RPGM - Completed - Odyssey of Gianna [v4.4 + DLC] [Vhiel Kalominos]

  1. 4.00 star(s)

    Beggarman

    [Provisional score based on 0.2 release, which is primarily focused on demonstrating combat, statuses and demonstrating a few bad ends]

    I'll try and keep this review quick as this doesn't appear to be the full game, but more just an example of a some systems:

    Art - is decent. I mean it's Kisekae, I think it'd take genuine effort or extreme apathy to do badly. Luckily, it seems like genuine effort has been put in here to make it good, instead. It seems to primarily be just Characters + Backgrounds, but includes quite a few (still) frames so scenes don't feel too static. There are also a lot of minor art changes for when you or your allies have status effects inflicted on you (more on that later). Chubby elf girl isn't my kink but it's interesting to see something a bit non-standard.

    Combat - It's mostly the typical RPGM stuff, although with a few twists.
    From the player's side, the main change is that spells operate off of charges rather than a Mana pool, and you need to spend a turn meditating in combat to regenerate those charges. Personally, I way prefer this system to managing MP and fussing over whether to use potions or whatever, but YMMV.
    From the enemies side, almost all enemies seem to inflict some sort of status effect on the player. There's actually quite a few of these, and I feel like revealing too many might be a bit spoiler-y, but safe to say that they do seem to go well beyond the basic poison/confusion/silence/knockdown statuses of other games, and some statuses may even be preferable or exploitable for a player who's set up to do so.
    In what seems to be a bit of a trend for RPGM games lately, enemies do also seem to do sexual attacks and grapple-like moves, but there's not a great deal of description with them and I don't think there's any sort of CG for it either, so whether or not you'd really count them is iffy. It does seem like the game is trying to set up to allow for lust-focused combat, but I personally found that characters were too "fragile" with regards to lust for that to be practical. It could be something more viable with higher-level characters, or may just be intended as a "this character is nearly defeated, choose whether you want to try and save them, or make them go out in a blaze of glory" sort of thing and I'm misreading it.
    There seems to be a decent variety of enemies, but as there's not any true story here yet (AFAIK anyway), I can't really comment much on them.
    I would say that the balance is kinda tough at the minute. As this is more of a test, you can heal up after every fight, but it's easy for a character to go from 100%->dead in even the "easy" fights if you can't mitigate some status effects, and some of those do need a special potion to be bought if you want to revive the character. I would hope normal mobs in the main game are a tad easier if you don't have easy revival points like in the demo.

    Game over scenes - Honestly, the game-overs are nice, but kinda short. Like said before, there's a fair few frames in each scene, but they are fairly short, and not voiced. Most of the ones done so far don't end in outright sex, either (which I am neutral on). I think all but one of these that are implemented so far are "lose to trash mob" type losses though, so I wouldn't expect anything really long, but for bosses or setpiece enemies, I would expect longer. Also worth noting - I don't think the "loli" status carries over into scenes, so if you're worried about the FBI knocking then you might be alright?

    Overall - nice start, seems promising, has a few ideas to set it aside from the pack and I'm interested to see what the story will be, if it gets the same level of effort as the rest. I could probably bump up to 5 stars if it is good, but I would like to see some slightly lengthier game-overs(/sex scenes in general, assuming they're not limited to game-overs) and maybe some descriptions or art with regards to the in-fight moves. Otherwise this is pretty much meets my trifecta (female MC, cute art, and NC-ish content) and I'm really looking forward to more.