TLDR: An amazing game. I don't say things like that lightly. It's an AMAZING game. Go try it now.
Support the author too, if you can. People who pour so much passion into their project deserve all the good things that are coming to them. Plus, he's listening to any sort of feedback, and you can't argue that it's quite respectable.
To start off, I didn't expect much from a game with a title like this. I've been taught better when I played other games with such unassuming titles, but I keep falling into this same prejudicial trap over and over like a blabbering cretin. And every single time I do manage to get around playing those kinda games - I truly am grateful. Just like now!
The premise of the plot is quite simple and basic for the ero game. Here's you, The Guy(default named Dante), one of the very few males left in the whole world and the only one left in your village. The human(oid) world is dying, bro. Like, really dying. The ratio of males and females born is nowhere near equal. The solution? You need to go and fertilize 1k of females to ensure the dwindling population won't become an extinct population. Good luck, Hero! Oh, and if you find a solution to this whole no-men-birth problem and uncover a couple of ancient conspiracies along the way - more power to you, man!
What I love about this game the most is how... alive it feels. Truly, a living, breathing world. Everyone you come across has a distinct personality. Every single person can't be described as purely good or purely evil. Every interaction, every chit-chat you happen to have feels very, very real and is very pleasant to read. Every area has its own distinct culture. Very, very rarely does it feel a bit off or forced(like this whole thing about the age of the protagonist being shoved down your throat for, most likely, real world's legal reasons or how they had to elaborate that a petite gobbo girl looks like a child, and a couple of other small things I won't mention because, eh, it's played around well enough), but in most cases the game's narrative and dialogues flow as naturally as waters of a mountain spring.
Really, I can gush over worldbuilding and characters for hours on end, but, to finish it off in a masterful stroke, I must mention that I'm one of those people who can't memorize people or characters' names to save my life, unless they make a good(or bad, as in "evil") impression on me. And guess what? I remember names of most of the characters' of this game. Fucking unbelievable, man, that's amazing.
The art in this game may be not exactly top of the top, but it's high quality, it's juicy and, most importantly,
it has soul. At first, when I was just glancing over this game I wasn't looking too closely, but as I actually started playing - damn it's actually bloody good.
Characters, a
shit ton of them, all have a variety of different expressions, which also help to liven up the already living world. Sure, static images that may be, but with some magic powers of
imagination, it really did feel like I was conversing with them, even though you, as a player, have no real power over a conversation most of the times. And that being said, it brings us to....
The MC. The character you control is a character in itself. And a wonderfully-written character at that. In most cases I would be somewhat pissed off that I don't have more control in regard to what he'd say, but this character resonates deeply with me. He reacts appropriately(even going as far as acknowledging the absurdity of his, heh, noble quest), he's not a prude asshole, he's not
completely dense. In most cases, what he would say and how he would react - I'd probably do and say the exact same thing he would. Maybe it's just my opinion, I dunno. But you can't deny that he's a likeable lad you can empathize with.
As far as I understand, the music used in the game is royalty-free. However, it's picked out wonderfully. Never once have I battled someone, or chilled in an in-game convo, and thought something like: "Fuck, this song sucks ass". No, quite the opposite. It either blends into environment, and in a good way, or it's a real fucking banger. I, personally, frequently re-listen the song that was used for a coliseum battle, it really grew on me.
You'd think that all of this would be quite enough, but no. This game... is
actually a game
. And a pretty damn good one at that.
The combat is very solid and feels just right. The moment you think that you hit dead-end and that someone in your party becomes a dead weight - they learn that one game-changing skill and get back into being a proper addition to your team. In addition to that, you have lots of stuff to consider: the status ailments, the resistances, the types of attack - very basic RPGM game stuff, but here it actually matters(at least until you break the game which doesn't happen all that fast). Equipment
matters, including blessings which is like a powerful accessory that you get for making a character dedicate themselves to you.
Almost everything is also upgradeable, including those blessings that become ultimate pieces of equipment in a league of its own once you max them. In this game, up until a certain point where you finally figure out ins and outs -
you need to pick the right tools for the job. Unless you play on Easy and Normal, but come on. What are you, a scrub?
Later on in the game you also will have to manage your village. As of v8.0.3., the system, while decently fleshed out, is still somewhat rudimentary. Can't wait to see what it becomes in the future, but I do hope that it'll be slightly reworked so that rushing mine upgrades won't be your first priority.
Really, there's so many layers to this game, even in its unfinished stage, that it makes the onions cry. And so far? So far it seems like this author's magnum opus. I have full faith that someday it'll be finished like his other games, and hoo boi, can't I wait to play it in its finished state.
There are not many flaws to it no matter how long or hard you look. However, there are
some, and some of those some are just nitpicks on my end. As of v8.0.3, there's some examples with criticism/impressions:
- Forced preggo and lactation stuff. Wish there was a switch between that and normal sprites and scenes.
- That traditional RPGM map section in the Reach felt a bit out of place and somewhat off-putting. The map's quality is fine, it's the fact that the very presence of traditional gameplay kind of ruined the pacing that was set beforehand. Hard to put it into words, I'm not a very eloquent person. It feels more like it was an "experiment", and it didn't quite do it for me.
- In later sections post-Misty Woods, I think(?), the Chat option which allowed you to chat with characters in your party to gather their opinions on your current location and/or an advice on how to proceed further was removed altogether. Quite a shame, too, because I really liked it.
- Once you start abusing the repeatable quest in Shores of Easy in later sections of the game, you gain near-infinite money and resources from your village's gatherers. More difficulty/reward-scaling balancing is required.
- More of a personal preference, but there's little to no anal scenes and it breaks muh heart. Come on, there's plenty of loving procreational shecks already, surely there's plenty of space for some loving deviant kind as well for us sodomites.
- That new experimental sex system(the one introduced with the new shopkeepers from the latest zone) is, eh... not that good, really. Makes things feel too generic. Honestly, it'd be a good idea to simply do the things the way they were done before. Sure, it'll take more time, but the result will totally worth it.
- For the game where you spend lots of time tweaking your equipment for the missions there's no save/quickload equipment set system. This whole process takes way too much time.
- Even though there's already tons of content, there's simply not enough
This game, unfinished as it may be, was an absolute treat and, perhaps, it'll become an even better one in the future. I wish the author the best of luck in his future endeavors(whatever it may be, not just with the game) and may we be blessed with decent sizable content updates for years to come. Amen.
