Welp, I decided to mess around with this thing for the first time in a long time, and I have to say that I'm quite disappointed. The last time I messed around with this for a long time was back when the VX Ace version was the only one... and I'm not particularly impressed by what's happened to the game since the MV version has been worked on.
Sure. Technobrake has added a lot of events and whatnot, but you can make a gallery with virtually no gameplay too and you'll have a similar result to how this game currently plays.
Why do I say that? Because the game is insanely grindy as all fuck, so to reach the vast majority of the events available in it, you'll realistically have to cheat to get what you want.... and even then you might still need to grind quite a bit because the Fame grind is still there too, to unlock new regions and whatnot.
Like.
I don't mind grind when it's implemented properly. But. What's here is not it at all.
The combat and the stats related to it are a complete mess. Strength is supposed to affect melee damage for example, but it does fuck all because the damage stat seems to be purely determined by the weapon and nothing else. INT is supposed to boost mana but the mana stat bounces between ~70% of your int value to twice said int value for no reason what-so-fucking-ever that I could determine. Checks for various attributes outside of combat seem to require some very high levels even for stuff that's supposed to be 1-star tier... (I'm looking at you here, Shadow Descends quest...)
On top of all that, the XP requirements for leveling spike hard after like 5 levels or less, while the XP rewards remain tiny for ages. Dunno if that changes in any notable way later, but as it currently stands, the best value I've seen was in those ruins with those golems that give 8XP, which seems to be the best place to grind gold too for a good long while, and likely even after that you're gonna keep using those 10 SC scrolls, because their damage is insane and they're F'N cheap, and I haven't seen mana restoring consumables.
What makes things even dumber is the fact that there's HP restoring consumables for some pretty high values of HP available from the very first store, but with how all the stats scale, I have no idea what level you'd need to get too to actually need that stuff...
All while healing spell scaling in combat is hilariously bad, to the point where there's no way that the priestess can act like a healer in combat for any real length of time.
On top of everything else, the skill system is extremely bare bones, leaving combat horrifically boring, leaving all the work to try and make it special utterly pointless to the point where I have to wonder what the heck Techno's smoking.
As if that wasn't bad enough already... sex related stats are ALSO horribly grindy regardless of what you're looking at. Want to improve MC's sex specs? Well, too bad hun, because the scaling there is absolutely horrible and y'know how much XP he gets out of most things? 1. ONE F'N XP... What the fuck? That makes the whole system utterly pointless. The only thing I've found that gives more than 1 XP is playing Kohaku's weird ass "I Love You" game, which results in a scene that gave 20 XP or something... and doing that is still faster than trying to grind anything else I've seen... which is absurd and stupid in the extreme.
Which begs the question. What's the point of the system though? Like. Does he intend to allow users to select MC's sexual prowess and dick size and character creation or something, and the system is otherwise pointless beyond that?
Because as it's currently implemented, you'll likely die of old age before you can make MC into anything notable via natural gameplay, which makes the whole system utterly pointless.
This is a TERRIBLE way to introduce anyone to a game.
"Here's the game. There's a bunch of lewd stuff in it, but you have to cheat to get most of it because the game itself is shit so this is basically just a gallery with extra steps... only there's no actual gallery either, somehow."
Seriously...
The heck is wrong with this dev? This is not how you develop anything.
Unless peeps are right and he's just milking this crap for as much as he can get away with, in which case, the way he's going about things makes perfect sense.
Ugh.
Guess I should come back in 3+ years, maybe the game will be finished then. Though I honestly doubt it looking at the mess that's currently available...