Unity - Completed - Love of Magic [B2 v1.2.6] [Droid Productions]

TL;DR: I absolutely LOVE Love of Magic. Is it perfect? I won't say that, but it did a lot of things right and it's an engaging read that I wouldn't hesitate recommending it to anyone looking for a game with great story.

Disclaimer: This review only takes into consideration up to ACT XIV and the game's still in development. I highly doubt the next few acts would disappoint, but just putting it out there that I can only review what's been released.

What is Love of Magic?

Basically, it's an Arthurian legend game mixed with other mythological creatures and characters set in modern era, with mystery and lore written in a quality that I haven't seen in any game (or media) for a long time.

What it isn't:

Not a quick fap game. None of the girls are remotely unattractive, sure, except for one (Day 108, if you know, you know) but the sex scenes are few enough in absolute numbers and far apart enough that if you're wanting some release, I'd suggest to just minimize the game and open a porn site or something before going back to it. This is in no way a negative, in my opinion. All the sex scenes are very in-line with the personality of the characters involved and none are added frivolously just for the sake of having it.

Gameplay:

This is an open sandbox game where you can interact with the characters throughout the world either by going to their usual locations or happening upon them while they're also walking around the area. Time management (especially in B2) can be tight, but it's forgiving enough that you can do it without following a walkthrough religiously and won't heavily punish you for it but rewarding enough when you do it right.

There are also the Elsewhere and Magic battles. It's a variation of poker combined with deck building. Like all else in this game, it's a simple concept with more depth the more you learn about it. Then again, I get that not all people are into it (I wasn't, at first, but got hooked along the way) and the dev added several ways to simply skip it altogether. Heck, if you want, you can just turn the enemy's health to 0. Though I'd still suggest to others to give it a try. Like in my experience, you may grow to like it more than you'd expect. If it still ain't for you, then those skips would still be available for you to use.

Characters:

Models: As I've mentioned above, all the girls except one were attractive. I'm also ever so thankful that none have boobs and asses that are each bigger than their torso. The guys are relatively good-looking too. No ugly bastards (so far) and every character is also expressive enough to convey emotions from angry to smug, intimidating, or even scared shitless.

Personality: I am so glad to find a game where nobody is two-dimensional. A lot of the characters start and you can fit into an archetype, but as you play along, you can see various depths for each one of them. Heck, even your GF's dad has more layers to him than you'd initially think. Overall, I respect the author's way of giving characters depth without also disrespecting any of them in the process and it's done so well in this game.

Story:

You're an American guy raised by a single mom who traveled to Edinburgh to learn magic after being attacked by a corpse dog saying they'd want to prevent a so-called prophecy. Not every (un)friendly face is what they seem and the characters have their own goals and principles for achieving them.


The tone of the game strikes a balance though it is relatively light. There are moments of sadness, the implication of torture, (mass) murder, etc. but you feel that the game takes place in a world where it's light enough that you can buy that people (even powerful mages) would agree to live in it under those conditions and has enough shadow that it doesn't make you think you're playing a sanitized world. It's a believable world.

The game asks a lot of philosophical questions without it feeling it's been forced into the dialog and each of the characters has their distinct opinions about most of it. Each of them is relevant to the story or what the character is going through.

Music: The game uses royalty-free music. Each of them fit the given location they play especially in the lens of the MC (e.g., the Elsewhere theme would have an otherworldly ring to it, the Edinburgh is strange but upbeat, Camelot's is so obviously closely related to Emily's, etc.) The various character themes also fit each one of them.

If I've got a very dumb and minor nitpick, it'll be Berserker and Bella's theme (The Foreign Tale) have such a long windup that wanting to time it with the moment things go down can be pretty hard even on my subsequent playthroughs. But again, it's me being dumb and nitpicky with my own way of playing, wanting to sync them and stuff. They are still music that suits the scene and will make your adrenaline pumping regardless.

Dialogs:

Each of the character have their own voices and how they speak contributes to the character's, well, character. Some might feel that some of the characters' lines felt weirdly worded, you'll find that perhaps it's because they're not saying what you think they do and it's only weird because you're presupposing what they meant. Overall, I always find it delightful when I see each of these under a new light on subsequent playthroughs.

Another thing I'd like to add though perhaps should be a minor point, is that the dialog is written by a person who can actually write proper English. No "would of" or "irregardless" or any weird words and phrases people type online that seem to bleed through other people thinking it's correct or some crap.


Overall, I'm happy I found this gem of a game and was able to play it. I'm looking forward to how the game goes from here.

EDIT: Just got done with ACT XIV. It keeps getting better and better. I love it, especially the last event for the act.

I've only finished Book 1 so that is what this review is based on. I may update the review after playing Book 2 and 3.

Visuals
Backgrounds - Good to excellent
Character models - Excellent
Renders - Average to above average (will explain later)
Videos - Good to excellent
Animations - Poor to excellent (will explain later)

Story & Writing
Story - Excellent
Writing - Excellent
Depth of characters - Average (aside from the MC and Emily which are excellent)
Character development - Good

Gameplay & UI
Gameplay - Excellent
RPG Elements - Excellent
Sandbox Elements - Good
UI - Good

Overall Impressions
Love of Magic is a fun and unique game. It is one of the few visual novels that combines sandbox and RPG elements near perfectly. It is one of my favorite games on this site.

The writing and story are clever and engaging. The story and writing are, by far, the highlights of the game. I enjoyed the poker combat despite all the criticism about it. I thought it was well done and is something that is unique to this game.

The game works very well as a whole and is one of the best and most unique games of it's kind on this site.

Cons

• The character models are excellent but are sometimes damaged by poor renders. Their skin and body details are sometimes good and at other times poor with lots of graininess and skin blotches. I'm guessing there are three reasons for this. #1 - Low resolution renders #2 - Low number of passes when producing the renders #3 - Poor lighting. It feels like the author favored rendering speed over quality far too frequently.
• My second largest complaint is the animations. The author does two animations really well in Book 1 and the rest are rather poor. Again, a problem with favoring production speed over quality. There is no consistency with the animations in the game (they are all over the place in terms of quality, most being below average)
• My third largest complaint is the lack of sex scenes. The game is extremely story based with some sex scenes thrown in. There should have been at least two more sex scenes with each of the LIs in the game. It feels lacking in terms of lewd/H content. For example, you can only have sex with Molly once at her dance studio (all other visits result in nothing). This happens with all the LIs in the game. Emily has the most lewd scenes but even she cock blocks the player a lot throughout the game. The majority of the sex scenes in the game are not animated.
• There are a few bugs in the game such as missing events on the calendar (mostly in the month of December), options that always do nothing after they are used once for a new scene, being able to click on a card in Elsewhere with only one action left and then being told you have to return home after the card was revealed (it takes one action to click on the card, revealing it, and one action to do the event on the card).

Summary

An awesome game that is hindered by the author favoring production speed over quality (poor renders, only a few good animations, most sex scenes aren't animated, lack of sex scenes).

The game would be a masterpiece if quality was the primary focus throughout Book 1 and the quality was consistent throughout the game. Still, the game is awesome and deserves a 5 star rating!

The writing and story are some of the best I've seen!

I had an awesome time with the game and am very happy that I gave it a try!

This is a very good game indeed, with some huge strengths and very few weaknesses. I have just finished playing through Book 2 and have started on Book 3. Although I discovered this game on F95 I have purchased it on Steam and am following Book 3 through the beta branch option.

Strengths:
- A really engaging story, with some very original elements. I am not aware of anything similar.
- The integration of the supernatural with aspects of modern Britain and the UK military is particularly well done.
- A literate writing style which shows the writer is well-read themselves.
- Very individual character models, coupled with individual personalities for the main characters. These strongly contribute to the narrative and I will admit to having cried at the end of Book 2.

Weaknesses
- Some of the earlier elements in the story (like the bookshop and cafe) do not seem to be all that important later on, but perhaps that is due to choices I made.
- Not a criticism of the final product, of course, but for the game in progress it is a bit frustrating to be going round in circles while no new real content appears. Maybe there could be some more indication of what actual progress is being made.
- The poker aspects do not interest me, but even if they did I'm not sure they would add anything to the experience. But too late to disentangle them from the game.

I've played a lot of games on this site, and have enjoyed quite a few of them. This is the first that made me put my dick away and just enjoy the characters and story. That's not to say the erotic parts are lesser, they're great! It's just that the writing is that damn good.

If you held a gun to my head and forced me to criticize something, I'd say that once you realize that the idle animation for characters is just a 2d image warping and not a 3d animation it hits hard on the uncanny valley spectrum. But the writing is seriously so good that I don't notice it 95% of the time.

Just made it through Book 1 and immediately started along with Book 2. I'm almost overwhelmed with how much high quality content this game is packing. The story threads are finely interwoven and leave you longing for more.

I've been playing this game from book 1 until now book 3. My review was the game is awesome. From story wise the game is pretty good, rendering image and animation for this game also amaizing. If you play this game you need to focus on all quests and check some hidden quest too. For sound or VA i don't have much comment about that because i never use or heard ingame music.

*have only played most of book1, have decided this isn't worth my braincells after 10 hours of gameplay*

Pros

• Somewhat interesting world.
• Has music.
• Very haremy.
• Character visuals are kind of neat.
• In-built cheating. Thank God.

Cons

• Gameplay is very repetitive and uninspired. Not a challenge, nor interesting by any merit after the novelty wears off.
• Fair warning, the way this game tries to entice is through giving the MC a sense of grandeur that doesn't fit very well.
• Your decisions mean effectively nothing, enjoy railroading.
• Chosen-one syndrome to the extreme. Makes every character feel like a soulless husk with no willpower, despite the game pretending otherwise.
• Characters are shallow imitations of already generic tropes.
• Generic is the kindest term used to describe nearly everything else, too.
• Scenes are very tame and rather lackluster.
• The music is always either kind of bland or really jarring.
• Dialogue is monotonous, with most of the differences being awkward accents or aggression of tone.
• The concept of romance or eroticism in this game is skewed poorly.
• Decent character visuals forcibly contrasted with poor aesthetic design choices makes for a rather appealing disconnect.
• Every attempt at giving weight to scenes tends to be ruined by not leading up to it properly AND(not or) the writing failing to express it.
• I can't even remember enough of the game to bring up more shortcomings which I know I've read but forgotten in the time playing it. Which is impressive in its own right.

Summary
All in all, I'm sorely disappointed. There's a decent amount of content, I think, it's hard to tell given there's a lot of fluff in the game, but it fails to provide any sort of flavor for me. Might be more for the self-insert harem enjoyers. (simple harem progression with more a focus on stroking your ego than being interesting. If that works for ya, this is probably a good choice.)

Extra note
I've only played up to a point in the first book, I may finish it so I can modify this review if needed. The initial experience was decent, I was hopeful at first. Like biting into a piece of steak... texture is average and the taste is decent... but you can't seem to stop chewing it and after half a day... it's still there, with no payoff. Maybe it was just this one bite and the rest of the meat is better, but I've been chewing on this thing for a good dozen hours, so spitting it out is the preferred option. Whether I'll continue depends on how desperately bored I am and whether I read any reviews that accurately provide a point on the later parts.

Click to expand...

Absolutely excellent. Starts Slow and a little exposition in the beginning but only to set up a whole world and a gameplay system that is fun and engaging. The characters and dialogues written well, and the pace of the story almost perfect, Really excited to see what comes next in the coming parts in the overarching narrative. 5/5

Droid is a awesome game developer Love of Magic has great renders good story and the updates come out pretty consistent. I had already got Love of Magic off his Patreon a while ago but went ahead and bought it off steam too for that little bit of extra support. My only negative thing to say is not a big fan of the unity engine I always liked Renpy better.

A well-written AVN in the fantasy genre. Currently, with two books out of three produced, there's plenty of story already told which will keep you entertained for a good number of hours. Yet the story never feels long-winded and seems to maintain composure and direction which keeps the story entertaining.

I really don't get the low standards people have. Sure, this game is big and ambitious, but ambition is a curse when you can't live up to it, and Love of Magic comes up tragically short. It has no life to it- no vitality, no passion.

The visuals are difficult to judge; the idea of having photo backgrounds with character models imposed over them could work, if you don't have those models constantly gyrating on the spot. Seriously, they aren't even real animations; they're just flexing distortions of still renders, it looks fucking awful, and you can't fucking turn them off. To say nothing of the MC, who (at the age of 22) looks like a 50 year old with over-dyed hair and a bad comb over.

The gameplay is somehow both trivial and unforgiving. It's a sandbox with a ton of locations but not much of anything to do in them; some spots are important for exactly one scene and then are never used again, but you keep the option to go back for... reasons? It's cluttered and irritating and almost entirely pointless, but I'm fine with that. What I'm not fine with is how events can pop up in a specific location at a specific time on a specific day, and the game doesn't alert you to the fact- and if you miss them, they're gone for good, as are all the scenes that rely on them. NO. THAT'S FUCKING STUPID. To get the scenes without tearing your hair out, you'll probably need a day-by-day walkthrough and to follow it religiously- and even then it's no sure bet.

The combat is, at least, an intriguing premise, though not for this game itself. You have a bingo grid of playing cards and you need to make poker hands with the cards dealt to you. Each hand corresponds to a gem you have socketed for it specifically, and the higher the hand, the more powerful the gems you can pair them to. Problem is the justification in-universe is trash (you're a fireball slinging superwizard, but you visualize your magic as poker because you're trying to make sense out of chaos) and just doesn't fit the rest of the game's tone. I don't feel like an Evoker- I feel like a middle-aged man in a mid-life crisis gambling match with weirdos in fursuits.

The sex scenes might as well not exist, honestly; they're just a couple of still images with a little bit of text vaguely describing the act, followed by a smash cut to the girl with jizz on her face. There's no sense of passion to any of it (excepting occasions with the main LI who seems like the only one the dev remotely cared about, and even then it's not good), and the buildup of sexual tension and release is completely glossed over. None of the characters involved ever really speak like they're all that interested in it either; One second, the MC is dryly mentioning he's about to burst- the next scene, he's cum all over the girl's chest and mentions how that was pretty fun. It's like the author has some crippling fear of portraying sexual climax and afterglow.

The worst (and most devastating part) of the game's problems is the writing, which most reviewers here clearly have bad taste in. It's mostly well done from a technical and grammatic standpoint, which is commendable considering how so many authors are inept at even this. But the tone of the writing is godawful. There's a whole lot of telling you how you feel, or what other characters are doing, but because of the lazy visuals, that's all that you get- telling, not showing. One scene has the MC and a new friend drinking, but you can only understand that by the fact that they're constantly talking about how they're drinking. There's no descriptive text mentioning this- in fact, the visuals show they're still in the middle of the university's courtyard. Then there's the MC being ostensibly from rural Maryland, but speaking like a posh, pretentious Brit, with lots of "perhaps" and "indeed" and "quite" and "bugger" and all kinds of phrases and speech patterns no rural Marylander would use (I know, I grew up not far from there myself). And the poor emotional weight of the writing is exemplified by a scene several weeks into the game where something happens to the MC; READ BELOW FOR VERY MILD PARAPHRASED SPOILERS WITH NO SPECIFICS:


You might think I'm exaggerating. I'm not. That's the EXACT tone of a scene that happens in the game; it's supposed to be shocking and dramatic, but it's so badly executed that it almost feels like a parody. So far that's the worst I've seen of the writing, but elements of it are sprinkled everywhere. The dialogue is entirely functional without one single ounce of emotion injected into it. People in pain never speak like they're in pain. We can only tell people are in love because they say it, over and over again. We know that people are furious because they calmly mention how very angry they are. We're frequently told how characters are feeling, but it's never expressed in their voice or actions. Every line of dialogue, no matter how important or charged it's supposed to be, feels like a casual and slightly dull conversation with vague attempts at snark thrown in. Even unbelievably ancient beings of incredible knowledge and power speak like bored 20-somethings just trying to move things along.

I give the game 2 stars because it has a lot of technical competency going into it, and because elements of the worldbuilding have some intriguing merit to them- but everything else falls short of the finish line. People need some goddamn critical standards.

Definitely a Gem (pun intended). It's a game made to have a great story and it definitely achieves that. The characters are great, unique and full of depth. I can't wait to see how the story proceeds.

Came for adult content..
Stayed for much, MUCH more.

Somewhat general statement:
Are you looking for AVN filled from start to end with sex scenes? ... This is probably not game for you.
Are you looking for nice story, very good characters fill with links to many fantasy and sci-fi writers (Dune, Wheel of Time) AND Monty Python references? ... This game offers all of those and much more.

Environment:
Graphics is somehow different than most AVNs and suits fantasy motives of Love of Magic.
Sandbox elements are very good. Fights are "poker looking" puzzles (You do not have to know anything about poker to master it in few tries), but you can skip most of those, if you do not like it.
Soundtrack is made for this game by very very talented artists!

Characters and ladies:
Game is more story oriented than most of games of this genre, so you will not have freedom you might like in AVNs.
Is that necessary bad thing? No, it is not. It takes your freedom to make solid story. Good trade off? You will be judge.
Ladies are beautiful with character depths you won't encounter in AVNs.
Not that many renders of sexual content included.


Finishing words:
This is NOT for everyone. But for me, this is best VN(ish) games can offer.

The game could be fantastic, but several things are holding it back.

One factor are the visuals. The decision to mostly use photo backgrounds of real locations results in the rendered characters being mostly superimposed on the backgrounds, not really interacting with their environment.

The poker based combat system is a neat idea, however at a certain point it becomes trivial since your companions (and eventually you) can do SO much damage that enemies have very little chance against you. Now combat is hardly ever mandatory but you need it if you want to build your character, the grind is not all that terrible though and early on the poker based combat can be quite fun. That only changes as you and your companiens level up and gain new abilities.

I am also not a fan that certain things are entirely unavoidable. Your main LI is something you can't change for story reasons (but she is likable and cute), you also cannot avoid cheating on your main LI who is of course 100% ok with sharing you, as women usually are (I am joking), you will inevitably get a small harem of extremely loyal quasi girlfriends.

Some kinks are also unavoidable, if you are no fan of anal sex then you are out of luck, while it may be included for the comedy it's still something some people would rather not see or play. You get no choice here though.

Also, while the game is story focused, meaning that sex is not the main factor here, the game still lacks several meaningful interactions with your various love interests, your main LI even outright tells you to do more for your other harem members (she really is VERY understanding....) several times, yet outside of the main story you hardly ever interact with your other LIs, which would be ok if the MC wants to be faithful, but he's anything but.

Another thing I did not like at all is the forced submissve (no avoiding it) aspect of the romance with the three other LIs. You can at least change the default "Master" or "My Lord" nickname , I changed it to "honey" or "sweetheart" just for the lols, but the submissive nature won't entirely go away.

In an optional side story the MC outright behaves like a creep when he takes advantage of a barista and plays silly games with her just to get into her pants. While it is optional it feels entirely out of character for the MC and should have been handled very differently.

On the positive side the story is pretty great, even if a bit outrageous, but it's strong enough to always keep your interest up and depending on personal tastes (do you like mostly vanilla / lovey dovey?) the main LI is a sweet and likable character you will grow very fond of. Even most of your harem members are likable.

If you, like me, have an ultra widescreen monitor (21:9) you cannot play this game in fullscreen, it will scale across your entire monitor resulting in a very weird looking game with characters not in the right place (their placement seems to depend on the resolution of the screen) so you need to play it in windowed mode and you need to manually adjust the window size.

All in all Love of Magic is not a bad VN, the story is good, most characters are fairly interesting, it does get epic here and there and sometimes the developer tries to create mini movies within the game with long animations, but making several things unavoidable, giving you no choice in the matter, a lack of more meaningful interactions with your various LIs and the completely pointless combat once you reach a certain level (you are basically in godmode eventually) hold the VN back.

And using photos as background instead of rendered environments - only some environments are rendered - robs the game a bit of immersion, because the characters are superimposed, cast no shadows and pop in and out of existence depending on who is currently talking to you.

If you want to level up your character chances are you will spend a lot more time grinding for points or money than interacting with the characters you care about. Even though you can include them in your party, but party interactions are extremely limited, each party member maybe has one short scene at a camp (not rendered, text only), but after that you will get nothing.

The sandbox aspect is mostly ok, you usually have clues where characters are, but sometimes it's easy to miss events that are not indicated, a walkthrough is 100% recommended if you want to experience and see all side content, the main content is unmissable, but many other things can easily be missed forever if you do not know where to be at the right time, resulting in entire side quest chains never available to you. A more robust hint system would have helped, especially since exploration of the sandbox is pretty boring, you just hop from one photo background to the next and you can do that at various times of the day, morning, evening, night and late night. For some reason "evening" is sometimes referred to as "afternoon" in the dialogue which can be confusing at times.

The game is worth your time though if you can live with the lack of choices here and there, some forced content/kinks you can't avoid even if you'd like to, and a lack of interaction with your various LIs, including the main LI who is even outright removed from the game for a lengthy stretch of time in the first part, a general scarcity of more steamy scenes and a combat system that will at some point wear out its welcome and become pretty boring.

Book II end of act X
Let's begin with this game is perfect, not the best sex game but definitely the best story in the AVN's I've played, so if you know what you're looking for and that's The Perfect story you're in the right place, about the characters they are all well written and you'll love them , character arcs and developments all done in the best way possible.
music compliments the tone of the game and they're so good I have some of them in my phone's Playlist , it can improve in some fronts and it already has at this point compared to book one like adding fully animated scenes or ability to skip most of the combat but none of them matter because at the end of the day I'm here for the story
Droid is one of the most talented writers I've seen in this space so don't doubt this game it'll be an awesome experience and trust me you'll even feel nostalgic about it when you're done

An excellent well-made game. Have done several play throughs and it never gets old. Great character development and story arc. Plus some really great art. Definitely recommend you give this a try if you haven't yet.

I'm only finishing the Book I, but I feel like I've already seen enough for a review.

Honestly, I wasn't expecting much, but the game is actually a gem. The writing is top-notch, the story is very engaging and feels like a good book. The author clearly is a well-read person, you can spot a lot of threads from different works. The amount of content is worth mentioning as well, being traumatized by "WIPs" of F95, I really expected it to be cut-off at the first month, but the Book I is actually a complete game already.

While story is the strongest point of this game, let's talk about the other ones. The combat is alright. Can't say that I love it or hate it. Could be better, but the game would be less fun without it. The weakest point I think is the H-scenes. There're no shortage of them and they're well-written, but there usually are a few renders and they're just... not hot somehow. The angles often block your vision of the action, this kind of stuff. Later in the game there're animated scenes, but it still feels like a part of the story in a boring way. Can't say if they're getting better going forward, I'll edit this part if that's the case.

That being said, the game is still wonderful. I'd even recommend it to irl friends, which isn't what you usually do with NSFW stuff Forget your preferable tags - if you want a good read, this game is for you.

Game Version Reviewed: 1.2.1

5/5 Overall 2/5 for sexual content (its not that type of story)

I have heard many things about Unity games of this genre not being particularly good or well put together, so naturally when starting this game I was very skeptical. Let me assure anyone reading that this is very much NOT the case for Love Of Magic. It is excellently put together, and I cannot recommend it enough. The story is very engaging, and well written, and at times absolutely hilarious, over the course of playing I found myself unable to stop always wanting to know what was going to come next.

This is not a game that has a story centered around sex, there are erotic scenes in the game, some of them have a bit of animation, but the majority of the scenes are mostly still images, but they are there to enhance the story, not for pure pornographic purposes.

At the time of writing this review I have just finished Book 1 and highly recommend playing this game and giving it a try to see if you enjoy it as much as I did. Please support this amazing developer!

One of the best games I've played in a long time.
Great depth of characters, and excellent story.
I have played this through twice now, once just before the final act was released, and once after it was complete; some optional paths were new, and some paths I didn't do the second time. Well worth playing!

Reviewed version: 1.2.1 (? thread says 1.1.9b)

I'm barely into this and can already tell it's a banger. Characters are distinct, the lore is interesting and dialogue has a good mix of emotions (and is actual, proper English.)

The battle minigame has enough challenge to be interesting and has some depth to it with stat, gem and other modifications.

Models aren't perfect but look better than most games out there, with animated scenes and portraits.

Navigation is fairly intuitive and not overly complicated or annoying, with a fair amount of locations to visit and activities to perform to pass time, boost stats and keep things moving.

There's really not much to criticize. The in-game recommendations for other games was a nice touch that let to me downloading a few I hadn't tried.

Super swell, totally bitchin' five-star rating.