"Forbidden Dojo" is perfectly mediocre. A nice bit of escapism, but nothing of real substance. A solid 5/10.
A 100% achievement playthrough took me less than 7 hours.
Adult:
There's little build-up to the erotic scenes, but they're not too sudden either. The way these scenes are structured within the story make them seem less gratuitous, which I like. There's a build-up of intimacy, starting with hand-, foot- and blowjobs, eventually progressing further. That is, if you never decline intimacy. Otherwise, you'll skip the foreplay actions and go straight to sex as the story progresses.
The scenes themselves aren't great, but I've seen worse. Still, they mostly consist of a single (short) animation with simple movements. One hand will be doing something, while other body parts are motionless. Some animations are fluid, others look very robotic. I'm not sure if the dev just needed to put in a bit more time, or if they need more experience. There's also some clipping, like Akiko's legs being inside the MC's while giving him a BJ.
Akiko's deflowering might be the most unsexy deflowering I've ever seen in this genre. And, if we're at all concerned with reality, it's very unlikely that Akiko still has a hymen, due to her intense physical activity.
Visual:
Scenes are hit or miss. Often the text describing a scene uses much more detail than the scene actually contains. You'll read how you're in a forest, with rays of light coming through the canopy, to see a bright scene with a few thin trees and a lot of open space. It's as if the dev wrote the story and scenes, failed to find usable assets, and didn't rewrite the original vision.
The scenes are generally too bright, with shadows looking very diffused. Shadows sometimes change direction, or are visible in inside locations. This makes it hard to gauge the time of day, or the passage of time. Some details seem easy to fix, like an oil lamp having white instead of yellow light.
The love interests and MC are nice to look at. For once, we have women with realistic body proportions, and an MC with a reasonable sized penis. Personally, I hope this is the start of a new trend.
One thing that surprised me were the facial expressions. They're generally well done. Surprise, disgust, anger, ... They're all shown on the character's faces. The same goes for eye placement, characters are actually looking at things, not just staring off in the distance.
While the game has a textbox (which I greatly appreciate), it doesn't seem like the scenes are designed with it in mind. Often the textbox will hide the "interesting bits" in a scene.
Novel:
The story gets set up as an Isekai. The protagonist is transported to another world, and finds himself at a dojo. Akiko, the only person there, becomes his trainer. Akiko has a feud going with Sayuri, who owns a nearby dojo. Apparently, Sayuri has been stealing Akiko's pupils (and killing them?), and has been sabotaging her dojo. All of this setup suddenly falls away after a while. Akiko and Sayuri decide to work together, and their conflict is glossed over. Sure, there's still some lingering mistrust, but somehow Sayuri isn't the enemy anymore.
During the story, Akiko and Sayuri decide to use the MC to lure enemies to them. All the questions/concerns the MC (and players) have about this, are declined by Sayuri yelling "Do as you're told!", and the MC acquiescing. The story takes many short-cuts like these, like Sayuri disappearing whenever it's convenient for the story. While I do think the story and world has merit, sadly, I don't think its pacing and execution is great. There's very little known about what drives the different characters, including the MC. This becomes apparent when the player is asked if they want to stay in the new world, or return to their original one. We only know about this world, and very little at that. We have no idea about the MC's previous life or background. There are many choices like these, some grant achievements, and others (intimacy choices) determine which ending you'll get. Otherwise, the choices don't lead to alternative story paths or events.
Probably my biggest gripe with this game, is the amount of useless text. Often, the text is describing what is shown in the scene. Sadly, like mentioned earlier, this description is in much greater detail than the scene itself. In my opinion, it should be the other way around. The scene should speak for itself, and the text should show what the characters think or feel at that moment. They could have a conversation, or a difference of opinion, with the scene setting the tone or reason for a disagreement.
