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

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.

Nice story, nice models but renders are grindy. There are 3 different traits MC can choose one at the beginning. MC is a Playboy who flirt with girls and try to bed them. It's actually fun to see how he's trying to flirt in three different trait paths. Plot tightens with the arrival of your sister there is scheming in this game who gonna attain the crown. Plot is interesting. Overall I enjoyed the game.


Edit v0.7

Man dev stepup his game. First i thought this one gonna be a simple fantasy game. But man this got a nice medieval fantasy plot about love , power scheming and betrayal. Your choices matters. Man absolutely loved this if you are looking for medieval story game go for this one.

Keep up the good work dev looking forward to next updates

It's an amazing game. A better version of Game of Thrones than the series itself. It is interesting to watch the plot of interesting characters. At the moment, it is one of the best games on this site along with the eternum.

Short summary:


There is some potential here. Lots of ways the story can go, and the writing is not horrible. Women are pretty, but MC is off-putting and currently renders aren't great



Good Things

• Several pretty models
• The story is somewhat interesting
• The setting opens many potential paths

Bad points

• Grainy renders
• Bad use of sound
• Very few choices
• Low effort on lighting and scene setup
• MC is a total asshole

Lazy monkey never disappoints. Once again he has created a fantastic game with a very innovative plot and the type that I like, that of a royal family in which the protagonist is the prince. The thing I appreciate most is that there is incest. The mother-son relationship intrigues me a lot. I hope Lazy continues with this project without abandoning it because this game has the potential to become the best of F95.

5/5 so far. I enjoy the story, the sass, the character types. The only thing I'm not super happy with is the lack of certainty when making choices. It seems like it's easy to miss out on content. Hopefully some one will publish a walkthrough so they don't ...
****Spoiler**** Miss out on the telepathy ability, etc.

I'm mean it's pretty damn good, what can I say, but it also has his flaws.


Let's begin:


Story:

The story is interesting so far, nothing game-changing (heh), but well executed so far, I mean for just the prologue it's a great start.

SPOILERS AHEAD !!!!

The world is a nice fantasy setting, filled with typical fantasy lore (elves, Orcs, Humans, Wizards...) and a nice but somewhat confusing backstory for our MC.




Characters:
The Characters are gorgeous, Even the MC looks good, the render quality is very clean, and you get a lot of "flavors" in terms of body proportions. The Animations are a bit lackluster but watchable.

Most of the characters have an interesting backstory, and making certain decisions that favor one character over the other actually make you feel like they have some impact on the story. For example,
Tl;dr The main characters have interesting backstories and personalities and choices actually impact the story

the negative:
The translation is very bad, I mean like, I'm not a native English speaker (obvs) and even I noticed a lot of mistakes, and especially in a visual novel, written text is a huge part of the experience and can actually ruin the game experience. I think the game is originally in Russian, but pls find a better translator, it's one of the few genuinely bad points I have about the game.

Last words:
The story/game is actually interesting, the characters/renders are gorgeous, depictions have actually some impact on the content you see and the story. The game has a lot of potential, and I wish the best to the dev/devs

TDU.

I enjoyed Lazy Monkey's previous game 'Monkey Business' and naturally felt drawn to the new game.
This game has started strong. The improvements from the prev game is pretty clear. There are different choices and routes already and it's only v0.3.
Dev has a very good eye for aesthetics imo. All the girls look beautiful. Even the MC is nothing short of good-looking and thus easily likable. The graphics are great. Animations are good. And the main focus is and I'm all for it.
The translations needs work but readable anyway.

Imperial Chronicles is quite refreshing discovery out of all garbage posted in this forum and is certainly a game you should try out anon.

So what is this game about? MC is a drunken prince who claims back his heritage. And unlike in pretty other game this one has a decent plot: everyone is constantly influencing you, manipulating you, trying to get out something out of you. There are multiple of options to choose witch all have different outcomes, starting from scholar-magician-warrior class to whom to fuck or talk. MC has three sister, one is a witch, another is a knife psycho, and third one is sickly nerd. MC's mom has also his own games, as well all other characters around you. Overall MC is quite based, like in one case MC says something like to his provocative sister: "relax sis, I am only fingering, not raping you." Or: "I am not made of iron," while tugging his cock against the asscheeks of his sister. Why there are no more games like this?

As you can guess, incest has quite role in this game, so unleash that is not your thing just leave it out. Yes, this game has plenty of non-incest content, but the game really revolves around it heavily, and unlike in pretty all other games incest context somewhat makes sense considering MC is a half-elf (elfs do weird stuff), and kingdom recently had a series of violent revolutions.

Some complain that graphics are grainy, and if that matters to you just do not play this game. The plot is great, there is replay value in this game, and the jokes are good. Sex-scenes are clumsy at the best but the writing is solid, and if this all sounds good for you just try it anon.

Solid 4/5 due to graphics, but then standards today are rather high.

Really enjoyed this one, loved the story, and the character development, and the animations were good. I love the mom, I played as a warrior and I was still able to make the vampire my ally. no real complaints, he probably picked one of my favorite generes.

A very promising game. Playing as an elf and being able to choose different "classes" and having them all affect how you can make certain decisions is very interesting. There's also a wide range of kinks and the game keeps track of what you did with certain characters. Honestly very impressive. The only reason I deducted a star is because there is quite a bit of broken English. Mostly in how sentences are structured and some poor translations from Russian. Still, I highly recommend this game for its freedom of choice.

v0.3
The game is pretty good.
The story is interesting, the art is good looking, the waifus are great.

The game focuses on choices, lots of branching choices with actual consequences.
The consequences are not always big, but everything is being tracked and makes at least small differences, and often not so small differences.

Ironically it makes it a bit tougher to navigate, as you probably have to replay every update to remap the choices due to forgetting what was what between updates.
But as a renpy VN without any grind it is easy and quick to do so thanks you the ability to skip seen (and only seen) text by holding down ctrl until it stops.

TLDR

• Pros
  • Same models and genre/fetishes as Monkey Business
  • Good plot and plot-sex pacing
  • (Personally) interesting/engaging fantasy theme and medieval intrigue based plot
  • Multiple(3) archetypes for the main character that can shape their personal character, frequently influencing dialogue and interactions
• Cons
  • Some characters seem too visually similar
  • Very narrow/linear story progression; choices shape facets of a largely similar journey
  • Text subject to english/grammatical improvement/revision

I, like many others, came here following their previous game "Monkey Business." So far, it seems not only that the continuing quality of models, an engaging pace of plot, and continuation of genre/fetishes, but I have also found myself enjoying the fantasy theming and background as well as royal politik/intrigue among the main characters family and what the player would like. Especially the 'inbetween' scenes, such that erotic and personal/conversational interactions feel natural(within context as a sexual game). Also, the choice between 3 character archetypes- warrior, mage, or scholar- shape dialogue and interactions much more than i expected.
The only critiques I would give are that the models for the mother, sisters, and mage teacher seem too similar, even if they are family they don't seem as stylistically as distinct as i'd like, even hair style diversity would make a big difference. Or, perhaps give the full-blooded elf mother more pronounced ears. Additionally, so far it seems that the character archetypes don't really affect the plot-line in a major way; all 3 archetypes face the same events, albeit potentially handling it or feeling about them in a distinct manner. However, I don't really think this is a true gripe because it makes sense from a creator perspective to keep the storyline linear and coherent, as well as having a streamlined process of making and writing the visual novel itself. Finally, the english can be off sometimes, but the dialogue is still reliably comprehensible, and can likely be improved with simple proofreader suggestions.

Review of version 0.2

Imperial Chronicles is quite early in its development, but I was very impressed with what there is to judge. The models are sexy. I found the characters to all be enjoyable and as interesting as one could hope for the amount of screen time they've had so far. The music is good and well fitting for where it's placed. And the plot has me impatient for a new update to see what happens next, which is a great, if annoying for me sign.

The only Con I've seen is the English isn't quite perfect all the time, but it was still way better than most ESL games in that regard. Everything is completely understandable, including its rather funny humor, it's just that every now and then you'll get an awkwardly phrased line or two, but nothing that hurt the game for me.

All in all I'm very much looking forward to playing the next update and hope Lazy Monkey has the best of luck in this endeavor.

(Adding some more thoughts after 0.7: I honestly can't stress this enough how good the writing is. It has got even better. The plot captures the intricate politics of royal courts from medieval times perfectly, and let's you play an important role in shaping it. The writing honestly feels like you're reading off a script of a big budget professional TV show. Whoever is the script writer, give him a raise!
However, there's now a big issue where the name of some new characters are written in Russian even when you have the game set to English.)

(Based on 0.1) Monkey Business was pretty good and the dev promises to not repeat the shortcomings of that on this new game so that's a pretty nice attitude to have while developing a new game. Making it VN instead of Sandbox certainly makes it less time consuming for the average player. Overall this one is off to a good start.

Pros:
1. Good setting and good writing. Plot seems interesting enough and seems to be heading somewhere. The medieval world seems interesting aswell with stuff happening as the plot progresses.
2. Good models. Seems uniquely enough instead of copy pasted models found everywhere on this site.
3. Characters seem to have personality.

Cons:
1. The girls lack the THICC
2. Sometimes dialogues lose coherence or maybe it's just grammar error.

Amazing visual novel (hopefully becomes a sandbox game at some poiny) . Love the medieval times setting. Intriguing plot, great potential and characters. Can't wait for this story to keep unfolding.

I'd certainly say this is a good introduction. I enjoy fantasy AVNs more than others, since their stories are often far less boring than the regular modern-day stories that are often mundane or repetitive. I'd say story-wise this game is better than the dev's previous work, Monkey Business, as that was filled with a lot of inconsistencies and made little sense. However, the true test is *after* the set-up.

Writing-wise, there are several grammatical and spelling issues, so either the dev speaks English as a second language, or they're just not a very good writer. They clearly try and distinguish characters by how they speak, but it doesn't go beyond "rude" or "cold" or "shy" really. You can see moments where it tries to be more, but it just rounds back to the more simpler and direct approach.

Visually it's good, I wouldn't say it's great, but it's definitely enjoyable. The sex scenes aren't great either, but I think the set-ups help enough where it isn't a major drawback.

In terms of choices it feels quite good. I enjoy AVNs the most when I feel a sense of accomplishment in balancing my choices in order to achieve the best outcome, however this game has more examples of "pick one or the other". It's certainly an easy way to diversify play, however for me I find it more annoying, due to the fact most people don't replay AVNs unless the writing and/or sex scenes are top-tier.

Easy 8/10, could certainly improve and get to a 9 or 10.

-- EDIT v0.3 --
The grammar and translation seems to have improved, as I almost didn't realise that there had been issues in previous versions before reading this review back. I wouldn't call it amazing, however any improvement is good, and speaking in a second language is always going to be more difficult.

Story-wise I still consider it weaker than I would hope, however that has more to do with the slower pace than the potential in the AVN. The main crux is that there are multiple threads being established early on, and so there's a lot of sitting to see those threads actually tie together. In fact, it still doesn't really feel like the story is out of the prologue, as in v0.3 we meet our third sister for the first time. My hope is that with the quality of writing on display, when the action picks up then it will be very enjoyable.

An issue I've noticed the longer I went is that the choice at the beginning seems of be one of the few opportunities you get to genuinely make an impact on your character as a whole. At the beginning, you get the very generic choices of "intellect, strength, or magic", you can tell when it's relevant and I appreciate that fact, but then there are multiple instances where it feels like instead of choosing your one competency, you chose what two you're INCOMPETENT with instead. The easiest way to think about this if that the MC had no choice in what he'd be strong in, he'd be fucking useless. For a man who's entire EXISTENCE essentially revolved around these 3 specific aspects, the fact he seems to be so weak in the majority of them ends up making it feel more like I'm piloting a drunk idiot with a very specific set of skills.

Ultimately it hasn't really changed my opinion, however it's improved my confidence in the ability for this game to be truly excellent.

There are elves! For that reason alone, it's worth testing, but it doesn't stop there, there's incest, that taboo that everyone loves, the MC has a beautiful and "young" Elf as his mother, and at least three sisters, two who have already appeared in the story and who showed that they were interested in MC, and I liked them all.

The MC is not exactly a gentleman, he is rude and does what he wants, maybe this is the image the developer wanted to give us, the MC could be a better person, but no, he is an alcoholic and a womanizer, and maybe is an MC like this who can give us the scenes we want to see, even though I don't like him, at least he's not a smooth-talking ass-kisser who just wants to do what's "right".

Choices matter, I recommend using URM to keep an eye on the variables, don't choose blindly, think carefully about what you're going to choose.

There is not much to judge, this review is about the v0.2 version, what I can mention is that there are several characters, and this indicates a rich world; there are conflicts, even if small at the beginning of the game; a potential drama, the MC, a half-elf exiled prince has returned to the kingdom, but will he get the throne that easily?

The renders are ok, but could be better, it's clear that the DEV suffers from hardware limitations.

The script has many errors, it is clear that it has not been revised, it was due to laziness or haste, if the developer does not have time to make revisions, find someone to help, some fans will love to help, here at F95 there are areas to obtain this type of help.

The sex scenes are bad, seriously, really bad.

The interface is bad, especially on the save and loading screens, my cursor is in one place but seems to click on another, seriously, how dare the developer launch the game like that, the default Renpy screen doesn't have this problem.

As far as 0.2 goes I can say that this is a very good VN. Maybe should be 4.5 instead of 4, but there is a few things that worry me going forward(in terms of story), so I thought 4 stars would probably hold better. A few things:
- Better setting, characters and writing than LazyMonkey's previous game.
- The incest doesn't feel to out of place since MC is a "prince". With irl nobility marrying relatives and all. Besides, it is not based in pure lust.
- In terms of sexy scenes (I call it like that to include teasing), it is a bit of a downgrade. What I mean is the scenes are not as "hot", but still good.
- Good amount of content.
- A bit to grainy.

EDIT: As of 0.4, I have to say I am glad my worries have been squashed. The world building and writing has proved to be fantastic (as far as adult VNs go of course). A lot of devs will drop the ball after a promising initial set up, but Lazy Monkey hasn't. So I updated my rating to 5.
It is not the "hottest" game, but it is VERY entertaining.

So far so good. The renders are a bit grainy and at some points the story did not make a whole lot of cents but over all not a bad start. The plot is good and I like the magical / mystical aspect of it.