VN - Ren'Py - Nephilim [v0.5.3] [BuuPlays]

This is an poor game overall.

It's a story focused game which has so many characters and plot threads that it feels schizophrenic in it's story telling mechanisms. Due to the fight for camera time between so many leading ladies it makes most of them come off as incredibly desperate. My best in universe explanation is that this is a world designed literally for him but it feels like a huge negative in a story focused game.

The plot has some nice set pieces and fight scenes which are ambitious but overall lacking in narrative tension as it's a porn game so we know the protagonist isn't dying and the dev doesn't seem to have any inclination of letting you lock yourself out of a path unless you explicitly choose too.

Linking in to choosing paths, it's completely pointless. The story suffers from it because it pretends that you might not being in a harem with half the fucking world's women but you are and it feels like there is a complete disconnect. The women even say to each other "Let's pretend nothing is going on around each other because that'd make each other sad.". Avoiding unpacking the in universe clear acknowledgement that the protagonist is making each of these women actively unhappy, it really limits a lot of scenes where someone you are close to is now acting strangely distant or conversely someone you have said no too still being all over you but stopping just before giving you a blow job.

Most sex scenes are basic in terms of imagination and length but well executed in terms of animation and direction. The female leads are pretty well designed too (aside from the fact they all seem to basically fall under a stupidity spell for the Protagonist). Some of the leads are actually really engaging with Eliza, while having a story that seems rushed at points, being a very fleshed out character (at least comparatively - she still suffers from Protagonist took my brain syndrome).

If you play a Story Focused Porn game you are playing it because you care about a good story with sexual content through out. When it fails on pacing and narrative and characters I don't know what it has left to offer.

Eliza l'une des meilleures LI de tout le VN !
De nombreux LI sont beaux, bonne histoire
Impatient to follow the future adventure ! Give a great role to Eliza please, perhaps a pregnancy ??? it would be great !

Good models, good story . This is one of the better games here. I hope this game continues. I'm already waiting for the next update to the game. This is my opinion after playing version 0.5.3 i was playing the light path. i will play the dark path too.

English:............9/10
User Interface:.....3/10
User Experience:....7/10
Art:................7/10
Dialogue:...........4/10
Story:..............6/10
Opinion:............5/10................
Avg:.............5.86/10 [2.93/5]

Every time I boot this game up, I quit early. No. Not because of limited sexual content. Contrary to what the first few frames of the game think, I have never cared that there is or isn't sex in the game yet. It's because the story lording the possible future sex over you is in fact, boring. Love at first sight and building all the relationships off-screen. It talks about relationship and world-building, but can someone point to where the relationship building has been? MC meets a girl, they travel to a couple taverns, and are horny for each other. The end? And the childhood friend? They were childhood friends and... That means she loves him. And the world-building? From what I remember, they go to MC's hometown to find his parents killers, a decade later, and angels exist. So the two major points they say they want to focus, don't exist. Nice. Granted this is from memory, and I DESPERATELY want to be proven wrong. ALL THAT SAID, I don't remember bad English, the renders were mostly good, and I don't remember the dialogue so that means it didn't make me angry at least. None of those are compliments, sure, but they're not bad. To be honest, I had a computer crash last time I played and lost a lot of my review so I got fed up and haven't touched the game in ages. This review might seem a little disjointed because it's me in two separate points of time. Here's hoping I like it a bit more or something.


I'm gonna have to call my review here. I'll finish to end of current content (5.2) and chime in if something of value happens. But honestly this is absurd. Kira once again loses the ability to function as a human when he's around. MC is suddenly sexually forward with her. It's annoying. Around the time MC leaves his village with Eliza, I had mild hopes for this. But the writer CONTINUES to avoid writing character building of any kind and just time skip to when they're in love. Which, SPOILER ALERT is about 3 seconds after they meet. You have no concept of time. The villain just escapes using pocket sand. And nothing is happening. MC had one goal, but because Eliza exists and there's some ethereal tie they have, he didn't just kill Taron and be done with it. Better yet, his allies all now know Taron is the bad guy, this should be over. MC will walk up to a new character, read their character sheet and tell them their traits every single time. Instead of getting an adventure, this is MC saying something will happen and it happens right after. And last time I played, I SWEAR I remember Rin being in the story, or whatever the other childhood friend he had was named. MC learns or remembers he has new magical powers whenever its convenient for him to do so. The only other semi-competent human is Dalen and he's just there as a plot device to give MC access to whatever he needs. He's known them for 3 weeks, maybe, and gives them land? The lengths the heavens and earth bend to facilitate MC is astronomical. The only problem MC has in the story is that traveling and doing things takes time. There's no adversity, there's nothing negative that happens. You're left not caring for anything because the writing is so infantilized it might as well be an episode of Blues Clues. Even Gods are in love with him. There's no end to it. His character is just "I want revenge" what does anyone see in him? I'm playing as him and I couldn't tell you anything about him, that's miserable. And upon getting to the part where they COMPLETELY REMAKE ANOTHER GAME'S PLOT ARE YOU KIDDING ME?!?! All respect I had for the game was gone once I saw that. It probably means other things from other games are stolen too. This is a joke and I'm not touching it again.

Let's be real, no one's reading this long of a review. I get it. The synopsis is: The English is fine. I noticed a few weird lines but that's about it. The UI/UX is stock, nothing touched outside adding more save slots. The Names NEED an outline though. So many names are orange or mid tone and you can't read who's talking. The Art is okay. The animations are all tine slow motion loops that just don't look all that good. Whoever needs to hear this, speed up the timings, my god. The Dialogue isn't terrible. I'll give it that. When it's not some maiden pining for MC to come fart on them or whatever, the dialogue feels natural. Too bad it and the story just ell you what is going to happen next at all times. No mystery or adventure here. But MOST of the dialogue is a character acting like a lovesick teen that just started dating for the first time in their life. The Story itself is what drew me in. I was hopeful the story of a Nephilim would have cool things to show me. But no. It's a simple revenge story that I'm uninterested in. Can I see them doing something positive with this? Maybe. But the dialogue and crap characters kills it for me. Forcing competent people to suddenly be bumbling morons and giving Love Interests, the whole point of the damn game, zero agency or importance beyond what they theoretically mean to MC, that's a joke. They had all the time in the world to make it so I give a shit about these characters. But no. Time skip "They talked a lot and fell in love." That is the character building in this. MC never questions if he should seek revenge. Never has to work for anything. The "villain" even leads him right to him. I'm so unbelievably frustrated and disappointed by this game.

Review as at [v0.5.2]
I know it does not feel good seeing nasty remarks about a game you created, but some of us players do enjoy the game, and we definitely feel some of these points would make the experience a lot better, so I do hope you take the time to review some of the comments!

The game is a fantasy/medieval story revolving around a boy from a small village, seeking revenge for the death of his parents, while making new friends and unlocking mysteries along the way. It is pretty interesting, enough for me to continue all the way to the current version. There are some parts of the game where I've the urge to skip, so it can be a little draggy in some areas, but overall, I do enjoy the story so far.

An important aspect of a game is the characters, and the girls/love interest here are generally pretty well designed. My favourite has to be Diana, Pearl, Maia and Rose, I find them just beautiful. Each have their own personality, and you do see some growth in them as the story goes on. Art and animation is also pretty decent. I do find the animation slowly improving with the newer versions, which is great! Now I'll move on to areas where I feel improvements can be made.

Choices/decision. As it stands, it feels that the dialogue options have little to no impact to the game at all, and it's mostly about gaining points with a certain LI, or whether MC will have a scene or not. For a game with choices in the first place, there should be more impact/consequences depending on which choice we pick. The Light/Dark path should branch out very differently from one another, but it doesn't feel much difference at the moment.

Love Interest/Girls. While the designs of the girls are great and all, there are just way too many LIs in the game, and cause way lesser screen time for many of them. Many of them adds very little value to the story, and I find it better not to include them at all, instead of trying to force content in for them, as this would affect the overall quality of the game. Quality is definitely better than quantity in this case. Speaking of the LIs, I keep rejecting Eliza, and even chose to "friendship lock-in" on her, yet there are still "relationship choices" with her, and she still sleeps on the same bed naked with MC, hugs him all the time, being lovey-dovey and all, now this is very annoying and frustrating as a player. If you gave us the choice to stay as friends, It would be good to keep it that way, instead of always having these additional contents with the particular LI, the same could be said for all the other LI's that are rejected. Some of the dialogues in the game are also a little cheesy/cringey, and somehow each of the girls MC meets all seems to want to jump on him, I think this is a little excessive, showing very little buildup in the relationship between the characters.

Pros:
-Interesting story
-Decent art and animation
-Beautiful girls

Cons:
-Decision does not seem to matter
-LI seems to all just fall for the MC
-Too many characters, causing content to suffer for each of them
-Lack of character/relationship building between MC and LI

V0.5.2
a simple version number. no over inventiveness that other devs choose for version updates, which they seem to lack in their games. clearly this dev sees the wheel and knows it does not require reinventing.

odd rant aside, this one i do quite like. it has it's issues, like we see the booty, we can touch the booty, but we cannot plunder the booty.....game even has pirates in it and we STILL cannot see the MC plug any females' hamster mouth. work THAT logic out!!
an anti pirate game that has pirates....

some of the art is suspect, with a few females pulling faces that has me thinking i have inadvertently switched to the nature channel and i have an urge to throw breadcrumbs to the swimming birds. but most of it is more than up to the task. my occasional chubby is living proof....oh...it was livin......no. wait. there it is again....

the writing and plot are pretty good. pacing is not the best but it has enough about it to be interesting, which is more than most. some of the dialogue can be a little immature but i don't feel luck i am stuck in the young adult section, which is where they keep the enid blyton and old mills & boon bodice rippers.

oddly, i get much of a muchness vibe about this, like another devs works under a different name. 23-22-13 is your only clue, though this is much better plot wise. just serious de ja vu on occasion with writing and art styles.

can't really fault this one as it does entertain me. MC being a protein enema applicator, to go with his skin cream dispenser and egg fertiliser duties, would be nice. it's booty waiting to be plundered and even half gods love a bit of piracy

Unfortunately I'm gona repeat what others said: game/story starts strong and turns to a childish brainless harem. Just meh. You keep rejecting lis and they just come again and again and again. I'll download it again when/if it gets finished to know what happened to the main girl.

Thank you and best of luck.

Definately one of my favourites. Great graphics, strong characters and good story. I love it. I plunge into each new episode with excitement and can't wait for the next. I hope tthat this one goes on and on.

Nephilim [v0.5.1] [BuuPlays]

It wasn't that good. Cheesy writing, boneless MC aka "disgusting wet blanket" with cast of 1,5~2-D characters, great models, interesting premise but edgy story with poor execution and just general feel of a fanfic.

Story - ~1,5-2.1/5. Eeeeeeeehh, meeeeeeh.
Choices - 3/5. Points, points, points!~
Characters - ~1-2/5. Most of the time it's just 'whatever'. Alice is shit.
Models - ~3.7/5 Good, sometimes not so.
Animations - ~1.6-3/5 Differs. Some are good, some weird, some boring.

Great game and the chapters are quit long.
It is definitely in my Top 10. All of the love interests are avoidable but as they are all pretty i dont know why u should refuse any of them
The main LI also have an interesting personality/story

Story started Good and has later fallen off.

Animations: Good and Bad when matching the writing. Example Text doesn't match text were "Mc is supposed to be deeper inside a FC" with only the very tip of the MC Cock is inside.

Choices: Non-existent during sex scenes Now (Lazy), in what I consider the fun part of any AVN that has choice implemented in them.
To many DEV's are doing this Goddamn Bullshit I see them "Never" being on the Same Level as Dr. Pink Cake, Mr. Dots our others listed in my signature.

This game started out strong and then crashed hard. It began as an epic fantasy story about a boy from a small rural village out for revenge for the murder of his parents, it has a fantastic main li, good side characters, an interesting story and you appear to be making important choices and laying out paths then … I don’t know what happened but it suddenly becomes almost a kinetic novel with an ever growing collection of mediocre, poorly written lis who love MC because he exists and has a penis and who won’t go away no matter how often they are rejected and a story line that is plagiarized borrowed from another game. So if you like epic fantasy stories, stay away – you’ll then that’s what you are playing and then you’ll be disappointed. If you like harem games with few real choices but a ton of lewds with a wide variety of women you might like this but you’ll have to wade through several hours of epic fantasy story to get there.

the game is very pleasant and beautiful, the characters I will say this: everyone is unique in their emotions and character, the plot is interesting and calmly reads pleasantly and all this makes the atmosphere of the music individually selected and all this causes me pleasant emotions and feelings for the game

Imho, if you like fantasy setting with mostly vanilla content in kinks and sex scenes - you probably should try this VN. But dont get your hopes too high, because just like me, you may find dialogues here absolutely horrible. They are naive, horribly cheesy and full of cliche. And it's one of those VNs where you always "hear" what others think about you but it's all the same:

"he is so cute!", "omg! am i really in love with him?!", "he cant know about my feelings"

Click to expand...

and so on.

Great visuals, lots of little animations throughout the game not counting the lewd ones. It feels like the author wanted to make this game a bit movie-like.

Nephilim could be great, but the Devs apparent obsession with piling in more and more mediocre Lis at the expense of the story and the player being able to make meaningful choices is killing it. It has the potential to be a five star game, but the Devs tendency to value lots of sex scenes and collecting “allies” who seem to have no value to MC over telling a good story currently leave it at two stars.

Story:

After the events of the prologue, when MC loses his family and is escorted away from his village to train – he ends up with Eliza, who is the games main Li and the only really strong one in the story. But unlike Between Two Worlds, for example, the developer isn’t content with you staying with the one li or even having polyamorous affairs with a few Lis, he brings them in by the boatload and the story is contorted in often nonsensical ways to give you more time with all the new Lis. The MC is also completely inconsistent – treating betrayal by a friend as a crime worthy of death and suffering in one instance, but a harmless misunderstanding a little later – and with no apparent reason why the situations are different.

Characters:

The MC is a strong character, the main Li (Eliza) is a strong character and the main baddy who MC and Eliza want revenge against is a strong character. After that it sort of goes off a cliff, with a few ineffectual and not particularly likeable male characters and a horde of mediocre and not particularly likeable love interests, all of whom seem to love the MC because he exists … and for no other obvious reason. All in all, beyond the big three, the other characters add little value to the game and some even detract from the overall quality.

Art and Animation

Most of the characters, settings and scenes (including the lewd scenes) look pretty good. Not the best, and a bit repetitive at times, but definitely above average.

Gamification / Choices

Definitely closer to a kinetic novel than "meaningful choices". There aren’t a ton of options given in the game and most of them aren’t particularly meaningful. You get the option to kill some people, but only people who are insignificant to the story anyway and you get to choose who you do and don’t want to fuck. There are also a few fake choices where you can take option A and be on the “Light Path” or option B and be on the “Dark Path” but even if you chose option B you end up doing option A anyway.

Let me summarize this game - Gary Stu and his harem of manic pixie dream girls meet and live happily ever after....

Game is just boring. MC is supposed to be a half angel which is an interesting concept yet is the most boring uninspired hero imaginable. And his harem members? Well lets just uninspired. The sex scenes don't even make this game a good fap and it's just... boring.

So far the story is really great. I like that there is not too much information and not too little. Just enough to understand the plot and get curious. Visuals are nice. If there is anything i could suggest is that i have no idea what the benefit of being rebel or not. if there is a way to put hint what each route enables or disables in the game without spoiling the story that would be great. Otherwise great job dev!
I would love to see more!

Great story, starts off slow and builds as a good story should. Introduces the MC and LIs in a way that builds. For most of them it's not "I met you 5 minutes ago lets get to it!" and for the ones that are that way you can choose the option to avoid them and remain friendly.

Only complaint currently is that the world is set as poly, yet the only poly relationship is the MCs. I think I understand the direction reason for the king's monogamy, but the mentor and the father were also monogamous. The LIs are also not open about it, some of them are supposed to be really close to each other but don't even discuss the MC? Notably Eliza and Alice know that they're both in love with the MC but despite the fact that polygamy is the social norm and not just accepted but expected they don't talk to each other about it?

Some complain about the pirate arc but I personally enjoyed it, felt like a golden fleece type of journey. The bad guys are well written, with the exception of a couple of the young noble asshats, but tbh them being shallow characters makes sense as pawns.

Hands down this is my second favorite VN that's currently in development. I always look forward to the latest updates even though the content is typically pretty short. But with the completion of chapter 5 it felt right to leave a review.
The background characters and LIs are wonderfully written. The relationship with Eliza is ridiculously cute and I love the chemistry there and the lengths MC has gone to protect and love her.
The villainous characters that are written for this story are very well done. I'm so glad they aren't cheesy. They're genuinely evil and I love it.
It's a well done story that doesn't require the same old tired ass incest story to keep people hooked. It's damn good and if you play it and don't like it then we can't be friends.
Also, this is one of the few developers I support on Patreon because I believe the content is *chefs kiss* quality.

Here is my review (google translate) :
Nephilim has a nice story, a little messy at first in the order of things, but it gets better as it goes on. The MC is badass, but a little too common in terms of dialogue. The bad people are pleasantly detestable, and the dramatic events turn out in a way that I like. The girls are all georgous, Luna and Sylph are my favorites
A very good AVN