I would give it a 3 and a half if i could, but we're dealing with whole numbers here, so 3 it is.
This game is ok.
Before we begin, lets set the stage with the information that is needed.
The game takes place in two sections. Day, and night. During the day, you are Work Lisa, going and doing your job, and heading out and doing activities to raise your stats. During the night, you do battle with the bad guys and try to save the day and all that. If you die at night, the night ends and the next day begins.
Its worth noting that there are only 3 days per area. Once you are on the third day, dying restarts the night, but you otherwise keep all progress.
NOTE: There have been quality of life updates since the games release. One such update made it so that you can choose whether you restart the night, or continue on with the next day. I believe this only works on the first two days, with the third just automatically restarting the night. This is useful since you can only learn skills on the first and second nights.
THAT UPDATE IS NOT HERE AS OF WRITING THIS REVIEW
With that out of the way, we'll start with everyones favorite complaint...
Combat:
I'll begin this section by describing what combat is intended to be because of how unique it actually is.
Combat runs off of what is basically a dice slot system. You start an attack, 4 to 5 dice appear on the screen and their faces cycle and youre supposed to click when you have the result you want. 3 of the 4-5 dice i believe are tied to your equipment, which is important because.. Outside of combat you can manipulate what faces are on the dice by modifying your weapons and/or equipment and changing what dice faces are on your dice. This gives you some level of control on how easy it is to roll certain things.
On top of this, equipment usually come with locked dice faces. These can be ones that weaken your defense, or make you more susceptible to getting bondaged/transformed, or it can boost your various stats. Some of these faces might even weaken you when the face is rolled, but they also provide stat boosts.
In practice, the dice roll mechanic rolls too fast, and even if it were slower, it would still take significantly too long to just wait til you have the rolls you want. Because of this, you are more likely to just click through and brute force every roll, whatever it is be damned. On top of this, attack rolls are multiplied by sword or magic faces, meaning that its more beneficial to have those rather than going for stats at the cost of risky dice faces that weaken you when rolled.
All of this is actually still pretty fine as it is. Even if it doesnt function the way the dev intended it to, its still neat and engaging enough that the combat is actually usable. They do have some other minor things, like getting gagged or blind will add gag/blind faces to your rolls, but this is relatively easy to bypass by using magic when blind, or physical when gagged. Theres also abilities to get past restrictions, like silent passion lets you use spells without worry of gag, or liberation which frees your arms to let you keep fighting with melee.
But this is where the dev lovingly fucks the entire system by adding...
The Exhaust System:
All of your moves, including the basic attack, has a meter that slowly fills every time you use it. Once the bar fills, that specific move will add negative dice faces to your rolls, and reduce the damage it deals by at least 50%, though its likely more.
On paper this sounds rough, but potentially manageable. However, thats until you realize that the only way to reduce that meter is by drinking coffee, which is expensive and youll require a lot of it to actually keep fighting; or you die and end the day.
Its worth noting that due to the update, this isnt so bad, however the mechanic is largely pointless.. ESPECIALLY with the update.
In practice you are either encouraged to avoid combat (which is bad as it means your character cannot grow which where 90% of where your stats will come from)
Or you fight many combats, and have to restart the night over and over again (or drink coffee over and over. Also its worth noting that if a skill fills its meter, coffee cannot return it to normal.)
Or in shorter words, the game punishes you for playing the game. This single mechanic is what turns a serviceable, potentially interesting combat setup into a broken terrible mess, and there really isnt much more to say on that front.
Level Scaling and Enemy Difficulty:
This section is for how i feel the scaling is from area to area.
To start, i beat the game at level 27, but i largely believe i could have beaten it at level 20 which is the level i was at when i entered the final area. (enemies there give a ton of experience)
My main focus was with using magic, which might also have an effect on the difficulty.
I believe that the level scaling kind of all over the place. The first area is easily the hardest in the entire game, and even into the late game, this area can still give you a little trouble. The third area is much the same, but with the saving grace that you have equipment and hopefully levels under you belt, however everything here seems to have health for days. An example: My cold shower, when rolling 3 spell faces, can deal over 600 damage. This either oneshots, or nearly oneshots any enemy in the final area. This barely brings most enemies in the third area to half health. This easily makes the last area feel like a massive pushover in comparison. That said, i also think this is partly because the last area is easily the easist area to tackle.
Theres only one cheap move that i can think of, potentially two, that i could safely argue as bad design. The first; Some enemies in area 2, and final area can give hypnosis which can potentially stunlock you if the hypnosis stacks too high, making it very frustrating when fighting enemies that spam hypno attacks. And for the second, there is an enemy in the final area that can stunlock you with an ability. I do not know how this ability works exactly as the enemy rarely used it on me, and i was able to break free from it easily in a single turn.
And i should definitely point out that in my playthrough, i boosted the hell o out of agility every time i could during day cycles. However, i do not know how much day statboosts affect your stats vs just gaining levels. So i cannot say for certain if this actually changes the game dramatically or not.
Story and Lewd Content:
The story is passible. Youre Lisa, an average office worker that got chosen to be a magical girl at night.
She gets a little preachy at the end of every bossfight, but i suppose it fits. I found it kind of mid.
Lewd content is okay and is largely what one would expect from any other game from this dev. (combat lewdings, not many cgs) The core kinks here are transformation (mostly in area 2, with 2 transformations in total), Domestication (housewife kind of things), bdsm bondage (from cuffs to vacbeds), pregnancy/egging(youll like area 3 if you love this), and hypnosis. Each area has two bad ends, one when dying on day 3 of the cycle, or one with dying to the boss. They arent entirely interesting in my opinion, but the chosen kinks arent really my kind of thing.
By and large a lot of this feels pretty vanilla, even by bdsm standards
But if thats your cup of tea, then youll have a lot of fun with this.
Do not expect girl on girl action though. Youre getting dicked one way or another.
Sound and Graphix:
Most of the sfx is pretty standard rpgmaker guff. The soundtrack is pretty ok, i didnt see anything wrong with it, but i wouldnt really say theres any noteworthy bops outside of maybe the boss theme which has vocals.
Graphics are what you see. If you hate this art style, youre gonna hate this game.
That said theres a few reused assets (ghosts and findoms come to mind) but other than that, its relatively unique. I liked the final areas enemies the most designwise i think.
Overall, i give the game a 3 and a half. It would be a solid 4 if it werent for the exhaust system.
Be a sane person and cheat to get infinite coffee, and just ignore the exhaust system. You will have a much nicer time, and the game will be much less tedious and more rewarding.
This game is ok.
Before we begin, lets set the stage with the information that is needed.
The game takes place in two sections. Day, and night. During the day, you are Work Lisa, going and doing your job, and heading out and doing activities to raise your stats. During the night, you do battle with the bad guys and try to save the day and all that. If you die at night, the night ends and the next day begins.
Its worth noting that there are only 3 days per area. Once you are on the third day, dying restarts the night, but you otherwise keep all progress.
NOTE: There have been quality of life updates since the games release. One such update made it so that you can choose whether you restart the night, or continue on with the next day. I believe this only works on the first two days, with the third just automatically restarting the night. This is useful since you can only learn skills on the first and second nights.
THAT UPDATE IS NOT HERE AS OF WRITING THIS REVIEW
With that out of the way, we'll start with everyones favorite complaint...
Combat:
I'll begin this section by describing what combat is intended to be because of how unique it actually is.
Combat runs off of what is basically a dice slot system. You start an attack, 4 to 5 dice appear on the screen and their faces cycle and youre supposed to click when you have the result you want. 3 of the 4-5 dice i believe are tied to your equipment, which is important because.. Outside of combat you can manipulate what faces are on the dice by modifying your weapons and/or equipment and changing what dice faces are on your dice. This gives you some level of control on how easy it is to roll certain things.
On top of this, equipment usually come with locked dice faces. These can be ones that weaken your defense, or make you more susceptible to getting bondaged/transformed, or it can boost your various stats. Some of these faces might even weaken you when the face is rolled, but they also provide stat boosts.
In practice, the dice roll mechanic rolls too fast, and even if it were slower, it would still take significantly too long to just wait til you have the rolls you want. Because of this, you are more likely to just click through and brute force every roll, whatever it is be damned. On top of this, attack rolls are multiplied by sword or magic faces, meaning that its more beneficial to have those rather than going for stats at the cost of risky dice faces that weaken you when rolled.
All of this is actually still pretty fine as it is. Even if it doesnt function the way the dev intended it to, its still neat and engaging enough that the combat is actually usable. They do have some other minor things, like getting gagged or blind will add gag/blind faces to your rolls, but this is relatively easy to bypass by using magic when blind, or physical when gagged. Theres also abilities to get past restrictions, like silent passion lets you use spells without worry of gag, or liberation which frees your arms to let you keep fighting with melee.
But this is where the dev lovingly fucks the entire system by adding...
The Exhaust System:
All of your moves, including the basic attack, has a meter that slowly fills every time you use it. Once the bar fills, that specific move will add negative dice faces to your rolls, and reduce the damage it deals by at least 50%, though its likely more.
On paper this sounds rough, but potentially manageable. However, thats until you realize that the only way to reduce that meter is by drinking coffee, which is expensive and youll require a lot of it to actually keep fighting; or you die and end the day.
Its worth noting that due to the update, this isnt so bad, however the mechanic is largely pointless.. ESPECIALLY with the update.
In practice you are either encouraged to avoid combat (which is bad as it means your character cannot grow which where 90% of where your stats will come from)
Or you fight many combats, and have to restart the night over and over again (or drink coffee over and over. Also its worth noting that if a skill fills its meter, coffee cannot return it to normal.)
Or in shorter words, the game punishes you for playing the game. This single mechanic is what turns a serviceable, potentially interesting combat setup into a broken terrible mess, and there really isnt much more to say on that front.
Level Scaling and Enemy Difficulty:
This section is for how i feel the scaling is from area to area.
To start, i beat the game at level 27, but i largely believe i could have beaten it at level 20 which is the level i was at when i entered the final area. (enemies there give a ton of experience)
My main focus was with using magic, which might also have an effect on the difficulty.
I believe that the level scaling kind of all over the place. The first area is easily the hardest in the entire game, and even into the late game, this area can still give you a little trouble. The third area is much the same, but with the saving grace that you have equipment and hopefully levels under you belt, however everything here seems to have health for days. An example: My cold shower, when rolling 3 spell faces, can deal over 600 damage. This either oneshots, or nearly oneshots any enemy in the final area. This barely brings most enemies in the third area to half health. This easily makes the last area feel like a massive pushover in comparison. That said, i also think this is partly because the last area is easily the easist area to tackle.
Theres only one cheap move that i can think of, potentially two, that i could safely argue as bad design. The first; Some enemies in area 2, and final area can give hypnosis which can potentially stunlock you if the hypnosis stacks too high, making it very frustrating when fighting enemies that spam hypno attacks. And for the second, there is an enemy in the final area that can stunlock you with an ability. I do not know how this ability works exactly as the enemy rarely used it on me, and i was able to break free from it easily in a single turn.
And i should definitely point out that in my playthrough, i boosted the hell o out of agility every time i could during day cycles. However, i do not know how much day statboosts affect your stats vs just gaining levels. So i cannot say for certain if this actually changes the game dramatically or not.
Story and Lewd Content:
The story is passible. Youre Lisa, an average office worker that got chosen to be a magical girl at night.
She gets a little preachy at the end of every bossfight, but i suppose it fits. I found it kind of mid.
Lewd content is okay and is largely what one would expect from any other game from this dev. (combat lewdings, not many cgs) The core kinks here are transformation (mostly in area 2, with 2 transformations in total), Domestication (housewife kind of things), bdsm bondage (from cuffs to vacbeds), pregnancy/egging(youll like area 3 if you love this), and hypnosis. Each area has two bad ends, one when dying on day 3 of the cycle, or one with dying to the boss. They arent entirely interesting in my opinion, but the chosen kinks arent really my kind of thing.
By and large a lot of this feels pretty vanilla, even by bdsm standards
But if thats your cup of tea, then youll have a lot of fun with this.
Do not expect girl on girl action though. Youre getting dicked one way or another.
Sound and Graphix:
Most of the sfx is pretty standard rpgmaker guff. The soundtrack is pretty ok, i didnt see anything wrong with it, but i wouldnt really say theres any noteworthy bops outside of maybe the boss theme which has vocals.
Graphics are what you see. If you hate this art style, youre gonna hate this game.
That said theres a few reused assets (ghosts and findoms come to mind) but other than that, its relatively unique. I liked the final areas enemies the most designwise i think.
Overall, i give the game a 3 and a half. It would be a solid 4 if it werent for the exhaust system.
Be a sane person and cheat to get infinite coffee, and just ignore the exhaust system. You will have a much nicer time, and the game will be much less tedious and more rewarding.
