RPGM - Project Skyward [v1.3f3] [Skyward Foundry]

Okay. After playing the latest version, 1.20, which is available on the Dev's website I feel like I can give this game 4 stars in earnest. Since the previous edition of the game they repaired the combat system and removed the overwhelming majority of the grind. The combat is still challenging, and frequent, maybe a little too frequent for some, but fair in my opinion.

New Pros
+ The artwork. Most of it is very good, and there's a lot of it. NPC's who you can sex up are marked with a special icon, so they're easy to find.
+There's a lot to explore in the game. There's an Easter egg mechanic where you can find freebee pic hidden around the world.
+ you can play as multiple characters, including the main villain.
+There's crafting
+ The setting very big.
+ There's custom sprites for some of the combat encounters (though I do wish there were more, since the majority are stock sprites)
+This doesn't matter to me in particular but there is a lot of lore for the setting.
+There's a skip setting for all the dialogue, and cutscenes now so you can fast foreword through them, which makes everything much more bearable. Also some of the excess dialogue was removed all together. It seems like they're just adding in as much as they can with each edition and then removing the excess, and finetuning it later on.
+ The weakest part of the game is the very beginning, in my opinion, but it get's better and better as you progress. I found the city of Ivor to be genuinely interesting, particularly when you get to the slums. There are several unfinished settings you can visit, including a tropical island. There's also a finished "haunted forest local" complete with futa witches, necromancers, and thicc ghosts you can seduce.

Cons
- There were a bugs when I played. Some of the early bugs I found persisted into the second build, but they were all minor. The newly finished sections were all mostly functional.

Summary
I'm generally pretty pleased to see how the game is progressing, and thus will be supporting the dev. I encourage everyone to do the same. While it's not perfect I genuinely think it's got more than enough to be a good.

I don't think this is worth finishing as is. But it is worth talking about. It has... potential.
Summary at the end btw.

It has:
A likeable MC... kind of.
A likeable ally
Good art
Futa
All good shit.
All the good shit in the game.
Excepting the mc, who is good, then shit, in the game.

And now we gotta cover why it has potential, but is 2/5. Why its not reaching its potential. Why its bad.

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Now we'll start with the gameplay.
Its bad.
Encounter rates are absurd. You often barely walk more than 1 step without a fight.
Basic enemies are absurdly strong, they'll have 50% or more hp than the local fucking bosses, each, and do a good 20% of your hp per hit, each, with their worst hits. Its ridiculous.
Bosses tend to be underwhelming because of this. Your average random fight can genuinely be harder than the local boss.
The encounter rate needs to be lowered and enemy stats need to be fixed.

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This is just in the battle system. Outside has its own issues. Issue. An issue that bleeds into every aspect of the game.
Its fucking slow.
Its so slow.
Why is it so slow?
You move slow, you talk slow, NPC's shuffle around in cutscenes as slow as possible, if at any point a scene or event takes over controls (like turning into wisps in the first dungeon), it'll intentionally take the slowest, most out of the route way it can.

On top of all this, you can't save at will. No-no-no. Need save stones for that, on the map. Not generously placed. Maybe 1 in an entire dungeon. At the start. With no shortcuts.

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Now that's just the 'worst' part here. Not the only bad part. So lets move on to the story.
Its bad. Shocking, I know.
So first of all, let's talk about the MC. I called her likeable... sort of. Because she is... for the first 5 mins of the game. She comes off as a happy-go-lucky ditzy girl with a cock. Its nice. Why is she ditzy? Ah, because of the tribute, and how little she cares about it. Goes off on an adventure instead of dealin' with it. Fucks up, comes back late, 'teehee'.
And now her entire town is on fire. Mom stolen, could be raped, its that kind of game after all. Entire town could be, except all the corpses.
Is she genuinely retarded? No, she's dumb, but a functioning human being.
Did she not know this would happen? No, she explictly confirms she knew the effect of not paying the tribute.
And its once a year.
The one fucking day of the year where she needed to be in town for literally 5 mins to hand over a gift someone else had sorted for her, and she couldn't do it, too busy being a ditzy 'teehee' adventurer.
What in the actual fuck?
It compeltely ruins her character. It takes a likeable, upbeat girl, and makes her into a completely unrepetant selfish asshole. And she isn't even called out on it. Except when she's unconcious and can't hear shit. Its her fault the bad guys, who clearly have no choice, had to burn her village. But in her mind, they're the bad guys. And everyone seems to agree with this.
What a horrible human being. Waste of a likeable MC. I can't see her as anything other than a stupid bitch.
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Contrary to this, the elf and her obsession with being above charity and always trying to look cool is always likeable.
Because they CAN write likeable characters. It is the singular one thing this game does well. But they decided to take the main character and dip her in shit.
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It also has this weird thing where words are highlighted in blue, yellow or red for no apparent reason. Red for threats and such, blue and yellow seemingly at random for anything they want you to focus on, but its overused so much it just feels weird. It'll also use green when it runs out of room for blue and yellow. Because sometimes it'll want you to note
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And to make matters even worse is the sheer volume of text here. They don't shut the fuck up. Ever. Every conversation is dragged out at least 3 times as long as it needs to be. You talk to random npc on the map, he throws fucking 20 text boxes in a row at you, all of whch are painfully fucking slow because you can't just have text instantly pop in. And he's saying nothing of any value. It feels like the game is punishing you for caring to talk to them with this slow-as-shit text.
Actually while I say 'can't have instant text', that's not true. You can. Hold W. and watch it skip it all. You have nothing in between skip and slow.

You talk to a shopkeeper, he tells you his life story.
Guard he regails you on his job for over 20 text boxes.
Random unnamed women in the middle of town doing fucking nothing? Oh boy, that's at LEAST 10 boxes of dialogue saying LITERALLY FUCKING NOTHING
And holy shit, the amount of times they do this
"..."
"?"
And each time its another fucking delay. Its ridiculous.

Oh and 90% of the time on entering a new area, they stop to talk. For ages. About nothing. Every area. Every time.
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This is on top of misculanious issues like how when you enter an area it'll show a KH like sign of the areas name, which is cool. And then it'll keep doing that. In ever area. Until you go to the one its supposed to spawn in to reset it then wait for it to go away.
Does the same when characters talk on the map.

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And now FINALLY we move on to the sex!
...Where the fuck is it?
Its not in the combat system.
Its not in the 1500000 lines of dialogue pooled from all the NPC's in the latest town.
Its not in any menu letting me interact with my party
WHERE is it?
No seriously played this for fucking hours and I barely saw any sex. Did they forget its a h-game? Is it one of those where all the sex comes in towards the end? Am I expected to tediously talk to every single NPC in every time to find the one with a scene, with no indiciation, like 'Where's Waldo's massive futa cock?
Ah. Its in the book. In key items. Not mentioned anywhere. Stated to be locked, but you can open it. Isn't it? ...No. That just has what seem to be random pics with no context to the game in them. Presumably what the op pics are from. Very misleading, if so.

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So. Summary.

The gameplay is slow, poorly balanced, all around bad in every single way

The MC is a horrible person

The writing is more bloated than this review. Everybody says too much while saying too little, the way they talk is constantly stilted by question mark boxes and similar, the text moves far slower than people actually read

There's no fucking sex to see anywhere
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Its a shame. If this didn't have the retarded ''hhaha woopshie my family is slaves now XD'' plot point and was just a slice of life as some cute happy-go-lucky dark-elf friend, it'd be more likeable. The MC is clearly the MC of a game like that. But its not. It constantly tries to be serious while starring a literal drooling retard. And it falls flat as a result.
Combat would also be fine if numbers were like 1/10th of what they are now and encounters were lowered. No one expects amazing combat from a HRPG to begin with, just 'not fucking annoying'.