I never write reviews but figured I would for Jessika's Curse. The reason being, I think it has the foundation of a very good game. The most recent update really showed what potential it has. Art is fantastic, animations are solid, and the core gameplay is fun and engaging. So instead of focusing on the things that will likely get fleshed out as the game developes (like bugs), I will instead focus on major problems/shortcomings that will need to be reworked.
So to put it very simply, this is Darkest Dungeon but stylized to fit around porn. Currently you have 4 available party members; a Busty Priestess, a Sardonic Sorceress, a Flat-Chested Rogue and a Bimbo Knight. All four characters are drawn extremely well and offer good, unique things in terms of looks and sexual appeal. Instead of gaining Stress your characters gain Lust, and are prone to fucking/masturbation/molesting each other or the enemies during the midst of battle if their Lust gets too high.
The problems stem from the fact that the rest of the game is TOO MUCH like Darkest Dungeon. I won’t compare every single aspect, instead just point out what doesn’t work in JC. First of all the combat is too hard. Enemies can 1-hit KO party members with a lucky crit. Normally this isn’t a big deal but in JC every dungeon has a boss at the end, and it is practically impossible to win vs. The boss without 4 party members. All the enemies have way too much health as well. Basic level 1 enemies have around the same amount of HP as the party, and the same damage. This makes it so that the most survivable way of fighting combat is spamming stun/blind, and then bursting down enemies who aren’t stunned/blind. If youre outnumbered, you will likely be taking a lot of damage which you have no way of actively restoring outside of combat.
The not-Curio interaction objects are pretty out of wack. Most are useless/pointless, excepting the Fountain Statue thing that heals a major portion of health. And conversely, the one not-Curio that can poison you, which will tick massive chunks of health every few steps through the dungeon until you heal it - and you can only heal during combat, so if you don’t get combat you might just lose someone and have to leave. There also needs to be some kind of keyboard button to open the chests so you don’t have to click on them every single time - if there is one I missed it.
Disregarding health/damage, enemy balance is also not great. So far I’ve run into Myconids (Big-mushrooms), Goblins, Wolfs, and Bandit archers. Myconids are fine. They either do lust damage or low physical damage. Goblins seem overtuned. They have physical melee, physical ranged, and lust melee (but it seems to be able to target anyone). Wolfs are utterly broken and will completely wash your run if you get unlucky. The reason being is that Wolfs not only have high damage, but every single wolf has the ability to howl and call in a second wolf. You can get overwhelmed extremely quickly in a fight if all the Wolfs just decide to spam howl and you find yourself fighting an endless wave of wolfs. There needs to be an Alpha wolf or something who has this ability. Being able to call in reinforcements in a game that is very determined by Action-Economy (how many actions each team has) is gamebreaking. Wolfs are broken, through and through. Lastly the Bandit archers. Also broken. It seems if the bandit archers are located in the backline of the fight they can target all 4 players with the same amount of damage that their regular 1-target shots do. This is utterly insane, especially in the boss fight where there are 5 bandits. I will bring up Darkest Dungeon again to compare - all abilities that target multiple enemies/the whole line do significantly less damage, which is why they are balanced. Archers need to be tuned way down, specifically that one ability.
Finally the “Afflictions” mechanic. Basically if anything bad happens to your party members they will gain negative traits like “Nymphomaniac,” “Sadistic” etc. Currently they gain these traits way too quickly, there is no way to see what they actually do, and no way to reliably get rid of the traits. You just put them in the church, pay money, and hope they go away. These happen way too often and are way too detrimental. I have found that characters will ignore orders entirely with low lust because of these silly traits. If you’re going to do these negative traits, you need to do positive ones as well.
I’ll laundry list the rest of things I think need to change/would like to see added/removed.
-Gold grind is way too slow, and rewards for dungeons are pathetic.
-Needs to be a dedicated way to remove afflictions.
-Voiced dialogue is nice but unnecessary. This should not be a major focus of your development.
-Characters having clothing changes as they get Lustbroken would be cool to see in-dungeon. Having their equipment get upgraded as you upgrade at the blacksmith would also be cool. Since your following DDs style, color pallette swaps could be interesting.
-Dungeons are generally too long. Having a boss at the end of every dungeon means it should be short and to the point, not forcing you to wander around for 20 minutes.
-Characters need swappable skills (I think you’ve addressed this already). But in the current state there needs to be more stun/blind/disabling skills, or the combat balance needs to change altogether.
-Gallery only seems to show scenes of your party members trying to molest each other on lustbreak. It doesn’t show any of the monsterxparty interactions, or the partyxparty sex scenes.
That’s pretty much it. It sounds very negative, so I’ll end on a positive note. I like this game a lot. It could be my favorite porn game if the developments continues on well. The art is fantastic. The gameplay to porn ratio is perfect. The animations are solid for what they are, assuming they all get fleshed out more then 10/10. The style, music, world and setting are all great as well. So I give this game a 4/5. I hope to see it continue to develop, and will donate on patreon though I rarely do because I believe there is something good going here.
