VN - Ren'Py - Imperial Chronicles [v0.8] [Lazy Monkey]

First off, I played the game in Russian, the English translation needs some rework. The writing in this game isn't the greatest but it's way more enjoyable and consistent in Russian.

The main story itself isn't that intricate, pretty basic medieval fantasy with some political intrigues but the characters and their romance paths and the way the story unfolds depending on player choices are what makes this game interesting, some key moments change and character alliances may shift to or away from the mc.

The visuals are mostly good with occasionally some grainy images and awkward poses but I imagine it's due to the dev's limited resources. In general, the scenes are fairly well structured and visualized and I liked the characters' design, they have a good variety in looks.

Overall this is a fairly good adult VN with some obvious limitations and flaws but while it's not perfect it is an interesting game with plenty of kinks and fun moments.

This game has also a disclaimer of a work in progress, so some things might get fixed and improved in a more polished future version.

Very well done overall so far, even if i am a sucker for fantasy.

The story is engaging and well designed, with almost every choices leading to a different outcome or scene in some way. The initial mage/bookworm/warrior choice is genuinely impactful and cuts off a number of options/outcomes in specific events without completely altering the story and requiring 3 unique paths. Some choices can have big outcomes in terms of revealing information, though so far i'd suggest that some of the 'reveals' have been effectively brushed aside The elven conspiracies that the MC is aware of have managed to not really be addressed at all

The renders are pretty good and all the characters so far have their own compelling enough stories and character development. The LIs are all unique. The sex scenes aren't long or complex so far, but i don't personally mind as for me it's more about the character dynamics.

I think the dev has so far struck a reasonably good balance between choice and branching content, which hopefully allows for the project to progress forward at a good pace. Often in AVNs, choices mean exponential branching and complexity, which means an exponential slowdown in game development.

I'm not sure how this will change in 0.5 assuming the main LI has become established - It's not seemingly a harem game, so this could completely change going forward. Also, I'd note that some of the apparent points systems so far feel a bit excessive and unnecessary, but this may change in later chapters. I'm concerned that the dev may be overcomplicating things. For example, you can obtain points for 'aurora love', 'aurora shame' 'aurora fear'. Is this a temporary mechanic that just influences a single event, or does it mean that there will be three unique aurora branches going forward that have to interact with every other branch. I'd rather we don't end up in a GRRM situation where the story is too complicated to finish or takes so long that the game gets abandoned.

I'm assuming that the English version of the game is in the Dev's second language, but one minor issue i had was that in quite a few of the lines, words were missing or the lines just felt a bit disjointed. I could still clearly understand the intended point and it wasn't immersion breaking as it can be in other AVNs (god some of them are so badly written). In that sense i commend the dev on the English translation as it does feel 'natural' and native. I just recommend going through and having someone do some further proof reading.

tl;dr: Good stuff so far. I'd consider removing complexity in some areas and maybe adding some extra scenes/depth in others. Wishing the project good luck!

This is one of the best games I have ever played. The choices you make in the game really matter. You need to play it multiple times to get the full experience. It reminds me of the book series I read as a kid where you could make your own choices.

Medieval fantasy, meaningful real choices that are not fake, different paths, fluid dialog, gripping story and most importantly, very attractive, beautiful LIs.

Don't take this as a negative criticism, but I would have expected the render quality to be a bit better. After all, this is not the developer's first game.

I played through v0.4 in a few hours, then had to go back and try some of the other choices to see where they would lead.

I give the dev high marks as a storyteller. The game looks good, the characters are interesting and attractive, and the world-building is first rate.

The only thing holding this back from five stars are the sex animations, which are decidedly second-rate.

Recommended for those who like good storytelling and fantasy worlds. People who enjoy incest stories will probably get an extra thrill; while that isn’t my thing, I still found much to like in this game, and will be eagerly awaiting further updates.

Best MILF Game ever. Great Genre, Great Lewdness & Exciting climax with the mother. I hope the creator makes more of these type of games.
Hopefully the creator makes more additional lewd erotic scenes with the mother.

This is one of those games that I wish I could screw my own rules and give the 5 stars it deserves. Imperial Chronicles [v0.4] as of now, one of the best VN games I've played here. This one has a soul. And the dev put his/her heart into it and it shows. It is such a breath of fresh air that reminded me that not every VN is made for quick cash grabs via patreon.

The story is well constructed, intriguing and goes at an acceptable pace. You assume the role of a half-breed prince, part elven and human in a medieval fantasy world. The choices you make feels like they matter and you got a lot of them to make. Healthy amount of drama, comedy, action and romance. And it feels like you got control over everything you do. That simply just adds more to how great this game is as if it wasn't great enough already with how deliciously plum the MC's mum already.

Ehm, anyway... Where was I? Oh yes. Models, environment, scenes, animations adds to the amazingly put story telling even more. I turn off the music of VN right off the bat, so I can't say anything about that. But the thing is, this here is a true visual novel. Almost perfectly crafted. Enjoyable and re-playable.

So what's bad about it? You are gonna have to play it yourself to find out. To me, a game like this should be a bench mark. The only bad part of this game was that seeing the end screen for the current version after like 5-6 hours of amazing time. I definitely recommend this game.

This one took me by surprise, i didnt expect to see so much stuff in a 2.5gb VN. First of all, love the fantasy tropes, mixed with a lot of courty drama.
The renders are top notch, models are amazing, didnt expect sound effects and they are perfectly placed every time. The story is shaping to be a high fantasy Game of Thrones, which im all for. Best of luck to the dev, brilliant start, insane amount of content.

I played the Developer's first VN and found it very interesting, it made me pay attention to this 2nd VN of his

The historical context is very attractive, hopefully in the near future we can intervene more in conspiracies and become a dictator ruling a vast empire.

Good plot, good mix of action and slow burn, great characters (physically very appealing ladies with actual personnalities and a MC that can be steered in one direction or the other without feeling like just a bland faceless self-insert), immersive setting with good personnal+political intrigue writing (would need some more proofreading though).

Also an impressive rate of upgrades for this site and decent quantity of content at every upgrade.

All in all, even if it's still in relative infancy, one of the games to play and follow there, dev do seems pretty competent.

Excellent game with great number of divergent paths depending on choices. Renders and the hot scenes are really well done. No engrish so far and the story is written in an interesting manner. Choices here have real impact and are not just cosmetic, they will you to different paths.

Definitely one of the best games on this site, with a lot of content for just 8 months of development. Good characters, soundtrack, dialogue, and the story is so good that even if this wasn't an adult game I would be interested. A truly great taboo fantasy story.

The only "problem" I see is that maybe the dev is getting a little ambitious with the whole choices/path thing, which technically wouldn't be a bad thing but this could affect the game development on long term.

I love this game, it's pretty much everything I like:

• Medieval settings and incest
• It has an interesting story with good dialogue. I never feel the urge to skip the text.
• There's a great balance between slow burn and sex scenes.
• The development pace is excellent. In just 7 months, there is already more content than most games here have in years.
• The choices do matter, and the LIs are not forced on you.

If I have to say anything bad, it would be about the renders. They're pretty average, but I personally don't care about this.

So far this game's narrative is at a level where I would be interested even without any adult content, the fact that there is adult content makes it even better. I never review games but this one deserves 5/5 and feels like it has massive potential as of v0.3.5.

This story got me invested quick, and I can't wait to see where it is going. The world building was really good without being heavy handed in the exposition, and all of the characters are all interesting and look great.

The adult content is really good as well, the models look good in action and the writing is on point during the scenes.

5/5, excited for more.

It's great, but it would be better if the developers considered making it a sandbox mode. The sense of immersion and content interaction would be on another level.
Now it is a more narrative novel mode. Although there are different choices, as the content continues to increase, players will have more regrets and the fun of repeatable interaction will be zero.

Just a short review I may revisit later.

The writing and dialogue in this game is a MASSIVE step up in quality from the last game this dev worked on.

There are some continuity bugs. Characters made references to choices I didn't make. I bent the knee to the king, and Cass ended up being happy I refused to bend the knee.

I am really enjoying most of the characters so far, but I do hope that we don't go to overboard in terms of LI's. The one elf bandit girl seemed like she was going to be much more present in the plot, considering the intro. However, we barely see or talk to her, which I think was a missed opportunity.

Finally, I don't understand why we were given the choice to find out who was spying on us, but were not given the choice to confront them and instead act all nice and trusting. Give us the choice to confront, or at least distrust this character.

Other than that, excited to see the games future.

Story 4/5
Story is good and it has some nice plots going, theres really not much when it comes to sex scenes atleast not yet, i dont mind that when a story is good then H-scenes arent really importen.

I dont understand the skill choice in the start of the game, i picked wizard but MC never uses magic to do fuck all, he dosent protect him self with magic and when someone challenge him for a fight for fun he uses swords and hes training melee combat as well, it just dosent make any kind of sense.

Im not really a fan of MC, he feels very submissive hes been exiled for 10 years and when hes allowed back it feels like hes bending down to kiss ass, he accepts that hes sister will be married off to some stranger and accepts that hes forced to marry someone as well, i wish he would have a mind of hes own instend of just bowing down to submit to whatever people tells him, and he trust everyone even Alaina who he knows is a spy it just makes him feel brainless.

The lack of choices really hurts the game as well, it dosent feel like your in controle of MC or anything that happens around you, almost feels kinetic other then being able to turn down a few girls, also not a fan of choices leading to forced sex scenes without you knowing thats where its going, like the wood nymph, someone tells ya go sit in the forest see what happens then you click wait 5 times or so to end up fucking some random creature you know nothing about, it just dident make any sense to me and you dont even get the choice to say no to it, so your forced to reload and not go if you dont want it to happen.

There are alot of spelling issues and worng words like saying He when it is a She which trows you off your reading having to check again what its trying to say.

Renders are pretty low quality and grainy which is i dont mind to much but it dosent help the overall experince.

Girls 3/5
I liked most girls and there is a ok diversity in builds, but again quality isent that best.

Animations 2/5
They just arent good, short and looks a bit weird, dont play it for the animations but for the story.

Choices 2/5
Not sure how much controle you have in this one, first there arent many choices to begin with and im not sure if LIs will be forced on you or not but it feels like it might happen which would lower rating even more, this version stops where MC is forced to pick between to girls and somehow i dont think you can say no to both no matter how much you want to, dev talks about freedom of choice but somehow i dont think there will be but time will tell.

Game has the potential to become better if it starts giving players the freedom of choice dev talks about, but it can also become a mindless fuckfest game forcing LIs on you, so i will revisit this one once it gets more content to see which route this game will take and leave it at 3 stars for now.

"Review update"
Had to lower my review rating since it did start forcing LIs and sex scenes on you, your forced to marry one of two LIs and forced to fuck them as well.
First i dident want any of the two options since none of them are good enough to become the queen, but MC is as always submissive and just follows along, where hes sister would refuse sex with her forced husbond your not allowed to do that as the MC with your now wife.

Its pretty shitty considering hole game up to that point has been about free choice in relationships, forcing them now killed the game and story.

Honestly a very solid game, with a ton of content to play through this early in development. I very much enjoy high fantasy games that are written with care and lore and have the sex be secondary to the story overall, and I think the author does a wonderful job of establishing each character and how they fit the story. The amount of choices seems promising, and the two potential bride choices seem to make the VN have a hugely diverging plot choice, which I hope is something the author can keep track of. All in all, play this game, it is very good!

Renders are nice, plot seems rather decent but the English feels unnatural and weird. Also, transitions between scenes are occasionally abrupt. Like the scene hasn't properly ended and we rush already into another.
In other words, could use an editor, native or at least proficient in English.