Ren'Py - Lust and Power [v0.73 Regular] [Lurking Hedgehog]

This game is super grindy and keeps rebooting (which forces you to grind again).

I discovered this game at its peak, where it had a decent amount of content in it. it was coincidentally just after the reboot to remove incest. (mom and sister were changed to random women who purchased your family ancestral house. you start the game breaking en entering to find some magic item in the house when the demon apocalypse hits. at which point you step up to become their protector).
It was a solid 3 star game, which I could rate a 4 due to personal preferences.

Since then the game was rebooted again to re-add incest. Redesign combat. And remove all the sex scenes (so they can be adjusted and readded later. not permanently)...
It admittedly improved somewhat compared to before. But that is not nearly enough to justify the constant reboots and the grind.

The game peaked at v0.37. Since v0.40 though the game is back to a pre-alpha demo. And the v0.41 did not bring any significant improvement.
Not much more to say, just filling with random gibberish to fill the mandadory 200 characters, way too much dor sure and which would explain why there aren't more reviews than a mere fifty (Notice how I wrote fidty and not 50, just to use more letters)

I find this game very interesting to play. There is RPG and combat part where player needs to survive and protect his girls, and there is seduction part. These things are connected and both are interesting. Seduction goes slowly and needs time and resources, and it feels like being the character and managing the situation.

The first time i gave 1 star.

After 2 days endless grinding, Kicking in doors, killing weird creatures over and over again i got stuck in the game not knowing what the hell to do next.
The game is filled with a lot of useless shit, cola, snacks, wine, beer, which have all no use whatsover, atleast not thatt i was able to figger out. You can o a few things with the girls, but soon you get those anooying signsunder cunstuction), which is the same result as al the stuff you collect kicking in doors.
At a certain point the game becomes a clicking game, clicking through the annoying conversation at the dining table you read by now a few hundreds times.
The graphics are fun the first hour or so, but after that they become annoying as heel as you will have seen them over and over and over and over and over and a few times more again..
one star? well its for the effort than i guess, the effort of making a game anoying as,fuck.

Played the game after 2 years of waiting for updates and it somehow has less content than before because the dev had the "great" idea of reworking mechanics that nobody gave a fuck in the first place. The "reworked" rpg elements still suck - you can use a broom now and trashy armor to kill shitty red monsters that are not implemented yet and that in the playable version, were easy as fuck to defeat.

1.5/5 (play the older version)

Can't say I'm convinced about this game. The drawings are very poorly done. There are some funny special effects, but the drawings in itself are very platonic, to say the least. Next to that, there's the grinding. It takes a lot going back and forth, while hoping to make some progress. Players who'd like to play the game without all the grinding better not play this game, at all. There are no shortcuts, no hacks or whatever possible. The dev made (and still makes) sure of that. He punishes anyone who wants to speed up the gameplay in whatever way. He literally kicks them out of the game. The dev forces anyone to keep grinding. I guess he hopes it will lead to people playing the game (A LOT) longer and maybe even pay a few bucks (I'm guessing: A LOT of bucks) to keep playing the game. Well, I won't. Waste of bloody time, this game.

Following the game since one of it's first releases. It's always the same content in these 4 years. Adding a scene - deleting a scene. Adding mechanic - removing mechanic. Constantly reworking the same few scenes. If you played the game 4 years ago, and then played it 2 years ago after which 2 month ago - no drastic changes. Same shit - different angle.

I played this game over a year ago and dropped it into a "I'll come back when there's more content" bucket. Now imagine my surprise when I play version 0.40 and after going through the tedious grind only to find out there is actually LESS content than what I played. Over a year ago. It's all layers of RNG time sinks here. Random chance to fight monsters to level up your skills, random chance to get quest items to improve your relationships, and of course the relationships areat a very basic level (dominate your "landlord", seduce your "roommate" and if you try to dominate your "roommate" you'll just be penalized with stat decreases so it's very much a "I call it a sandbox but there's only one linear way to play" at the moment). It's a goddamn shame to see a game get less content under the guise of a revamp.

First I should say that I've been a Patreon supporter of the game for years, no longer though or for the foreseeable future. I'm speaking primarily of the "remastering" of the entire game in version 0.40 which is a complete disaster IMO. Previous versions of the game had a much simpler and cleaner UI and mechanics. This latest remaster throws all that out the window in favor of a uselessly complex series of mechanics in virtually every area of the game while resetting content back to a level of two or three years ago.

For example, this is the second and worst time the combat system has been revamped. The first revamp was not an improvement over the original but I could overlook it. The latest combat system as of 0.40 is absolutely overly complex, tedious and boring to say the least. I'm able to grind through it but the entire time I'm asking myself "why". This started off as a Renpy porn game but now it's trying to be DOS2.

If that wasn't enough, every little inventory item and associated action has been changed and for what. The items do the same thing as before but now you have to navigate through several more screens, search through categories and select an action after you've already selected the action to give an item in the first place. The original way worked better which is for example: here is your battery. battery is removed from inventory. Very simple.

I would say the idea of creating a neutral path is OK because the original two pathways were somewhat rigid, and the game didn't handle switching between the two. However, it doesn't need several middle-of-the-road paths like it supposedly has now. Every aspect of the game like combat, inventory, messaging, etc. didn't need to be rebuilt from the ground up in order to achieve this.

So basically, what you're left with is no change in graphics and hot scenes from what I can tell. But now, most of the hot scenes and other features that've been around forever are locked again behind "under construction", and there are new bugs everywhere to fix. How long is that going to take to restore. Months or years. The bottom line is that even if I exclude all the missing parts of the game from my review, what remains is much less fun to play. The reason I give this game two stars instead of one is because I think the previous version 0.37 is worth playing but this is not the current direction of the game. Perhaps, one day if the content is finished and the game is working, I'll change my mind on a review and support. But I don't see that happening anytime soon.

Okay, here is a little bit of backstory for this game as to why I rated it so low:
Reboot,
Reboot,
Reboot.
Each fucking time either to add, delete and then add back some features like incest. Each fucking time forcing you to regrind all of the progress, or, pay 15$ a month for a cheat.
This time however, reboot deleted about 3 years of content, scenes and all, and all that was added are a bunch of new bugs and a slightly changed inrto, that reintroduced incest and deleted most of the rapey demons, with no mention if rape scenes, safe for imp trying to dick your mom/land;ady will even be added again.
The game as it was in v0.37 was not bad, 3 maybe even 4 out of five.
Kinda grindy, just to sell you cheats, but at least it had content to fap to.
Now you need to redo all the shit again, wile the damage output is nerfed into the ground and health bars got up by a margin, specifically so that the grinding would take even longer this time around. This is some EA or mobile paywall games rated fuckery.

I have just started playing this game and I really hope the developer is okay and we have new updates soon. I really liked the game, a good fighting system, a nice story and very good art ...

Waiting for new updates and having faith in the dev and his team that this gem is not going to be cancelled

Sex script are good also the art but need more content, it it is still in development so it still has potential, another thing they need to improve is the battle system, I Feel it is too easy , but if intentional is acceptable if they lack staff. still has good potential hope it get a good ending.

Great story, great scenes, great mechanics. My only suggestion is that it would be awesome if you could change their clothes. Like slutty clothes, bondage clothes, etc. where they could wear around the house. Other than that, great game.

All have been already said before, to sum it up :
- Combat ok, but far too slow, even with ctrl hold all the time And repetitive over time.
- Binary relationship : either you develop love (and sub decrease) or the other way around, leading to the same result, there is a lack of synergie between these stats.
- Some time-logic are quite fucked-up, I didn't expect my shower to take 2h, nor climbing the stairs up from basement taking 1h (or leaving a room after seeing someone naked for 30s taking 1h too... you get the point).

That being said, this game strike my kink and interest, I hope it will develop well to change my note in the future.

The dev REALLY doesnt want you to have fun. Grinding for everything. Bad endings in every corner. Relationship system that just exist to slow even more the corruption of the female characters. Quests that takes waaay more than they should. Patreon paywalls for every character. And last but not least, the prohibition for the cheats, that was remove thanks to a patch (thank you F95 community, you guys rock) but is still something that he really wanted in his game. Why? I dont know, maybe he is trying to make the first pay to win porn game.
The result is a game that while being ok in his story it kill the likening of its own themes through useless mechanics and grinding filler. Oh, and hope you like updates that are half new stuff for the game, and half ''balancing'' (thats it, you guess it, more grinding and boring mechanics). The earlier versions of the game, while having less content, at least were more fun to play. It is ok if you have nothing better to f** with, but there are far better games on this site. Hope to see a modded version when its finnished that removes the grinding parts and the ''love'' of the relationship system, those things just slow down the experience a lot.


EDIT: Just finished the last update. This was one of my first games in this site, almost 3 years ago now. Almost no new content since then, even when its updated every 2 or 3 months. Scratch that ''half new content, half FUCK YOU mechanics'', the updates are almost 4/5 shitty, grindy, useless new mechanics, and 1/5 new content. I have seen games with the triple of content be finished before this thing. Play something else, or cheat the fuck out of it with the anti-cheat removal patch, at least to piss off the dev. One less star for the lack of content.

By all rights, this should be one of the best games on the site. Instead it's the worst.

The developer is obsessed with making sure players don't enjoy his game.

He works hard to make the battle system even slower and more tedious in every update.

He works hard to remove players' ability to make the game more enjoyable through use of console codes.

Dear Dev, please: Just RELAX. LET GO. Stop trying to force players to suffer. I'd be a Patron for the maximum monthly amount if you would stop WORKING to make this into the most unpleasant experience possible.

Edited for version 0.41

Incest is back, performance is WAY BETTER while graphics look better than before.

A lot of content appears to be stripped off and i actually didn't find any locations - nor batteries, which is bad - but overall step into good direction. This game is worth to watch again.

Well that game play completely into my fetishes so obviously that's great for me. Beside that the art is really nice. The system is stil partly under construction like many parts of the game as I write but what is there is quite fun to play and what seems to be planned should be make nice additions to the gameplay. Though unfinished there is quite a bit of content and several routes to follow "dominate" or "love", "demon hunter" or "demons". The author tries to implement some humor but though in ambiance and in style I think he succeeds the writing is still a bit lacking for humor in my opinion.

To neatly sum it up: wasted potential. The game consists of an endless grind, wherein "leveling up" feels like nothing other than struggling to remain on a rapidly rising playing field. The story is bland, the characters are somewhat sexy, but once more the grind prevents me from enjoying any of this. The combat boils down to "what animation is the enemy doing" in terms of tactics as well.

Great game.

It didn't appeal to me just seeing the screenshots, but the monthly amount it gets on Patreon made me think it could be worth a shot.

And it was.

I enjoy the system and combats a lot. It's refreshing after so many visual novels where you just "click".

I think the 3.5 current stars makes it no justice, so here I am trying to get it a little bit higher so more pleople are inclined to play and enjoy it.