RPGM - Completed - Phantom Thief Effie [v1.0.3 Steam] [Yamanashi Girl]

Played the first two dungeons and realized this game is not worth the time to fully play out.

Story has a boring flow of "find out about bad guy and go steal from them/beat them up". None of the writing was very interesting, but the setting and hook of the main character being a superhero-by-night is neat.

Gameplay is too easy - it's too easy to sneak past guards and assassinate them, and even if you get caught it's too easy to beat them. Bosses can get downed in two spells. Nothing is threatening so there's little point in searching for gear, strategizing etc. The h-battle mechanics are very superficial and unfortunately not great. This is a shame because with the way MP and arousal works, and how they programmed guard scouting patterns, there was definitely some thought put into the game system. Unfortunately, it's just too easy so there's no reason to engage with it.

There are a lot of h-scenes at least though, the h-gallery is fairly large, although cgs are reused for multiple scenes. There is voice acting but actual lines are not voiced, it's just generic moaning or catchphrases.

If the art interests you maybe try as much of the game before you get bored. In that case enjoy the gallery. A shame because this game is like 70% of the way to being good but it's just too damn easy.

It's okay.

Translation: Steam version is fine.

Story: Effie got saved when she was young and becomes a phantom thief. Which are apparently just magical girls in this universe. So she goes and steals from the bad guys to get things back for the town and being the heroine of justice everyone needs. Also there's another one, but she's bad at her job and exists to be a joke.

Gameplay: It's a hybrid stealth/RPGM game. There's sightlines, and traps you can avoid, but it's also just RPGM if you do get spotted. It has some battlefuck stuff, but it's pretty straight forward. It's got 4 levels, each time you lose to a human you can reduce the danger level until it's just a straight path to the boss. Where you cast magic on them a few times and they lose.

H-Content/Art: Effie is damn cute. The art is drawn well, but the variety is kinda locking. You go to the recollection room and see all these locked scenes and go "Damn that's a lot" then as you play through the game you realize that a ton of them are very minor progressions of the same scene. For a game about a thief sneaking in and trying to avoid traps, you'd think there might be some more scenarios based on her falling into these traps. The battlefuck system, while technically present, will almost never come into play. Becase if you get into combat you're either just gonna "oops I tripped teehee" for the scene, or one shot the thing with magic. Even if you don't do that, the system is very basic - enemy grabs you (Tentacles/Slimes do the typical down the shirt and bind thing, humans grab around the torso to fondle with one hand and use their other to finger her) and it just repeats that same cut-in every turn until you lose all your hp/mp.

There's certainly worse games you could play though.

Completed the game in 5 hours. Remained a virgin. Unfortunately, for such a playthrouh all the CGs were not unlocked, only a part. For the rest, the developers recommend going through NG+. So I just download save file after completing the game.

The story is average. You obviously won't play for this.

There were no bugs. The trick of instantly killing enemies from behind helps a lot.

H-scenes are good, but many repeat themselves.

It's a good game, more like a 7/10, I just have a few peeves with it.
Firstly, the way time progresses is a bit annoying, as the game doesn't let you sleep to progress time or anything, you have to go to a dungeon and come back.
Overall I also felt that the game could've been more fleshed out, like there wasn't enough of a pay off before the credits started rolling. When I got to the end it was a bit of "that's it?" feeling.
But I gotta say, if you're like me and just want a nice corruption game that's not dogshit, this one's not revolutionary, but I think it's worthy of taking up some of your time.

Okay, Phantom Thief Effie.

A nice and cute children's game where a bunny girl thief deals with bad guys. Very friendly gameplay and an interesting story. The bunny looks beautiful, as if you've stepped into childhood. I really liked the concept of the project, especially the setting in the room of our main heroine. I recommend playing it if you're bored and want something simple and easy to pick up.

Simply put this game is good. The game unfortunately could be great if it had more time in development. Everything is straightforward and to the point. I think what keeps this game from getting 5 stars for me is that the ecchi scenes do not go far enough.

Specifically there did not seem to be any consequence to allowing enemies to constantly molest the character in battle after the first 15 levels or so. The character gets extremely powerful far too quickly. I do not think a single attack in the final two dungeons ever hit me, including the first dungeon's boss. The final boss of the game managed to do some damage, but I was never threatened with defeat unless I skipped about 25 turns for no reason. The difficulty curve seems non-existent, but are we really playing a game like this for the difficulty?

The game took me about two hours to complete, and I am going to go through a second playthrough at some point to see if something changes my mind.

So, the gameplay itself is great. The steam version had perfect translation. The combat is a bit better than the average RPGM game (though it is very easy) and I enjoyed playing the game to 100% completion in around 3 hours.

So lets get onto the 2 stars. I enjoyed playing it, but the guy I was playing this for (I am talking about my penis) didn't even wake up. It's a good game, but a terrible porn game. Scenes are generic, while the characters themselves look good, the stuff happening and the variation of animations is among the worst I've seen. It's walking up to individuals and getting gently molested (I love corruption games, this is not corruption, it's just a forced conversation and the MC being like "huh what huh" while it slowly progresses) and a blowjob.

That is until you have sex. This can only be done by specifically losing against a boss 2 times in a row, or badly transitioning into it via the brothel; then the other half of the town/dungeon scenes unlock. Woo. except it's just the same few sex animations and a really bad context setup that all end basically the same. The MC does not really get taken advantage of at all in this, everyone is far too soft and only gently caress her until she gives consent by losing her virginity. And then they just all do the exact same thing.

That said, the progression of losing boss fights over and over (up to 3, 5 on last) was a little better. Though still not really anything special, just vanilla with syrup instead of plain vanilla.

In the end, I just left feeling very underwhelmed, but I did not dislike it enough to leave early. The larger majority of RPGM games on this site are better when it comes to H content, and many better when it comes to gameplay too.

Is worth it?
Short answer Yes.
Long answer YEEEEeeeeeeaaaaasss. xD
Just for the art is a 3 stars game
So the game actually is about 4.5 so its good not excellent but 5 to round
Pros
-Art
-Battle harrasment
-harrasment
-virgin route
-Can skip battles
-Voiced
Personal->That ass

Middle
The history
No bugs (I didn't find any)

Bad
-Just one costume
- some of the cg 's recicle
-Theres no more games of this developer

MTL that seems good enough is most places, but baffling and reversed meaning in others,
clothing damage is MP%,
unavoidable battles (blocked paths) when 'stealth' is advised,
repetitive and annoying combat HG cut-ins

Very decent game, nothing special but the art and voice acting is good
there is a variety of scenes but my one con with the game is that the CGs get reused
nice short game with the usual
virgin end
boss loss scene
intentionally boss loss scene, the bosses will point out you lost to them on purpose for sex
slime scenes
stuck in the floor scenes
sexual harassment
combat sexual harassment
Getting too horny in the middle of dungeons while out of mana
prostitution scenes
masturbation scenes
bad ending scene
one other problem with the game is the extremely abrupt ending but that's all
translation can be strange at times but it's passable, pretty good, slightly better than MTL tier of course it's AI translated or whatever
wish there were different outfits or something or the ability to strip naked, there are a few outdoor scenes though

I liked a lot of scenes from this game. I love this kind of art style and protagonists in general.

A MUST HAVE, if you are a fan of Clymenia games (you know what you are in for ) or you just like bunny girls.

There are tons of lewd scenes you can cover in a virgin-only run and the game encourages it.

The censoring did not even bother me. I got off more to fully clothed scenes than when the protagonist is getting fucked to oblivion.

There are very few games I can say that about. And that says something about the quality of artwork.

Short but decent game.

I think the small volume actually works to its advantage in that the game is completely carried by its art style, but it is short enough that its issues like the generic combat and predictable, simple story don't have the time to come up to the surface.

The translation, as others have said, is clunky at times but perfectly serviceable.

Overall, a decent time-waster that won't probably make anybody's favorite list, but one that you likely won't find yourself regretting the couple hours you spent with it.

Note that if you don't like the art style, you will get very little out of this game.

Very nice game.
The gameplay isn't half bad. If you don't like repetitive rpgm battle, you'll be happy to know you can basically skip all of them (except the bosses). You'll have a better time with stealth takedowns anyway.
It is a little short for my taste and the scenes are just a little repetitive, but the art is amazing (and i also have a soft spot for bunny girls, so this is a big plus for me).
The "AI translation" isn't even terrible. There are a few mystakes with pronouns here and there, but you can always understand what's been said at least (no poetry here). Although it doesn't help for certain terms (like, what even is the "rutting" stat?).
I definitely recommend it.

This review is only based on my own taste :

Phantom Thief Effie is, to my knowledge, the first game of the studio Yamanashi Girl.
This studio is already known for its own style in mangas for adults.

The graphic style is therefore one of the strong points of this title.
If the gameplay isn't as good as a Personna 5, you can nevertheless invest the dungeons in different ways : head-on, discreetly or voluntarily alerting the maximum number of guards to... well... anyway.

So YES, the translation is NOT Shakespearian, but for me, who is neither native English speaker nor fluent in Japanese, the dialogues seem to be largely understandable.
...And if the characters speak about herself in the third person, "je m'en tamponne le coquillard au vinaigre blanc citronné!" (that means that I don't care, sorry for my French.)

This game is, in my opinion, a very good game, like we don't see enough of on this site, a gem that just needed to be translated.
...and there are so many other jewels waiting...
So don't demotivate the translators, even a copy/paste>DeepL>MTL takes time so...

I thank those who take this time for us !

And if the letters M-T-L make you want to puke, you will find on this site an impressive number of v0.001 3D DAZ Ren'py visual novels clones written in perfect English.

To each his own sweet treats and to each his own vomitizer :
the important thing is to taste !