atrocious(but not exactly the worst)writing, right? Well...it's bad as well - a dungeon crawler with many familiar elements, but no good things to make it better - if not worse - you use torches during early-mid game because your healer needs higher level for the longer lights, go into rooms to get chests because money dependency and fact that enemy groups outside those rooms are the same, just no chest at the end, fight floor bosses occasionally, and do a crap ton of grinding(especially bosses for certain items)if you are playing the highest difficulties - and especially because you really need high tier items that overall cost you more than 1 million in gold total, if you intend to go post-game.

The enemy fights are mostly just kill enemy as fast as you can before they'll overwhelm you, especially bosses, but nothing unique that makes them engaging - considering you lack stats to properly tank them without grinding, and fact it relies on grinding for hardest diffilcuty clears, well...you basically spend time on farming money and resources rather than thinking of proper gear or tactics to defeat your enemies.

There's other bad things with gameplay as well, like minor shops such as casino area and pixel dungeon, which again, both are also nonsensical in a medieval world, but aside from that, the problem lies in fact, that both are very unrewarding for mid-late game - the casino's resistance ring doesn't defend against the effects you want to save against, and the sword gets replaced by much, much cheaper alternatives post-game, and the minigame itself doesn't award more than 6 coins at best, making it a chore that best bypassed with money. The pixel dungeon is basically fight enemies that give nothing but crafting materials to make items that at best, mid-late game material, but suck post-game aside from chicken gun, but since chicken gun can be obtained as a reward from yuri lab(and the best one because others can be crafted for cheap while that one isn't), getting it via craft is time consuming and cost inefficient, because you need the money you can get to spend on high tier gear for yourself and your allies.

The music and sound design is average, heard from many games of this sort, the voice acting, I would say - while a nice touch if done right, it's rather...more annoying, in battles, they overlap every so often when you try to fight fast as possible, nor its exceptional to feel for the character that speaks it - if only more effort on characters relations was made, then it would be great.

The sexual elements are...just random, but all come down to "our heroines do some task by some strangers, get lured into OBVIOUS traps, act dumb when confronted, and so on", then some situations depict them being engaged with enemies that are "just in time" before others rescue them, then a succubus that used digital tech to show events, yuri laboratory with growth/test liquids, and other nonsensical things I cannot explain...

The translation is...considering the Communism venom thing, German looking girl riding a Soviet tank, dumb English jokes, mistranslations like an ability that states to heal all is just a medium heal and so on, well...is fairly decent, but if you count in rather offensive for certain people "historical jokes", I have doubts about that...

There's other minor quirks there, like disclaimer that says that "all characters are 18", but then include lolification of one of heroines, a shota scene, the title menu having a different(but still bad)design of armor for main character, many other things that I wish I could tell, but I ran out of thoughts for this mess, so have what you got.

Well...playing this game from start to end was a total chore, the main story, if you do not mind the sidequests, takes about 4-5 hours, but due to how difficult it is to do that way, on average it takes 8-10 hours, 12 if you include the DLC post-game area, and that all if you do not count in grinding aspect of the game, which becomes mandatory at highest difficulty, which doubles the hours with no good payoff - I'd tell you one thing - you'd rather stay away from this game unless you enjoy grinding while playing absolute nonsense that somehow tries to make itself relatable or serious for that matter. I hope I'll save people who are not informed of what the chore I had...and wont come back.

After more than a day, i've finally finished the game and oh boy, this game is.... quite bad, honestly. If you see this game as a H-game then you are wrong because there aren't that many 18+ scenes, but if you see this game like a pure RPG... it's still suck and bad...

TL, DR: A 3,5 star game with half RPG, half R18 but everything is incomplete and half-tasted. The scenes aren't that good and the gameplay is.... time-consuming because you'll get lost in the dungeon most of the time (85% of my time is in that dungeon, finding the way down/out) with a seriously high rate of random enemy spawn...

Story: There is story ? Oh right... THERE IS. However, it's really plain and easy to forget... you're a princess, want to save father, go down the dungeon with your friends. Fight monster, solve the problem with the power of friendship. The end, now give me the GOTY. The reason why the story is so forgettable is because its cut-scenes are really short and simple. They only appear once in the first time you get to a new floor (5 scenes in total) and one during the final boss. Other than that, nothing... nothing. Just a really simple main mission "explore the dungeon to save your father". If they want to focus more about game than H-part, they should have at least improved the story writing skill.

H-scenes: Only have the art, nothing else. During the first hour of the game, you will encounter 2 scenes. That's it. Only 2. Then every floor you reach, there will be only 2-3 scenes. Overall, each girl will have around 2-3 events that actually about sex. Not to mention, those scenes are really short and popular, there's tentacle, normal rape and blah blah. Not actually worth your HOURS of exploring the dungeon. To make it clearer, the game flow is just watch 1-3 H-scenes, waste hours finding path in dungeon then repeat when you actually found the next floor. Totally not worth the time if you're looking to beat your meat.

Gameplay: Did they actually focus more about the gameplay part or not... because it's no better than any other games, if not say that it's worse than. The dungeon has TOTAL 5 FLOORS with "different" themes for each floor. That's what they said but it's just the same one but with more annoying traps which serve no other purposes that wasting your time. The only different in this game is that you have to hold a consumable torch in orther to see something. The torch only lasts a limited time and then you'll have to refill it again (there are skills similar to the torch but ONLY when you reach the late game... which is quite trash because you're almost finish the game). Another "fun" feature is that the enemy is randomly spawn, if not said that they will appear everytime you walk into a new room. Yes i get the idea that they want us to abuse the auto-save system whenever we unlock a chest from monsters, but the amount of monster and our limited healing, lighting resource is the main problem, you can't just constantly go in and out the dungeon every 5 minutes because some monsters can instantly half your HP like a chad. So if you're looking for a way to clear the dungeon faster, just choose very easy mode because either you get bored by wasting time go up and down to restore and do again or get bored because you're strong but still have to deal with insanely amount of monsters. And don't think about teleport out of the dungeon because there's none. YOU HAVE TO GRIND THROUGH EACH FLOOR AGAIN IF YOU WANT TO GO DOWN OR UP (there's an elevator but some floor don't allow you to instantly use it and it only drop you in the middle of the floor, you still have to find the way)

Overall, this game is not good at both R18+ and RPG part. Everything is half-baked and the deep of characters is a joke (especially our princess). Every mechanics in this game is for 1 purpose and that is wasting your time, not making the game better. In the end, if you're looking for a game to beat the meat, just use the full save although i don't think those scenes are good. If you actually want the gameplay (why?) then i recommend testing the first 2 floors of the dungeon because that's all the game, from that you just repeat till the final boss...

HAVE A NICE DAY