VN Ren'Py Nephilim [v0.5.0] [BuuPlays]

[Grumpy Old Aussie]

I don't like how Leyala was done though, so Eliza having a forced mechanism like a bond would've probably made it worse. The dev should've just wrote Eliza as MC wife from the start or girlfriend. Or just removed the choice to reject her altogether.

By the way, Kali best girl in Seven Realms.

The great thing about this story is the development of the MC and Eliza's relationship. If they had been married straight off, it robs the VN of the best part IMO. MC and Eliza's growing relationship makes the story for me.

PS Layala and Kali for me, I can't choose between them yet. Put them up against Eliza and Eliza wins hands down. Just sayin.

 

[DrakoGhoul]

And is older then him.

Pretty sure Tasha is younger. Unless you're referring to Ophelia lol.

 

[HornyyPussy]

Pretty sure Tasha is younger. Unless you're referring to Ophelia lol.

Pretty sure he meant Dessolos

 

[DrakoGhoul]

The great thing about this story is the development of the MC and Eliza's relationship. If they had been married straight off, it robs the VN of the best part IMO. MC and Eliza's growing relationship makes the story for me.

PS Layala and Kali for me, I can't choose between them yet. Put them up against Eliza and Eliza wins hands down. Just sayin.

For me, it's the opposite. The start isn't great at all. It's clear the dev is pushing the player towards a specific choice. It doesn't even give you time to decide if you like her or not. It progresses too fast and assumes you're already in love with her. Even though you're given plenty of choices to turn down her advances and prevent yourself from doing it.

As for the waifu thing. Eliza only wins against Leyala. Kali is much more interesting as a character than both of them combined. At least for me. Others might prefer differently.

 

[Dessolos]

For me, it's the opposite. The start isn't great at all. It's clear the dev is pushing the player towards a specific choice. It doesn't even give you time to decide if you like her or not. It progresses too fast and assumes you're already in love with her. Even though you're given plenty of choices to turn down her advances and prevent yourself from doing it.

As for the waifu thing. Eliza only wins against Leyala. Kali is much more interesting as a character than both of them combined. At least for me. Others might prefer differently.

I think this also boils down to how you play the game. I generally play these games with my personal feeling I don't give a shit about the MC's. So for me it didn't feel to fast it felt kind of perfect for a slow burn character , as I felt I got to know her and enjoy everything else in between.

But with Leyala it felt like it skipped the romance part because of the bond bs, It left me wanting to get to know her better but takes a very long time for that happen and still doesn't feel like there is much romance there for me. Even With Kali I felt a bit the same but better was only in the last Season she got better for me.

 

[DrakoGhoul]

I think this also boils down to how you play the game. I generally play these games with my personal feeling I don't give a shit about the MC's. So for me it didn't feel to fast it felt kind of perfect for a slow burn character , as I felt I got to know her and enjoy everything else in between.

The thing is, I'm referring to myself, just like you are. Not the MC. I didn't like Eliza at the start, so having her pushed so hard against me actually was a turn off. Even more so when I chose an option that says we're friends and yet we're acting like lovers and planning our future out after the revenge is done. The game just assumes I'm going to romance her eventually.

If anything, I would say the game lacks autonomy with regards to Eliza. You either her husband or her boyfriend playing hard to get. I don't imagine that changing even if you chose to be off her path.

 

[jadepaladin]

It's tricky to want to tell a story a certain kind of way and then also give players agency. More so when you're consistent on updates and it limits your ability to really adjust the dialogue as needed when you give players tons of agency.

Honestly it feels like Buu wanted to tell a kinetic story but since those tend to be less popular, chose to give us the ability to accept/reject LIs but then doesn't have the necessary time in development to make sure all types of routes are covered. So you end up with the weird mess that is the story in it's current state unless you just run full harem. That has it's own downsides since it undermines a lot of what he says to Eliza and the romance between them.

Eliza could have been the harem queen, working behind the scenes to build a vast support system based on MC's conquests but that's not happening (yet, if ever) and so it makes the MC look like some kind of glorified playboy, telling everyone what they want to hear. Meanwhile, MC is playing Pokemon, adding to his growing collection, and hopefully it pays off some way in the future content. I can understand certain characters being essential to the plot (Kira and Pearl give him story transportation that doesn't tire him out, Diana gives him legitimacy on the water since he's technically running with a pirate crew and that comes with a negative reputation).

I'm not even sure how to interpret routes where you friend everyone or choose certain characters over others since it just reads like full harem outside of not seeing specific lewd scenes.

 

[Grumpy Old Aussie]

For me, it's the opposite. The start isn't great at all. It's clear the dev is pushing the player towards a specific choice. It doesn't even give you time to decide if you like her or not. It progresses too fast and assumes you're already in love with her. Even though you're given plenty of choices to turn down her advances and prevent yourself from doing it.

As for the waifu thing. Eliza only wins against Leyala. Kali is much more interesting as a character than both of them combined. At least for me. Others might prefer differently.

I had no feelings for Eliza originally. She grew on me in those chapters and now I just love her character. If the dev is pushing me towards one character doesn't make any difference to me. If I didn't like the character I would have walked away from the VN after a couple of chapters. I have to like her to stay on and I love the Eliza character so much she is the only one who has their own save. Had the dev gone with Kira for example, I would have walked away. I'm not a fan of her character, although Pearl may have kept me around, I don't know.

Those girls are interesting, but I love Eliza more. Its a preference thing of course, we all have our preferences.

 

[Saphfire]

I guess most of us like Eliza the most, but that doesn´t mean that some people like others more.
Both opinions are valid, i play the manwhore part save, a selected harem, and well of course a Eliza only save.
In the other game, yes i meant Tasha and i believe she is way older then Atlas.

 

[DrakoGhoul]

I had no feelings for Eliza originally. She grew on me in those chapters and now I just love her character. If the dev is pushing me towards one character doesn't make any difference to me. If I didn't like the character I would have walked away from the VN after a couple of chapters. I have to like her to stay on and I love the Eliza character so much she is the only one who has their own save. Had the dev gone with Kira for example, I would have walked away. I'm not a fan of her character, although Pearl may have kept me around, I don't know.

Those girls are interesting, but I love Eliza more. Its a preference thing of course, we all have our preferences.

See, I'm different. I play the game for the lore and story. Eliza isn't the end all be all for me. I have no reason to drop the game because of a single character. There's nothing that says I have to like this character or I can't continue to play the game. It's not as intrusive as it might have came off. It's just clear the dev has his bias and it shows with some of the scenes.

In the other game, yes i meant Tasha and i believe she is way older then Atlas.

Pretty sure in game, Atlas and Zyair state they're older than her in an earlier section. The official site also says that Tasha is 1,499. Atlas is 2,551 and Zyair is 2336.

 

[Saphfire]

Maybe it has been to long for me to remember it correctly, im getting old.

 

[Grumpy Old Aussie]

See, I'm different. I play the game for the lore and story. Eliza isn't the end all be all for me. I have no reason to drop the game because of a single character. There's nothing that says I have to like this character or I can't continue to play the game. It's not as intrusive as it might have came off. It's just clear the dev has his bias and it shows with some of the scenes.

I usually play for the story as well. In Nephilim, the early chapters were more about the romance between MC and Eliza. Had the story been about say, MC and Kira, I probably would have moved on as there wasn't a lot of lore in the early stages to hold me, but in this case, Eliza kept me interested. Interest in the Lore came later for me as the story developed.

It's all good, we are different people, we approach games in our way, nothing wrong with that. I find it interesting to learn how others approach games. So thanks for the back and forth.

Maybe it has been to long for me to remember it correctly, im getting old.

Aren't we all mate

 

[Pixillin']

I think this also boils down to how you play the game. I generally play these games with my personal feeling I don't give a shit about the MC's. So for me it didn't feel to fast it felt kind of perfect for a slow burn character , as I felt I got to know her and enjoy everything else in between.

But with Leyala it felt like it skipped the romance part because of the bond bs, It left me wanting to get to know her better but takes a very long time for that happen and still doesn't feel like there is much romance there for me. Even With Kali I felt a bit the same but better was only in the last Season she got better for me.

I get that with Leyala - fortunately for the Dev I like Leyala a lot. However, he built in a failsafe which is that Leyala lets you know really early on that she doesn't care who you fuck and there are a ton of other options. I also like the bond thing. I wish we had that with Eliza because with Leyala - if we're apart, I know she's fine or I know immediately if she's not fine.

 

[Pixillin']

Pretty sure Tasha is younger. Unless you're referring to Ophelia lol.

Yeah Tasha is only 1500. Atlas, assuming he was from the height of Spartan power, is about 2500.

 

[Pixillin']

It's tricky to want to tell a story a certain kind of way and then also give players agency. More so when you're consistent on updates and it limits your ability to really adjust the dialogue as needed when you give players tons of agency.

Honestly it feels like Buu wanted to tell a kinetic story but since those tend to be less popular, chose to give us the ability to accept/reject LIs but then doesn't have the necessary time in development to make sure all types of routes are covered. So you end up with the weird mess that is the story in it's current state unless you just run full harem. That has it's own downsides since it undermines a lot of what he says to Eliza and the romance between them.

Yeah I mean, it still is basically a kinetic novel - the only thing, so far, that really changes based on your choices is you see the lewd scenes, or you don't but everyone still acts like they happened. I redid my main save with the walkthrough and kept score. I'm on the friendship path (locked) with 5 of them and have less than 10 relationship points with everyone else combined (including the goddesses) but all the Lis still act like we're in a relationship - I mean the last update where Luna and the Princess, and then Pearl and Kira are all talking about how much they love MC - I have zero relationship points with any of them, am locked on the friendship path with Luna and the Princess, and actually have negative relationship points with Kira ... but it changes nothing (except the lewds didn't actually happen). So ... still a Kinetic novel. There are choice dialogues but they don't change anything. Oh, and you absolutely lie to Eliza all the time - MC keeps telling her that he won't leave her alone anymore.

 

[jadepaladin]

So I did a thing. I had mentioned earlier that I wanted to go through and count all the lewd scenes in the game. I tossed URM on and decided to look at some of the coding. This ended up changing my plans somewhat because after a while, I can't tell when lewd scenes are going to be called up. I think it's due to not having a gallery.

I came away with some big takeaways in this project.
A) A lot of relationship flags are already in the game but spoil future characters. The harem will definitely harem.
B) There are path flags that are separate from relationship flags. I haven't broken down who has path only versus relationship only but a cursory glance tells me not many. Maid path is a good example.
C) The way this is coded sometimes hurts my brain. You can turn off a path for a character and then seemingly turn it back on later. This sounds good in practice, like if you weren't sure on someone or wanted them to wait for better circumstances (Sage from BaDIK is the best example of this) but this VN takes it to the extreme. You can flip flags in the same scene sometimes.
D) I don't know if anyone else will get a kick out of this but I certainly learned a lot from it. I tried to be objective and just report what I saw but sometimes some bias slips in. I was reminded how much I absolutely hate the first Meredith scene and the scene with Alice and Eliza in bed together. A replay did not help things, at all.
E) I tried to skip choices that were strictly flavor only but I included some when I felt it was appropriate.

So with that said, have fun!

Spoiler: Chapter by Chapter Breakdown of Flags

You don't have permission to view the spoiler content. Log in or register now.

I'm still not 100% sure how Buu calls lewd scenes sometimes but I blame that on a lack of experience with Ren'py. I would think they would be tied to a characters path flag but I never see the flags get called except in rare cases like achievements. Some lewd scenes just seem to be baked into the dialogue. Someone smarter than me can explain it better.

If there's any typos, just give me a heads up and I'll edit.

 

[Pixillin']

So I did a thing. I had mentioned earlier that I wanted to go through and count all the lewd scenes in the game. I tossed URM on and decided to look at some of the coding. This ended up changing my plans somewhat because after a while, I can't tell when lewd scenes are going to be called up. I think it's due to not having a gallery.

I came away with some big takeaways in this project.
A) A lot of relationship flags are already in the game but spoil future characters. The harem will definitely harem.
B) There are path flags that are separate from relationship flags. I haven't broken down who has path only versus relationship only but a cursory glance tells me not many. Maid path is a good example.
C) The way this is coded sometimes hurts my brain. You can turn off a path for a character and then seemingly turn it back on later. This sounds good in practice, like if you weren't sure on someone or wanted them to wait for better circumstances (Sage from BaDIK is the best example of this) but this VN takes it to the extreme. You can flip flags in the same scene sometimes.
D) I don't know if anyone else will get a kick out of this but I certainly learned a lot from it. I tried to be objective and just report what I saw but sometimes some bias slips in. I was reminded how much I absolutely hate the first Meredith scene and the scene with Alice and Eliza in bed together. A replay did not help things, at all.
E) I tried to skip choices that were strictly flavor only but I included some when I felt it was appropriate.

So with that said, have fun!

Spoiler: Chapter by Chapter Breakdown of Flags

You don't have permission to view the spoiler content. Log in or register now.

I'm still not 100% sure how Buu calls lewd scenes sometimes but I blame that on a lack of experience with Ren'py. I would think they would be tied to a characters path flag but I never see the flags get called except in rare cases like achievements. Some lewd scenes just seem to be baked into the dialogue. Someone smarter than me can explain it better.

If there's any typos, just give me a heads up and I'll edit.

So are you saying that, according to the code, I’m still on a harem path - even if I got zero points and activated no flags. I mean I’ve been careful not to trigger anything. I haven’t held, hugged, kissed, flirted with or fucked anyone except Eliza. I’ve always sided with Eliza over anyone else, I didn’t even catch Kira when she fell because I didn’t want to be on her path … so I’m still on a harem path?

 

[jadepaladin]

So are you saying that, according to the code, I’m still on a harem path - even if I got zero points and activated no flags. I mean I’ve been careful not to trigger anything. I haven’t held, hugged, kissed, flirted with or fucked anyone except Eliza. I’ve always sided with Eliza over anyone else, I didn’t even catch Kira when she fell because I didn’t want to be on her path … so I’m still on a harem path?

I can say so far that there is no "harem" flag. Where I thought there would be one (the talk with Borri) literally nothing like that gets applied, it's all trust points. Each character has a path flag and some have a relationship flag. Path flags get turned on and off in a lot of scenes, it's frustrating to try to follow them, which is probably why Buu included "romance" and "friendly" text help into a lot of the choices. Otherwise how would you know that standing next to Luna instead of behind her would turn her path off, or grabbing her ass instead of her legs would do the same?

Relationship flags seem to only get affected by "Major Choices" except Eliza. Eliza's relationship flag is messed with a lot earlier but her actual "Major Choice" doesn't seem to come until Chapter 5. I think after these relationship flags start turning on, you have less and less choices involving that character and they start to go kinetic. Eliza's relationship flag in chapter 5 is her last choice in current content (here, I don't have 5.1 yet) and we know that you mess around with Eliza afterwards. I'm guessing that is how Buu will handle characters long term. You'll mess around with their path, decide if you want the relationship in a major choice, and possibly go kinetic from there. I could be wrong though.

Long winded but your Kira example...not catching her on the boat turns her path to false, but later on you could do something and the path would turn right back on. It's pretty confusing at times tbh. Kira only had one choice after you had her major choice (flipping her relationship on or off) and that was if you say I love you or not for trust points.

There's never been an Eliza only flag to set. There is her path flag and her relationship flag and if you played it the way you wanted to, Eliza should show true for both and then everyone else will show false on both. I still haven't quite separated the difference between a relationship flag and a path flag yet.

TLDR: You're not on a harem path but it always feels like you're one choice away from being on one. I'm gonna inline spoiler all of this, kind of annoying to do but I think it's for the best.

 

[Pixillin']

I can say so far that there is no "harem" flag. Where I thought there would be one (the talk with Borri) literally nothing like that gets applied, it's all trust points. Each character has a path flag and some have a relationship flag. Path flags get turned on and off in a lot of scenes, it's frustrating to try to follow them, which is probably why Buu included "romance" and "friendly" text help into a lot of the choices. Otherwise how would you know that standing next to Luna instead of behind her would turn her path off, or grabbing her ass instead of her legs would do the same?

Relationship flags seem to only get affected by "Major Choices" except Eliza. Eliza's relationship flag is messed with a lot earlier but her actual "Major Choice" doesn't seem to come until Chapter 5. I think after these relationship flags start turning on, you have less and less choices involving that character and they start to go kinetic. Eliza's relationship flag in chapter 5 is her last choice in current content (here, I don't have 5.1 yet) and we know that you mess around with Eliza afterwards. I'm guessing that is how Buu will handle characters long term. You'll mess around with their path, decide if you want the relationship in a major choice, and possibly go kinetic from there. I could be wrong though.

Long winded but your Kira example...not catching her on the boat turns her path to false, but later on you could do something and the path would turn right back on. It's pretty confusing at times tbh. Kira only had one choice after you had her major choice (flipping her relationship on or off) and that was if you say I love you or not for trust points.

There's never been an Eliza only flag to set. There is her path flag and her relationship flag and if you played it the way you wanted to, Eliza should show true for both and then everyone else will show false on both. I still haven't quite separated the difference between a relationship flag and a path flag yet.

TLDR: You're not on a harem path but it always feels like you're one choice away from being on one. I'm gonna inline spoiler all of this, kind of annoying to do but I think it's for the best.

Thanks!

As far as I can remember, based on your breakdown - everyone (except Eliza) should have their relationship and path flags off. A few of the choices seem really minor, unimportant and non-sexual or romantic and I can’t remember 100% but I know that if the walkthrough said romance or path or + … whatever I turned it down and if it said “Friendship Path Locked” - I did that one. So I should be locked for Sylph, Luna, Amelia and Pearl … and it seems like there was one more but don’t remember. The only ones I should have positive relationships or trust with are Bori, Maia and Lucid. So … hopefully safe from a harem for now.

 

[jadepaladin]

Thanks!

As far as I can remember, based on your breakdown - everyone (except Eliza) should have their relationship and path flags off. A few of the choices seem really minor, unimportant and non-sexual or romantic and I can’t remember 100% but I know that if the walkthrough said romance or path or + … whatever I turned it down and if it said “Friendship Path Locked” - I did that one. So I should be locked for Sylph, Luna, Amelia and Pearl … and it seems like there was one more but don’t remember. The only ones I should have positive relationships or trust with are Bori, Maia and Lucid. So … hopefully safe from a harem for now.

I don't have a great example of Eliza to use for this so I'm gonna use Luna because it's fresh. You can pick the "friendly' choice with her at every opportunity, keeping her path flag set off and she's still gonna do whatever the story wants her to until you hit the major choice, which turns the relationship and path flag on.

Spoiler: Luna

You don't have permission to view the spoiler content. Log in or register now.

So basically you just have to really look out for major choices when it comes to characters you want to permanently avoid.