Reviewing v0.10.
TL;DR:
Very well done AI graphics and animations. Stupid dialog and trope-laden storyline so far. There is the seed of a great game here, so hopefully the writing gets fixed up.
(I recognize this is very very early days in this game's dev history. Score could go up if the writing improves)
Plusses:
- Graphics are generally lovely. ("Tonight at 7KWN news: AI haters enter AI game thread and shout about their hatred. No-one else cares and life goes on")
- However, there were still were a number of inconsistency issues (i.e. the size mutating banana?). Some more care and attention would be able to solve these.
- First time I've seen significant usage of AI generated video. It looks great, in general.
- Grammar and spelling are good - did not notice any obvious errors, which is way better than 95% of games here.
- There is the potential for some very interesting story lines and build up.
Minuses:
- The dialog is elementary school level stupid. No nuance, no suspense, just dumb "say the first thing that came into our heads, resolve every conflict in 2 sentences or less"
- The story development is too fast and random. New characters pop into screen every few dozen lines, with no context, and then we get their painfully basic trope backstory in 5 sentences. Seems like a normal-ish rural fantasy fetch quest game, but then MC gets some action and is cockblocked when a random demon appears, attracted by *blueberries*, like WTF? PLEASE give a little bit of foreshadowing, or even just a few sentences of dialog to set up expectations.
- So many characters who all look too similar - I was partway through a dialog before realising it was supposed to be a different person that MC was talking to. Hard to tell the 3 brunettes apart (mermaid / witch / barmaid).
Neutral:
- the "stats" pages makes me suspicious that netorare is just around the corner. That's not my interest, but I won't deduct points for that because I am not an asshole reviewer.
- the soundtrack kinda sucks.