RPGM - Completed - Laura of Zero Moon [v1.0.4] [piyokogundan]

I am writing this after playing the whole game. It took me about 26 hours to complete everything. The gameplay wasn't that hard, I just had to grind a little a few times and I would be able to defeat the enemy. The fighting isn't your average rpg where you just attack, defend, and heal. All the characters have abilities that are unique to them and you can create numerous combinations with their abilities to get your desired results. There were moments that felt boring or tedious to do but I absolutely loved the story of the game. It's about two girls who vowed to be together when they were young, but got separated. A few years later and they are back together again with their relationship growing stronger by overcoming numerous challenges. The other main characters also played a huge role. The sex scenes were okay. They weren't that glamorous but they weren't boring either. I liked that they put a feature letting you decide if you want to view the sex scenes or not, and they usually give you hints on what to expect from that sex scene, so you can choose to skip what you don't feel comfortable watching. The English wasn't so bad. I just had to guess on what they were saying based on the sort of broken English they were using. It mostly made sense. After I completed the whole game, I felt sort of sad that the adventure with them is ending. Out of all the hentai games I've played, this one has definably one of the best story I have ever read, and out of all the jrpgs I've played, this one has one of the best battle systems I've ever experienced.

Completed the game on hard difficulty, it was an experience alright (23h playtime). First of all, there're maybe two or three mild yuri scenes with main characters, the rest are futa, be warned. Secondly, side characters engage with men, some in prostitution. Those side characters are very much involved in the story to the point where you might call them a part of the main cast, so yeah, if you are a "yuri enthusiast" it will leave a bad taste.

- The story is straightforward, but well-written. It has a heavy contrast of cute and wholesome moments or lighthearted humour to some brutal or sad events. Characters are very well built and developed. There are choices in the story, but they rarely matter (aside from the "yuri branch" where you can avoid sharing of the main characters i.e. skip some scenes).

- Combat is surprisingly fun and there are a lot of unique bosses to challenge. Random encounters can be tedious, but they are mostly avoidable. And I'd advise to do so because with each new location the exp you get raises considerably. So as long as you're able to kill bosses, don't waste time farming trash.

- H-Scenes are pretty good quality if you don't mind what's mentioned at the top. This is not a game where the protagonist fucks all of the cast. It's more like every character has their own thing going and scenes are evenly spread among them.

- Translation has nothing to do with the game quality, but it's readable mtl. There were no sentences I couldn't understand or had to guess.

- Extra: music, animations, scripts, effects etc. are very well done. I'd say you can't ask for more from rpgm. Attention to details is great.

Overall, while this game certainly doesn't fall into any narrow category and I was put off by some stuff, I can't bring myself to give it less than 5*. This is a very solid work all around.

4 stars but almost entirely for the SFW part of the game, as a porn game it's probably a low 3/high 2 star game just because the scenes are pretty spread out and not really intergrated. The translation is workable, like most MTL it can't keep track of pronouns but it was generally understandable. I'd really like to see a proper translation but given the length of the game I'm not holding my breath.

The main focus was put on the story which is well executed for the most part. It's overall lighthearted but with occasional tragic moments that, while effective, often come out of nowhere and can feel somewhat jarring. It's a fairly long game too, a little over 16 hours for my playthrough.

There was also a fair bit of effort put into the combat which is rare for RPGM games, lots of unique abilities to play around with and some decent boss fights to use them on. It somewhat suffers from a fair amount of grinding through trash mobs but they're also pretty quick fights and mostly avoidable aside from a few locations with random encounters.

TLDR: A wholesome RPG brought down a star by some pretty harsh tonal whiplash and underwhelming sex scenes.