Unity - Portals of Phereon [v0.30.0.0] [Syvaron]

Version v0.18.0.1 at time of this review.

This game has porn in it, quite a lot of porn, but really what makes this game shine is that it is actually just a good game as well. Its a mesh of pokemon/breeding sims and X-Com like strategy games but its a hell of a lot more balanced then X-Com and its few clones.

There is also an incredible amount of content in the game as of this current version. Ive played this since its first release and have beaten it a few times at this point (Only with the evolution character atm) and I usually wait a few versions before playing it again to see the new monsters and some CGs. But this most recent time i decided to just play it and go for the achievements and boy was i surprised by just how much content is in this game and how I apparently missed it each and every time since i focused purely on breeding and basically ignored my companions and the NPCs.

Which brings me to my only complaint, it is hard to follow some of the questlines since there is no actual indication of you actually being on some of them, like the Avy demon storyline that requires you to use the map at somepoint and go an area you normally never interact with.

The game lacks creative direction.
Too many ideas are at work within the game and pulls it apart in many aspects, the game forces you to play it by using all mechanics at its disposal.
These mechanics are pulling in polar opposite directions as your investing a disproportionate amount of time into specific aspects interpersonally with some of the characters but the lack of physical growth (stats or even just keeping the character constant for any purpose) is heavily evident as you need to build and drop repeatedly to farm for higher and higher strength.
Ultimately this reminds me of xcom with dating sim elements, except your the one directly killing the characters because your forced to rather than accidentally losing them. Gameplay is somewhat refined and balanced and those aspects pulling at every end are tearing immersion rather than the game itself which is why I gave it 4 and not 3 or less.

The game needs some automation aspects like auto-fill with the best equipment.
REALLY FREAKING NEEDS TUTORIAL, there is so many aspects of the game that you learn through experience which really sucks the new player experience. Dating, sex, fighting is half decent, interactions with NPCs, guild, the map & why things highlight as they do, etc. These all really need individual tutorials.
The balance around stamina needs to be fixed more, the value of an action is purely on the stamina-reward output rather than anything else, makes some things prohibitively unbalanced.
The balance around players own personal time needs to be fixed a lot more, as those actions that are balanced around stamina also aren't that balanced around real time as well.

I really don't want to give this game such a low score, but I feel like it's the only way the most honest description I can give, because I don't think I could ever recommend this to anyone despite spending a lot of time trying to get it to work for me.

As it is (At version 0.17.0.1), the game has gone through years of proggress, and I can see how much work and effort the devs have put into the game. But at the same time, I can't ignore that the end-result has become something incoherent. It feels like there are at least three games here fighting for control, with all the mechanics, gameplay systems and stats you need to track. It's an SRPG/Pokemon/Dating/Breeding/Roleplaying/Brothel Management-game, where all the disparate systems fail to make an enjoyable whole.

To go into the details a little bit, I think the SRPG/ranch-management system is the strongest part of the game, and what the game should be focused around. The exploration, combat and team-building feel like what the game "should" be themed around, but that that experience has been intervowen with so many ideas and needlessly micromanaged mechanics, that actually enjoying that part of the game is a slog. You "have to" engage in breeding and fusing and arena-battles, and shipping units to the library and the tavern, and also dating them??? The monster-girls and units you collect are your teammates, and dating partners, but also your "pets" you can breed and send off, and also just things for you to pimp out? There is a dissonance in what fantasy the game is trying to convey, beyond just making numbers go up and seeing and unlocking cool new forms to play with.

Clearly, this sort of fantasy is something that speaks to some players, however, so I don't want to be too hard on it either. I would personally enjoy it more, if a lot of the the micromanagement of your sex skill-levels, dating-scores, jobs, lewdities and maybe even some items and inventory slots were greatly reduced or even removed, or linked to just having specific body-parts. The brothel-system, also feels like it doesn't fit a game like this, or rather, it feels like you should be getting more from it rather than just money. (after all, what value is money going to have in an apocalypse-scenario?) I feel like it would feel better to have a lot more functions of the game linked with improving and building up your home/ranch, which then powers up your exploration- and combat-abilities, rather than having so many "bubbles" that all have to be appeased by adding in corresponding stats of that "bubble" to every character (genetics, bodyparts, brothel value, inventory slots, arena ranks etc....)

I wish to love it, i trully do, this game has great art and you can see that people were working hard on it, but the ammount of plesure you can get from playing it pales in comparison to the investment of time you have to spend on the grinding.

Even on "easy start" you'll get squashed in the first dungeon by the first or at least second monster party.
Also, aside from some encounters - sex is a highly repetative mini game, that you'll need to grind relationships with your monster girl harem. You have too read what your partner wants, even if she is a trow-away harpy that you will use on a farm, to get some actual results.

PoP is worth checking out right now, but it still needs some polish and maybe even gameplay changes. The sheer amount of more or less fleshed out game mechanics is enough to make this game interesting, but it is a double-edged sword that can easily overwhelm you.

Still, it seems that the dev is more focused on the gameplay and puts only the necessary amount of time into the presentation (though I don't doubt that the game will have tons of great art later), which is a good approach to a management RPG like this. You can tell that it took a lot of effort to string every mechanic together: there's so much stuff you actually need to do, but none of it feels unnecessary or out of place. Things are still unbalanced, though, the main clue for this being the King's requests that require you to know how to play the game and get lucky with the characters you get, because I don't think you can keep up with his requests otherwise. The requests scale too, so even if you skip one, you are expected to catch up later.
Thankfully, the game lets you toggle freeplay mode or just cheat and continue after failing too many requests.

Other than that, PoP plays fairly well. Both management and RPG features and mechanics are easy to understand, there is no ambiguity in most actions. It's just fun to play the game, breed and fuse the characters at the start, get the gear and go into a portal to feel your way around and figure out what sort of party you're going to have this time. Kinda hurts to get instantly steamrolled sometimes, but more often than that some characters would click together and you would feel like you're on the right track to get a perfect team, which in turn prompts you to breed the characters to get an ideal specimen for a certain role.

The NSFW content is alright, I guess. The sex system is nice, although the "fun" stat it has really confuses me, the artwork is good and it is a nice way to bond with the characters that you like.
But this is clearly a game that focuses more on SFW stuff rather than porn and that's for the best. Similar to (now dead) Breeding Season, the porn and the idea of sex are not the end goal and only reinforce the gameplay. You'll come for the cute monster girls and stay for the hot, hardcore number management.

I guess the only notable downside is the UI. I don't even care that it's raw and that I can see the default Unity font and textfields. It's the fact that it doesn't have good management tools like sorting or filtering for characters that bothers me. Having more than ten characters overall or more than three characters of the same (or even just similar) species can become tedious. This is probably the biggest problem of PoP, because you can't work around it. It messes with the tempo and makes you stop whatever train of thought you had to go through every character and look for the one with the highest stat, only for you to double check because you had three Lizardgirls with the same portrait and you didn't bother to remember their names, so now you have to go through the three of them and, oh shit, what was her name again, and... you get it.

So, overall, Portals of Phereon is on its way to be one of the best NSFW management games. It's clear that the dev has skill and patience to make it even better, though I hope that they will take some time to work on the Quality-of-Life updates for the next versions.

Art is quite distinctly appealing. Gameplay in terms of sex related subjects is interesting and offers lots of variety, albeit a bit lacking in the art department and the writing is all over the place at times.

Gameplay in terms of RPG is the equivalent of playing a database software for a game. With almost the entire game's complex mechanics explained to you right off the bat, the learning curve of this game might as well be a vertical line. This is the only RPG I have ever played where I'm discouraged to even get into a combat because I'm too scared of having to deal with more information.

I believe it's suitable for those who REALLY enjoys management games, but even then it's kind of questionable why someone would play this over an actual management game. Definitely not for everyone that's for sure.

Doesn't get much better than this. Even in it's unfinished state (v.0.16.0.2) this game blows most completed games on here out of the water. It's management, rpg and strategy elements seamlessly blend together to make a very difficult but fair game with plenty of difficulty modifiers and easy to access cheats on the wiki.

So Portals of Phereon has been in production for years and years.

It was barely playable when I first tried it. As such it left a poor impression on me and I've avoided it until now.

Now though it is pretty good.

The thing about this game is just how much game there is. It has a pokemon system. It has dog breeding. It has battle sex and sex training. Deforestation and battles against slime hives. Dating and rescuing damsels. And item crafting for some reason.

It's quite the thing now. Kind of snuck up on me.

Pretty good, I always get excited when a new update comes, pretty good game, I really enjoy the combat for me its fun to find new members in the portals, I like to find every unique character, and the thing that i enjoy the most is that you don't have to loose to see the artwork.
Pretty good game in my opinion, one of my favorites

A well developed game that I'm surprised isn't finished yet.

If I have to pick a flaw then It's unavoidable to talk about the lack of a good tutorial (something i personally am fine with because i like to discover how mechanics interact) and clear hotkeys.

In a very weird sense I would describe the intro to the game as similar to darksouls. It gives the minimal mechanics and info needed but not really examples on how to apply it or why.

Engaging, great art, a fun game overall. I definitely could get a little annoyed at the stamina mechanics, but that's easy enough to either cheat past, or learn to manage. I do wish the characters would be expanded a bit further, but overall, a great game.

It's an excellent game, but it's a hit or miss if you like it or not because it has its peculiarities. Also keep in mind that it is not a porn game with RPG and management elements, it's an RPG management game with some porn in it. Portals of Phereon fills a niche, and it fills it masterfully. I've been playing this from way before i found this site, something like version 0.7 maybe (it's come a loooong way over the years).

Now that this is out of the way, review.

Art : as of 0.15.01 the gallery is extensive, with 350+ unique pieces of art on display, and it's really closer to 400 because some gallery entries have multiple artworks. Everything is done in a beautiful hand-painted look, characters look fantastic and have solid designs, without being over-sexualised and out of proportions (some ARE ridiculous but you know and feel it's on purpose, and it's fitting). It's amazing.

Sound design : this game has no audio, but it doesn't feel lacking either. Just pop your favourite playlist in the background.

Gameplay : the learning curve is very, very steep, ye been warned; but it's also very satisfying and well crafted. There is no hand-holding tutorial, but there is an extensive library of information to peruse.
-Many elements of progression interact with each other (RPG exploration, town management and breeding, crafting, quests) and it WILL confuse you at first. But the great thing is that if you feel locked on one avenue of progression, all the others are there to surmount that obstacle. Combining all systems efficiently will skyrocket you into a strong power-fantasy in a short time, and you'll actually feel like a God (story related). Just don't feel bad about losing at first, it gets better and the community will answer your questions helpfully to get you in that sweet spot faster.
-3 heroes with unique abilities and progression that will make you re-think how you play the game and what your short and long term objectives are (besides the main mission). All of them have the ability to snowball their power when done right.
-Unlocks for future runs are done through a mix of in-game discoveries and old-shcool type achievements (some more challenging than others, all doable).
-cheats are available publicly, and will only lock you out of unlocking things (fair enough).
-difficulty customization of the game. It's extensive, and you can really play as easy or hard as you want through the multitude of options.
-Replayability value is to the moon

The porn (is that why you're here?): it's integrated seamlessly into the gameplay, both in the town management and in the RPG exploration. It's the art stills from the characters, some events (both semi-random and active dating), and little animated action bubbles. It's solid enough, and quite wholesome imo, but you should not be afraid of seeing stray dicks or semi/non-human characters.

Story : there's an actual plot, and the author has put some serious effort into creating a believable story and lore. You can absolutely ignore it, but it is there, and you'll be more involved and get a different perspective depending on which hero you choose to play as.

In terms of porn content, this game is pretty weak, the artstyle is quite good, there are a bunch of CGs to unlock via dating and other ingame mechanics, but every scene is just so lazily-written that I can't help but smile a bit. There are also not really that many CGs, unless you count every species' portrait (Which are quite nice, I admit).
I guess that's part of being v0.15 at the time of writing, though.

Onto the game itself, I think this has the potential to be one of the best adult management games out there, it's extremely fun to start out and fiddle around with different species, biomes, and breeding methods.
There is a lot of variety between runs, multiple MC choices, multiple starter party members, and huge variety of starting options (Including difficulty ones).
However, this game is progressing at an incredibly slow pace, there is much that needs to be polished, and the developer really needs to hire someone to write the scenes cause this is honestly embarrassing. Personally, it feels like v1.00 will be released by 2025 if we're lucky. I haven't kept up with the dev much in that regard. I would give it 4/5 but honestly the pace in which it is progressing is making me go 3/5.

TL;DR: Great game, clearly unfinished, unpolished, but still enjoyable enough to sink numerous hours into if you're looking for a game that has infinitely better management mechanics than it has porn.

Hello my name is Siderophilia and I have played Portals of Phereon v0.15.01 by Syvaron.

I discovered this game after that YouTube guy flashed the title screen for a split second in one of his videos. From that point on I've spent weeks trying to master the basics, at times putting it aside only to infallibly return at a later point. The thing which has held me back is of course the one thing everybody will tell you about this game; That it suffers from an extremely steep learning curve. This issue is in fact so prevalent that I believe it is preventing a lot of people from enjoying the game, and I don't even believe that it might be mitigated by my review telling people to give it a chance. The game is clearly not for everyone and I wouldn't blame a potential player for giving up on it after multiple attempts at lunging themselves into the game without success. It has taken me multiple restarts only to get a somewhat complete grasp on the gameplay mechanisms. For better or for worse, the game also allows you to ignore major gameplay mechanics for a long time without preventing the player from proceeding. For instance i my early playthroughs I would mismanage my economy, go into debt, have all my characters sleep outside, and in the end the only thing which prevented me from going further was the realization that I wasn't playing the way I was supposed to.

Despite this issue, the game has managed to reel me back in every time. Portals of Phereon's primary appeal, unlike a lot of games on this site, is the gameplay. The gameplay can loosely be divided into two separate areas, the management game played while in town, with activities such as breeding new characters, assigning characters to work and training and upgrading stuff; and the tactical RPG which takes place when you explore portals or fight in the arena. The ingenuity of Portals of Phereon is how these two spheres interact with and affect each other. While exploring portals you gather resources and recruit new characters in order to get upgrades and breed new stronger species, which you may in turn bring with you to aid in exploring more difficult portals.

The actual breeding at points feels overshadowed by the vast amount of content beside it, but arguably it is the one component which really strings the rest of the content together. The game has an impressive system of hybridization and genetic traits which may be passed on to offspring. See the wiki site for the list of 12 base species and resulting 78 (I still don't get the math on this one) hybrids, as well as additional "special hybrids" and "impure species", all of which come with unique portrait art. Due to the limitations of games like these however those portraits along with quite many unique gallery stills are probably the most interesting things you'll see in the art department. When you accept these limitations however I believe the right choice has been made, and discovering the unique looks of each hybrid is probably the greatest joy of a "monster girl breeding game". Sound design is nil, but I haven't felt like it's missing.

The game is heavily geared towards replayability and even comes with a surprisingly effective hotkey setup for almost every screen which allows for easy optimization once you learn the ropes. Perhaps as a consequence thereof, the story often takes the back seat. While the game probably has a bunch of lore stacked away in the library that I didn't bother to read, most sexual activities outside of unique events aren't accompanied by any writing, and even when there is writing for an event, it boils down to a few short paragraphs. I think that for it to actually function as a pornographic game, PoP calls for a vivid imagination of its player.

Despite these arguable flaws, the game is simply so good at what it does well that I cannot rate it anything other than 5/5.

Ui is such a cancer to deal with, game is ok, mechanics are good, like the art, breeding etc. etc. but goddamn this UI just ruining every single fun of this cool game, i dunno what need to be done, but devs should rework the UI 100%

Very good game , Bcuz i like to train and go to arena to fight something very hard but fun to lvl the exp for my character and partner is my favourite things to do . And one last thing is the sex traning is very good i have nothing to say about sex traning .

Portals of Phereon is one of the few titles that leans heavily into the RPG elements but makes the sexual content part of the world and how it functions. The game doesn't feel cobbled together or incongruous, even the idea of mechanisms and portals blending seamlessly with a world of magic and swords.

As a side note, that each race and hybrid race has artwork for it that's customizable is a level of dedication that must be commended. In fact, the level of customization can be overwhelming at times.

Really great game! I spend the last week playing two campaigns and had a lot of fun catching all the different monstergirls and trying different team compositions. The art is amazing, so it was exciting to find all the combinations and to see how the resulting girl would look like. This results in a great atmosphere. You can see that there is a lot of thought behind the different abilities, genes, passvies and so on.
In general the game reminds me of a combination of the round based fights of "battle for wesnoth" or "age of wonders" with the gotta catch them all of pokemon. (plus lots of sex and futas)

After playing about 40 games on this platform, I have done the mistake of not reviewing them many times, I started playing this game about a year ago, and every now and then I would get back into it.

This game has basically everything I would want.
A good combat system
a good breeding system
things to do outside of combat(the minigames are sometimes a bit too longwinded but whatever)
but most important for a sex game: GOOD FUCKING SEX

The art on this game is amazing and the customizations even more so. If you like or don't mind furry content I HIGHLY suggest giving this game a whirl(same for futa content, however that seems mostly optional)

Amazing, has this fusion mechanic which is really well implemented.
Enjoyed the breeding feature as well.
The story behind the snu snu is actually quite good and I think you will like it.
I think it has great potential and should be definitively be given a try.