Unity - Portals of Phereon [v0.28.1.1] [Syvaron]

Just started. Looks great, UI feels great, idea is familiar enough but still has much novelty. Seems to be a game loved by its fans and devs, possesses a dedicated and talented dev and artist combo, supported by a decent wiki.
But the main reason for this post has to be a rant. THE SHEER AMOUNT OF INFORMATION IS CAUSING MY BRAIN TO OVERLOAD AGH. But the game is compelling enough to continue, just like The Last Sovereign.

I really want to like this game. The art is great. There are interesting ideas for combat and management. There are so many elements introduced so quickly that when you start the game it just feels like you're blazing through a flurry of different tangentially-connected menus. The UI is not great in that regard. You can tell there is a great game inside trying to get out. I think if the dev rethought the design of the interface this game could be more attractive. As it stands it just seems like you could rename this Feature Creep: the Game.

I'm not even a fan of the content, but it doesn't even matter, because this is a GAME, and not a sad excuse to show off a few pictures. In fact this may be the most game I've yet encountered in this category. Mad respect to the creator(s).

I think is the best game i have ever played in this site, complex mechanics, quest, random events and secrets, it have it all. The art is great, and the characters as well, is hard to believe it is made by just one person

This is a game that deserves the descriptor of "naturally grown" in regards to its systems. Its honestly impressive how many systems it has. too many in fact.
The game is very pretty, cool art, cool interactions and very cool ideas. Its also incredibly customizable regarding difficulty and experience.
So its even worse that even on the easiest of settings its still incredibly tedious. Its mechanics and time management are far too granular leading to a complexity that is so high you cannot play this game casually. You cant just start a game and feel like you are succeeding at something. This is not helped by the fact that if you try and make the game as easy as can be so you can have the time to learn and experiment the game tells you to fuck off and restricts unlocks.
While its easy to say "git gud" and learn every in and out of the game this really only works if the game is actually fun. And many of its mechanics are. Dating, Breeding, Fusion everything contained to the basecamp is pretty great. Combat is a mess. Its unintuitive, has a horrible UI, Encounters vary highly etc.

Yet I dont want to judge it too harshly. Because what does work does so in a great way. It gives you so much, even if it is too much.
I would really wish for a PoP2 to be announced. Take what was learned and streamline it.

I could say that this game is the best of it's kind but I don't think that would be very accurate. This game stands completely on it's own. Sure, you might draw some similarities with other breeder titles but this game goes far beyond just a simple breeding simulator. As a whole package, with all of it's features and mechanics viewed together, it is a completely unique experience you won't find anywhere else.

Beautiful and unique art. Great combat which requires strategy. Detailed and varied breeding/ fusion system with a huge amount of different species with unique traits and skills. Lots of events with unique characters, some of which have their own mini-arcs. Dates with cute monster girls. And I could go on...

Despite the amount of time I've invested into this game there is still a bunch of features and mechanics I am still not familiar with. This game is ROBUST and it doesn't ease you in. One criticism I think is valid is that it's very intimidating and hard to digest for new players. But once you start to slowly get the hang of stuff it's very rewarding.

5/5, give it a go. Push through the harsh beginnings and it will be worth it.

This is an excellent game. Make no mistake it is a GAME first with some porn in it the gameplay is very deep, so deep that i havent completely figured it out yet completely. Sandbox mechanics allow you to progress by very different distinct options. Insane amount of content spells/skills. Highly recommend.

One of the best games I've played but in overall is pretty well made but common. Countless mechanics. Wery rich gallery. It's pretty slow in gameplay but still nice to play. Recommend to try.
4\5

Sometimes I feel the dev think their game is too perfect. And he intends to spoil it so that people do not die from rapture.
Game idea is nice, sandbox strategy with tactical combat and pokemon/persona pawns collection and improvement. With futas and breeding.
But everything, exept combat, falls to boring loops due to restraints. All of this max lvl, world lvl and so on forces player to repeat already known reactions, instead finding new ones.
Finding something new maded boring too. It`s not like uniqure pawns with uniqure traits spawn in uniqure conditions. It`s just random mess where you just sort usefull or not. All of this amplified by traits that dublicate linear stats. 5 str and strong or 10 str and weak!? Why not just extend stat range by aditional numbers and leave traits to be ... well, traits!? Uniqure effects.
And something wrong is everywhere. Game has breeding mechanic, but most of MC, unlike pawns, can`t normaly improve stats and traits. So their offsprings always be worse than random ones. I don`t get it. Dev share with us his dream about that his children will be worse than others? let his dreams come true.
And so on. Unlockables for next playthrough, instead of current, like in bad mobile games. Uniqure NPC that lose their uniqueness if you try to improve them.
Everything indicates that the game was spoiled on purpose. A person cannot just make mistakes like that.

Rewards the time you put in, a ton of different monstergirls and a ton of art in a very interesting style. You can get into the patreon for $1/mo. With the time I've spent I more than got my money's worth. There's a linux version which means it became another game I slapped on the steam deck and I've no issues there beside the custom cursor, which can be toggled.

This has some nice porn in it, but more than that it's just a fun game on its own. Specially as you start to understand how deep some of the mechanics are.

Probably the best game out there if you like managing games.

This game is great: A perfect blend between Heroes Might & Magic 3 and a farming breeding simulator.

Looks like it is still in early stages but the amount of quality gameplay and contents here is admirable that it make the Patreon 5$ sub still feel like a steal.

Though the devs should REALLY try using UI Icons instead of just hotkey-ing and right-clicking everything lmao.

I feel like there is a good game here. Maybe. Its beautiful certainly! But I've never played a game so damn uninterested in explaining what the fuck is going on in my life. The straw that broke my back was after I had created a character and tried to date one of the Monster Girls I had. I quickly found out that to actually do anything in this game you need to attend a four year college and get a degree on it. It is again, visually stunning, but Ive only got so much time

Portals of Phereon is probably one of the best example of dedication and delivery in this industry to a project which has no reason 1. being so unpopular while 2. being such high quality. The best word for describing this game is: Remarkable. The amount of content, quality and CONSISTENCY of the art and writing is just simply REMARKABLE. Like a breath of fresh air after the constant smell of rotting, putrid garbage that is the porn/hentai gaming market.

For that reason I can't go ahead and just give it a 5/5 because I feel like it would give out the wrong message. I don't think this game is perfect at all, and with that said I would like to show my respect to the dedication the dev has for this game by giving my unbiased and raw experience playing Portals of Phereon.

Every time I open up this game, start a new run, get to a certain point, or get an ending I encounter the same problem: Confusion. For some reason my understanding of the game mechanics does not feel to give a proper advantage to me in most areas of the game. I blame the fact that there are just so many things to manage I encounter a too high wall which I can't climb without constantly loading up different save files. I don't think the problem is with the bad tutorial or the complexity, in fact I like that this game is so complex.

I think the problem is that the experience is not streamlined. Exploring portals efficiently while managing what characters to breed for different scenarios while also finishing the king's quests WHILE trying to earn money AND FOOD efficiently is just so much I get overwhelmed every time and increasing the game's difficulty sounds like a bad joke.

In Portals of Phereon each gameplay arc like the breeding, portal exploration, brothel work, and recently the dating could be taken out of the game and put up as a SEPERATE TITLE and some people would find engagement in that. Is that good? YES! But only if I the player can manage all that in a single game. This is where I feel the game has its weak point. As I said I don't have a problem with complexity but it is much more enjoyable when there are a few gameplay elements which have great depth and good attention to detail rather then A TON of elements with adequate depth but not much attention to detail.

Since I myself am not a game dev and the aforementioned problem is just so niche I don't feel it in me to give out suggestions on it, so I will just leave that part out. I just hope this review helps either the dev and/or potential players to know what to expect.

Almost every update I return to this game to make the same mistake...
- Hm, it seems that I have some free time, why not play PoP? It had update since I last time played.
- ...
- Wdym it's night already?

I want to say that despite my intolerance to futanari I like this game by a lot. I just can't stop grinding for no reason, making the best of the best characters, raise relationships with them, searching for something new.

Anyone who says that UI is bad never played Era games. And to be honest, you are just getting used to it. No one forces you to rush things. No once is going to kill you out of nowhere. Just take your time and enjoy this game. The whole complexity is that you just don't know what button what means. But after a bit of investigation you never will find yourself cursing UI. All is placed where it should.

Imho, if you want porn - you better find some other game. But if you want decent management simulator with creating new species - still avoid this game cause you might occaisionally ruin your real life

One of the few porn games that's actually a game. And pretty fun too. The art being as gorgeous as it is , is just the cherry on top. Oriel has only one portrait that I know of and it's the cutest thing I've ever seen. Its rogue-like mechanics also give it decent replayability. I only wish there were more representation in the sex pop-ups accurately depicting the variety of genital sizes and species in the game, some unfortunately are only represented by text instead of art. Sfx and music would be nice, but no soundtrack is better than bad soundtrack imo. Maybe some random events depicting the girls you put in the brothel would be nice as well.

Jesus I thought steam had a shitty UI design but this is pure chaos, There doesn't need to be 100 menus put in separate corners of the screen with unknown importance to each of them. Great character design I guess but It wouldn't surprise me if this creator only worked on this game while on Adderall.

I'm sorry. But it is stupid that this game is as good as it is. I was just browsing steam and looing through my library of games and... What happened? It doesn't make sense to me that three of the greatest games ever created are adult adventure games. Meanwhile, licensed game studios keep churning out garbage. Idk. It definitely bothers me more then it should. Anyway. This game is absolutely phenomenal. While it is still in development, if it keeps going like its going, 10/10. A profoundly wonderful experience.

A real standout in the porn game space, a lot more gameplay focused than most/all other games, but still plenty of porn. To anyone who gives this gem one star because the interface is confusing and the tutorial is bad: skill issue. Maybe this game is just not for you, doesn't mean it's a one star game.