HTML - Masters of Raana [v0.8.4.3] [GrimDark]

This was a tough one to review for me. On the one hand, a wonderful game, totally sucks you in. Everyone should tryt it - it's definitely "good". But is it "fun"?

On the one hand it's great:

• open world sandbox, do what you want go where you want
• rpg grinding to become more powerful/skillful can be satisfying
• interesting quests with different options for handling them
• image renders are nice, girls are cute, scenes are hot, very classic male dom your harem of slaves
• constant updates
• more than just porn - there are lots of systems and ways to play and a broader world full of interesting lore and exploration
• and more

All these things are awesome.

But, for all that it offers, I find that the closer you get to what you might call "core gameplay mechanics" or "core things for a porn game to do well", the less great it is. The core of a good slave game should revolve around the interaction, management, training, and breaking of slaves. It should involve your slave's personality, behavior etc shifting, and offer a diverse range of experiences and ways you can break slaves. And it should feel realistic, ideally modeling human psychology effectively, with a reasonable punishment and reward system. If there are multiple slave characters they should have different traits that both change your strategy for how to break them, and lead to differing events, dialogues and reactions.

And unfortunately it is here that I find this game to be most lacking. You can do the same exact activities with each slave, and there are very minor dialogue and event differences between them. There are three-ish ways to break slaves - either through affection, coercion, or bdsm. Doing so involves grinding to get your relevant stats up (beauty/charisma for affection, manipulate for coercion, bondage/flagellation for bdsm), then spamming the same limited set of actions for each type, and slowly changing a number. The slaves are virtually identical in this regard - they might have slightly different traits or attributes but nothing that meaningfully changes the way you interact with them. You can basically do it mindlessly - it's part of the grind.

When I compare to Jack o Nine Tails or Wife Trainer, there you have many different stats/attributes representing the slave's psychology, and so different slaves require different strategies for breaking. You actually have to think about the characteristics of your slave and adapt your technique. JoNT also has a really well designed punishment vs reward system, while Wife Trainer gives each character different mechanics. MoR features neither.

So yeah, while I wanted to give this game 5/5, I think I can only give it 4. It's got a ton going for it, and lots of content, lore, scenes, hot renders. The content is very "wide" - there are something like 30-40 different NPCs/slaves you can have in your household that are all slightly different from one another. But ultimately that variety is only surface level - the core slave gameplay is a bit shallow and repetitive.

If Grim is reading, I'd say that the way to improve it now would be to incorporate a more dynamic punishment and reward system and more complex internal psychology from JoNT, and to add more flavor to make slaves more unique - for example unique skills, more unique dialogues, or decisions . The game has plenty of breadth, now it needs more depth.

Maybe the only game with a world that makes you stop to wonder at it. Its fun and its grey. Things are confusing, they are in flux, where different parties and factions arent clear cut, no lore dumps but just a world you claw through to explore.

The porn is fine. But theres not that much variation, unless I am missing something? One bondage location and thats all. Pillory would be nice! Girls have "traits" but they all have the same dialogue and beyond that It doesnt really come into play. More events during sex might have been good. Lot of images, to its credit. And after youve trained them up whats the point of visiting those slaves again? In fact the game will describe how your slaves become more willing to whore themselves out, streets and to servants in your household but you never see it in action, random events throught your manor would be pretty cool.

Also not a big fan of the Ai art but Im not knocking it for that, its a big game, lotta scenes.

Combat is fine, I think people beyond me have better criticism then i can make.

Oh and let me give completely unsolicited advice. A prequel with the main character as Loren or Aiko, would make me happy, dunno about anyone else. Seems like fun adventures. AND add more latina pls

Probably the only F95's game that would be genuinely good even without the porn part, I've spent 100 hours trying to find everything there is. Kudos to GrimDark for this masterpiece. I guess only negative is that the official art mods don't seem to keep up too well.

Can't tell you how many hours I've played this. Truly a great game.

Love any game where you can capture slaves and train them. The different game systems are great.

Only downside is there are some rough edges. I wish there was a way to skip 7+ days at a time for certain events. And the grind to up you stats with books is annoying.

It's almost tragic that this isn't a AAA or, in fact, as some companies call them, AAAA game, because this is the kind of depth you'd expect from an RPG when it comes to questing and stats. It's a little dense for an adult game, but this might be one of the few that is justified in being a sandbox game on this site (seriously most of the others might as well be kinetic novels with a few being truly VNs). That being said, it does suffer from the HTML, which honestly seems to not only limit the graphics but also seems to make the game harder to code/design/make. This is seen with the sometimes almost sluggish nature of the performance at times. Other than that, it's a solid RPG with good adult elements.

Easy 5 Star game, one of the best in the "slave management" genre these days, and still being updated quite regularly by a caring dev who seems to be maintaining constant interest in the world he's building. This game isn't finished, however it's looking a lot more polished in the last year or two. There's a lot of quests and locations to explore, combat is relatively fun for a while, and the girls have plenty of charm. Some of them even have unique questlines, family members, or other hidden secrets, although many of the girls are just randomly generated slaves you can capture or buy. One of the best parts of this game is that it really captures the feeling of being minor nobility, being above most people you interact with and yet still being decidedly below certain people in the hierarchy, at least without a lot of effort on your part to surpass/sabotage these folks. In many ways, this game reminds me of the old classic, Jack O'Nine, but set in space. There's a bit less kink, a lot less "weird", but it's much more modern in its approach. This game has definitely got it's own voice, it doesn't feel nearly as dark as Jack, but that is one of the closer examples I could give of a similar game where you feel like a free-wheeling hedge noble, trying to freelance his way to the mid-ranks of high society and also eventually rubbing shoulders with the nearly untouchable big fish at times, the residents of the so-called "Mastersphere" which orbits the planet. Lots of things to like about this game, so I can't list them all, but definitely check it out if you like slow-burn games about people/asset management and rising through the ranks of power in a relatively measured fashion - you don't go from pauper to king in the space of weeks in this game, but you can get a real feeling of progression if you put some time into it. A dilapidated manor and an old drinking buddy for company can eventually be leveraged into a splendid compound and a veritable army of companions and slaves, toiling away in your workshops & brothels so that you can eventually trade your 9mm pistols and leather jackets in for some plasma rifles and power armor, and there's almost certainly going to be a lot of screwing along the way for all involved! Highly recommended for all fans of the genre, especially if you enjoy western style 3d art as the renders for the girls are generally quite varied and of good quality.

This is a masterpiece of a sandbox slave trainer game.

I've played Jack of Nine Tails and various other renditions of this formula, but I couldn't get very far into all of those. It would feel like I was grinding for the sake of it, with very little investment into the randomly generated characters and the generic scenes. It was just numbers and management screens, and at least for me, it never really rose past that feeling.

While many other slave trainer sandbox games offer similar freedom and vast amounts of game mechanics, this one balances it with extremely good story-telling and world building. The world feels positively alive. The immersion is off the charts. There is a story behind the numbers and the grind. And many of the Story NPCs have their own little arcs.

While the game does a pretty good job of explaining the mechanics and quests, it's still obviously not such a simple game to just pick up and learn. And you really do need to consult the wiki and game thread to get on the right path. It took me a while to really understand what I'm doing, but once you do, it's quite addicting growing your little empire.

Also, what sets this apart from other games of this type is the visual representation. Most other games like this basically have image packs that are like anime girl portraits and random pics that don't give any kind of coherent feeling to it. Essentially, they feel like entirely text based affairs with images that don't fit what's happening. This one has actual renders and you can visually see the different outfits you put on the girls.

Lastly, the dev is an absolute monster of a workhorse. I've never seen anything like it. The speed of the updates and the ridiculous amounts of story and game mechanics they keep on rolling out is just insane. It's hard to believe the current state of the game (which is very robust and playable) was achieved in just 3.5 years by a lone(?) indie dev.

Edit:
Perhaps one thing that should be addressed is that there is only really one playstyle that makes sense. You beat all the random mooks with a whipping cane and sell them for money until you can make a workshop and then you flood the market with knives. I can't think of any other way of playing that will let you sustain the upkeep of having more slaves and upgrading the house. Unless you purposefully don't interact with the environment, you will keep on running into unique NPCs that you want to capture. And your house will continue to grow and the upkeep continues to rise. You just can't keep up with this unless you do the slaver -> workshop build.

This game has everything I want. So many different aspects of adventure and slave owning. Updated almost monthly with new additions, things that I didn't even know I wanted. Give it a try and you'll be hooked.

Excellent game. This is a full blown RPG. The sex system needs a bit more variety and girls need a mind-break state where they can only think about your dick (lol) and will have repeatable random events throughout the day showcasing this. This game is what all RPGs should aim to be. Go play it. Ignore at your own loss.

I honestly dont know where to begin this Game HTML Masters Of Raana is incredible the word Incredible really dosen't do it the justice it deserves the game is absolutely stunning and the loe behind the game is breathtaking your constantly be put at the edge of your seat with how the gameplay is . its Unique in that way its almost as if you are really there in person with all the exploring and people meeting you do there's also a lot of enslavement and sex in this tory driven experience which is a plus in my book BDSM, pregnancy , Slave Management , Sex , Prostitution, Base management, training slaves warfare, its all there in this game with constant updates to it as well as tier levels for payment its definitely worth your time and money if you want its a Unique experience i haven't really been able to find in any other game and i constantly brings me back to play more and discover new things . i promise this game won't disappoint you .

I just had to come here and give my love for this awesome game. MoR is one of my all-time favorites since back in 2021 when I first discovered it on itch.io. The game has taken leaps since then and is now a polished jewel that rivals other classic harem games in the same genre. There are many likeable girls that you can encounter while exploring the city of Ikanos and you're free to make them your slaves, wives, fighters, professors or anything else really. The TOTAL freedom of choice is something that is unique for this game. There is no definite playstyle (even if hunting and selling slaves is by far the most profitable job lol) and you can go about your day doing anything without being forced by hard-locked quests or other "must do's". You can even fully customize your background and religion.

Try this jewel if you haven’t already. Invest a couple of hours and I promise you wont be disappointed.

Art and music score are both top-notch and you have to literally play for weeks if you want to discover everything.

Tldr:

It's not ground breaking, even though it has (had?) the potential to become fantastic, there's just too many inherent flaws that make me think that it's just as good as it'll ever get.

Preface:

I'm reviewing this game after completion, as I helped Aria overthrow the government, and later defeated the Dengi invasion, I went through (almost) all the available content (that I know of), in the course of several years (both in game and in real life), and even if the game seem overwhelming at first, as it's showering you at the start with seemingly endless possibilities, after a (short) while, you realise the limitations, and you're left frustrated and disappointed by everything you CAN'T do.

Art:

the bulk of it is made with DAZ 3d, and while it's not the most appealing visuals, it has the merit to be consistent, and once the models are made you can create all the scenes you want with them, and here come the first (of several) problem I have with the game and the dev himself, rather than keeping to it (daz3d) he had to shovel in the most obnoxious looking AI art you've ever seen, I'm talking about 1st generation garbage, with malformed limbs, impossible position, inconsistent clothing etc. the shower scenes are good examples (with the arm and the hand around the neck) and the whole "fort Sera" quest-line " " " illustrations " " " are atrocious, how blind you have to be to curate that kind of crap?

and that's when I began to have a suspicions that the Dev is more compelled by the money rather than the aspect of creating a great story (more on that later) when instead of creating asset to keep a cohesive visual identity, or even paying someone to create all those assets (which is what the game funding are MEANT for), he resorted to cheap AI cg, which are SO bad you'd have a hard time imagining that the DEV saw them and thought "yeah good enough, it goes in ".

Writing:

The writing is really good, I'd say it's even impressive at times, the world building is amazing, aside from the "sex scenes" that made me cringe to no end, which I assume is a matter of personal taste, but some of the dialogues are straight out of a bad porn movie, it's vulgar, and realistically I don't think anyone can be aroused by what the MC come up with sometimes, I personally didn't like that at all, but if that's your jam, or if like me you can gloss over it, you're in for a great story !

Fetish:

It's all about power fantasy and male domination, you're in control of everyone around you (up to a point), and it's great if you're into that, but there's a jarring issue, to come back to a point I made earlier, by the nature of it's funding, the game is limited by what fetish it can explore, so the DEV (who's seemingly scared shitless to lose his precious money) will never EVER go further than "kinky consensual bondage in the basement" because everything "non consensual" is against the TOS of funding platforms.

While the game is set in a very dystopian world, with very dark themes, it stay exceedingly tame with what the player can do, and I feel that there's a missed opportunity, as the only viable gameplay you're allowed into is "making slaves love you and corrupt them into sluts" and that's it.

Gameplay:

It's day by day life sim, you have rpg element (with stats, health, stamina) and you complete several actions from 08.00 to 23.59, where you occupy your time grinding, capturing slaves for market, crafting equipment, training etc. the game is meant to be played over the course of several in-game years, having a wife and child, and seeing them grow, however there is no mechanic to progress smoothly through time other than day by day, and it's long, and tedious, and if you're expecting something like a "crusader king" kind of game, you will be disappointed, there's nothing beyond the end game (aria rebellion) but day to day monotony.

The combat is perhaps the worst aspect of the game, it is turn based and you select an action and a target and proceed until one side is all dead (or captured), the combat at first is challenging, and it become easier with gear and weapons (but most importantly training) then it become "too" easy, to a point when you don't even feel enemies hitting you anymore, and you just one-shot everyone, so what does the dev do to parry that ? creating interesting game mechanics? like skills and positioning, terrain advantages and other things tactical rpg created almost 50 years ago had already figured out ? no, he just pull out the most nonsensical numbers out of his ass to create an unfair advantage to the enemy team, like giving them 1600 strength (which is more than than twice all your team combined will ever get) or a thousand HP, making late game fight hitting bullet sponges, It's just lazy game design.

Conclusion:

Everything is set for mediocrity, by someone that should write books instead of trying to make games.

The art direction, the watered down fetish, even the fact that the game is HTML (played on browser) is setting clear limitations to what it can do, and how far it will go.

The game will NEVER meet the expectations it set for the players and I would not be surprised one bit if the DEV decide to screw everyone and rebuild the game from scratch on a new engine on some false pretence and rack in 5 more years of funding.

I have played and supported this game since year 2 you always find new things, Yes it is hard to play at beginning it plays like life you start with little have to get cash any way you can beg steal maybe kill. But if you make it is good. Great discord community that's willing to help with anything even the creator answers help questions bugs are fixed days or hours not next update or a week or so

There are very few games that scratch the itch of being a character in a cruel and merciless game where you have to fight to live another day while also being a power fantasy where you are a badass and have an input on the world.

This game achieves that for me and after SlaveMaker 3, its the only game I have played with multiple playthrough. The mechanics are a bit grindy but nothing visit to save editor fairy or html editing cannot fix. The world building is good with your player having multiple actionable goals which include expanding businesses, doing a soft revolution, learning about weird magic not magic occult system. Hell, u can basically play the game as a minor lecturer in academy. The dev have also promised a crime family system so looking forward to that.

The updates are continuous, like once every month at regular frequency. The harem is continuously expanding with new girls. Overall, its a great game and I strongly recommend if you are that type of player who is burnt out by visual novels and want to feel more agency as you pillage, rape and burn

I've really enjoyed playing Masters of Raana. The game's depth offers something that few other adult games do and I've invested countless hours into forming my own great house and harem. It feels VERY complete even if it's still in Alpha.

--ART--
Really hot. Some renders are still placeholders but most girls have around 100 (!!) individual scenes so you can really explore every part of her body if you want to. Lots of clothes and accessories to chose from.

--SOUND--
What really pulled me in. The score and ambience are breathtaking and very varied. Haunting music plays when you explore caves and catacombs and somber tunes engulf you when exploring the cities.

--LORE & SETTING--
Also another factor where this great game shines. There is so much to explore that I still feel I've only scratched the surface. I won't go into details about the setting as you can read that in the OP but there are more things going on than what the game's premises tell you. Very exciting.

--RGP-ELEMENTS (THE "GRIND")--
It's a pretty hard game especially if you pick any difficulty level above Sandbox. I love this but give the traits and stats some attention when creating your character.

This game basicaly mix of DnD, Crusader Kings 2 and Sex Slave Trainer in Sci Fi Setiing, and which is actully very good in it own way.
Game very unique, and I would say it even started it own genre. So far very few games who have similiar gameplay and similiar mechanics.
Now what I meant about mixing all these genre. Even though it started as Slave Trainer game, it prety quickly devoloped into much more. At firts there were added RPG DnD mechanics, which allow players customize their MC, and customize and develop their slaves in way they want training their unique stats and trait. Aside from slaves games have other non slave NPC, prety decent battle mechanic which is turn based, and alot of quests.
From CK2 it basicaly inspired Political Events, and Religion and other elements which allow player Empire Building.
So yeah Players can gain titles, and even run their Buisness Empire.

On top of all that game have very regular updates. Dev seem workaholic in good way, unlike most devs who make excuses why they didnt make any updates in months, he make update every month adding new mechanics, new quests, new NPC.


Dev seem also good writer, because his worldbuilding is very decent and precise where even Planets build in way so it had scientificaly accurate properties. Seting also unqiue, Planet have misteries: Hive Minds, Alliens, Ancient Civilisation, Stargates, Mutants, AI, Zombies and other tasty Sci Fi stuff. All that never revealed fully but always keep players guesing how it all conected. Dev created world which interisting to discover and mysteries which make players engage when they arent busy already by building their empire or fucking beautifull girls.))

As if all that wasnt enough dev also have long term plans, planing second part of game, and even ability later transfer saves which whole project give Baldur Gate1 and Baldur Gate 2 games vibes.
In general despite game already great and already have lot of great mechanic and sexual content dev plans show it only beging of long road and future promise even more mechanics, more empire building , more strategy elements, more interisting location to visit and more mysteries to discover.
So long engaging journey await of fans of these series.
Definatly recomand this Masterpiece.

Simulator of misses and training.
Some content available only for payable players so if you like that attitude it won't be a problem.

Tutorial is so bad that you'll got nothing from it. The best friend of yours' wiki but it also doesn't fully explains many aspects of game. Many pages are still empty after so many years.

The first battle with your "bro" against bandits is 2vs3 where your enemies never miss while you can't even make one hit with 40+ weapon skill. Like someone wrote in his review earlier only with 90+ lvl of skills you get feeling that it works more or less and even then it won't save you from misses completely. And for that you should have 360 points from payable version of game or spend a lot of time for training attributes every day while you have money after that you train your slaves every day for 0-3 points of attribute.
And after you spend a lot of time and money on leveling your attributes you
still could fight worse then ordinary bandit against you or you fresh hired pal with the same equipment.

You'll get casino slots gameplay where one time you hit for 1 hp and hit full hp in another. If you don't miss it ofc But mostly it's a very weak strikes.
So save scumming is a rightful mechanic of this game.

Your character in scenes will be default bold old man even if you chose 18 year old lad for your play. Poor looking rendered scenes mixed with fascinating clean ai pics looks strange and out of the general picture. You don't believe in that world.

It's a poorly made game with a lot of grinding by greedy devops.

Ok, an essential premise: I cheated on this game, badly, giving myself top everything from the start. I've this theory that if a game has no interesting content, putting aside the grinding, than it is not worthy to grind for.

Well, this game has very good content..
If I had to grind to reach that level, I'd quit, and it would have been a shame, because the game in itself is crazily good.
It has everything: large amount of lore, content, quests related to the unique slaves you can acquire in market or related to specific places, a decent combat system, mistery, a great UI, good graphic for the the slaves.

Probably one of the best games around for people who love free roaming/sandbox. And not only in the html section.

A true gem... BUT... this if you start with crazy high stats and money. If you start with the measly 280 points in character creation, I've no doubt that it can be a grinding nightmare.

So, this is one of those rare cases where the grinding is NOT the content, but blocks the content. (HINT to the dev: be way more generous with character creation points).

Aside that explained above, the game has just a tiny bit problem for a game on this site: the sex content is not always such a turn on. The graphic, as I said, is good, there are a lot of ways to interact with slaves, but it just misses that 'magic' that makes a situation hot.

But I tell you, I've played it for hours and I'm still playing it just for the lore and the quests, more than for the images of the naked slaves.

A sandbox that mistakes grinding for depth. Every stat is basically useless unless it's really high and every stat raises incredibly slowly(when there's a way to consistently raise them at all).

The slaves all use modular, generic dialogue and scenes so there's nothing setting them apart besides numbers. Their responses are based almost entirely on skill check dice rolls, so they can go from accepting to horrified and back within the span of 3 text boxes, end the interaction on a positive note and then be mad at you for it.

Most actions are limited by stamina which drains incredibly quickly and only recovers about half when you sleep because I guess the other half of your stamina bar is just imaginary, or something? You can train it higher but you're still gonna need 2 days to recover from a day of work. Speaking of work, for most of the game anything that isn't beating the shit out of random people in an alley and enslaving them pays jack all.

There's potential here but as is it's mostly just a number-go-up simulator.

For an html porn game, Masters of Raana is surprisingly good. There's a good amount of quest and stuff to do that you can absolutely just ignore most of the porn stuff (most, not all, because you have to empty your ballsack pretty often)

- Some features that caught my attention:
1. Character customization. It offers you enough choices that you can keep replaying the game with different build each time (although, I ended up always doing the solo melee walkthrough)
2. Many content. Like I said earlier, there's a ton of content that will probably make you addicted to it. There's slave capturing and shaping (the game's main focus), investment mechanic, bounty hunting, crafting, etc
3. Pretty high quality CGs. Although I mostly play the game for the lore and gameplay, the CGs are objectively high quality.

- Bad things that should be optimized in the future:
1. Unbalanced. It's very hard to make decent money in the early game if you didn't have certain build (especially for pacifist and business man walkthrough). The late game money making is just... easy. Too easy.
2. Grinding fest. If you picked some unoptimized trait and waste your stat points, your first quarter of the game is just grinding for stats.

Ovarall, this is one of the best html games I've ever played. Hope the dev optimized the early game walkthrough, though!