RPGM - Completed - Melty Brave Kittens [v1.22] [circle-tekua]

A very poor showing from a dev who has shown themselves capable of making good and fun experiences. The game is very short, scenes are lacking and not very interesting, characters are boring and bland, the "karma" system doesn't really add anything, most fights boil down to projectile spam.. I really wouldn't recommend this one at all.

v1.22
Coming from the other games, this title was pretty underwhelming.

It's short, relatively easy, and the story is underwhelming for the first title of this new world they cooked up. They seem to leave a lot out and/or unexplained. The list of useful equipment has taken an enormous hit and equipment experimentation is lackluster. Areas/maps are lacking detail. Combat is in open areas with nothing of note (which is counter-intuitive to all the stationary 'trap' weapons you get that would excel in narrow areas). As such, there isn't much to explore either.

The animations and girls are good though, maybe better than ever. The game is still fun to play, it's just lacking substance. It feels as though they're leaning more towards a scene viewer than a game.

very good game. many enemies and a fun simple story. i was disappointed by their last game but this is kinda like Lilith in nightmare again just better. the story is kinda short and the battles too and there is not much grind but it have a lot of great h-action and animations

I feel kind of sad. In my opinion, the quality of Circle Tekua's games was on a perfect incline, until they peaked with Succubus Tamer 2 (possibly my favorite H-game in history), and now I'm watching the quality of their games steadily decline with each new release. Granted, even this game is still superior to 99% of H-games, but I can't help but be sad because I know that this studio can do so much better.

I can see that they've been experimenting with genre, as their older games were mostly RPGs, while Captive Alstroemeria was sort of a puzzle game, and this one is sort of a bullet-hell. So I give them credit for that. But the worlds and stories of their latest 3 games (including the demos of Succubus Tail on Ci-en) are starting to feel really shallow in comparison. Their character designs are becoming inconsistent, if not flat out bad in some cases. They’ve also made it difficult to enjoy the H-scenes in combat, since when an enemy catches you, you’re forced to quickly time a button press, and when you lose you are kicked back to the title screen. And if you want to argue that you can still enjoy the H-scenes before getting a game over… Well, I’m experienced enough with bullet hell games that I haven’t seen a single Game Over (without intentionally doing so), and I’ve even gone entire fights without witnessing one single H-animation. At least they had the wisdom to make the recollection room accessible and fully unlockable from the beginning!

Suggestions? I feel like these devs should abandon the button timing mechanics altogether. Also I feel like the quality of the art in modern Circle Tekua updates is being sacrificed for the sake of animating them. I want more variety in fetishes, more variety in characters, and more depth to the story and game worlds. For fuck’s sake, you can’t even enter the item shops in this game! I’m glad they’re experimenting with genre, but why even incorporate an rpg-edge into what is essentially a boss-rush bullet-hell game, if it’s going to be this shallow? I’ll follow this studio into hell, but I do hope that they’ll return to their roots at some point, and sink their time into making something deeper, and more memorable than this.

Great animations and game play marred by some questionable design choices for the h-scenes.

So this replaces battle fuck mechanics with a top down action rpg battle. The good news is this battling is actually really fun and provides some complexity with the numerous weapon options and weapon modifiers. Honestly whoever designed and balanced the combat hit it out of the park by H-game standards. It's just challenging enough to be compelling but not overly frustrating once you learn the enemy attack patterns. The bad news is that this kind of system limits how long you get to enjoy the H-scenes and wonderful animations because most of the time you won't be seeing them at all. It also makes playing one handed pretty much impossible.

Even when viewing a defeat scene the design of them is very subpar. The majority of scenes involve the same looping animation with mild changes while the enemy girl says a line followed by 2-4 seemingly pointless battle fuck RPG messages about losing hit points or becoming excited/sensitive/etc. It's like if you took an average VN and put a blank few filler lines between every line of dialogue - just enough to annoy the player and take them out of the moment. It's even more frustrating because as said previously this isn't a battle fuck RPG at all so why wrap the H scenes up in that system?

It's a shame because the animations are GREAT. The content here is around 90% vanilla with 10% mild fetish involving light femdom, minor GTS play, minor foot play, general theme of succubus draining. But none of them are really explored enough to serve anyone interested in those kinks. It's more of "what anime trope of succubus do you want to perform mostly vanilla sex acts on you"

Bonus points for translation being good.

Bonus bonus points for providing an "unlock all scenes" option in the memory room right from the start.

Overall, this game is another pretty solid entry from circle-tekua, but it still feels sort of shallow compared to some of the circle's previous works.

Pros:

• Great animations as expected from this circle
• ARPG combat works well and is pretty engaging/fun
• Some fights can be challenging
• Specialized dialogue if you chose to play as the futanari MC.
• MTL is really good compared to non-GPT MTLs, thanks dazed.
• Ending sets up for a sequel!
• Futa MC choice and some Futa content

Cons:

• Due to the large cast of characters, there's not a lot of development for most of them. This is pretty typical of circle tekua though.
• Almost no romance other than with the orphanage girl. I miss the cute scenes from succubus tamer 2.
• Defeat H-scenes result in a game over and kick you back to the title screen.
• Most scenes don't show MC, or don't differentiate visually between Futa MC and Male MC. Once again, this is pretty common from this circle though so nothing new.
• Story is kinda meh, just two siblings looking for their older sister.
• Censored as all non-localized Japanese games are. This one is really excessive though.

Despite its shortcomings, Melty Brave Kittens gives you tons of H-scenes with a wide variety of scenarios (mostly femdom / seduction fetishes). The combat is pretty fun and a good change of pace from the usual turn-based RPG fights you see in H-games.

If you're a fan of circle tekua's past games you'll probably like this one too. It's pretty short and packed with content so you don't have to worry about spending too much time in order to see everything. Just save often before you take on any quests and you'll be fine.

If you know Circle-tekua, then you are already familiar with the formula.

Melty Brave differs only in that this is an ARPG, so while there isn't strict battlefucking like the previous titles, you are still fighting succubi that will try to get you to cum and drain you if they catch you or hit you with certain attacks.

The game employs RPGM MV's systems in a clever way. You have two 'party members' that are floating weapons with no hurtboxes, both of which can be equipped with a weapon and a modifier. Along with the player character, that is three different weapons. While there is a satisfying variety of weapons, I found most modifiers too tame to make some of the weapons useful.

You can grind for levels and gold in a generic monster clearing mission, taking place in a specific map, so no procedural RPGM jank. And then you can tribute either or both to your enemies waifus of choice.

The sex scenes are beautifully animated, the characters are gorgeous, and there's enough variety to keep the scenes from being repetitive (but don't expect hard or outlandish kinks, the weirdest you'll find is tiny-giant play.)

And the story has a branching ending depending on (reversible) decisions you make during the contract missions.

TL;dr: If you like Circle-tekua's games but you find them too long to replay, this will offer plenty of fun for a lesser investment, at the cost of the battlefucking mechanic turning into a fairly enjoyable action combat game.