RPGM - Completed - Magical Princess Lily [v1.0.95] [Studio Little-Fish]

Hi, I am brazilian. So my review can have a poor english.

In my opinion, the developer is a beginner. I say this because it's clearly a game that required a lot of effort, but it has errors that clearly show it was made by someone inexperienced.

The story is good. But the plot (the way it's told) is quite mediocre.

When using a soundtrack, care must be taken in choosing the type of music. The same applies to moments without background music. The game has many random moments lacking music, which leaves it feeling quite soulless.

The gameplay is innovative.

The way the female character is corrupted is inconsistent. First, it's not possible at the beginning. I lost fights and received a Game Over screen. Corruption is only possible later. I wonder why. Another thing: precisely because it only happens later, it limits the ways in which the female protagonist can be corrupted.

The CG art is beautiful. But the characters' facial expressions are also inconsistent. You notice this in the scenes, where the characters randomly alternate between a smile and a serious or sad expression in a rather questionable way.

In other words, I won't give it less than 3 stars because I think the real problem is the developer's lack of experience. These types of mistakes he made here can be avoided in future games.

[Note: I am always trying to make reviews as brief as possible to not spoil any fun - this game however is kinda unique and some minor spoilers are unavoidable - you have been warned!]
[Note2: Games have some bugs that may lock you and force to load last save - save often; also gallery contains only CG for boss defeat events, so be sure to backup saves before the fights for later! ]

At glance
Overall rating: S- (yes, as for now it has 1.3 average score from 3 reviews, because the guys did not manage to reach the point when the game gets actually good - can't deny though that this moment come very late... also, as mentioned in note 2, gallery does not contain full content of the scene, only CGs!)
Length: 4-8h (closer to 8 if you want to get "true" ending)

+ Hetrodox (yes, I have used AI to find this word xD) solution to what RPG maker game structure may look like with really good story...
- ...that is being kinda schizo and obscure, just as the game itself

Game as game
Story: 8/10 - kinda linear at most, yet multi-threaded - interesting, but some of the plots have little sense and are kinda bizzare, overall feeling is very good though
Gameplay: 9/10 - yes, it has unskippable 1 minute video that will annoy you more and more every time you watch it, yes first part of the game is linear (but good as for linearity) - but that are downsides. As for good sides - second part of the game is pretty nice (yet a bit too small and short) sandbox and battling system is also distinctive, as it is forcing you to time attack and defence well - especially for boss fights; you also have got simple crafting and skill system. And as for the phase with the sandbox - you can fully choose to go straight for the final, or explore the city with its events and enemies as well as track down and eliminate the bosses (finding them is not as easy as you may think )
Graphics: 7/10 - art is very good, locations are... well, some of them looks good, some of the are just meh (floating 2 tiles of path on the lake in the library backyard are my fav part of this xD)
Sound: 7.5/10 - no fireworks, but keeps level of the game

H-content
Quality: 8/10 - each scene is several images with a bit of text; quality of art is very good, although I have seen better...
Quantity: 12.5/10 - usually games like this consists of event scenes and a little bit of battle scenes if applicable (and these are a bit rare). Here on the other hand we have different approach - over half of the scenes are related to battles and in the battles themselves you have restrain system with CG differing on the enemy, your HP level and clothing state (only normal and one step of tearing unfortunately) - so there are a lot of variation here. As per after defeat scenes - they are also very varied both regarding the enemy and "intensity" of the action - from almost "non-harmful" to brutal and gruesome death; there is a bit of inconsistency here though, as we have some scenes that there is nothing special happening and you got game over (very first boss defeat) just to not having game over screen after our protagonist having several bones broken and (probable) internal organs damage, with blood on the screen - save game often! Amount of content is just right considering the length of the game itself, although a bit more would be even nicer... I also found that there is some kind of clothing system where you can change panties in gallery, did not find it in game though
H-Gameplay: 9/10 - at first you have only restraints and after boss defeat combat scenes and some events in the mostly-VN linear path, later on you will get much more scenes both from (after)fights and some casual events in the city - first part lacks a bit, but 2nd one is really good

Summary
A bit obscure, yet very interesting game. If you manage to "survive" first, VN-like part which is ok, but just ok, you will get kinda small, yet very interesting sandbox experience, where you are really free to explore the possibilities before going for the final boss. It is very close to get full S tier and 6 stars, however it has some minor bugs, that may softlock you, translation is bit weird sometimes (a tandem with a bit vague storyline just multiplies the effect) and some of the VN-like parts are really too long for RPGM experience (one block is so frecking long, that they make you promt to save twice - one time as standard before proceeding and 2nd time in between XD), so summing it up it is very strong 5 star S-, being much closer to 6 stars than to 5 stars.



PS. "Why telling 6 stars, instead of just make reviews trimmed to 5 stars for best games?" -you may ask
Well, recalling from my memory, Celesphonia, which I played some time ago, would be 8 stars at least - therefore if I would trim it as 5 stars, none other game would have this note probably and barely anyone would get 4, and rating all the great, but not spectacular games with 3 stars would be just harmful and unjust

The sin of Having walls of text that you must pay attention to because theirs not an objective function or any markers on where to go. Art is ok. A little better than the One one 1 game that was just released. Gameover pregnancy only which is Sad. The First 2 Magical Girl Transformations were 1 minute each of slow ass unskippable annoyance. Just an epidemic of rpgmaker games that are not good at all.
There's games. There's Visual novels. And there is books which this game should have been.

I played this game so you don't have to.

Calling this a "game" is a lie... is more like "chore simulator 2.0" every chapter is made of "go speak with x then after that find y and then go with z... and it goes on, after all that you unlock a "dungeon" which has a very lame design, its literally the same map from daytime with a "dark fog" effect on the screen. Even worse some areas are so badly designed that they forgot to add arrows or a mark to know theres a map next to another (like the amusement park map) and you may walk for many minutes until you find that there's an area next to a random stall.

A randon thing about this game... it has the transforming sequence which the first time it seems of good quality but later you will see it a lot, like a minute long sequence that you cannot skip and it gets boring very fast.

I had hope for this game... after it having the beasty tag and a virgin female protagonist... those tags usually mix very well.

I usually play the games since just watching the recollection wont give the same spice as getting to know the main character and see her get corrupted but this time I do reccomend: GET A SAVE FILE, watch the gallery (maybe fap) and forget about this game for good.

So with battle restraints, you'd think the grind would be potentially hot or at least tolerable. It isn't. With timer turn based battles, you'd think attacking from behind or being atrtacked from behind would change the intial positions/speed of the timers. Nope. With some decent looking front page art you'd think you'd have a bunch of nice looking cgs. Nope. You'd think there'd be some freedom to explore and such. Nope, it's almost all on-rails till the end where there's some pseudo freedom of movement. It really feels like every aspect of this was poorly planned or executed.