RPGM - Completed - Once Ever After [v1.0] [Sierra Lee]

This game is a massively overrated snoozefest.

First off, I don't know why people are reviewing this like it's an actual game and not an H game. Most people I know have huge backlogs of real, professionally developed games that they still need to play that blow this game out of the water from a gameplay or story perspective. Just because it has good gameplay or story for an RPGM game doesn't mean that it's worth your time.

As a porn game, it fails spectacularly. The main problem is the pacing...it's not unusual to go 1-2 hours between scenes. You can't even access the gallery to see unlocked scenes until you've completed the standard ending about 15 hours in. It's got about 30 scenes, but at least 25% of them are just reused images in another setting. Most of the scenes are in the postgame section, so you really gotta put some serious time into it. The scenes themselves mostly consist of a single image when some cum blasts drawn in at the end. The art is great, but the lack of voice or any sex sound effects really bring them down.

The actual gameplay is just a grindfest that takes way too long. The difficulty is also absurd for a porn game, I used the special armor that is supposed to let you just enjoy the story on easy mode and I still had to grind and get a good understanding of the combat system to finish.

There's hours and hours of wandering thru mazelike levels while being interrupted to fight constantly...at least there aren't random encounters. It was 15 hours for me to get the standard ending, and another 5 hours to get most of the scenes and the true ending...and that's with using the walkthrough. You could easily double that time if you're figuring everything out on your own. There's a ton of missables as well... did the dev really expect people to make multiple playthroughs of this 20+ hour grindfest? I hate missables in games like this because they really incentivize the use of walkthroughs...did i mention the walkthrough is 127 pages?

I also experienced several crashes to desktop during my playthrough...thankfully at least it has an autosave feature.

Overall I'm left with a feeling that I wasted 20 hours of my life. I'm not even sure why I finished...some sort of sunk cost fallacy after spending so much time on it I think. If the game was trimmed down to maybe 8-10 hours and the grind eliminated maybe it would be better. It sucks because you can tell a lot of effort was put into the game, but I just don't see the purpose of this game. If you can't wank to it then it needs to be compared to real games. Sure, the story is decent for an H game, but the hundreds of old games you can get on sale for a buck or two are much better.

It's a Sierra Lee game. That should tell you what to expect. They're unique in this space since they're always story heavy games that happen to feature sex, rather than sex games that happen to feature a story. Adjust your expectations to this frame and this is a real gem.

The positives: great story, great worldbuilding which plays with some high level meta concepts, great characters who react reasonably and believably to the ridiculous circumstances of their world, come together to make this a really worthwhile play. Also while the scenes can be rare (the frequency changes sharply after the fake-ish ending), the art is excellent.

It does have some negatives. While it stretches it to the limit, there's still RPG maker underneath this game. A lot of RPGM nonsense actually gets incorporated as part of the story, but that doesn't change the fact that it's there. There's plenty of builds possible, but if you figure them out you can make one that Just Works without much variety in how you approach each encounter. Also the game SEEMS like it's grindy. This is because you unlock new skills in your extra jobs after just a few encounters, which makes it feel like the game wants you to grind, so it FEELS like you should. But, you don't actually have to, and unless you have something very specific you're going for you should actually just ignore this impulse. Also, the intelligence/-corruption stat gains may feel a bit arbitrary at times.

The negatives, though they exist, are relatively small blemishes. The game is mostly carried by the worldbuilding and the characters, and they carry it HARD, making it so on balance this is a truly excellent game.

This game isn't heavy in H-scenes by comparison to other games but as an actual JRPG I thought it was surprisingly good. The writing and worldbuilding are fun, interesting, and unique while also heavily being a parody on the entire 'heroine corruption' genre.
Gameplay's pretty straightforward RPGM stuff with class changing but it's done pretty well.

one of the few western eroges with actual care and effort put into them. very high quality all the way through. the plot takes a bit to get going and the humor doesn't always land, but that's not really a big deal.

This is one of the games I started for the H-scenes and ended playing for the plot. I love multiverse plots and this one is funny and well crafted. Game is around 18h if you go for completion and, sincerely, I found it quite well made.

I don't recommend it if you're going for the H-scenes. They're quite scarce.

This is a review for v1.0

Story 5/5
As stated in many of the other reviews, the writing in this game is amazing. It's definitely one of the best story's I've experienced while playing an eroge. It has a unique spin on a familiar concept, good character development, and lots of extra side quests/stories to flesh out the world. In general the world building is really good. The story is definitely the strongest aspect of the game.

Gameplay 3/5
Standard RPGM stuff. For me it was mostly tolerable, but near the end I started getting really tired of the grind. There are a couple mechanics added to try to make you think a little during combat, but you figure out the formula pretty quickly (especially if you've played other RPGM games). In general the combat is very unremarkable.
However there is a lot of post game and side quest content. The arena is also quite fun, since its a good measure of how much stronger you've gotten as the story progresses.

H Content 2/5
The art is good, but the scenes are few and far between. I also found the CGs to all be very vanilla and kind of same-ish. In many cases I found myself even speeding through a lot of the H scenes so I could get back to the actual plot. Definitely wish there were more scenes and more variety.

Overall I would give it a 4/5 mostly because I really liked the story.
TLDR:
-play it for the story
-bland RPGM gameplay
-lots of post game and side quests
-sparse and vanilla H content

How someone could rate this genuine masterpiece under 5 stars baffles me to a degree I have never felt before in my life. This game is amazing, play it. It's literally free what do u have to lose. Not to mention, it's hilarious.

A game that has great writing and game mechanics.

The porn is simply pics and are not that numerous but this is more a game than a porn.
You can expect 40hrs of gameplay with no grind, a fun and interesting story and an engaging game mechanics (multiple class to upgrade).

It's just a grindy game in general and nothing to even reward the grind. I've played for 2 or 3 hours and have only seen about 3 scenes. With how the plot of the game is, you can tell that the creator isn't even trying to make a game that is suitable for the genre and niche audience. Don't waste your time as I have o7

The game is great! Super unique story and the art is A+++. The H scenes are spread out, but I didn't mind at all, they had significant story relevance. My only complaint is a bug that is keeping me from completing the Red Arena.

I didn't find the game too grindy at all. I don't think I ever once had to grind to progress. Maybe a little at the very beginning.

Came to the game after finishing Ouroboros. Well, disappointing, confusing, unpolished. I wonder if the dev still has the plan to make it more engaging and alive than just beating thousands of MOBs. Again the dev is good with multiverse, that's why +1 star. But otherwise it just lacks interesting gameloop and plot.

P.S. I died because after the fight I was still poisoned and my HP reduced to 1.

I just finished the game and well, I am somewhat disappointed. I won't talk about talk about the gameplay as it is still being refined. The premise and the character arcs are great but, the plot was limited compared to the game's premise. A good analogy for those who watch anime is to think of Once Ever is think of Attack on Titan but it ended at Season 3. The conflict that appeared at the start is resolved but bigger ones have appeared, and yet the story ends abruptly.

Unique use of stereotypes in traditional porn to create a more interesting story with the main character trying to deviate from said stereotypes. Does not give many early H scenes and REALLY needs a gallery option to view old scenes. Also needs to tone down the grind a good bit for both money and AP. Great scenes so far tho, you just gotta work a bit for them

This game is without a doubt, legit - prolong unique story with pretty decent animation and game play. The problem however, is that it takes itself seriously as a game, leading to a Final Fantasy-esque grind to forward the plot. In over 6 hours playing this game I only saw two scenes. I don't think this game deserves the hate it gets (you can tell a lot of love was put into it), but it felt more like JRPG with porn sprinkled in than a porn game.

Although I'm a fan of Sierra Lee's work I did not enjoy this game at all.

Gameplay and writing wise it has all the standard things Sierra likes to put in her RPGM games. Puzzle maps , character progression , blah blah blah.

There are two main issues with it though:

a) Too few CGs for a game with a lot of grinding , with almost half of them being the same position (cowgirl)

b)
The game advertises itself as "making fun of typical erotic RPGM game tropes". That's an understatement. It's preachy about it and it's doing it in a bad way. A "joke" that repeats itself during every grinding intermission.
I don't even know what the moral of the story is. Make war , not love? Cock from outside your hometown is always better? Dumb bimbos bad , smart bimbos good? How to groom small (wolf) girls ? It's a mess.
Even if you are in it for the de-bimbofication it ends up being dissapointing cause you end up slutting it up anyway (just after some hours of killing things) . The de-curruption mechanism doesn't make any sense : Concensual sex in Bungtown is bad and degrading , but whoring yourself to get into some sewers is good and empowering.

Pity , the ideas all all there (library/drinking event hunting , how awesome is that!) for a 5 star game but the hateboner for typical curruption RPGs are fucking it up.

For reference, this is both my first review on this website and my first time posting on this website. I have beaten the main story and some of the optional post-game content. I'll keep this brief.

The story is fantastic. It demolishes expectations by taking a new spin on classic fables.

The gameplay, however, is the biggest issue with the game in its current version. First and foremost, the difficulty of the enemies, bosses and randoms alike, are well out of balance. Considering that the most valued resources are gold and ability points, I find it strange that the rates at which you get these are astronomically low.

Despite the fact that the scenes are few and far between, they are so well written and drawn that it felt more like a reward for the hard work rather than an expectation of gameplay. I, personally, did not mind.

For me, this game gets 4 stars. The character's statistical development and creature parameters need to be altered to make the game playable without requiring endless hours of grinding. This could be accomplished by increasing the number of ability points gained as the game progresses (the most I've seen for a single non-boss fight is 15 while abilities can cost upwards of 250) and the amount of money procured with each battle (I've never had more than $3000, which was promptly spent on an artifact found later in the game).

This is another quality RPGmaker porn game, that you don't masturbate, to by Sierra Lee.

If you are a fan of those then this is one of her better works. If you aren't into that then... Well dang. You aren't gonna like it.

With a strong Chrono Trigger like world that feels pretty great to explore. Characters are solid, dialogue is fun and the drama is believable. The combat, classes and so forth is fairly interesting.

Keep in mind you can't have class change without letting the player grind. It's a fairly hard rule. It just don't work otherwise. And this game has the avenues for grinding.

In the games current state... It is both unfinished and finished. The frame work of the game is done and a theoretical 1/6 to 1/3 of the erotic content has yet to be installed. There is also a lot of polish yet to be done on this thing.

Not enough scenes to justify the grind. Which is a shame cause the premise is such a missed opportunity, and the art is fantastic. It reminds me a bit of Noxian Nights in that the game can be super difficult at times, but with more grind early and a lot lacking in scene quantity and quality.

I really wanted to give this a higher score, I really do.

Sierra lee is a very good storyteller, but what she isn't, is a good game designer. If you came to wank, you're shit outta luck because every scene is separated by 30 minutes to an hour of mindless grinding.

Ok, so you're not here to wank. Chances are you still wouldn't enjoy this. Don't get me wrong, the premise is very interesting and the story is much better than your average RPGM game, but having to fight 20-30 enemies before you get any progression is just awful. You can't even avoid these enemies either, because they follow you and you need the XP to beat some unavoidable fights.

And by unavoidable, I mean unavoidable, invisible boss fights that you can't escape from. There was a point where I was engaged in the story and forgot to save and bam, invisible and unavoidable boss fight that wiped my team on the first round because I didn't forsee that I need to heal for it. Because there's no autosave mechanic I had to backtrack around 15 minutes to my last save.

tl;dr: Great story, but shit game mechanics prevent me from enjoying it. Don't play it for the scenes.