This game had the potential to be very good but as it stands it's merely OK.
Story & World
The story takes place in an alternate 1950s Italy (named Stivale) with a fantasy bent. It's actually pretty basic, boiling down to "help the princess stop the evil prime minister wrecking the country", but the execution is adequate enough.
The setting itself is rather interesting. A lot of effort went into the worldbuilding but sadly a lot of the lore is told either by books found in inns or by the characters infodumping. There's enough stuff to make a meaty RPG even if you remove all the porn but as it is the setting is underutilized.
Another thing to note is the overall tone of the game. Despite moments of drama it errs more toward the comedic side, with stuff like talking animals, random encounters consisting of privilegied women and their poms, or a weird obsession with poop.
Characters
The game has several central characters.
Ryuunosuke: the protagonist, hailing fom alternate 1950s Japan. I suspect he's been made a foreigner in order to give him a reason to not know Stivale very well, allowing the other characters to explain the lore to the player. There could have been a nice clash of cultures here but ultimately this angle stays unexploited. Ryuunosuke is a rather generic kind MC with a covert pervert side, though the "covert" part disappears quickly.
He's overall pretty bland.
Selena: cute blonde fox-girl is the most important character in the game. She's the one aiming to take down Prime Minister Abattini, everyone else just tags along. She's strong-willed, unrefined and a bit violent. She's also quite romantic, even though she dresses like a streetwalker.
Nothing groundbreaking here, but her characterization is solid enough to make you care about her.
Lisa: the cat-girl with huge boobs. At first glance a prude man-hater, it becomes obvious very quickly she's a slut in denial. Whether she becomes a loving girlfriend or a cheating sow is up to you, the player. Her dynamic in the party mostly consist of playing the straight-man to Selena's more outrageous though-patterns.
She's cute and fun enough but Selena is clearly the star of the show.
The other characters of note are antagonists or antagonists-turned-allies. In most cases, what you see is what you get. In some cases (Abattini in particular) you get hints they weren't always the way they are now but these trails remain unexplored in-game.
Gameplay
Boring and forgettable. You get standard RPG Maker combat with trivial normal enemies and damage-sponge bosses. Certain enemies can attempt to rape the heroines mid-battle, something that can be easily avoided by making sure their clothes aren't destroyed thanks to the cheap protection item sold in stores. And good thing it's cheap too, because this mechanic is pointless —the bulk of the porn comes from the events.
The three main characters have a class tree. This is an entirely superfluous mechanic: their archetype (swordsman, gunner, mage) is fixed. Class changing only boosts stats and allows to learn more skills. The same result could have been achieved by just streamlining their stat growth and give them a single skill tree with specialization.
Overall the game is just very easy and becomes something of a chore quickly. Bosses can take a long time since they are huge blobs of HP though they're all vulnerable to percentage DoTs (Poison, Burn, Stigma). This is the only strategy you'll need. There's a surrender skill if you want to lose to bosses for the rape H-scenes, and you'll need it: it's very unlikely you'll lose if you actually try to win, even on Hard difficulty.
Had this part been good I'd have rated the game 4 stars.
Graphics & Audio
Character art is very pleasant to look at. Battle sprites are fine, though a lot of enemies look very different from their map appearance. Tilesets are a mix of stock & DLC Rpg Maker sets. Thumbs down for the factory tileset, which is absolutely terrible. It's upscaled low-res to the point I'm sure it was originally made for RPG Maker 2000. Fortunately we don't spend much time in factories...
Overall, graphics are decent.
As for audio, five characters are voiced, including Selena and Lisa. They are not fully voiced, mind you: only for story segments and H events. This represents quite a lot of lines regardless. The VA are quite good, there isn't any room to complain here.
Important: there are bugs related to voice files. At a couple story events, the path name is wrong and you'll have to keep clicking "Retry" at the error message until you can save, then quit and restart. Rather annoying.
Music is another story though. The number of tracks is low, making everything very repetitive. There isn't even a boss battle theme.
Porn
There are 3 main categories of porn: vanilla, rape and NTR.
Rape only happens when losing against bosses. They are all one-off scenes, not impacting anything except the girls' sex stats. You have to try to get them and honestly I wish they didn't exist: content on defeat doesn't work so well in games not centered around it and this is effort that could have been put towards more vanilla and NTR scenes.
Vanilla scenes happen between the girls and Ryuunosuke. They are delivered extremely slowly, gated by story events and endings. It's a bit of a pity. With the exception of the ending scenes they are all viewed by resting at an inn with one of the girls. There are also a couple vanilla scenes with two of the secondary heroines.
As for NTR scenes... for the majority of the game they are prostitution events. You get them by playing as the girls and prowling the streets at night. At first the girls only do stuff like exhibitionism and as their Lewdness stat increases they can do more. It only becomes full NTR (with ending) by following a specific event chain at the end of the game (and you can only do this for one girl per playthrough). Basically, it means that unless you specifically choose to play as Selena or Lisa and have them whore themselves out you'll never see any NTR.
As you can see there's a bit of everything for everyone but there isn't
enough of it.
- If you like vanilla you'll be starved for content for a while, even though the ending H-scenes are very hot lovey-dovey pregnant sex.
- If you like NTR you'll have to make do with standard prostitution for most of the game, only to get what you want at the very end, and only for a single girl.
- If you like rape and corruption you have to lose on purpose against weak bosses knowing those scenes don't really impact anything.
The scenes themselves are good enough, the game is just too unfocused. At least you can unlock everything you missed on new game+ instead of doing multiple playthroughs.
Final words
This review ended up far longer than I planned. Because I actually like this game. It has an interesting setting full of possibilities, lovely beast-girls, a story that does its job and a lot of porn. It's also a RPG, a genre I love. If only the game part was better and the porn part less haphazard...
It's a ok game and worth playing once. It simply could have been much more.
