Stumbled upon this a couple of days ago, and had some great fun with this. Why the 3 stars then? Well, let me explain. That's gonna be a long wall of text and in this particular case I'm not gonna provide a TLDR version, so brew yourself some coffee or something, buckle up and LET'S GOOO!
In short, those are the pros:
1. Mechanics are quite solid in its core and some are interesting overall. Especially enchanting: it's just the cream of the crop amongst the most, if not all, enchanting systems I've ever seen in games, as well as the lore-explained counter-balancing feature that discourages you to go enchanting every sock you wear to the max. I especially liked how some certain personality traits affect every character's speech in the game - a very neat touch.
2. Somewhat related to the enchanting system I've mentioned: there's tons customization options to make. You can literally mold your character into whatever you want.
3. The progression feels pretty nice(that is, until you pick up that one broken perk in the middle branch and go unarmed physique build with all related perks and enchantments)
4. The plot and the lore is pretty entertaining to seep through. I dare to say: some of the best ones in the heavy porn-related games like this one. Same goes for unique NPC interactions and dialogues - it's just that good and satisfying to read most of the times. The game feels alive.
5. Most of the times, if not all, you have plenty of choices to make in order to progress.
Now onto negatives that counteract those pros with some more explicit commentary.
1. While the core mechanics are solid, the game struggles with variety to represent them. I have no qualms with battle mechanics, they work as intended. Sex mechanics, however, is a different thing altogether: every sex option you can choose has two or three slightly different description variations of that particular act. For a text-based game where you fuck a lot, it's a bit too meager, don't you think? And that doesn't go for generic NPCs only, but for every NPC in the game.
Imagine my confusion when I started fucking with some unique NPC with some particular traits, and they behaved and talked in the exact same ways as any other ordinary Joe or Jane you've encountered up to this point. In case of unique NPCs, however, there's often some neat flavor text in the beginning of the scene that can go from a few lines to a few paragraphs, but after that? After that it's the same unvaried mundanity you've read thousands of times by then. It's a very bad sign when you start seeking to skip sex in a porn game, and that's exactly the case there.
Not gonna nitpick about other, more minor mechanics, just gonna say that they work and they need to be polished a bit more.
2. While there are tons and tons of customization options, you barely have any indication of it. Same goes for other characters. Basically, unless you specifically inspect a character, or suddenly get some specific choices(like, fly over the wall if you have wings and similar stuff) you barely have any idea how anything, including yourself, looks like. While there is some fluff text that indicates that this or that character have those or these kinda bodyparts that you use to sex people, there's not nearly enough.
The peak of this kinda fluff can be seen when you expose someone's privates and the game explicitly describes the color or shape of everything related to this particular body area, but there's not gonna be something similarly explicit down the line about your or their body overall. For example, it'd be nice if the game occasionally described the color of eyes and shape of pupil or irises, when the characters look at each other or stare seductively or something. Or add some random fluff actions which describe other, unrelated to sex body parts during the act, like the partner ruffling your wings, stroking your monster-like arms, etc., etc. to give the player a more explicit idea of how you or them look like and add more intimate feeling to an act.
Basically, this lack in variety of descriptions renders the whole aspect of superficial customizations obsolete which deals a huge blow to the descriptive narrative, which is not good for a text-based game, while the heavier aspect where you transform your body parts into different ones might give you at least some gameplay advantages and that's about it.
3. My main nitpick with progression is with only that one perk that I've mentioned. Anyone who played the game knows which one I'm talking about, and those who'll only start will realize immediately after the first look through the perk screen.
As for the perk system itself - it's mostly uninspired. While there are a couple of interesting options here and there, most of those you'll have to put your perk points into are those pesky "+1 to stat" padding perks. It shouldn't even count as "perks" IMO. The game explicitly states that the perk tree is a work in progress, so, I guess, whatever, it's gonna be reworked eventually or something.
4. Whatever lore and plot is in the game, as I said - is amazing. But I do have a gripe with it: there's simply not enough. As of now, there's a somewhat reasonably-sized main quest chain in the Dominion(the first and the main city of the game world) and a bit of the following questline(presumably, the first part out of eight). Just a little bit though: enough to have a taste, but not even barely enough to sate the hunger.
As I found out later, the game was out for years now and it's experiencing the same bullshit treatment as the other game with the similar format(Monster Girl Dreams) and many other, if not most, of the user-funded games on the market.
Basically, there's barely any progress. For a long time now. Which saddens me to no end, because whatever framework is there - it's excellent.
Is it due to burnout? Or due to the fact that main devs want to keep milking gullible people until the moat runs dry? Unclear. What is clear, however, is that the Rance 10 MangaGamer's translation will probably be released before this game does, IF it does. In either case, however, most of us will be dead of old age by then, lmao.
5. Can't really say anything bad about the choices and such, only that for repeatable ones there should be more fluff text for variety. Yeah, the lacking variety is the main concern for this game.
That's all I have to say about the game. Well, most of what I wanted to say.
Do I recommend it? Depends.
If you don't mind blue-balling yourself over inconsistent updates, lacking content and don't find the lack of variety in the text-based games unappealing - then yeah? It's a pretty solid experience if you ignore all those bits.
Otherwise? No.
Just write this game's name down in some note, bury it somewhere in your backyard and set an alarm on one of your devices to some time in a few years from now to unbury it and remember it ever existed and make your final decision. By then you are going to know whether the game was finally finished, accumulated a good modding community to keep it alive or was abandoned altogether. And, based on that, you'll know whether you want to play this game or not.
