Allright, I'm going to be generous with this one - 4/5 on the whole
Art-wise, this game is a solid 5/5. Both the porn and the regular art are genuinely good. But unfortunately, this game is held back by a number of flaws...
The game itself is a Streets of Rage-style beat 'em up, albeit one with a dark fantasy theme. The game also has a neat little gimmick in that you can revive and mind-control defeated monsters, which you can then take along as party members. Both monsters and regular companions can level and be upgraded, which is pretty neat. The engine works well enough overall, and my only complaint in that regard is that you can only hit enemies on the exact same y-axis postion. This means that your attacks will miss very often when you're facing enemies that move around a lot - such as that black wolf boss.
The controls, though... that's a different story entirely. The default keyboard controls are the game's worst flaw by far. They're just cumbersome and counterintuitive, and it uses a few too many keys. OTOH they can be remapped quite easily, which is one of the game's good aspects. It does take a few minutes, but you'll save yourself a lot of grief that way.
The game's writing is generally... decent. The plot makes sense. The characters are appealing enough. The whole thing is sufficiently atmospheric. But... the writing is just a bit too sparse. There's a hub town where you can talk to most of the special characters, but their dialogue is just absolutely minimal. Unless there's a story trigger or an intro conversation, selecting 'Talk' will just get you the same very brief stock reply.
I mean, that's just wasted potential, you know? A few more lines of dialogue would have given the characters and the game in general a lot more depth.
Again, the writing that's there isn't bad. But it's glaringly obvious that it could have been so much better if only there would have been a bit more of it.
The game's structure and progression are overall decent. It's slightly imbalanced, but to a tolerable extent. The worst of it is right at the start - you'll start off seriously underpowered, and you'll actually struggle against the most basic enemies. Grinding and levelling are easy, but it'll take about an hour of that before you can handle regular enemies on your own.
Then there's another difficulty spike when you hit Hunter Hamilton, the first boss. Big difficulty spike. Even with a party of the strongest monsters you can get up until that point, Hamilton will just absolutely murderfuck you unless you're 1) constantly guzzling potions, or 2) have been grinding to an absolutely insane degree.
But once Hamilton is done? It's pretty much smooth sailing from there. The game will still be tough enough to be a moderate challenge, but it'll be quite managable frome here on. Especially if you resurrect Hamilton and recruit him as a companion (which you should, because he's every bit as much of a beast as a party member, and looting his weapons isn't really worth it).
Most other bosses can be recruited in the same way, and this is well worth it.
Then there's the porn aspect of this game...
The art itself is, like I said, amazing. No complaints on that one.
Another thing I liked is that not all of the sexual content in this game is defeat rape. You can actually have sex with the female monsters you've dominated. You can also pay merchant girl Lamia for sex. And when you're in camp, you can even have sex with your female companions.
However...
The catch - and my main complaint - here is that this *only* works for the male protagonist. If you picked either one of the female protagonists, your only way of getting any action is defeat rape.
Oh, and there's naughty nipplesucking mimics. And you get a free option for walking around with your tits out (Half Nude Mode in the menu). But that probably isn't what you came here for, is it?
If you're like me, you opened this thread, you immediately noticed that screenshot of that female protagonist scissoring with another girl, and you were like "fuck YES". It's not that common for games like this to give you a good opportunity to lez out - and I like it all the more when it's lesbian content with other plot-relevant characters. Which did seem to be the case here.
...but alas.
The character, Kamui, is a bonus character who only becomes available after you've finished the game once. She has no plot relevance, and she doesn't even get any lines. So much for my hopes that she's a romanceable companion or something.
But to add insult to injury, you can't even access that scissoring scene in-game. The scene is unlocked in the gallery once you unlock Kamui - but you can't actually trigger it in-game in any way. Even though Kamui also has a straight sexscene with the male protagonist, which can be activated in camp just fine.
Honestly, that pissed me off just a little bit more than it should have. It's probably just a minor oversight on part of the devs, but still.
I mean, I like my sexscenes with a little buildup beforehand. That's why I play porngames. That little bit of buildup + interactivity can turn an otherwise unremarkable sexscene into something great.
...on that note, even most of the straight sexscenes are reaaaaally lacking in buildup in this game.
I mean, you know what most of them are like? Go the the dungeon entrance in town → click 'Team' → select some character with a heart → click 'Sex'. And then you'll be having sex out there in the open. Rutting in the gutter, right next to where Conette is standing.
You don't even get the chance to go to a quiet spot or anything.
Barring the defeat rape, the only real exception to this is the prostitution sex you get from Lamia. At least that takes place in or next to her tent instead of at the town entrance.
The whole thing is just another wasted opportunity, really.
..
The clunky default controls, the terse writing, the extremely barebones way that the sexual content is handled, and the lost potential in general - all of these things hurt this game a lot. This game would have been 2 stars at most if it wouldn't have been balanced out by its strong points.
But at the same time, those strong points should not be dismissed. It's still quite decent as a game overall, and the art is amazing. And even the porn is actually good - it's just that the ways to reach it in-game leave a lot to be desired.
So, in all, I'm giving this one a 4/5
