Others - Moon Rhapsody [v3.1.3] [Kosmic91]

This is one of the most frustrating slogs on the site, and I'm saying that about a game in a genre filled with JRPGs that require hundreds of hours of grinding. The part that really kills this game is that the mechanics simply don't work for what the author is trying to go for. The screen is GB vintage, postage stamp sized. The enemies can go from one side to another in less than a second, and they have nothing resembling knockback, hitstun, invincibility, or even a pause between attacks. Every enemy kills in one to two hits in melee Sure, that's fine in a game where you're pitted, one at a time, against these kinds of enemies. But this game routinely throws entire screens of enemies like this at you. Some rooms are just 'How fast can you reset the room before the closest guy instant stunlocks and kills you'. And this is even if you use firearms since, as many have stated, the firearm controls aren't great for the type of game this would normally be.

I see here the dev posted sometime in the thread and said this was a staple of "Survival horror" games, and I have to call shenanigans on that. Making a game that plays poorly isn't excused because you changed some definitions around.

Silent Hill 1 and Resident Evil can be brutal games if you don't know what to do, but it has nothing to do with how they control or how fair the enemies are and everything to do with knowing how to budget resources for problems. I think the game simply has really bad enemy design and controls and there's a need to rethink how they interact with each other.

I can't give the game one or two stars, the art is just too good for that. If nothing else, you should go look up the art on your local booru instead of playing the game.

I was scrolling through, searching for... Nothing, really, just bored and curious what other hot garbage H-game I could find to waste time, since triple-As have lately become stale repetitive and boring. And I came upon this jewel.

Now, I'm going to say something I can't put enough emphasis on. This game is HARD. A proffesional game reviewer (ign and other plebs like them) might not even get past the first island, let alone the first boss. Hell, your average gamer will likely drop this. YOU will likely give up on this game for it's difficulty.

I came for the... Not even the porn tbh, I just saw cute pixels and I was in. But I stayed for the challenge. This game is not impossible, but it's as close as I ever played to impossible. Hell, Sekiro was easy in comparaison.

As this is a demo, it still lacks plot, decent tutorials and anything resembling a guide, so you have to discover all on your own. Combos, attacks, mechanics, places and bosses, it's all on you to find, no hand holding allowed.

H-content can only be found upon game over, and it's very short. Not fappable, but I'd say it's cute. Most of it, some is disturbing or even macabre.

The characters are each unique in termn of gameplay and combat. I recommend starting with Nyx, as she is easier. Only once you 100%her part of the demo, go Sahsa. Otherwise, the learning curve might seem (and rightly so) like a learning wall.

Conclusion:

Amazing game, I recommend it to any masochistic gamers in search of a challenge. I also recomment it to any pixel enjoyers. Animations, props and characters are all really cute and well-made. I even recommend it to people who don't care/don't like h-content. You can turn that off from the settings, at any time.

Be aware. This game is incredibly difficult, much, much more than what you'd expect seeing the preview pictures. The closest comparable would be something like I Wanna Be The Guy. There are several parts where the difficulty is so obscene that I can't believe it wasn't intentional. In particular: 1) Most levels are full of obscure mechanics which you are never going to guess without a walkthrough and 2) boss fights are almost impossible without exploits, some of them take hundreds of hits to die, while your heroine gets one shot by almost everything. If you don't use Cheat Engine, expect to be frustrated a lot.

That said, once you manage to complete it, you can't help but feel empty and almost sad that it's over. This is such a remarkable game on so many aspects. Visuals, musics, and sounds are stunning, the heroines are super cute and the story combined with excessive difficulty gives this game a truly unique survival horror ambience. If you can work around the difficulty (ie. use a walkthrough and Cheat Engine), then it's well worth the time. A shame that the difficulty will ruin it for so many people because otherwise there would be only 5/5 reviews.

Maybe logically I should be giving this game a much lower rating. But it just kept me coming back to keep playing it to the point I beat both routes in hard mode (accessible by starting a new save after inputting up, up, down, down, left, right, left, right, B, A and Enter in the main menu), and I kept enjoying it more as I played, so there you go.

Let's start by saying everything I loved.
I've played a couple "game over" type H-games at this point, and this is no doubt my favorite and most memorable. The presentation is the best part of this game. It's the first one I can say actually kinda feels like a genuine attempt to make a video game rather than just an excuse for H-scenes, in fact, most of the time I found myself more invested in the game than the H-scenes. I've even played it a lot with no intention of seeing one.
The visuals impressed me when I first started the game, such visually pleasing pixel art for an H-game.
The world is nothing too deep but still cool and I enjoyed exploring it and talking to the characters. The atmosphere in this game is done especially well, possibly its best aspect, with both the visuals and audio / music giving a creepy eerie dangerous feeling to most areas that was super effective and memorable. Also that fishing minigame was NOT necessary in the slightest and I love that it exists, even if it's mechanically tedious.
I also love how the two routes were done, while they share enemies, they feel incredibly different in every single way possible other than that(seriously a lot of ways, I'm not gonna name them all tho). Even the shared enemies appear in different ways at different points. And Nyx showing up as a minor NPC in Sasha's route is cute I guess, even if I'm still confused as to which route chronologically happens first.
Lastly, obviously, the H-scenes were great yeah, possibly the best I've seen from this type of game. I wouldn't have played the game if I hadn't seen some beforehand and liked them. Good looking, and very satisfying audio. Contrary to most people I also do like the way they're triggered(from a porn point of view, gameplay's a different conversation). I might have more to say but let's just sum it up with saying that everything about the porn in this game was quite hot to me.

But now let's get into what I disliked.
Oh my god I did not like the combat most of the time, particularly with melee weapons. Genuinely near-impossible and luck based to fight enemies with melee weapons, and usage of ranged weapons is obviously limited somewhat.
This problem is even worse with the bossfights, which I hated. Every boss other than Ogre (and Kunoichi in my first normal mode playthrough) I had to find a way to cheese because they're so incredibly goddamn tedious and difficult (tbf I never gave Mizuki a try without letting the hands defeat her so exclude that boss). Hell, most of the time I also used cheese methods for normal enemies, like hitting them from behind an obstacle. The only boss I'd say was good is Ogre. Not perfect but I felt that it was pretty fun and fair, especially in normal mode. Kunoichi while possible without cheese is ridiculously difficult and unforgiving for a first boss, your only window to safely attack is while she's doing that slow swing attack. And, as with every other boss or enemy, attacking normally is luck based because enemy attacks are so fast they can come out while you're still in the animation of hitting them. There is no way to dodge them, there is no way to see them coming, they are sudden and instant. Enemies can also dash across the screen in the blink of an eye, you have to be on your toes and use your tools carefully and with precision.
There are times when this can absolutely work in the game's favor: particularly, when you have ammo for your gun with Sasha / SP for your magic with Nyx. Here, not letting the enemies get close enough to attack is the point, and it's absolutely fun and thrilling to try to kill them without them getting to you! This is when I enjoyed the combat. Maybe this WAS the whole point of the game, but I don't think there was enough ammo / time to recover SP for every enemy, and sometimes the spaces were just too small to try and create any distance. A lot of the time you just gotta go in with a melee weapon and pray you survive. Even if you do, there's no way to avoid losing some HP and SP. But again, this is much worse with the bossfights, because there is no bossfight you can reasonably win by just keeping your distance. You have to go in and risk getting hit by a sudden attack, which will kill you after a couple times(or sometimes just one time, in hard mode). I think this is unreasonable and unfun which is why I cheesed almost every boss in some way, which is basically skipping the bossfight. You just don't have enough ammo with Sasha to kill a boss, and... well with Nyx honestly the bossfight problem wasn't as bad, Kunoichi was tedious but beatable with a certain strategy, Ogre was good, the Basilisk horde and Nagi were the ones I had to "cheese" (I just used the super OP spray that makes you invisible, it breaks everything because it's so OP so I consider it cheese lol, but at least it felt a bit more intended?)
Anyways, another part about the combat is the grab system. While it WAS frustrating a lot of the time, to be fair, the problem can be alleviated by keeping your clothes repaired, and if they break, your SP somewhat reserved. It took me a while to realize escaping depends on the state of your clothes. If the game told you that I wouldn't have much issue with it tbh, early into my first playthrough (Nyx's route) I decided it was probably impossible to escape from enemies without attacking and treated my SP like a second healthbar almost, and never used sewing kits, which did hurt the experience.
I do want to mention that a lot of the time, avoiding enemies instead of fighting them is an option, which I appreciate and it made the game SO much less tedious than it could've been. It's not exactly easy either, it's still risky which I like.
Finally, a part that also sucked was finding what I needed to do. A lot of the time I was super lost so I just watched a vid. Definitely think the game needs to be less confusing.

Overall I think I enjoyed the game more as I kept playing it and started to understand it and get good at it. Maybe I would give it 2.5-3 stars for when you start playing, but now that I'm a bit better at it and understand it, I can give it like 4-5 stars. But for the standards of fucking H-games, that's overall like a 8-9/10. I can't stress enough how much this impressed me for an H-game. This is a game I can find some entertainment in playing even without the hentai elements, having quite a decent amount of content for a demo, and said hentai elements are very hot if I do want to engage with them. What more could I reasonably ask for? The combat may not be perfect, but for an H-game it's quite interesting and engaging in just how hard it is, and it could've been worse. Honestly, the biggest complaint might be that there's not enough of it. For a game with such a learning curve, it runs out of content quickly- it's unfinished, of course, so it's justified, but it still hurts the experience- and i'm also not sure if it IS going to be finished.

Which route is better? Nyx has combat that's less frustrating and it's generally the easier route, so good for a first playthrough, but I find Sasha's usually more challenging, thrilling and fun to replay (though I generally find Nyx and her scenes hotter so it's quite the predicament lmao)

So yeah, out of the couple H-games I've played (all "game over" type) this is the best one, and will probably continue to be my favorite H-game for a while. And if it ever receives another update I will excitedly be there for it, though I'm doubting it will. Maybe I'll just replay what I have in the meantime, do some challenge run or something lmao. I don't know if the other game by Kosmic is an H-game but maybe I'll look into it too, eventually.

Do I recommend this game? If you're willing to face difficulty, sometimes it being quite frustrating, and you're willing to either get lost for a million years sometimes or give in to just watching a video to see what you need to do. Then yes, I would. I'll say it again, an experienced player is gonna have more fun playing than a new player. Maybe I'd give it 5 stars if the combat was more fair and didn't encourage me to cheese it, and if game was as good when you start as it is when you're experienced (...and if it wasn't terribly unfinished with uncertainty concerning if it's going to and when and how).

this may be my favorite porn game of all time. (also my first time reviewing a h-game, be chill ok)

gameplay
i understand the gameplay and puzzle difficulty is most likely a turn off for a lot of people, but i've come to enjoy it. SP adds a sense of strategy and stealth at times, as you need to decide what battles to take or how to conserve the amount of SP you have (in Sasha's case, as Nyx auto regens SP abiet slowly). the grab mechanic is a bit confusing at first, as you have the choice to escape immediately, sacrificing a large amount of SP or if you have the clothing you can hold to get out, which i think is a downgrade from the previous, more straightfowards system. the movement options are fleshed out and sastisfying to get the hang of, and the different weapon types leads to a large amount of freedom in your playstyle (if you have the resources to back it up). the wide variety of items you can pick up and buy helps out a ton, but money can be tight as there isn't many effective ways to farm it in this version (3.1.3 ). the amount of content is huge, as having two different characters that both have largely different stories and gameplay mechanics give you more to play after you've finished one of them (imo nyx ix easier than sasha). the hardcore mode can be a fun challenge when you've gotten more acquainted with the game as whole. however, i do agree that the majority of bosses are frustrating and at times tedious (mizuki especially if you're trying to 100%).

puzzles
the puzzles can be finicky and cryptic- trust me i've gotten lost and confused more times than i can count in this game as i struggled to pick up visual queues with where an item could be or where an item leads to- asking the community for help (they are very nice and helpful) really does make things more managable and straightforwards, which gives you more time to play the game and less time to wander around aimlessly (me especially), and figuring out the puzzles on your own can be satisfying.

art
the art is one of my favorite parts about this game, with beautifully crafted pixel art backgrounds and the wide array of items and clothing that sasha or nyx can use, the attention to detail is astounding, to the point that sometimes i can't figure out a puzzle or where an item is because the rest of the game is so intricate i don't notice the small queues given in the background (as stated previously). the H-scenes are also very well made, being both sexy and enhanced by the color mod (which is something you should definetly pick up)! while in the grand scheme of things the H-appeal is probably the main reason why people here picked up the game in the first place (myself included) taking the time to take a closer look at the settings and appreciate the animations really improved my opinion of the game.

conclusion/summary
MR is honestly a great game to play, regardless of the H-scenes and whatnot. it's by no means is perfect, as the puzzles can be confusing and the bosses can be irritating but i genuinely had a great time adjusting to the gameplay and would recommend it.

Great music!
Great graphics, if you like pixel art. It has great animated waves!
Porn is good but vanilla. You only see it when you die which is a bit frustrating.

I have to give this 5 stars because it is one of the few porn games that I have played that seems to have a unique vision and gameplay style. I can't just bang my head against the wall with this one. Actually have to think, decide which encounters to take on or avoid.
I think it is a bit obtuse and unusual, but definitely worth a try!
So far I have only tried the Sasha character, but I can see that Nyx has a somewhat different setting and scenario - probably worth trying both for a bit.

Good, just good for pixel lovers. Especially for games that are low res and supports older computer, even though my equipment aren't that bad at all. I still love to watch sex animation with good in-game gameplays

Yeah, I played this a bit, can't really say that I enjoy it.
Art is nice, character design is cute, the actual game is pretty bad.
I'm familair with survival horror, but this isn't a very good one. Game over every time you see a sex scene is bad H-game design, and for a survival horror, each screen is far too small to be throwing you up against multiple enmies who can kill you in two hits.

In addition, stamina draining with no way to restore is bullshit (yes I know you eventually get matches, but that's too little, too late).
Also, when you get grabbed by an enemy, you absolutely do not have enough time to mash out of it before you get game-over. And it definitely shouldn't give you the wrong button-prompt (it tells you to mash Left click to attack, and right-click to escape. But left-click does nothing because you 'can't attack', so it just leads to you failing to escape.)

TLDR: Cool design, bad gameplay. Bad porn too.

Game has some of the worst combat ever in a video game. Playing as Sasha, you use all your SP just to kill one enemy and it doesn't recharge so you're just screwed. Killing the pirate enemies is terrible because while you're hitting them they'll just instantly hit you back which brings up the grabbed state and holding escape is pointless because you'll never fill the bar so you'll always lose. Playing as the other character Nyx is pointless too. You get a random map to roam on but the only thing on the map is bats. Nothing else, just a completely empty map. Saving is pointless because you can clear a room and go back to save but when you die the enemies spawn back again so what's the point of saving? The animations are above average and the color mod makes it a bit better to look at. This game needs to fix it's combat badly and it's overall content cause this is definitely not worth calling a demo.

Moon Rhapsody intertwines a Souls-style difficulty and learning curve with retro pixel art and classic action adventure gameplay, a unique horror environment and gorgeous artwork which just keeps me coming back for more. 10/10, fantastic work so far from the developer!

Completely broken, all interactions does little to nothing, unavoidable game overs, impossible to break loose from enemy rapists, hp means nothing because they just assault you sexually and it's insta game over, escape feature doesn't do anything, your own attacks are meaningless since they insta one hit you with assault. Waste of time.

When I saw this game, I was quite excited to play it, because it promised a mix of Legend of Zelda and RE. Unfortunately, I was very disappointed.

The art style is good and H-content is decent, that's primarily the reason why I didn't give it a one-star rating.

The combat feels unsatisfying and I don't like the SP system in the game, where it kinda represents your stamina for attacks. Well, good luck fighting bandits with low SP. (it's quite annoying)

It is still a demo, but the combat should definitely be improved to make it more rewarding and not so crouch-attack spammy.

Really great art and gameplay. The porn is a side thing but it's there, and the community is very kind. Only issues I had were with the difficulty; it tends to be less of a curve and more of a wall, but it's satisfying to get over.

The Combat is too janky and way too easy, there is no reason to explore, there is no aim in the game. Its supposedly survival horror, without any survival or horror elements.
You wake up in the middle of nowhere, walk into the most steamiest forest in the world and because its so hard to see you fall down cliffs a lot.
No explanation of your character, nothing tells you why you are there in the first place, nothing tells you why you're fighting there or for what purpose.
Even for a demo, its extremely lackluster.
Do not play this game. Its not worth your time or your money.