Ren'Py - Heavenly Peaks Cultivation [v2.98] [My Big Little Brother]

Reviewed version: v2.0

Note: This review is done in the context the game being in a cultivation world setting. Cultivators are selfish assholes. The only thing that matters is their personal strength. If they can gain some benefit they won't hesitate even if it means torturing their mother. Cultivators also love to pick on those weaker than themselves, including everything from verbal and mental abuse to physical abuse, torture, sexual assault, rape and murder. If anything happens to you or your friends it is your own fault for being weak. Cultivators are also not faithful. Both men and women will fuck anyone as long as they can get stronger from it. If your waifu fucks someone else it is your fault for being weak. Expect these things from this game.

With that said, on to the review.

The game contains a lot of the things your would expect from a cultivation story. Cultivation into different stages and realms, skill techniques, body tempering and son on.

Currently there is not much adversity in the game. It is only a weak "rival" that only serves to showcase how much you grown, and an evil spirit you need to fight.

Combat is time based, which is both a blessing and a curse. A blessing since battles go much faster that way with less clicking. A curse because it is sometimes difficult to press the right buttons at the right time. Otherwise the combat does its job.

The game is a bit grindy. But that fits rather well with the cultivation theme. Cultivating is grinding at its core. Cultivators spend most of their time meditating for hours, days, months or even years at a time. All for gathering Qi and become stronger.

The story is very much on rails, to the point that if you choose the "I don't want to do this" options the game will just give some excuse for why that is not good and then railroad you into the set path. This is to the point where you can't choose who the MC will fuck.

The story itself is so far not that much, but I'll assume this is because it is only the prologue so far.

All in all, mostly what you'd expect from a wuxia/xianxia game.

v1.0:
pros:
+ I love xianxia

cons:
- very grindy
- after several vanilla routes suddenly mandatory NTR waifu. The NTR in it is completely illogical, out of character, and contradicts previous scenes.
- fake choices. You are asked "do a thing? yes/no". if you pick the choice the dev does not want you will get a thinking monologue on why the MC is going to ignore your choice and do the other thing instead.
- buggy
- scenes constantly display out of order
- poor in game explanations. you need to read a manual and even that is not enough
- koikatsu models look rather meh. MC himself looks like a girl with A cup boobs because honey select is designed for only female models and it is very difficult to properly mod in a male into that engine
- massively over complex mechanics. both in terms of not being fun and also in terms of there is zero chance this game is not going to die out due to needing a massive dev team for such an overly ambitious mechanics

This has some interesting possibilities, but drowns them in grind and combat.

The "yer a wizard Harry!" beginning is even thinner than Harry Potter. The kid is dumped on a mountain top with NO explanation to him at all. Fortunately he rescues the resident hottie and she is actually a real help (in more ways than one).

The sparsely explained story leads to some opportunities, but with major grind and no explanation of why things are like they are and not even a "I'll tell ya later!" in most cases.

Most games struggle at the beginning and the opening never gets remade, I get that. This may smooth out and everything comes together before Draco Malfoy shows back up (yup, rich spoiled blond kid screaming "he shouldn't be here" right from the early stages)

The biggest deal killer, and what lead me to delete it, was the combat. At the time of this review there was no "combat" tag at all. Worse, the combat is time based, not turn based, and you get this shit kicked out of you before you can even figure out where the controls are or which button represents which action. If I wanted to play a reaction based combat game I'd fire up "Call of Duty" or "Halo" or "Fallout" or some other FPS. I'm not a huge fan of combat in H-games, but see the connection to some stories - this one included. Make the combat turn based, or have a no-consequenses tutorial sparring match before getting me chewed up by a flying pig.

I'd like to see this with less grind and a more "lazy-ass-Ren'Py-game-player" friendly combat system. I'd reload it and probably enjoy it then, as of now - it's not one of the 200+ Ren'Py games on my computer

# Review for Heavenly Peaks Cultivation [v1.0]
Recommended = Not at its current state.

## Pros:
+ I found characters interesting
+ The story is there.
+ Has Sexual Animations
## Cons:
- Shuffled events [ During my playthrough the events were mixed up: some events would reference events that have yet to happen (yet according to the dialog, had happened), and others would happen in reverse order. There are clearly no event requirement flags. It got really confusing and is the main reason why I wouldn't recommend this game. ]
- Grind [ There are multiple stats that you need to keep track of and train. ]
- Really bad task tracking/quests [ The game gave me a task: cultivate 1300 points of qi. After doing it, there was no update, and the NPC didn't have anything new to say. Turned out you simply had to wait for X amount of days to pass for the story to advance. That's bad game design. If you want the player to keep gathering points and wait for some time - make it clear in the task: "Gather X amount of qi and wait for the events to progress". Otherwise, the player will keep stumbling around looking for something he missed. ]
- No auto-advance text [ No idea why the game developer chooses to disable the 'auto-advance text' function. ]
- Really bad combat UI / Combat [ After I gained the ability to challenge the enemies in the forest and got engaged in combat I was very confused about how to actually fight. The game showed me a picture of 'stances' there are and didn't wait for me to actually look at them, throwing me immediately into the fire. The actual combat tutorial was way later in the game. This begs the question, of why the game pushes the player to fight, before actually teaching combat mechanics. ]

As of v0.5
I love cultivation themes, and I've never seen one on here. So five stars for that. There's a bunch of things done right.
However, I immediately have several complaints. Probably because, as you stated, proof of concept.
For one, stop with the all white screens. I hate it. The menu screen for example. If you could use black or a darker color instead, I and my eyes would thank you. Same is true for other transitions.
For two, the dialogue is literally white text over the picture. Please put a background for the text box. Some games have a slider for the opacity or other such things, but the hide interface button is sufficient.
The default text speed is terrible, but I can easily fix that, so no complaints.
For three, the door of the hut I start in moves when I click on it, which is weird. Temporary assets as you said.
In the scene transition to the cabin with the redhead, she loses her shoes and he fixes her top. However, after returning from gathering medicine, her top is open again. Then when it zooms in it's closed once more.

Skipping through stuff like training results in glitching around the house (Using the rock).
It seems like sometimes when I talk to Mai I can bond with her. But not every time. A dedicated button for that sort of thing would be nice, or at least not having the same dialogue repeatedly. EDIT: There is later a bond button but point kinda stands. Though sometimes reading the dialogue more carefully is nice.
I like the animations, but I kinda also want to skip through the training quickly, since I know cultivation is a bit tedious. Mechanisms to help that are good. It seems you have a couple on further note.

Meditation:
I'm not entirely sure what the point of the two block refill Qi thing is.
I have no idea if I should be buying points to improve stats, or stockpiling Qi to breakthrough because that seems more efficient...

Combat:
I don't get it. There's no enemy health bar. I have no idea what the button to change between fist and sword does, presumably weapon. The stance thing I get but offensive doesn't lower my Qi so I don't know why I wouldn't use it.

Erotic content:
Seems pretty good for the initial. Obviously could use more. I don't know 100% I saw it all, but I got a bunch of "future update" notices, so I"ll stop here.

You have nice icons for the saving and all that- though honestly I'm equally happy with the Ren'Py words I always see.
The models look nice, animations are good.
English is great. No complaints, honestly, it's enjoyable. Its only real flaw is it's the initial release.

I like base building, so the repair of the cabin is pretty pleasing to me. There's implied upgrading living situation, which will be nice.
Things like formations to protect it would be great for later on, but they does inherently limit the types of events possible at that point.