HTML - Masters of Raana [v0.8.3.8 public] [GrimDark]

This is my thoughts on Masters of Raana.

I just came from the Discord after playing the latest alpha version with rebel Aria Binachi (Katniss Everdeen!!) which is supposedly the main quest of MOR. It's a great example of the depths this gem of a game offers. Every action counts and how you've built up the rebel faction and trained Aria before usurping the current emperor plays into how the new kingdom becomes.

[+] The art is topnotch and very sexy. Most characters are slim but I like that. Also realistic in a post-apocalyptic world right?

[+] The UI has a lot of depths and takes some time getting used to but it runs smoothly once you get a good hang of it.

[+] The music score is professional and combat, sex, looting and other gadgets have a lot of different sound effects.

[+] Texts and dialogues have a nice flow to them with lots of variation. It also feels professionally written.

[+] Very addictive!

Open world sandbox. Lots of story girls with a ton of sex scenes and has randomly generated girls if you get bored/sell the storyline gals. Good quest system up until the midgame, that's when you start to have to expand your business and not go quest grinding anymore. It also has an active worldstate system that changes the map based on how it is.

Corruption is a main mechanic, you turn feisty girls into obedient ones.

I'm currently on my 50th~ hour and there's still a lot I haven't done (I've mostly just been training my girls).

It's not very often that we see a game there where the dev knows what is fun in a game and focuses on that, eliminating all the game play that doesn't serve to make it fun.

The game is definitely designed for players willing to defer gratification. Breaking the willpower of slaves and training them to be enjoy their fate takes a long time in day-turns. That doesn't prove to be "grindy," though, because the player is also doing many other interesting things. I found myself frequently having to choose between various fun options, which would have been frustrating had there been a time limit to the game. But there isn't one, so the choice is just the order in which to do fun and interesting things.

The game seems simplistic when one starts to play, but the design cleverly makes each NPC character different and interesting by a combination of stats and backgrounds, and each MC different by choosing different skill and ability emphasis at the start. There are no right or wrong, best or worst choices. Just different choices. It's the ultimate sandbox.

The only things I found sub-optimal in the game were the combat system (which gets repetitive pretty quickly) and the uneven state of the current artwork (which is being expanded and updated).

I'd encourage other devs and potential devs to take a good look at this game and see what can be done when a developer focuses solely on having the player make fun and interesting decisions.

Scrubbed prior to account deletion. TL;DR, this game has promise but its too grindy and you'll want to cheat heavily. Filling the rest of this space with characters until I hit 200 because this board won't let me delete a review.

Raana is one of my favorite games on here. It's dark, it's grindy, it's on occasion clunky but it perfectly scratches my itch for *expansion*.
You can do so many cool things here, explore stuff, level your character and your slaves, it's just the ultimate sandbox and I love it.

I've never played a game quite like this. The ui is bad, sure, but the grind is horrendous. At least that's what I thought before cheating in max stats and money. Then I realized the game is somehow still an unfun chore to "play."

0833b

Definitely F95's best sandbox game. Masters of Raana could even rival many AAA games in the same genre. It's a dense and rich RPG experience with consistent lore, 1,000s of unique scenes and lots of customization. Highly addictive!

Things I really like:

• The characters. Masters of Raana probably has around 100 distinctive NPCs + a lot of randomly generated ones, that really come to life with special dialogue based on WILL, Corruption, character and other stats. Each female character also has hundreds of sex scenes for different positions.
• The world. Many locations to explore, beautiful scenery (=renders) and a shockingly great music score. Play with sounds on!
• The art. Some girls are smoking hot.
• The diverse skill trees. You can dabble in any profession. Combat, non-combat, crafter, hunter, teacher, slaver, scavenger… You name it.
• The character creation system. Feels very AAAish. Lots of customization.

Things I don’t like:

• It's a pretty tough grind in the beginning but once you get maxed after 50h+ or so, I feel almost invincible with my top crew of fighters. The mid-game is GREAT but that part of MOR should be fleshed out more.
• The art (II). While some girls are smoking hot, others might have render sets that feel pretty dated. I know Grim constantly updates old scenes so this might change in the future.

Hint:
Treat Masters of Raana like Game of Thrones. Not only when it comes to annexing your neighbors and birth offspring, you have to give the game a couple of hours before it truly begins to shine.

Conclusion:
Bookmark this game, if not play right away. I also highly recommend replaying Masters of Raana with different styles. Go for a combat build first (=easiest way to make money), then do a university run and why not try a scavenger-crafter hybrid for your third session?

Review Version: v0.8.3.3

Tl;dr
Masters of Raana is heavily inspired by the first two entries into the Fallout series as is evident by the long list of skills/attributes, the equipment, companions, and resource management. If you want to skip grinding you should follow the guide linked in the original post.

Masters of Raana also has "pay-to-win" in the form of the "MoR Enhanced", which provides players with the ability to start the game max leveled.

Positives

• The world itself is dense, providing the player with several locations within a large city to explore, islands, and a space station
• No limits on how many items you can carry in your inventory
• A mix of unique and generic character models
• Ability to customize your character portrait (similar to the Pathfinder series)
• In-game wiki that provides additional lore for certain events, characters, factions, and locations

Neutral

• Time consuming RNG elements surrounding the slave markets that you can circumvent by save scumming
• Locking of the ability to access the options menu unless you're in the open world
• Lack of quest markers on your map despite your journal explicitly mentioning them
• Non-animated sex scenes

Negatives

• Generic pregnancy models for most of the character models
• Mixing of fully rendered and AI generated CG (obvious discrepancies in quality)
• Generic MC model that does not reflect character portrait (discontinuity in sex scenes seeing generic bald guy in place of the portrait model)
• Unintuitive UI based on 1990s/2000s era of styling
• Excessive grind regarding materials, money, and influence that only serves to waste the player's time
• Quests breaking due to lack of logic preventing sequence breaking (notably the quest surrounding your brother)
• Poor explanations surrounding the following
  • Enslavement and recruitment
  • Slave management
  • Material acquisition
  • House upgrades, deterioration, renovation, production, and decoration
  • Map navigation
  • Factions as a whole
  • Equipment as a whole
  • Stats (how to increase, what they affect, etc.)
• Most factions appear to be partially implemented
• Various minor issues

Conclusion
With how big the negative and neutral lists are one could assume that this game should be rated lower than 3 stars, but... The game has insane potential to reach indie status if the issues regarding quests, UI, consistency with models, and fleshing out partially implemented systems is done.

To put it another way: This has the potential to compete with the first fallout games with the benefit of explicit NSFW content.

The Good:
- It trully "feels" open world. There are lots of things you could focus on.
- Lots of female NPCs, renders, etc.
- RPG mechanics, level up, get better gear, upgrade your base, get more slaves, etc.

The Bad:
- The mental stat managing mechanic is poorly designed. There are too many stats, but they are also highly correlated, and no clear way to know what they do or how to change them. Is too easy to enter in a deathloop with a slave and you really have no choce when interacting with them (if you want to keep them).
- Very difficult to make money, which suggests that I'm playing the game "wrong" which means the gameplay is not as open as it pretends to be.
- No idea what factions are and why should I care or donate stuff to them
- In general there are too many mechanics, and very correlated. Not well explained, and very grindy. You could be in a frustrating loop trying to raise some number while the game actually expects you do to something very different but you have no way to know what.

Probably my most favourite game here.
I played multiple versions and invested countless hours of my time.
If I could give 10 stars, I would.

The only thing that doesn't meet my twisted desires is the weird approach torwards MCs childen. You can have female children, they become adults and are optically presented like the other girls (superior fuckmeat), yet you cannot do any incest action.

I completely understand reservations against incest since Patreon can be quite cruel regarding this topic, however, I wonder why there aren't "inoffical" mods to add this content - this would certainly be something that would appeal to many other people that greatly enjoy and support this game.

I think we all know that "incest" is something of an inofficial mainstream thing among adult game connoisseurs - many of us are into that.

I do not understand the good reviews. I find this game horribly grindy and terrible to menu around.
The Menus and overlay is one of the worst i have ever seen you need several clicks to get anywhere. There are so many menus for everything with little to no explanation or tooltips.
The map is separated in way to many districts which could have been one big map.
The RNG can be so horrible and is more annoying then anything else. In my opinion the start of the game is super slow and you are so under powered, even the "tutorial" mission is stupid and will fuck you up more than help you. Even if you get a slave then the rng will make it run away and give you a few penalties when you try to skip days to heal up again.

Overall it just takes ages to get everything done or even find out what you have to do. The beginning of the game just makes me dislike the game so much, i don't want to spend hours just to have some understanding of the game and then have little to no progression to show.

Masters of Raana redefined my thoughts about management games. It is truly epic with a scope that gives you hundreds of hours of playtime.

Just like many other veteran players I came for the porn but stayed for the lore. Thankfully, both parts are absolutely top-notch!

You can do almost anything in this game besides training and screwing hot chicks. Become a conquering warlord, a scientist, a mercenary or gamble with cards. Sex system is also open and advanced with lots of replayability. Each NPC has many different renders so you never get bored.

There are many quests, maybe 30 or so, and most "big", aka Story NPCs have at least some form of special adventure tied to them.

Combat system feels very advanced too but might take some time to get used to. It's is easy to get killed if you don't know what you are doing or face a powerful enemy. My advice is to hire a strong mercenary group that follows you around the map.

Character creation feels like something out of a AAA Fallout game. Impressive!!

Dev is also very responsive and updates game quickly. There is usually one new update out every month and lots of hotfixes in between.

Top game! Five stars!

Ehm... Again, why does this have 4.5 stars and reviews full of "DIS IZ DE BEST GAME EVER" rates? Game is all about char building and grinding the way out of it - if you are new in the game and don't know how exactly how the stats will affect your game, you have a high chances to fuck it up and ruin your game, when you'll meet stat-checks (that you can fail even if your stat is high enough, lol), or die in a very-interesting-and-for-sure-not-a-garbage-part-of-the-game - combat, what is a complete waste of time thanks to it's poor and extemely lazy realization where melee fighters loses with no chance cause they always must waste first turn to close up with the enemy, when rangers can just do their thing - click and deal damage. And yeah, that's all gameplay for a combat - pick an enemy and click on it, repeat until you win or lose. Just... Nice.

Openworld is same lazy and just have a several points of interest and some linear events that you can pass or fail. Map just don't need to this game and can be easily changed to the list of encounters without any loss for a player.

Slavery and management stuff is literally the worst part of game even comparing to it's combat, cause it just based on the worst game about it, so you have a tons of slave mental stats that you must deal with, and the problem with these stats is that developer trying to make his game looks realistic, absolutely forgetting that in reality this just doesn't work like that and will never be, so instead of interesting gameplay you're getting a damn grindfest straight in your face. Also your slaves there acts like a cats that can tell you "fuck off" and you must take it and continue pleading to raise their stats. Or turn them into braindead fuckmeat. In these games, you're not a slaver, but a goddamn tamagotchi's owner.

review a bit chaotic and don't have a normal structure, but i hope my point is clear.

This is game is going to become a reference in terms of sandbox, rpg, open world and customization.

So far the author is delivering content at a pace that makes the Blitzkrieg a paced down event, every 2 weeks he delivers something new

The options are limitless, you can just focus on capturing raider girls, train them and sell them or just train them and make them your prostitutes for profit, you can also just go around investing in factions and gaining influence and skills to raise your houselhold's reputation...

There's a limited "radiant quest" system which is rapidly expanding, the raider girls are randomly generated which means you always get something new, you can explore the map with your squad, you got lots of quests...

I'm telling you, give this shit another year or two and it's going to be a Patreon's top

I am following this game for a long time, and I finally decided to write a review, as I feel that enought time has passed, and even though the game is not completed, the development has been steady and the direction taken is clear.

First, it is a true RPG. If you are in for quick games or VNs, this might not be a game for you. But if you like RPGs, you should definitively check this one out.
The developer created a whole, interesting universe, with a solid and consistent lore, with a complex faction system and dynamic events. Even without the sex elements, it would be a good game for RPGs fans. Now that also means that a player has to be ready to invest a lot of hours (or simply cheat via the console...) to fully enjoy the game. It has a slow pace and it takes time to rise from an almost nobody to one of the most powerful being in this universe. You have to be aware that the grind is slow.
That also means that you can shape your adventure the way you want. There is hunting, hacking, fighting, developing a business empire, obviously slave training, and much more.

The art is good, not the absolute best I have ever seen, but it is quite unique and very consistent. Also, the females are normally proportioned, which is a real plus for me.

Keep in mind that the game is still in development, and it seems that way more content is planned. Anyway, updates do come on a regular schedule. Also, I appreciate that while the developer is listening to the community, reworking stuffs after popular demands, he keeps his vision clear and don't go all crazy just for the sake of adding tags.

So this game is right up my alley, and I can only recommend it, as long as you are ready to invest at the very least a few hours into it.

This is the best game ever made to land on F95 imho.
Been playing this a lot, is it grindy? Yes it is, same reason why Skyrim is grindy: because it's a game, not a porn showreel.

Would achieve perfection if supported by actual animated sex scenes and not just static images, but I guess that would just bee too much, you can't have everything.

Honestly, best of the HTML games out there. Worth financially supporting when you get the chance. It's story rich but you are not really put on a timer to complete these missions. You can approach the slaves AND associates however you feel so you can either be a benevolent master (I know that's not a thing shut up) or an iron fist.

This is a tough one to review. I usually only take the time to review games that I think are amazing and give them 5 stars, and while I think this is amazing, I don't think I can really give it 5 stars as there are a few pretty substantial flaws with the game at the moment.

On the whole, Masters of Raana is a pretty great porn RPG. It has reasonably interesting HTML-based gameplay, with 'deep' stat-based combat, sex, BDSM, and some other minigames and lots of narrative skill checks which most of the time don't lead to dead ends. The world building is pretty cool and not too 'in your face', you can choose to read more about the world or less, but you pick up important things 'organically' without having to read huge exposition text dumps. There is a reasonably interesting narrative, with a cast of characters and character agency that the player wants to exercise to affect plot outcomes; lots of tropes, but well executed -- on this front I think it's the best I've seen in an HTML porn game.

I've just completed a full playthrough to (what seems to be) the end of content, and I had fun, but it was also pretty frustrating lots of the time. This manifested in a bunch of ways, but I think the two biggest issues are:

1. Running into sudden 'shallow' content moments when lots of it is pretty deep
2. Moments breaking the immersion roleplay

For 1, it would be things like a 32 year old suddenly referring to her "teen body" (recycled dialogue with many 18/19 year old characters), completely uncharacteristic behaviour from the same character between two different scenes, really intricate side quests with seemingly massive implications for some characters, which abruptly end and are never mentioned by anyone again, etc. etc. Honestly, this seems pretty inevitable given the scope of the game and a single developer (whose priorities are rationally influenced, like all developers, by the proportion of fans who want more breadth rather than depth) but it is still kind of a shame, given that the text-based nature of the game makes it more realistic to have additional depth.

The second thing has two main parts, I think. The first is that it's often not entirely clear what you can be doing , besides grinding stats. The game is really good at 'organically' having you figure out/find what to do next while you're on a questline, but while you're not, the world just kind of passes around you during the day, with (almost) nothing happening unless you make it happen. Nobody interrupts you, slaves never need you, nobody comes to the door etc. This becomes weird because these things DO happen while you're on a certain questline, but pretty much never day-to-day. The other really immersion-breaking aspect of the roleplay for me was the grinding.

Now, in a RPG with semi-realistic timelines like this, there is definitely going to have to be grind. If the player character can train to be a professor over the course of years where each day is simulated, there has to be some stat grinding for that to happen. The problem for me was not that the player character has to grind out stats, it's that the person playing the game has to grind out stats in real life by clicking hundreds or even thousands of times and seeing the same passages (or sometimes even just a progress bar) for like 20 minutes in real life is not fun, and totally broke the RP illusion for me. The crafting system is the worst example of this (not sure if GrimDark reads these reviews, but if you do, please change this) where to spend 10 hours crafting heals in game you need to click at least twice per hour (and wait for progress bar animations and code to run in the background) for several minutes in real life, whereas 10 hours lecturing at the academy is a maximum of 8 clicks with some fun random events thrown in, less than a minute max. Crafting is an extreme example where I think the player should just be able to say "craft for 10 hours" with a single click, but stat grinding (through training the player, educating slaves, or learning etc. ) is way too much unfun busy clicking work for the person playing the game in real life, relative to how frequently it need to be done to progress the roleplaying. I've seen some other reviews mention having to keep stats from decaying, and I think part of the problem with that is not so much that they decay, but the fact that it's so much real-world (rather than roleplaying) effort to maintain them.

EDIT: Crafting has been more or less addressed in a newer update with the introduction of a workshop system.

Overall though, if you're reading this review, you should probably play this game. If you like text-based narrative-driven adult RPGs with good writing and an interesting plot, this is one of the best out there.

One of the most promising games I’ve seen here, that’s already very solid. There is already plenty of content and complexity, and the constant further improvements are significant and are all moving further in the right direction.

Some mechanics dont work as intentioned (i.e. number of wives depending on religion, you are maxed at 1 no matter what), and the game as a whole is too reliant on grinding. Half the game is maintaining character points without them dropping, which is not fun for gameplay.

Its got a good story setting, fun gameplay (when not grinding), and is pretty well polished. Amount of content for time since it started is also not bad. Solid 4 star game.