Ren'Py - Ilias: Alcyone Legends [v0.7.10] [Alcyone legends]

Version 0.7.10 Review

TLDR: Feels like monthly isekai anime slop in a game format. Poor writing that doesn't understand its own content. Great art, poor game design/minigame vision. Creator wants a novel-first vision with poor writing that gets overshadowed by the art. You'll waste 1-2 hours doing no H-content if you want that. This game is story-first so no fast H-content if you want that. Different audience.
Is It Worth To Play: Use cheat codes and see H-content/art. Story is a slog to get through which kind of defeats the purpose of it being a "game". Getting to the h-scene did not feel eventful. Really up to your thoughts from reviews but I say no currently.

The art is so great, it has to be at least 3-stars. However, if you want a H-game, this is a much worse Danny's Adventures. The code is the second best part. You can even read the code yourself. It's around intermediate level and the primary flaw is that it has a few bugs which I attribute to the weak game design.

Game design is the second worst aspect. Point and click sandbox which is contradicted by the writing and story along with thrashed together features and minigames that make no sense.

The weakest part of this game is the writing.
Code is also quite buggy and minigames are pretty awful. They serve no purpose in the game outside of the sake of being a feature. You have stardew fishing and poorly implemented variants of mouse-driven minigames.

The game's core loop past the tutorial/demo portions (I consider this prior to Chapter 2/3), is the clearest part. Everything after isn't clear on how to progress. Yes, you can get past it but it's a design contradiction with how much better the first two chapters are. Also, the game gets lost in its own plot.

I do believe the talent for this game gets restricted greatly by the writing. The story is boring. People state the MC's personality is too passive/femboy-ish but I don't think that's a problem. The problem is that the story uses these tropes without actual consideration of why they would work for a character.

Arguably, Blaine is the best character by the audience. That's because her trope is much more well grounded in reality. The other characters, even if you state they haven't had as much focus, are too exaggerated yet the story expects us to take it seriously or take them in depth. This expectation stems from over an hour of content with ecchi/h-bait. It aims to try and build up/introduce the characters but there's nothing good about this. The writing doesn't make you fall in love with the characters. The art simply carries it while the writing adds no depth. The characters look cute, they look strong, but none of the writing gives narrative weight. Thus, it get hits with a double whammy where people who like story don't get a good one initially and people who want h-content have to waste time with minigames (granted they're skippable) and a bunch of irrelevant writing for them initially.

The creator stated the game is still in the negatives production-wise and want to prioritize making this a novel over a H-game. This is a good goal. However, they need to re-evaluate the story they want to write. The sandbox format is worse for their goals. In my opinion,the creators should make this a classic linear VN without the sandbox aspect. The shota MC, the ecchi characters, and the goal of a novel over a H-game is also a slight contradiction.However, I understand this is moreso a marketing decision.

Overall, it's hard to take the writing seriously when it pales by so much to the art. There are multiple games like this on F95 with such great art. However, many of the creators forget the importance of writing.

I do think a 3/5 means a successful game though.

The only positive this game has is the high quality art, that unfortunately does not extend beyond the character models, as the game has fuck all in terms of other content.
The gameplay is a slog of horrible mini-games and "go-there-do-nothing" quests that don't achieve anything at all. The plot is barely existent and what little is there is dull and uninteresting. The characters are unlikable and shallow.
A waste of time.

Can include more h scenes, ecchi stuff is good too but they should reduce grinding and build up only to be with some ecchi.
More side characters and main cast will be pretty slick. I know you want the story to be by your own pace and means. Tho not complaining for story but try to increase h scenes like you can have added some b groping in blaine's corset scene. Otherwise arts and others are good

This is one I really wanted to like, so I forked over 20$ for the 6.1 release on patreon to try it out.

I'll start with the good:

The art is fantastic. The models of the characters are super well done, and I wanted to follow quest lines get to the action upon seeing them.

The characters, though a little tropey, are likeable.

The minigames aren't bad, though a little tedious after a while. I really liked that cooking was the MC main contribution as that's a nice change.

The not so good:
This is the critical issue I have with it- the game is a tease. There is a lot of ground work and story dumps with very little payoff. There is some light fondling here and there, but there is only 1 actual h-scene and the art drops off quite a bit, and it's with a character that is the least interesting of them all.

I spent a lot of time following Lira's story, for instance, and the only "h-scene", if you can call it that, is fondling her boob when she's sleeping. I get that this is in development, but the pacing is horrendous to the point where I simply won't play it again as it's not worth it. I don't play games like these just for the h-content, but the game builds up this tension but doesn't deliver. Even if h-scenes are injected, the amount of time it takes to get a taste makes it seem like the dev wants this to be an ecchi game , not a h one.

The other issue I have is while the h content is significantly lacking, the rest of the game (besides the characters I guess) is not fleshed out at all. The cooking mechanic and cooking game... kinda sucks. It would of be cool if they made that a bit more deep as it would make the stagnant other parts of the game better, but no, it's just your basic bitch "click mouse repeatedly or inside cursor" type thing.

This is actually a pretty big disappointment because the art is so good. I would give it 2 stars if it wasn't for the quality of the CGs.

The art and voice acting, and the overall attractiveness of the various LIs, are very well done. This is just about the only reason to recommend this game, and unfortunately, this doesn't overcome the many flaws.

Although the dialogue and tone of each character is done well, and there is a skeleton of character development, overall there's a lack of depth and coherency. Most of the characters only really interact with the MC and are generally cookie-cutter. The main plot likewise is fairly stereotypical and uninteresting, and seems to have gotten little attention so far in favor of advancing LI routes. The one commendable main development so far is that MC somewhat acknowledges he's not meant to be a Big and Strong Adventurer, but has other valuable skills, although even that could've been executed better, e.g. MC realizing this himself after his own experiences, development of his strengths throughout other subplots, etc.

However, by far the worst flaw: the RPG / mini-game aspects are obnoxiously grindy, and even with the cheat to skip through them it's still tedious. Most of the mini-games are low-skill click-fests. The "quest" system is used inconsistently, as many subplots simply don't appear in the quest log, and such quests (whether or not they show up in the log) often have arbitrary triggers, meaning without the walkthrough you are forced to try everything at random. An RPG like this is supposed to be goal-oriented and rewarding, but this one is unfortunately boring, repetitive, and aimless.

IMO, the dev would better spend their time without the RPG aspects entirely and focusing on how to streamline the quests/story. To make the RPG aspects appealing would require redoing all of it and putting far more thought into what is supposed to be fun about it. I find it hard to imagine anybody playing the cooking mini-game 10 times in a row, and going "I can't wait to do that another 10 times!"

this game has a very good potential if developers going to if the developers continue to work on the game and maintain the keep level of quality.

Total quality of the game is very impressive, it has very good setting that is easy to fall in, unique voiced characters that have their own well written personalities, lots of not mind fucking mini games, some of them you can skip, animated scenes looks veeery good

for now game got only only proper sex scene that was released in last update, and its look so good, if the developers continue to work on the game, moving story slowly and adding a lot of sex scenes and new characters without falling into a hole of scam money milking games, this is easily gonna be a top tier game on site

If i had to summarize this game, using an apt metaphor. its a beautifuly wrapped present; that you are excited to unwrap and see whats insdie but inside this beautifully wrapped present is just a picture of a middle finger. The only reason this game has "high" reviews are because of its art; the art is superb, and there's no denying that. Everything else, though, is crap. Its boring, tedious and above all has 0 action despite almost a year of work. Why games tote themselves as sex games then include 0 sex, but just erotic looking characters is beyond me. Maybe it's the most effective strategy to milk coomers with money, I really don't know.

You have this fox woman throwing herself at you, and your character is too much of a pussy to do anything. Finally, after simping and working for her 300 times and cooking her 300 meals, you muster up the courage to ask her on a date. On said date, you go to her place at night where she touches your crotch, and I thought, "Wow, this might be the first bit of action in this slog of a game". But nope, your character has one option of going, "THIS ISN'T YOU STOP!" and the scene ends there, even though this chick has been hinting she is DTF at every waking moment. At that point, I deemed this game a tremendous waste of time.

The gameplay is boring as hell mini-games that no one enjoys but will do on the promise of sexy times at some point, which in this game don't occur. You also play an MC who is "18," but it looks like he belongs in a Shonen high school anime. You are like 5"1, have 0 fighting ability, you are boring as hell, and your only redeeming quality is you can cook well. So if your dream is to be an anime line chef i guess have at it.

I guess there is a story, I really didn't follow it, to be completely honest, I tried, I really tried. But after the 15th cook this meal and working for this person for the 18th time, I really, really stopped giving a shit. It just went in circles with incomplete quest lines; just choose a damn quest line to finish, holy shit.

I'm giving the game 3 stars, on a fleeting hope it becomes not terrible and solely based on its art quality. But right now this is no stretch of the imagination a 5 star or 4 star sex game.

i like the production value and original artstyle
i appreciate the voice acting and intriguing world

However game seems a bit buggy at places
every task is very urgent and need to save to get thru it
i burn all my money to finish task in time just to get less money than finishing task cost

minigames are crude, hard and needlessly mandatory
you can lose all the ingredients and get softlock if you fail

As for sex scenes? i m almost sure there aren't any, i played hard skip 2 hours, could not unlock shit

Also seems like game was made crude and inconvienient on purpose so author can say you patreon Codes
if it helps anybody try: wyrmfyrther

Story is a bit bland at the moment and the tasks/quests are to me just not much fun, memory mini-game, alot of cooking, fishing and blacksmithing, the smith stuff makes 0 sense you get 15 coppers for each time doing it but it dosent matter if you do a 100% perfect hit or just good hits its still same payout and one you lvl up you gain 1 hole copper more per task done.....talk about grinding......one meat to cook with cost 50 coppers to give you an idea, i dident play with cheats but i found the fastest way is to make the meat and cider dish then sell it and repeat you gain money somewhat fast that way once you can buy enough stuff to make 10 dishes to sell at a time, using skip speeds up the cooking stuff, but there really should be an option to create x number of food instend of wasting peoples time grinding boring stuff.

The art look ok but reminds me to much of AI art and like most AI art all girls has to have over sized tits which just makes them look stupid and ugly, faces looks good but when 95% of the focus is on huge tits it just fails, devs really should learn to make alot better diversity in builds then this game.

It does say animated but there arent any sex scenes yet so cant really rate that part yet.

Music is ok, nothing special but ok.

Sandbox is like most sandboxes where everything feels very very kinetic, you just follow a set questline and is forced to do tasks for people you might hate which will proberly lead to sex scenes at some point without having a choice in it, i say this since you are already forced to do alot of stuff for blain which i couldent care less about and when learning to get stronger your forced to touch some bimbo tits and pull off her bra, again you have 0 choice in it with again leads me to belive it will be a mindless fuckfest at some point with a perverted MC that cant controle him self.

As for content there really isent much, consider it a demo with no sexual content, maybe ill give this a try and redo my review once it has some real content, mostly to see if it will ever have any choices or if it remains kinetic/linear, but for now its pretty poor hence the 2 star rating, for this to change it needs to start getting somewhere and add sex scenes since its 0.4.2 now and still nothing and become alot less linear at the very least when it comes to relationships.

Excellent game! First of all, the game has a decent plot. The game also has very cool art and animations. The game left only positive emotions, although I would call it just a demo. Looking forward to NSFW scenes in future updates

I was very impressed with the story and mechanics of this game. I wish more often such games would be made. And with such a good drawing few games. I wish good luck to all the creators of the game.
P. S. Ozekot and baku baku hello, do not lose me

The story is really engaging, it keeps you hooked throughout the game.
The artwork is amazing.
The gameplay is decent (has unique minigame mechanics).
The cast of characters is unique and well written.
Game looks very promising.

v0.2
Decent story writing.
The fact that you can pick a font is great (not a big fan of Vinque which a lot of game with alike theme uses).
Good drawing/artwork/graphic, whatever that is called
Some what unique minigame mechanic
prob will edit the review and add more as the game update

2024-09-01 Ilias: Alcyone Legends v0.5.4 Review:

The game finally has real 18+ content.
The quality of the drawing and style is impressive.
I would like to highlight the detailed elaboration of the backgrounds, they are given attention even in the sex scene.

P.S. For people who just want to watch the sex scene, start a new game from chapter 5.



2024-03-14 Ilias: Alcyone Legends v0.2 Review:

I didn’t want to write a review for 0.1 since there was only 5-10 minutes of content. But in 0.2 version game grow a lot 0.2 added:

- 3 L2D animated scenes. ( NO SEX YET!)
- Full city map which one also have some animations.

- All girls are diverse, hot and sexy.

- 2-3 hours of dialogue if you don’t skip it.
Maybe even more, I'm not sure, because right now you can finish the main story, watch the credits, and then continue the game and still find side quests and story.
Looks like devs decide make more realistic story, then regular harem game where MC can got sex scene after 5-10 minute of playing.

Also i hope this information help someone :
This game DON'T HAVE ANY SEX CONTENT right now in 0.2 version.
I not sure how to classify 0.2 content properly, i think most similar it's Ecchi anime.
IF you want just see sex scenes i think better skip this version because game don't have this type of content yet.

After finished v0.2 I definitely recommend try this game, because art style and entire game looks good and solid for me. Also story pretend to be like in good VN with ZERO degeneracy like NTR or something similar!

P.S I will watch every version of this game and review can be changed in future. Art style just catch me.
I wish success to the developers .

I like the story of this game.
Characters you can't help but fall in love with.
Nice graphics and a fairly extensive set of mechanics.
It will be interesting to see what will come out of this project.
So far 5 out of 5 for all the work done.